I'm Getting My Final Harvests for the Season - Peppers and Soup

I actually slept in until my alarm went off today, so I'm a bit rushed today. I got in my meditation, but now I only have 30 minutes to get this blog posted before I have to leave for the swimming pool. I was glad to get some sleep, however. I really needed it. 

My Tabasco pepper plant is doing really well, 
with a lot of peppers for me to pick. I'll leave that 
until this weekend, allowing them to get as much 
heat as possible over the next day or two. Then 
I'll stick them into the dehydrator and I'll have 
a lovely batch to grind into my own chili powder. 

Yesterday and today are gorgeous days - a bit of a fall-back into summer with warm temperatures. The garden is responding accordingly, and my peppers are ripening quickly. I have hopes of getting one more really good harvest from my Jalapeno peppers and a wonderful end-of-season harvest from my Tabasco peppers. I took some photos of my plants to share with all of you, and if they transferred correctly, I'm showing you here. 

These three large (and they're REALLY big) 
Jalapeno peppers are the last ones I'll probably 
get from this plant this year. I'll leave them on 
the plant for as long as possible to allow them 
to ripen more, but yesterday's 80 degree day 
was wonderful in getting them towards a 
beautiful red color. Hopefully today's 80 degree 
temp will be all that's needed for these guys, 
because we'll be colder and rainy over the 
weekend. 

I decided to make my Roasted Peppers and Tomatoes soup yesterday, and also have all of the ingredients for chicken fajitas in the refrigerator, waiting for tomorrow's cooking time. That soup is one of my favorites. It takes a bit of oven time since I'm broiling the red peppers, tomatoes and an onion before combining everything into my blender and making the soup. But the time is well worth it. It also tends to smoke up my kitchen a bit since I'm blackening the skins of the veggies and fruits in the oven (yes, tomatoes are a fruit). So I also had some smoke to contend with. But the kitchen was pristine by the time DH got home. 

My roasted red peppers and tomato soup is one of my 
favorite blender soup recipes. I broil the veggies, 
then put them into the blender with some clear stock 
(veggie or chicken, usually) and some herbs and 
spices, set the blender to "soup" setting, and let 
it do its' thing. Less than seven minutes later, I have 
a hot, steaming batch of soup that will last me for 
several days. Yummy! 

I was so distracted by cooking, however, that I forgot to turn on the clothes dryer for my final load of bedding! Duh! I turned it on shortly before dinner, though, and had everything folded and into the linen closet right after dinner. Silly me! 

Of course a blender soup would be impossible without a 
top quality blender, and my Wolf manual setting blender 
is more than up to the task. It cost a FORTUNE, but I 
use it every week, often more than once a week, and it 
continues to perform above my expectations. 

So, today's post is a bit short, but I can already feel that today's going to be a good day. I'm determined, so therefore, it will be - LOL. I hope you also have a wonderful Thursday. I'm heading out to the swimming pool and then to the shop to work for the day. I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini. 

My New Blender and a Gift of Eggs - Yesterday Was A Fun Day

I'm going on record that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my new Wolf blender. OMG - it's amazing. I used it yesterday to make my Ogre Juice. I prepped my veggies the same as I always do - cutting things up to more easily work with the blades, and adding my coconut "milk" to the mix. It is a BEAST! But is's a very quiet beast. Although it's almost twice as powerful as my previous blender, it's twice as quiet too, and it's solid. No vibration, even though it's spinning at 2400 rpm. Making my Ogre Juice was a joy, and I'm looking forward to a wonderful relationship with it for years to come. 

I'm loving my new blender. It's really 
sturdy, it's very powerful, and it's 
quiet! I think I'll be using it heavily 
for the next few years, and that's 
perfectly OK with me. 

Today I decided to wear my standard swimsuit to the pool. I don't have to just wear the skin suit until I'm swimming outdoors. So I'm going to mix things up a bit and use the skin suit one or two times a week, and my standard suit the other one or two days until we're swimming outdoors. Then I'll be in the skin suit exclusively for the summer and into the fall. The outdoor pool usually opens around the end of May, so I'm looking at another two months of the indoor pool. 

My friend Meg from up the street has backyard chickens. 
Obviously this isn't her back yard, we don't have lemon 
trees up here in the Frozen Northlands. But the contented 
chickens pictured could easily be hers. She spoils them, 
and they have a very nice and cozy hen house to keep them 
warm in our frigid winter temps. 

My friend Meg, a fellow swimmer who happens to live only two blocks away from me, brought me six eggs from her hens yesterday. I'm looking forward to using them. The thing I love the most is that they don't actually require refrigeration until they have been washed. Washing eliminates the protective coating on the exterior of the shell. Without washing, they can stay out of the refrigerator for a long time. So I currently have the eggs on the counter in the kitchen. I'm planning on making some "cookies" within the next week, and maybe I'll treat myself to a couple of cooked eggs for Sunday breakfast. 

I have too many thoughts bounding around in my 
head right now. Too many things are pending, or waiting 
on other people or events. That's the kind of thing 
that drives me a bit crazy, so I need to remain 
grounded and focused. It's all going to fall into 
place eventually. 

I'm a bit brain dead today, my thoughts are jumping here and there, so I'm going to call this done. I'll wrap up my current Idol story today and get that posted. I probably could have posted it two days ago, but sometimes I like to let stories percolate a bit before releasing them. This was one of those times. Have an excellent Thursday and I'll be back tomorrow. (At least yesterday's snow is gone, and we're above freezing so driving won't be hazardous. Little steps toward Spring - LOL). Peace! 

Running On A Wheel - Is Etsy Resolved? Please Let Me Know

OMG, yesterday was a VERY busy day. I started by swimming, then grocery shopping, and then cooking and cooking, and more cooking, finally ending up with uploading documents to Etsy (hopefully that will work) and relaxing with a long chat with Aearwen. 

There are just some days that seem as if I'm just 
running in place. Yesterday was one of those days. 
I got a LOT accomplished, but I was doing this 
and that all day. 

I baked my corned been, so DH is certain that it will be horrible because corned beef needs to be boiled along with potatoes and cabbage. Well, I don't do potatoes, and the only cabbage I do is shredded red cabbage on my salads. I'm of the belief that boiling corned beef takes all of the flavor out and just puts it into the water. I'll be happy to eat my corned beef if he wants to buy one for himself today and boil it. Otherwise, he's stuck with what I made, and it looked lovely when I moved it to the refrigerator yesterday. 

I'm currently using a Ninja 1100 Professional Blender 
for my Ogre Juice, and it does a good job. The carafe 
that it came with cracked after three batches and they 
sent me a new one. Now, this one has developed a 
crack. It's always at the base, near where the blades 
attach to the spindle, and it starts to leak fluid 
from the carafe into the motor housing which is 
NOT a good thing. Time to look into a professional 
level blender *sigh*. 

Another blender is biting the dust. Again, it's not the motor - that's in great shape. It's the carafe, which developed it's first crack yesterday. I know from experience that's a death knell. I'll look into whether I can order another carafe for it, but I'm also starting to look at a more professional grade blender - either a Wolf or a Vitamix. I'm not fond of how much they cost, but they have top level ratings because they are the best in the industry. There are two different models I'm looking at. But, I'll see how long my carafe can survive with the clear Gorilla Tape I placed on it yesterday, and I'll look into a new carafe first - a considerable cost savings if one is available. 

I'm looking into one of these - a Vitamix 3300 Ascent 
series blender. It's one of the few they carry that has 
the 64 oz carafe, which is a necessity for me. I blend 
four batches of Ogre Juice at a time, and that requires 
me to have my materials all the way to the top of 
a 64 oz carafe. 

I fully admit that my Ogre Juice is harsh on a blender, but you would think it would be the motor that would be having the issue, not the carafe. The carafe just sits there and keeps everything contained while the blades and motor do the actual work. But, this seems to be an endemic problem, at least with the two Ninja brand blenders I've purchased so far, and once a crack develops, it can easily snowball into a series of them in a short time, rendering the blender completely unusable. 

The other blender I'm looking at is the 
Wolf Pro-Performance (or their Hi-Performance) 
blender. Both the Wolf and the Vitamix have 
great reviews and a dedicated following. I'll 
have to research this one carefully, because it's 
a major expense and I don't want to choose the 
wrong one. I expect it to last for years. 

I uploaded my corporate documentation to Etsy again yesterday (and again this morning). I'm still not 100% sure it's completely resolved, but I think it is. I'll continue to work on it, but it's hard for me to tell 100% because it automatically brings me to my own pages, rather than allowing me to look at the website from afar. I'd love to know if it's functional, so please check out Stormcloud Trading (I'm not sure if the "Co" is part of the name or not) and let me know if you can access the site. Email or post and let me know. Thanks. 

d

I'm off and running, the pool is calling me for my last swim of the week. Happy St Patrick's Day to all of you, and please, pray for Ukraine. Peace! I'll be back tomorrow. 

Gifts and Holiday Schedule - A Bird and An Upcoming Sale

Yesterday was crazy/busy and I ended up missing a zoom call completely because I messed up the time. They always state the time in New York time zone for their US customers, and I know there's an hour difference between NY and my home state, but for some stupid reason I suddenly thought it was an hour later, not an hour earlier. Oh well, the calls are recorded. I can catch it on replay. And I was busy wrapping holiday gifts for DH at the time anyway, so it would have been hard to pay attention to a Zoom call and deal with scissors, paper and tape at the same time. 

I'm pretty plain with my wrapping - there are 
only the two of us - I'm pretty sure that if I 
didn't wrap it, it's for me, and if I did wrap it, 
it's from me - LOL. 

As some of you might remember, I had purchased a new blender in mid-November (the 18th to be precise) because the carafe on my old one (purchased at the end of March) had cracked and it was leaking badly. I had glued the cracks but that was a temporary solution. Since they no longer had the carafe available, I gave up and bought a new one. So ... I had used it 4-5 times, and noticed I was getting cracks in the new carafe on the new blender. I called customer service and they arranged for me to get a new carafe, which arrived earlier this week. 

My Ninjo Professional blender doesn't have the 
food processing bowl (far right), but it does 
have the other items. However, if the carafe simply 
can't hold up to what I make, it's worthless 
to me. 

Yesterday I use the new carafe for the first time. I took photos before using it, because I have a feeling that this is an engineering issue and that the problem will happen again, probably just as quickly. But I was able to use my blender as needed yesterday, and I'm going to keep a very close eye on the carafe. If it's the physics forces that I think - the blade and the torque causing problems - I'll be trashing another new blender within a few months and buying a different brand - something substantial that will hold up making my veggie smoothies. You wouldn't think it would be so difficult to puree a bunch of fresh veggies that are cut up, but I guess I'm wrong and it's much harder than I thought. 

We usually do our holiday gift exchange on Christmas 
Eve, but since we're closed for Christmas Eve this 
year, we're doing it tonight after we close the store. 

Today is our final open day at the shop before the holiday. We'll do a small gift exchange tonight before we go home, and then we'll have three full days off. BLISS! I will be swimming at 5:00 am tomorrow morning - I really don't want to miss my time in the water - but then I'll come home and cook a turkey in my new oven. I'd better double-check my recipe file on my computer to find my turkey instructions.  I did bake my chicken breasts yesterday night, after having done a thorough self-clean cycle on the oven earlier in the day. The chicken breasts turned out perfect, so call me a very happy person. The turkey will be our "trial by fire" for the new oven, though. We'll see how well it does on my bird - LOL. 

We like a nice brown skin on our bird, which I usually get 
by basting it every 20-30 minutes for at least two hours, usually 
closer to three hours. It just gives a lovely bird. We're having 
our Thanksgiving a month late but now we have an oven, so 
all is good - LOL. 

Have a wonderful day and I'll be back tomorrow, but then I'll skip the entire weekend and relax before we dive into our 4-Day End-of-Year Sale to wrap up 2021. I'm hoping things will be a bit of a zoo, but not so busy that we can't take care of our customers with our usual level of efficiency. I'm also crossing my fingers that my computer system won't spit. It's ancient, and it's been having "issues". Enjoy your Thursday.