Pitting cherries without a Pitter

Tuesday, June 30, 2009. Posted at 9:52 pm

One of my favorite pies - thanks to Tammy - is cherry mulberry pie. While the mulberries are pretty much no-prep, the cherries have pits to be removed. The easiest way to remove pits is probably a cherry pitter, but we don’t use cherries enough to spend the money on one. With this tip, I’m not sure we’ll ever have to. (unless we find one for cheap because I can’t resist a good deal)

What you’ll need:

A sturdy drinking straw. Those big ones you get with a slush at convenience stores (or with Taco Bell’s Fruitistas) work best for me. Depending on the size of the cherry and pits, you may need more than one straw available.

That’s it! Well, you might want a couple bowls and some paper towels to clean up splatters. Last year, while pitting dark cherries (not very carefully, I might add), I ended up with dark red splatters everywhere from flying pits.. walls, floor, counter, myself. It looked like I’d killed someone. Just saying ;)

Thankfully, I was much more careful this time.

Okay, take your straw in one hand and a cherry in the other. Place the opening of the straw at the top (or bottom) of your cherry. Gently twist and push straw through cherry (photo). The pit should now be inside the straw (photo). Push it out, and move on to the next cherry (photo).

If viewing photos, ignore the fact that I’m wearing a Tinklebell PJ top.. and the Christmas mug, please and thank you. ;)

See it done –

 

Find more kitchen tips and info on how to participate in Tammy’s Kitchen Tip Tuesday here.

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Pets, garden and fighting for Narnia

Monday, June 29, 2009. Posted at 5:17 pm

Possum and her gorgeous green eyes
Kenzie, the dog we “borrowed” from my brother-in-law
These kittens belong to someone down the street, but look how cut there! They’re almost identical.
Kenzie and Pokey
Favorite, standing-by during the water fight

The neighbor girls came over to play with the dogs and rake our grass (I dunno why, but they seem to like doing that lol) and Mark decided to attack them with the hose. They got their shields (a shovel and a rake) and decided they had to defend “Narnia” – haha

The battle grounds
Standing guard, but not paying attention as the enemy tries to sneak by.. (it’s hard to be stealthy when you’re giggling ;) )
Attack!

Retreat!
Mark’s mom getting made up by our niece. The lip gloss was blue and white – yuck! haha
Eyeshadow time!

  

Herb box: Oregano, curly- and flat-leaf parsley, small and large leaf basil.
A hot cherry pepper forming!
Sweet banana pepper
Cucumber row
Zucchini row
Cayenne peppers
Spearmint
Spearmint
Found out that the red thorny vines I pulled out of our yard were black raspberry plants. These are from the neighbors’ yard.

Proof that cats like yoga too..

 

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Filed Under Animals and Pets, Nature

I’m a terrible blogger

Monday, June 29, 2009. Posted at 12:05 am

It feels like I haven’t been around much because I haven’t been blogging much, so I’m going to try to work on that. My husband is often reminding me that I haven’t blogged in a while, and he has nothing new to read. (Not like he isn’t living whatever I’m blogging – haha) I’ve tried posting a couple times lately to share pictures but my crap Netzero “Hi-Speed” “encounters an error” and closes about half the time I try to upload, which is pretty frustrating. Actually, that happened just now as well, so I guess pictures will have to wait.

I realized that I actually haven’t mentioned much of what I, or we, have been up to lately. Mark and I were down near Columbus for a couple weekends for the Marion Mayhem indoor football games, where Mark sold stuff and I read books. (haha, it was really that exciting for me. Nah, actually indoor football wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined.)

We have a few things coming up in July that we’re really looking forward to. First of all, Stone Temple Pilots in concert on the 8th.. which I’m sure I’ve mentioned but it’s definitely worth mentioning again ;) Some other bands coming to the area that I’ve love to see include Cavo, Sick Puppies, Hurt and Candlebox (for, what, the third or fourth time? Love them!) I also hope that we’ll get a chance to check out the Three Rivers Festival, which is kind of a big deal in our area. I love it anyway, so that’s all that matters, right? :)

We have the annual [Mark's] family vacation July 9-11, but because Mark and I are going to see STP in Cinci that Wednesday, we’re heading down a day early. The plan is to visit the Creation Museum, which actually sounds like fun for the kids and adults. And there will be swimming at the hotel (one great thing about Mark’s family is that when we have to stay in a hotel, they’ll only book a place with a pool. I can’t say it’s only for the kids.) I hope I have my new bathing suit by then.

We’ll be at the Ohio State Fair at the end of July, which will be a first for me :) There’s also a fundraiser coming up that sounds like a lot of fun.. partly because I’ll get to dress up (sorta) and have awesome Italian food. Mark’s latest business contacts are definitely going to keep him busy this summer, I think. I’m not complaining one bit because I get to tag along and hang out with some great people. (I really don’t get much into the sports aspect of it all though)

As far as my workout agreement thing goes, I’ve been doing pretty well. I haven’t lost any weight I’m sure, because I hadn’t been working out often enough to make a difference, but I have started doing this mat workout that came with yoga mats Mark and I bought probably a year ago (and finally took out of the boxes – haha) It’s a 20-minute mixture of yoga and pilates, and I actually love it. Tonight I managed 15 minutes of strength as well. For the month so far, I’m up 30 points, which is all work-out time or time working in the yard. That puts my total at 93. I’m doing a lot better than I thought. I hope I can stick with this!

I think that’s about all for now.  Hopefully I can try uploading new photos again tomorrow and show off more progress in the garden, Mark vs. the neighbor kids, the dogs and other random crap that I know you all love so much :)

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Fortune Cookie Winner

Thursday, June 25, 2009. Posted at 6:58 pm

Whoops – I completely forgot to choose a winner for the giant fortune cookie.  Random.org is now telling me that the winner is comment number…

35!

    Carol on June 16th, 2009 8:37 pm

    I follow Fortuneaday on Twitter cdziuba

Congratulations, Carol! Erin should be contacting you shortly for your info. Thanks, again, to all of you who participated!

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More pictures from the garden

Monday, June 22, 2009. Posted at 3:16 pm

Thankfully, our garden seems to be doing well so far.  We were away for the weekend so we loved seeing the new things when we got home.  Here are some pictures from today:

Two cups of mulberries.. to add the the 3-4 cups already in the freezer :)

Two types of basil in the herb box

Parsley, also in the herb box. (the oregano is growing slow)

Hot cherry pepper plants (left) and jalapeno plants (right) in another planter box on the deck. The ribbon is to prevent the cats from sleeping in the box. Which we've often caught them doing!

In the following pictures, you’ll see our way of keeping the cats and Pokey out of the fragile plants.  Pokey runs loose and would just plow through or roll all over eveything.  The string seems to discourage her.  It prevents the cats from thinking the fresh dirt piles are a litter box.
Oh, an you may notice that the tomato and pepper areas were pretty much the only spots tilled.  It was getting too late to waste any more time, so we (and my mother-in-law) just turned the dirt.

Spinach

Tomato plants (and lots of prickly weeds)

Zucchini plants, moved to the garden today

Onions

Blurry picture of a tiny cayenne pepper - yay!

Pepper row: Serrano in the front, sweet banana left back and cayenne in the middle and back right

I take so many pictures of the garden that I really may end up needing a lot more computer memory!

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Shutters

Monday, June 15, 2009. Posted at 6:32 pm

We’ve been thinking about giving the exterior of the house a mini-facelift by repainting our shutters. The only idea for the new color we had was a red/plum-type, like our neighbors’ and our aunt’s. My mother-in-law, who is likely the one that will be doing all the work, keeps asking what color I want, but I keep saying I don’t know because, well.. decisions aren’t my thing. I say, “Whatever color Mark wants.”

I was bored the other day and Googled “shutter colors” and found some more color options. My personal favorite is blue.. navy or blue-gray. Mark says he doesn’t care what color we do (Helpful as always ;) ).

I took a picture of the front of the house and edited the shutter colors to see how they might look.  (Ignore the trees growing out of our gutter lol)

Here is the house with it’s green shutters (and mailbox, air conditioner and railing.. )

And here are some blue shutters

We’ll probably get rid of the mailbox because mail doesn’t get delivered to the house anyway (and it houses wolf spider nests *shivers*). The new air conditioner we have to put in will not be painted. I don’t know what we’ll do about the railing.

Eventually, I’d love to repaint the siding (which Mark says can’t be replaced/messed with because it’s asbestos), putting in a raised bed around the front (I consider the whole area shown as the “front” of the house, because both sides face the road.  We live on a corner.)  Those first two rose-like shrubs I showed earlier are under the window to the right of the front door, so those will fill in that area pretty well, I think. 

FYI – in case you weren’t reading way back then, this part of the house (and the some) used to be surrounded with half-bare, probably more-than-half-dead, ugly shrubs and trees.  I’m still happy those are gone!  Oh, and see that awning thing above the upstairs window?  Those used to be above most of the downstairs windows.  I couldn’t wait to get rid of those either.  Then we used three of them to make the kitty house.

Anyway, how do you think the house would look with either of these colors?  I think the first blue makes everything look brighter and new

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Six things that make me happy

Monday, June 15, 2009. Posted at 3:46 pm

I was tagged by Cole the other day.

6 Things that make me happy…

1. Rock music.. like you don’t even know. Cranking up The Bear cures about every crappy mood I could have. I think I feel most like myself when I’m singing along to whatever’s playing.

2. Sitting outside on gorgeous days, surrounded by the cats.

3. My tan (well, my funky uneven tan). I realized that I look fantastic with a tan. I wish tanning wasn’t so bad for skin. Maybe I should think about Mystic Tanning, or something.

4. Reading a great book. I love to get so into a book that I think about it when I’m not reading it. The only problem with that is sometimes it’s hard for me to start a new book right after finishing one.. and I love to always be reading.

5. My husband, even if he might doubt it sometimes.

6. A clean house, even though I don’t clean enough..

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All that.. grows

Monday, June 15, 2009. Posted at 3:18 pm

Here are a couple pictures of what’s growing around our yard, including our very late garden which will probably not be very successful this year because we (I’m actually blaming Mark here) didn’t get the brush burned until late and didn’t get the ground worked until this month. Still only half of it has been turned. I get a little frustrated when I think about it..

Anyway, onto the pictures!

Parsley (planted curly and Italian/flat-leaf) and basil. There’s oregano starting on the other side of the parsley.
Chives. Hopefully they’re going to spread out and get a lot bigger..
Wildflowers Mark planted in three of the boxes.
Cherry pepper plants and a couple jalapeno plants on the right side.
This is all our garden consists of at the moment. Tomatoes and cayenne/banana/serrano peppers.
Starters. Zucchini, carrots, watermelon, “sugar baby” watermelon, honeydew and canteloupe

I also have other starters of cayenne peppers, cucumber, lettuce, bell peppers, onion, cilantro, and spinach.

The two grootendorst rose shrubs in front of our house.  Planted last month, I believe.  One will have pink flowers, the other red.  (yes, this area needs a lot of work lol.  We plan to put in a border and fill it in with mulch, possibly making a raised bed around the front of the house.) Each of these should grow to be about 4ft tall and 3ft wide.

The other pink and red rose-like shrubs along the back fence line.. surrounded by wildflowers (and weeds)  These ones aren’t very leafy yet, so you can see how they look when they’re received/planted.

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Tweet

Wednesday, June 10, 2009. Posted at 8:22 pm

I’m going to post ten facts about myself throughout the rest of the week on Twitter. Care to follow along? Share your own and include hashtag #10tweetfacts.

I think I may incorporate mine into a not-so-distance future giveaway/contest.

Posting number one right…. now.

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Update to agreement

Tuesday, June 9, 2009. Posted at 6:10 pm

Mark and I have decided on a couple more changes to that workout agreement:

I’ll earn 1.5 points for every five minutes I jog.
I’ll earn 1 point for every ten minutes of yard work I do.

I earned myself 1 point today for working the ground for the garden (which is probably pretty late), but I’m -16 because I spent $79 on a new bathing suit. ($63 earned last month.) I couldn’t wait on that because it would take about 3 weeks to have it ready and shipped.. and I need it the second week of July.

You may be wondering if I’ve managed to lose any weight and well.. I haven’t. I don’t do anything regularly enough to see a difference at this point. I’ll have to work on that. (sometimes I think a weight loss supplements wouldn’t be so bad! That reminds me, my sister is taking something that her doctor prescribed. She said it’s working well for her, but I dunno if supplements are right for me. I just need to get off my butt and try!)

Now, about that $79 bathing suit. There are a lot of stores that have sales on their bathing suits at the moment, but nothing I love. I mentioned before that I was looking for a more modest two-piece, and most of the suits I’ve seen that would fit that description look.. “old”. I needed something that covers but also would look great on a younger person. This is what I chose:

With black bottoms like the ones shown here:

These and others can be purchased from the etsy shop Black and White Apparel. I will definitely post my opinion on this once I get it and get the chance to wear it. I really hope I love it! (especially because I spend $79 on a bathing suit! ;) )

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Filed Under Shopping, Weight Loss/Workout Agreement

 

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