I know I always say “this weekend was awesome”. But come on, it’s true.
Friday night, Matt and I went out to Canterbury. We’d never been to night racing before, and I guess it’s lucky for me!
I bet $20 on the ponies, and ended up winning over $50. The old guy at the cashier included this bill in my payout, and suggested we use it to roll a joint. Old hippies rule.
One downside to the Friday night races is that the tables in the card room are always full. We swung through there in between races, and there were no seats to be had. Also, once it gets dark, sitting outside becomes less than ideal. The trails in the below photo are all the bugs who wanted to 1) bite my feet, 2) land in my hair, or 3) commit suicide in my drink. Jerks.
Saturday, we ran many errands. The most important one involved a stop at Mother Earth Gardens for help with our earwig infestation; they’re a huge problem this year due to the rain. I’d be fine letting them hang out and be gross, but they’ve started eating some of the plants to the point where they’re not going to survive the season.
We ended up with a box of diatomaceous earth. Is that not the most awesome-sounding way to kill earwigs? I know! Also, it’s safe to use around the vegetables. My garden is now covered in white powder, and I’m hoping the rain holds off for a while so the mass-murdering can happen.
Saturday evening was Kristen and Andy’s wedding! There was an end-of-the-world-type storm brewing, so we headed downtown really early to avoid it. We met Missy and Joe at WXYZ (that’s their color-changing LED-lit bar in the $5 pic above; I told the bartender I was likely to return later that night to dance on it), then walked over to Mill City Museum for the wedding.
There was a big group of our friends, a photobooth, and dancing. We had such a great time. After Mill City asked us (politely) to leave around 1am, a few of us headed back to WXYZ and played Apples to Apples rather than dance on the bar.
Yesterday, we did some hardcore hanging out. I baked bread, both knitted and crocheted, and we bought canning supplies at Target. I anticipate that we’ll have 4 million jalapenos within a week or two, so I want to be prepared for pickling. Since I’ve never done any kind of canning before (except for jelly when I was 10 or so), I really hope I can avoid killing us both via botulism. Especially since I don’t have a pressure canner.
I have a giant box of yarn arriving at my house today. Expect a lot more domesticity starting immediately post-gym tonight!
Regarding canning – I have never canned before, but Jamie Oliver did a show on it once and showed how to do it without the pressure canner. So maybe Foodtv has a video of it that would be helpful to you. He didn’t use any special canning supplies. I think he used the dishwasher or something. (I might have hallucinated that part, but it was easy enough that I thought “I could do that.”)
i’ll have to look for that!! i wonder if he used the dishwasher to sanitize the jars? i know ours has a setting for that.
And speaking of dishwasher cooking – did you know you can cook fish in a foil packet in the dishwasher. I’ll bet you did, actually, because you’re pretty clever like that.
i didn’t, but don’t tell matt. i don’t want my dishwasher smelling like fish!