journaling

Darius brought up an interesting issue with his comments for opening day. This blog phenom is an interesting one. I suppose there are several ways to look at it.

Are we living in a world that just wants to find more ways where someone will pay attention to us? I have been following a couple of blogs in areas of my own interests, and one thing I have noticed is that they are of more personal nature than comments found in yahoo groups for example. I belong to about a dozen yahoo groups, and these more or less address the issues of the group as a whole. Bloggers tend to express more of the personal issues in their lives as they apply to their blog topics and otherwise.

Or, are blogs a way for people in the world to record their life history in a different way? There was a time where every young woman kept a journal (before my day!). I don't know at what point that went out of vogue. With the home school movement came a renewed desire to restore journaling at least among the children being homeschooled. Some families had more success than others. We were not too successful with this, but I think all of the boys kept mission journals, again, some more detailed and resolute than others.

As a member of the church, we have always been encouraged to keep journals as a way to record our life's events for posterity. Again, some members are more successful than others, but I think as a rule, most members don't do too well with this. I think most of can't believe what we have to say is really all that interesting to anyone.

So, with that being said, why are blogs coming into their own in such a big way? Perhaps we are thinking the things we are doing in our lives do have value, and that someone, somewhere, might benefit from it. If you do have values you believe to be important, it is very difficult to get anyone to listen to you, even in your own family. Maybe the blog is our way of *feeling* like we are being heard, even if no one is paying attention. So then it is an ego thing.

Well, I'll go along with the prophet Elijah: this is my small way of turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. As far as whether to write things of a personal nature, I don't quite know yet about that. I thought about that when contemplating a blog, but couldn't rationalize both sides. I guess I will cross that hurdle when there is something of a sensitive nature on my mind. Of course, if there really is no one reading, i.e. listening, than it won't matter anyway, right?

Today was a busy day. Alicia came this morning with her weekly enrollment packets and brought her digital camera to give me a mini lesson. I guess I shall have to bite the bullet and get one. There have been many times when I needed one, and things would have gone better had I had one, but I have avoided it. Of course, I should never do that, and realize it is my own stubbornness. I fought getting a computer for many years before I actually purchased one, and then found out they (the computers) think like I do. I had missed out on all those years of having a best friend who thinks like I do. Those of you reading this who know me, know that there are not too many folks out there who think like me!

We could not get her camera to download on my computer, so as soon as she sends them to me, I will post some pictures so this isn't so boring.

I had some planting to do in the garden as I mentioned yesterday and decided to pick some peppers while I was out there. I got at least 5 pounds! I didn't realize there were so many ripe ones.

So I decided I better can them right away or I would never get to them. I tried a couple of different applications which my family will be forced to try at our next family get together, and I also canned some pickled garlic I had read about on one of my yahoo groups. I can't imagine I will like it, but I'll bet some of the kids will, and besides, I was intrigued by it. The author said you can whirl it up in the blender to make a great salad dressing too, so that will also be worth a try.

That took much of the day in activities I had not previously planned on doing. I am seriously behind on getting the English courses rewritten, and we still have a lot to do for our "date night" presentation in Lake City Friday. I also have to get the visiting teaching handout made up for Kitsy to mail out.

Last month, she indicated that I'd better get my act together because we miscommunicated about who was going to do what. She's right of course, but I don't think it's going to happen as she would like it to. Hopefully I will get that done tonight.

Unfortunately, Roger and I got to bed late last night as I decided to roll a large skein of lace weight yarn into a ball. I have been wanting to make a shawl for the longest time, and bought this hank some time ago on sale. I belong to a sock of the month club, and in December they sent me some Regia silk with a lace patterned sock. I finished the first one on Friday, and I have fallen in love with both the yarn and the pattern. My success with that lace encouraged me to begin this shawl project, so I looked for a simple pattern yesterday and decided on the yarn harlot's "snowdrop" pattern. I made Roger help me roll the ball, and it is huge. It took us a long time, 3 - 4 hours I think, to roll it. There were a few knots too that took me forever to get out. I think next time it would behoove me to pay the nice lady at Knitwits to roll it for me.

Anyway, I did start knitting it last night, but was too tired to concentrate on it as much as a lace pattern requires. I figured I would start fresh tonight.

Well, I suppose I have rambled on enough. Here are the recipes for the items made today in case you get a chance to taste them and want to try them yourself.

Pickled Garlic

Peeled garlic cloves
2/3 c Vinegar; (white)
2 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Salt
1 1/3 cup Water

Purchase 1/2 gal peeled garlic cloves at Costco or peel your own. Combine solution of white vinegar, water, sugar, and salt. Must be enough to cover garlic. Bring solution to a full rolling boil. Drop in peeled garlic. Return solution to full boil and boil 2 minutes. Turn off fire and allow to cool. Put into container and store in cool place 3 months.

Bonus: The author says it makes excellent salad dressing too. We'll let you know when we try it. We got about 9 (1/2) pints out of it, but i had used some for canning the peppers.

From Lynnda/tnlds on my food storage yahoo group:

We eat a lot of jalapeno peppers and our favorite recipe for pickled jalopeno is:

1 cup water
1 cup vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Bring this to a boil. Put sliced pepper and 1 tsp dried garlic chips (I didn't know what this is, so I just used fresh garlic, about 2 cloves per 1/2 pint jar) in a jar and pour hot vinegar solution over them to collar. Cap and process for 5 min. in boiling water bath.

I think this made about 5 jars (1/2 pints).

I still had a lot of peppers left, so I decided to try this other pickled pepper recipe. I got 19 more 1/2 pint jars of jalopenos, and then I used the same recipe for the serano peppers, poblanos, and whatever those other peppers are. I think they're anaheim, but stupidly I forgot to label them when I planted them. I got 6 quarts of the whole peppers, and decided to cut the poblanos up in to cracker sized squares to use as hors d'euves. Man, I hope this stuff tastes good.

Pickled Peppers

8 quarts peppers
1/4 cup sugar
8 cups white vinegar
2 cups cold water
16 cloves garlic

If using small whole peppers, cut two slits in each pepper to allow for complete pickling. When using larger peppers, cut the stems off, take out the seeds, and cut in fourths or eighths. I like (the author of this recipe) to cut them in squares so they're the perfect cracker size for hors d'oevres.

Combine all ingredients in a kettle except the garlic; simmer 15 min.
Pack the pepper and 2 garlic cloves in each clean, hot pint jar, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. process 10 min BWB

We are relying more and more on our food storage and avoiding eating out as much as possible as per my goal for the year. It will be fun learning to use this stuff.