House of Roses

Last Fall before Snowfall

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Meat Haul for September

I had a day off, so I biked up to the farmers’s market to pick up our meat share for this month.

Beef:

• ~1 lb steak tips
• 0.8 lb ground beef
• 0.9 lb ground beef
• 1 lb  T-bone steak

Chicken:

• 3.5 lb chicken legs

Pork:

• 1 lb Italian sausage
• 1.25 lb pork steak
• 0.7 lb ground pork

I also picked up 3 pounds of Gingergold apples while I was at the market.

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Canning Tomatoes

Amanda and I canned tomates this weekend.

A few lessons learned: heirlooms are more meat and less water, so they shrink less in the heat and pressure, and are preferable to put up. After some chatting with my folks—who were horrified to find the book told us to add acid (”they’re tomatoes!”)—I’m wondering if I could do 11 pounds for less than 25 minutes. My poor mother’s worried I’ll have to add sugar to eat them when I open them. I hope she’s wrong.

Amanda got mortgage lifter tomatoes and, boy, are those huge:

First up: wash the beasties:

Then, chop to fit into the (quart) jars:

Next, pack the jars, stuffing in the tomatoes, filling as much as possible (but leaving head space at the top of the jar!):

Then, put on the hot lids and rings, and put them in the canner with water, some vinegar:

After the rise to pressure, 25 minutes at 11 pounds (oy vey), and the time required to cool back down to 1 atmosphere:

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Hauling the Meat

dmm kindly biked out to Brookline to pick up the last meat share from Stillman’s Farm.

The goods were:

• 2 x 1 lb ground pork
• 1.5 lb porterhouse steak
• 1 lb bacon
• 1.5 lb knockwurst
• 1 lb leg of lamb
• 3.15 lb pork shoulder

Not as much variety as I had hoped, and no ground lamb, sadly.

(And it turns out I am not a fan of knockwurst.)

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Memorial Day bike ride

I took a 16.7-mile bike ride today, mostly just to enjoy the nice weather.

I started by taking Broadway up to Arlington Center, where I stopped at the craft store and bought materials for a craft project. Hopefully, more about that before too long.

Then I tried to find my way down to the bike path and ended up going under it, on Pond street. I walked my bike along the park until I got back to the path at Linwood, took it back to Alewife, and then took the streets over to the path by Concord Ave. That took me to Huron Ave, from which I took Sparks to Memorial Drive and the Charles River paths.

For a change I took the next bridge over to the Boston side, and cruised along the riverside towards the ocean. 4 miles of that later, I got to the new park I had seen across the water last trip. It’s small but pretty, and it connects to what looks like the beginning of a pedestrian cross-river bridge next to the commuter rail bridge. The pedestrian bridge is unfinished (I guess they’ll have to make it a drawbridge too?) but I got to watch the rail bridge come back down and reconnect with the stationary rails, which was pretty cool.

Then, back across the river to Cambridge, and back homewards. I followed the bike-map-suggested route along Gore instead of taking the highway again, but the route I had planned based on the map hit an unmarked one-way at Boston street, so I went through Union Square instead (with a brief, failed attempt to go around it), along Somerville, up Central, and Highland to Davis and home. Whee!

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Bikeabout

I took Friday off from work, so I went on a big bike ride. First I made my way from Powderhouse Circle to Harvard Square, then made my way through some Harvard buildings down to Mem Drive and the bikeway. From there I went all the way around Cambridge past Cambridgeport to MIT and Kendall, then up to Lechmere station and a little park near the Museum of Science, where I had a little lunch and watched the duck boats enter the Charles. 7.5 miles before lunch!

I started taking McGrath Highway back, but on a whim took Washington Street up into Somerville, though I had no idea where it went. It ended up taking me to Sullivan Station. From there I got back over to Broadway and followed that up and over Winter Hill and back down to Powderhouse and home. Plotting it out on the GMaps pedometer afterwards it looks like I went a little over 12 miles total. Whee!

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