After collecting mainly beans and tomatoes from the garden and doing a little mowing Wednesday morning, I decided to make peach chutney. I had several pounds of peaches that needed to be used and used the last of my plum chutney a couple of months ago. I especially like to put the chutney, which has a little red chili pepper sweet-sour bite, on egg rolls. I had fixed egg rolls and had nothing to put on them. Do you know how bland egg rolls are without sweet/sour sauce of some kind. I’m using a Thai substitute right now while the new batch of chutney ages. You have to let chutney age for several weeks for optimum flavor. Well that little effort took till that night before the chutney had cooked down enough.
I let it set overnight and got up the Thursday going to can the chutney. Thursday turned out to be a very busy day for Mr. Murphy (a.k.a Murphy’s law). First, filling up my large canning pot, I saw a pinhole leak in its bottom. Shit! Not to be undone, I pulled out my iPhone and looked at Walmart’s website. Sure enough, they had one in stock–available for pickup. I purchased it online, changed clothes from my work clothes and got ready to head out. Then I got a brilliant idea! I can take the trailer and pick up that load of gravel I needed for three projects around here, since it was not too far from the Walmart. Quickly hooking up my trailer, I headed off. Got to the Walmarts that I always use. Got there–and no pot. What? That’s right. No pot. When I tried to log in to their kiosks you have to use.
I stopped a sales rep and asked her. She looked at my email that I had gotten. Scrolled on down and pointed to it saying, it is in the Pickens’ store, not here. What! I never go there. I always come here. She said, maybe we are out and pulled up her little e-devise to check it. It says we have one, she said. Off she went to retrieve it for me. A few minutes later, coming back, and saying, nope, we don’t have any. I sighed and would have to drive back by the house on my way to Pickens, so I would go ahead and get the gravel since I was already here. That I did.
Ran back by the house and dropped off the trailer with its 1000 lbs or so of gravel, had some lunch, and came back out, and, lo-and-behold, this is what I came back out to:
Another sigh. I would have to rebuild it again. I have bent the poor thing several times over the years, forgetting to raise it. The last time, my son Chris had driven all the way to his house before he realized he had left it down. When he brought it back, I had had to pull out my welding equipment and patch it. This time though, I would have to totally rebuild the bracket and had additional supports. But first, I would have to unload all that sand. Not a hot summer project for this old man. Okay, so I headed off to Walmarts in Pickens and picked up my new canning pot.
Does this story have a happy ending? Yes. I got up this morning, Friday, and canned the peach chutney, and here it is:
Tomorrow I need to get onto the Roma tomatoes. I deseed them, run them through the blender, then cook them down some to reduce volume. Then, they go to the freezer until this winter and I will make salsa, pizza sauce, and tomato sauce out of them and can them. Garden season is a busy season around here for me. Meanwhile, the weeds are far ahead of me out in the garden.