Leap Day

This morning I had to do a double take when I walked by the wall oven.

Bunnies running across the screen and it says “Leap Day”. Thanks, oven!

Last night at midnight, I put the Prairie Life Sampler away and got ready to start stitching on the Leap Year Project that I’m stitching with Denise and a couple of other friends. I had already removed a big piece from a big frame but the biggest lap stand I have was too small for the frame. The only frame I have that will work is the floor stand that I have to use upstairs and since dogs aren’t allowed upstairs, I don’t see that working very well, plus the frame I put this project in doesn’t work with the floor stand. Such problems. 🙂 I do have a plan and I’m going to try that as soon as I finish this post.

I’m trying to convert a sourdough sandwich bread recipe to a whole wheat recipe so I’ve been trying sourdough sandwich bread recipes. I think this one is the one I’m going to stick with and convert. It isn’t hard to do a conversion but I’ll have to make good notes on how much of everything I use so I can add or subtract as needed to get it the way I want it.

While the bread was rising and baking, I worked on baked beans to be canned. In the summer, we do a good bit of grilling and smoking meat. It’s so easy to stick potatoes in the solar oven and then open a jar of home canned baked beans, jazz them up a bit, bake them alongside the potatoes in the solar oven and never have to do much in the kitchen. When I’m out working in the yard and see the solar oven sitting out doing what it does, that makes me feel good. I don’t like it so much when I’m out there working and knowing I have to stop way before I’m ready and go in and get a meal ready.

That’s 18 pints of baked beans. I’ll probably make another 18 pints later this week. That will give me enough to share some with Chad and have enough for us to have them once a week in the summer. I’ve canned black beans and garbanzo beans. If I could end up with enough canned beans to open a jar every night for dinner during the summer, I’d be a happy cook!

While the beans were canning in the basement garage, Vince was downstairs working and had the garage door open so I could hear the canner from the back patio so I worked on getting some tomato seeds in cups and got seeds planted for two more kinds of lettuce. I had planned to get cilantro and several kinds of basil planted in containers but I ran out of steam.

As I was moving jars around in the garage to make room on the counter for the beans coming out of the canner, I found this little purple potato, sitting in a little jelly jar, trying as hard as it can to grow!

I don’t know if it will make it but I planted it in the potato bed. It’s still too cold to have that long sprout above ground so I dug a much wider hole than I would have needed for that little potato and then kinda wrapped that sprout around and covered it all with dirt. We have straw over the bed to help protect them from the cold temps at night. We’ll see . . at least I gave it a chance to survive.

The dogs have been in their crates way too long today. For the last hour they’ve played really hard and now Oscar, who was quite grumpy and snippy with Cooper, is under the blanket sleeping. Cooper is pretty much sleeping on top of Oscar and any minute, I expect Oscar to come out snarling at Oscar for disrupting his sleep. Hopefully not but I’m right her close and ready to jump in and stop them if I have to.

I am going to try to stitch for a bit but I have a feeling I will be in bed early tonight.