Idle Hands

are the devil's workshop, so the saying goes. I don't know about the devil but I do know that I'm doing lots to keep busy and fight off the crazies.

I borrowed a dehydrator and I'm experimenting with ingredients and recipes for the upcoming backpacking/hiking season.  Yesterday I tried batch one with a can each of pinto beans, minestrone soup and beanless chili.  Each was a 15oz can and was reduced to between 2.8 to 3.6 oz after dehydrating.  I've got to rehydrate and submit them to a taste test. Batch two was fruit: strawberries, mangoes, golden delicious and granny smith apples, comice and anjou pears, bananas, limes and lemons. The results are obviously drastically reduced weight, change in texture.  I was surprised that they weren't sweeter than they were. There are ways to sweeten by pre-treating the fruit but I needed a baseline to start from. Right now I'm dehydrating ham, breakfast sausage and some fresh chorizo with steak marinating in the fridge for jerky-fying later.

I'm making things that aren't dehydrated too.  A batch of from scratch pasta sauce, vegetable soup with homemade chicken stock, bell pepper and jalapeno hummus, homemade applesauce, and rhubarb sauce within the last five days or so. Luckily, 25 is happy to have leftovers for lunch so I don't have to have soup for seven straight days. The dog even got some of the goods as I made her some peanut butter treats. Oh, and I perfected a sugarfree mojito. Between that and the yard, I'm doing my best to lure the warm weather to Seattle.

But wait . . . There's more! Yesterday I also had a big shop at Winco, a local grocery.  I bought all the above fruits plus some big packs of chicken and beef that needed to be repacked in to smaller bags. The weather was good so I headed to the backyard. All the patio furniture (six chairs, two ottomans, a small and large table) are all scrubbed.  I cleared the deck but need to scrub it too. I did some light weeding and in concert with the potted flowers, it looks ready for summer.  I planted four baskets of fuscias and three mixed baskets of full sun flowers.  On the food front, there are two tomato plants (sweet thousands and Viva Italia), spinach, broccoli, green and yellow onions, two types of basil and garlic growing. There are daffodils up and I'm hoping the daliah bulbs will spring up too.

In addition, I vacuumed and walked the dog yesterday. Oh, and I blogged. Hmmm, an excess of anxious energy maybe? I'm off to the craft room now for a sketch pad to draw up some headboard ideas and then the gym after that.

My excess of output may seem a little, I hate to use the word crazy but. . . .
Well, it's either that or I give up, move a mini fridge full of beer next to my bed and never leave the house.