Showing posts with label canning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label canning. Show all posts

Monday, October 4, 2021

Harvest Time and #GTT by @JacquieRogers

 Harvest Time and... #GTT


This is such a busy time for me!  Besides keeping up with my regular chores, there's the fall harvest.  And boy howdy, did we ever get a LOT of produce!  Right now, I have delicious red-ripe tomatoes everywhere I look.  Green ones, too.  

I'm saving this beauty for a BLT in the morning!
Makes me drool just looking at it.


We'll only get another week, maybe two, until it frosts here in SW Idaho, so I'll have to figure out how all these durn maters are gonna get processed.  So far, my daughter and I have canned tomatoes plain, and we've also canned them with Indian butter chicken flavor, chili flavor, stewed tomatoes, and tomato juice.  We've canned lots of salsa, too--mild and hot.  We never seem to manage to hit the medium mark. Hahaha.

Mostly plain tomatoes and chili mix in 
the latest batches.

Right next to the boxes of jars is the dehydrator.  It's brand new, and believe it or not, I've never dehydrated veggies before.  I've dried herbs in my toaster oven but that's about it.  My daughter suggested that I could dehydrate veggies and make my own soup mix to take with us when we travel.  Good idea--throw some meat, broth, and dried veggies in the Instant Pot and voila! Soup.  The bags of veggies would be less bulky and weigh far less then canned goods, so I'm going to give her suggestion a go.  We do have to pay attention to weight in our new Casita (which we've named Tillie the Tank).

Only the peppers were grown in the garden, 
we bought the carrots and celery.

All this while Mr R is still working on the kitchen remodel (it's now officially a year into this project--we don't call him Mr. Speedy for nothing).  The latest accomplishment...okay, so it's not done yet but is functional...is the oven/coffee center.

Top left is the microwave and under that, the Advantium 240v oven.
The right side is the coffee center.
Mr. R is still working on the cabinet, obviously.  In case you're wondering,
the drawers will be painted purple and orange. 
I like color.

Meantime, I thought you might like to know what it's like to stare at a screen with only 70-80,000 words left to write.



The writers who see this will know exactly what this means. LOL.

So what's #GTT?

Well, in the olden days Southerners often had to give up their property and a lot of them headed to Texas, so they'd write GTT on the door or gatepost and leave.  Later, GTT was used for an outlaw who was on the lam--they'd Gone To Texas.  Didn't matter where they actually went, people still said they'd GTT.

And we're headed to Texas in a few weeks, so #GTT.  We're not outlaws but we'll be visiting some pretty dicey characters, among them the famous author Caroline Clemmons.  That woman has a wicked sense of humor and keeps me laughing so this is gonna be a ton of fun, for sure.  We'll see how patient Mr R and Hero are with us.  Throw in their daughters, and we know for certain we'll have a very, very lively and entertaining week.  Oh yeah.

Stovetop oven in our dinky Casita travel trailer.

I'm really excited to have an RV this trip.  I have food allergies so we needed a place where I can cook my own food.  It's never fun when you stop by a burger joint and they try to poison you.  The Casita is a dinky little fiberglass travel trailer, but we can cook, poop, and sleep in it so I'm happy.

After we leave Caroline's house, we'll be headed to Arizona to see my longtime buddy Ann Charles.  She's always a hoot, and I'm looking forward to visiting with her and her crazy family.

I guess I better get some words on the page before someone starts throwing rotten tomatoes at me.


Until next month, Happy Reading!




If you're on Snapchat, friend me!  My handle is jacquierogers.  You can get videos of Sassy's latest updates there.  And goofy pictures of her scribe.

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Summer Bounty by @JacquieRogers



Summer Bounty
Plus remodeling and books.
August was a busy month and September promises to be even busier!  That's how it goes when you live in a rural area and have such wonderful fresh fruit and vegetables.  After years of living in the city, I just can't get enough of all the vine-ripened peaches and such.  I apparently forgot what good food tastes like.

This month, my daughter and I canned a bunch of peaches, plus we froze peach nectar which we'll make into peach butter.  Yum.  We also canned 22 pints of stewed tomatoes.  I'm tellin' you, they're delicious.  I'll be picking the rest of the tomatoes tomorrow. (Um, today.)

Stewed tomatoes ready for the pressure canner.
I must be obsessed with food this month because Mr R and I found a new favorite place to eat--Alejandra's in Marsing, Idaho.  If you're ever in the area, this is a great place for Mexican food.  Mr R had a chili relleno and I had chili verde.  Nom nom!

You can't go wrong eating at Alejandra's!
Between all that, we're getting the master bathroom remodeled.  We now have a new shower--the best we've ever had--that'll serve us well into our old age.  It's an awesome shower.  Also a new toilet and a new sink that's huge with a kitchen faucet.  I love it.  Bathroom sinks should be useful for something other than rinsing your toothbrush.  And cultured marble countertop.  It's flat-out gorgeous.  I'd post pictures but it seems a little tacky. LOL.

Speaking of books... Were we speaking of books?  Well, folks like us think about books all the time so we probably were.  Anyhow, every once in a while we need a new dress, and books are the same.  I'm thinking about changing the cover on Have Wand - Will Travel.  So what do you think?

Old cover <------------------------------> New cover
I really like the new cover but I'm a bit reticent because the hero dresses in all black.  On the other hand, I think it's an awesome cover so I'll be forgiven.  The cover designer for the new one is Steven Novak.

Be sure to read my latest duet with the fabulous Caroline Clemmons, Orphan Train Brides.  This one is about two women who were orphans and adopted from the orphan train by an abusive couple.  Caroline wrote Merry's book, A Family for Merry, and I wrote her sister Polly's book, A Family for Polly.  See how they planned to save five orphans who'd surely have been put in dire situations, and in the process the sisters find true love.  Oh wait, that was a spoiler.  Oh wait, they're romances, so of course there's a Happily Ever After.

Orphan Train Brides is available now in


Check out Caroline's post for more info on this duet and also the other duets that we've written together.  And guess what?  One more is in the works.  

Happy reading!  I hope you enjoy reading Merry's and Polly's stories.  They both have fun adventures that you won't want to miss.  Also, please consider posting a review--you'll have our undying gratitude! 


Click here to sign up for Jacquie's newsletter
Pickle Barrel Gazette

If you're on Snapchat, friend me!  My handle is jacquierogers.  You can get videos of Sassy's latest updates there.  And goofy pictures of her scribe.

Keep up with Jacquie Rogers' latest news at the