Mosquitoes, Friends & Jamming
This past week I meant to post about how awful mosquitoes are. I haven't been bitten (until now) since I got pregnant with Quentin, and suspect that my visit to Quesnel for April and Andrew's wedding may have actually been the last time a mosquito bit me, let alone having a bite that drove me insane. Well, I got quite a few bites last weekend. They were very itchy. Poor Quentin gets big eczema-like patches around some of his and that seems to increase the itch factor too much for my little boy. I think they bother him more than his chicken pox last year did.I also meant to post about friends and how great they are. My friends that I gathered while working at Fraser Valley are the only work friends I've had that have carried on past my work experience. Okay, there was Ally, but we seemed to lose each other after she went to Saskatchewan. Shannon (the one who got married) is of course a great friend, Mike and Melanie, and even David and Genvieve (sp?) although we don't see them as often. I hope we can retain our friendships over the years because Tyler and I think they are all really great people. It's been a year since I left FVCHS, so I'm taking this as a good sign. Okay, when Shannon and Melanie each phoned me last September without provocation when I was getting a little depressed was a good sign, and it made me incredibly happy that they did. Okay, I'm tired, and before that dissolves into me repeating myself...
Taira, Ed, Philippa. More great friends. A little more random as they all live away from the Lower Mainland (well, Philippa doesn't, but she is out of town so often she seems to live away). April, who I still have a box of stuff for sitting by my door. I keep adding to it, but I don't seem to send it. Not very useful that way, I hope she forgives me. She is an amazing friend in so many ways. I don't know about finding true love over the internet, but apparently with the help of a mutual friend, finding a true friend does happen.
Yes, I took pictures of the cake. It turned out well, other than the discovery when I was filling and icing it that the bottom layer had a very large area in the middle that hadn't actually cooked. That's fine, there was more than enough cake for everyone that was still there, and I sent home the two bottom layers with the groom's family (big family, lots of gatherings, I worked with one of the brothers last year as well).
Oh right, jamming. Berry picking does not work all that well when the children aren't quite one or three. Hopefully next year will go better. I've made three batches of jam so far, and more will happen...Tuesday. Not tomorrow as Tyler and I will be heading out to see Pirates so Vicki can spend some time with Quentin before she heads back to China for four or five weeks and Tyler and I get to go out. Jade will come with us as that wouldn't be fair to anyone but Tyler and me. Quentin's hard enough to get to settle down for sleep without him trying to vie for attention. Anyways. One is raspberry, one is blueberry raspberry and the third is blueberry. If only the recipes made more than four maybe five jars at a time...lol. Immediate plans call for a blueberry cherry, cherry, and strawberry. We'll see what the pantry looks like after that.
Time for sleeping. I have already slept an hour or so tonight, so subtract an hour from the time of this posting and that's approximately when I'm going to bed. :)
Take care all.
posted by The Jaded Bee @ 1:30 AM
5 Comments:
did you try some calamine lotion? my mommy used to put it on all my chicken pox... maybe it was all psychological but I remember it working.
oh and about pirates... loved most of it... some of it was a little bit out of my reality suspending range.
very funny though
thanks jen for all your kind words - I have to agree with your analogy - very well captured!
sounds like you will have a very full pantry - I didn't even know that you could make cherry jam... do you have a recipe for it - that is something I would definitely like to try... we have raspberries bushes in our yard so I will likely be making jam tonight or tomorrow - i just need to buy some sugar
I do have calamine lotion, Stewart, from when Quentin got those chicken pox last year. It seems to help him, very momentarily helped me. I was very, very glad to find my After Bite and that works much better for me. Instant relief!
I missed some of Pirates. Tyler, in his misguided but well-meaning chivalrism, missed about 3/4 of it. Oh well. We know we'll own it one day. Although it was more gruesome than previous ones and it will be a few years older that our kidlins will need to be to see it than the first.
April, generally what I've been doing is entering the request into google (ie. cherry jam recipe) and looking for one with ingredients I don't mind using. There's some that have lemon and/or orange peel as well as the standard lemon juice. Some with pectin and some without. cooks.com is a decent site for jam recipes and I know I saw one there for cherry raspberry jam, oh wait, that one that I'll use (if I get more raspberries) is at www.astray.com I also have a basics cookbook that has a chart of standard jam recipes and play with that to get combinations sometimes, like the blueberry raspberry. It gives amounts of berries, sugar, lemon juice and time to cook for. I should be doing the cherry jam tomorrow, so I'll post the recipe I end up using then.
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