Wednesday, 1pm and at last I get to sit down for a few minutes.  Thanks to Norman, who is in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes from making the marmalade.   I started the day by watering my blueberries while Norman went for his 2 mile walk, which he has done almost every morning since his by pass surgery 24 years ago.When he got home I had the fruit dish ready and we sat down to eat that and then went to the Easy Street Market to get our fruits and vegetables for the week.  The blueberries were high but I got a pint anyways so we could have some fresh on our oatmeal, most of the week we will have the frozen ones.  I got two melons, a pineapple, red grapes and a few bananas for our fruit dish this week.  Then I also got a dozen Valencia  oranges to make the marmalade with, I gave four of these to Patty and cut the other 8 into 1/8 inch slices which I quartered and put into the large kettle with 6 cups of water, the zest and juice of one lemon and got that on to boil.  I also got carrots (a large bag for $1.00), zucchini, broccoli, potatoes, a large green pepper and a large red pepper, 5 ears of corn, a bag of spinach , a bunch of asparagus and a box of mushrooms.  I shared some of these with Patty and put the rest away for this week.  I steamed five large carrots that I sliced and then fried them in butter and put them away to put in the warmer at dinner.  That gave me 4 or 5 servings of carrots.  I like to have to have at least 3 vegetables, potato and a small piece of meat at dinner so I put three cooked vegetables in my little dipper ( 3 small crock pots) and cook potatoes and meat fresh each day.  Today I will cook the corn fresh and have carrots and zucchini in the crock pots.  Then Norman grated three cups of cheese for me and I thin sliced the zucchini.  At 9:30 Norman cooked the oatmeal and we stopped for that with blueberries at 10.  We always play a couple hands of gin while we eat the oatmeal so we got a nice break then.  Then I went back to fry the zucchini and melt the cheese on that.  I have so much squash I have to do it in four different fryings and then put them together to melt the cheese on it.  That is Norman’s favorite vegetable so we have that about 5 or 6 time a week.  I made enough this morning to last 4 or 5 days.  Patty and Becca are coming for dinner on Sunday so I’ll make up a new batch for Sunday, it is also their favorite dish.  All this time I was cooking the orange slices that I quartered.  They had to boil 10 minutes and then simmer for 40 minutes.  Norman went to the attic and got the pressure canner and the jars for the marmalade and he got those ready and everything set up to do the canning.  We stopped at noon to have our dried fruit and nuts and then the oranges were ready to add the sugar and boil down the last bit.  When the thermometer got up to 223 it was ready to jar up.  Norman always helps me with that and by 1 0’clock they were in the water bath to be processed for ten minutes.  That was when Norman sent me in here to sit down,  He is still in the kitchen cleaning up the mess.  He took the jars out of the canner and is almost ready to come sit down too.

The kitchen is all cleaned up and ready for me to cook dinner, we eat at 3 p.m.  I love having a kitchen maid to make all the mess disappear, I could never have a cooking day like this without Norman.  But that is true of everything I have ever done in my life.  

We have a small galley type kitchen and these are the marmalade jars cooling on the chopping block.

This is the marmalade  close up so you can see how pretty it is.  It is a lot lighter in person.  And it taste sooo  good! 

The last job is to make the chicken and asparagus rolls and cook the corn and potatoes.    Norman is now taking his nap and I will sit for another twenty minutes before getting to work on the chicken.  I do love to cook as you can see but I’d weigh 300 pounds if I cooked like this every day.  I will spend the late afternoon and evening knitting and today Patty comes to visit about 6 so all in all it has been a great day.  Hope you are having a great day also, doing all the things you like the best.