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Sunday, September 9, 2012

Family, Friends and Football

Well yesterday turned out to be a pretty successful canning day.


We slaved away in the kitchen for about 9 hours, but it was all worth it when we screwed the lids on about 20 jars of MomMom's chili sauce and 6 jars of my beloved sweet & savory tomato jam. The house smelled amazing, and we had a great time all hanging out for the day. It was so nice hanging out with MomMom and having her teach us such an old recipe from her childhood.


Once the sauces were prepped and simmering away, we took a break to hang out in the back yard playing cards and enjoy some wine and cheese.


It's kind of hard to tell from the picture, but those are actually mini grapes. I happened to see a package of "champagne grapes" at the store the other day and had to try them. They are so tiny that you eat entire clusters at one time. Love!



I had fully planned on making a nice dinner for everyone, but canning all day tends to wipe me out, and by 9:00 I was just pulling the last jars from their hot water bath and couldn't even imagine starting to chop anything else. You know what that means.


Garlic and mushroom pie for all!

***

After an evening of pizza and a day full of football food ahead of me, a smoothie sounded like the ideal breakfast. I blended together some low fat coconut milk with half a frozen banana, a cup of frozen strawberries and a scoop of chocolate protein powder. Yum!


My sister left soon after breakfast, and Matt and I got to work cleaning up and taking care of some chores before heading out for the day. Today is the first football Sunday of the year, so we couldn't just sit home all afternoon - we headed over to our friends Heather & Kevin's house to watch the games with some of our good friends. 


Riker apparently wasn't excited about watching the Patriots kick some butt. ;-)

We usually order food when there's a crowd of us - today was Mexican! - but I always bring a snack of course, so homemade garlic breadsticks made an appearance.


I simply made a batch of pizza dough, then spread it out over a cookie sheets and cut it into strips. I patted it with olive oil and scattered a generous portion of garlic powder and salt, then baked them for 20 minutes until golden brown. They weren't earth shattering, but they did the trick for a pre-lunch appetizer. 

I also had my first Dogfish Head Punkin Ale of the season. I wasn't planning on drinking a beer, but my friend Matt brought a few of these and I couldn't resist. Fall scented candles were burning and football was playing (and the Pats were winning!), and a pumpkin beer just felt like practically a requirement. :)


It's fall!

Now we're back at our house snuggled up watching the night game. Hope you had a great weekend!

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