Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
food & drink

canning

So, I got canning equipment for Mother’s Day and my birthday (including a fancy-ass pressure canner). Now we are canning. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while (I mean, my freezer only holds so much stuff).

Despite the fact that I’m a hypochondriac and fear that I will contract botulism each time I eat one of our canned goods, we have been soldiering on with this project. We’ve been trying to can something every week (I say “we” because Brian is on board with this project–and we even got Jake into the mix last weekend). We are running out of ideas until tomatoes come into season (soon enough), so we might not be able to keep up with our previously torrid pace. So far we’ve done two types of strawberry jam and two types of mustard. I can’t wait to start canning tomatoes, salsa, and tomato sauce! We’ll probably be doing pickles next but that might have to wait another week or so as I don’t have enough cucumbers yet. Anyway, I definitely like learning new things and this has been a lot of fun so far.

movies

blue valentine

I heard a lot of good things about this movie, so I was surprised to find that I did not like it as much as I expected to. Sure, the movie was depressing, but that much I knew going in. The performances from Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams were great. But, it was just missing something–and I don’t know quite what. Brian did not like it at all. That, I would have guessed.

gardening & landscaping

garlic braids

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at braiding garlic for some time now. I finally got around to doing that tonight. It was pretty easy and looks cool so I think I’m going to do that with all of the garlic from my garden (and the onions, too).

My garden is doing pretty well this year. The potato plants look better than they ever have in past years. I’m hoping that means I’m going to get a good harvest. I’m trying a few new things this year, watermelon being one of them. I have a couple of tiny watermelons growing. I hope they turn into something.

The only negatives to note are the eggplant and carrots. Something is eating the eggplant leaves–I do not think the plants are going to survive. As for the carrots, every year I have to plant carrots twice. They never seem to come up the first time. This year, I got them in the ground late. By the time I decided that the seeds were not going to sprout, it was too late to reseed. I’m going to be disappointed in the fall–picking carrots is one of the fun things about gardening. I guess there are a couple of them growing out there, but it’s not going to be the same as picking 10 pounds of carrots.

The cucumbers are doing especially well, too. I think we’re going to have a bumper crop this year. Coincidentally, Brian and I have started canning this summer, so pickles are on the upcoming schedule. I’ll have more on canning in a future blog post…

movies

salt

We drank Margaritas while watching Salt, coincidentally enough. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not a fan of Angelina Jolie action movies. This movie wasn’t as bad as Wanted, but I could have thought of a better way to spend 90+ minutes.

motorcycles

drizzle in the valley

The weather was not ideal for this year’s Thunder in the Valley, but we managed to go downtown a couple of times (albeit without the bikes). Thursday night, we caught half of a set from the Eric Tessmer Band. I could have listened to them all night. The band was great, but the guitarist was phenomenal.

We took Friday off, as is our custom and we went downtown in the afternoon and walked around for a bit. Saturday, having seen all there was to see, we simply went for a ride on our bikes. Next year, I think we need to branch out and check out Windber Rumbles.