A new toy…

More accurately, a new tool. 

That’s a food dehydrator. Over the weekend, I sliced up some fruit to give it a test run. Pineapple, cherries, grapes, strawberries and bananas on Saturday. Peaches on Sunday. All turned out well except the grapes. The grapes required a type of pretreatment ‘checking’ which I must not have done properly. It involved putting them in boiling water and then immediately into very cold water. I think I was so afraid of cooking them that I didn’t leave them in the boiling water long enough.

Each tastes pretty good in the dehydrated form and would make tasty snacks and would be especially good to bring camping. This morning I reconstituted a few slices of peach and strawberry to have with my yogurt. Yummy!

Now to look for what is in season or on sale…….

A little of this, a little of that

I haven’t posted in a bit, but we are still around. We were supposed to be camping this week, but with temps in the high 90’s, we decided not to. We did take a day trip up to Tallulah Gorge State Park  to check it out. I’d like more time to explore the area, but I’m not sure this campground is “MOTH friendly”. We observed a person having a hard time using his walker, and MOTH was quick to point it out to me. It is an awfully pretty area though, and I’d really like to see more of it.

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I finished those green/purple striped socks a while back, but never posted.  I tried working on them while recovering from my knee replacement surgery-but I was still on painkillers. Do not operate knitting needles while using this medication…… In spite of a few ‘design elements’ that I added, they are finished and wearable.

This area is blessed with several nice yarn stores (as well as good quilt stores) and one of the friendliest is Only Ewe and Cotton Too in the next town. You walk into this store and feel right at home. There are always people sitting there, knitting and chatting, and other folks will help you find what you are looking for if the owners are busy with someone else.  Last month this shop had a knit-along doing the Annis shawlette. I joined in, learned how to bead and thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. The shawl is now finished and blocked, ready to use…well, if it wasn’t in the 90’s.