In the Kitchen
I kicked the food preservation into high gear this past week in order to meet my goal to have the pantry finished by the second week in November. It was a week of very little sleep.
I made two types of barbeque sauce, dried over a bushel of apples, harvested the rest of the pumpkin seeds and dried them. I also canned cranberry sauce.
But finally on Saturday morning, I declared it finished! The work was not over though.
I spent fourteen hours (with a few breaks to help kids) on Saturday photographing my pantry, videoing the pantry tour, and editing the photos and videos. It was a long day but I know from last year’s sharing that many of you enjoy seeing the finished project.
If you would like to see it, the Youtube video is below.
House Progress
We had another slow down with the house progress because apparently we are a little unconventional with our choices. We want a metal roof. Actually, there are lots of metal roofs near us, I think it’s that we are the first people to ask our builder for one.
Our builder’s roofing guy only does traditional shingle roofs. So it took a month for him to get a good bid from a company that knew what they were doing. They look like a really good company and the price was fair so we are excited to go with them.
Meanwhile, our house was getting drenched from the constant rain storms. Some of the wood got stained and some started to grow mold. Luckily, it isn’t everywhere but having experienced mold in our last house we were totally freaked out.
Our builder wasn’t worried a bit and said it was normal. We still weren’t comfortable with it, so Cameron kept pressing for him to get someone lined up to do the roof (this was before our builder found the metal roofing company). To placate us, our builder sent up his usual roofing guys to put on the roof underlayment and said it would waterproof the house for now.
We have been really happy with how everything has turned out so far with the house until the roofing underlayment went on. It was done so poorly! There were many obvious missing pieces and they left the top ridge part open so it didn’t really waterproof anything at all.
When we told our builder about this he said they left areas uncovered because it needed venting. Oddly enough, our builder seemed hesitant to have them fix all the bare and unfinished spots. Apparently his usual roofing contractor wasn’t happy that we chose to do a metal roof with a different company so things were touchy between them. I don’t know why we get the bad end of that deal.
With another week of storms approaching Cameron took matters into his own hands and finished all the spots they left bare. Then he covered all the ridges and said if it needs to be open for venting, when they lay down the roof they can cut a slit in it.
He spent a few hours doing that one night and then it rained and rained. We went up to our house and it was still wet inside but not quite as wet as it would have been had he not gone up and fixed what he did.
Cameron said when he was up there it didn’t look like they overlapped the edges just butted them up together on many of the sheets. And in order for the waterproofing to work they need to be overlapped.
We aren’t really sure where to go from here other than to tell them that we aren’t paying 100% for a 90% done job. We are glad the actual roof isn’t being done by these same guys.
We are hoping everything shakes out ok and the metal roof gets done soon.
Other than the roof, there has been some good progress with the plumbing. Our plumbers came and are doing what is called the “top out”. They are installing bathtubs, adding venting through the roof, adding the more detailed piping behind the walls for sinks, refrigerator, washer and dryer.
Oh my, well, this is getting long and I wasn’t really intending to say all that much about the house. I suppose i needed to do some writing therapy and get my feelings out. I hope you don’t mind 🙂
4 comments
I’m impressed! I can things too. This was my first year of pressure canning. I had a trial by fire when someone got me a bushel of green beans this spring. I’ve made a batch of the Ball’s vegetable soup, 7 quarts, and a ton of chicken stock. I’ve gotten hooked on those rotisserie chickens from Costco. They’re bigger than the grocery birds. Anyway, I put the carcass in the slow cooker with carrot, onion, celery, pepper corns, thyme and a bay leaf. I cooked a batch over night last night. It’s a bit odd to wake up to the smell of chicken soup. I strain it in a fine mesh colander and then use my gravy separator to defat it.
Why do you can your beans when they keep just fine in the dried form?
If you want a nice applesauce cake recipe, try the one on the Smitten Kitchen blog. It uses almost a pint.
Thank you for the recipe recommendation Katie, I’ll have to try it!
To answer your question, I can my beans for convenience. Some days are just busy and it’s nice to have cooked canned beans ready to pop in a soup or use in tacos without a few hours of cooking.
The amount of hard work you’ve put in is astonishing Becky, I’ve never seen such a beautiful pantry. What a feast you have made truly it’s inspiring! We don’t preserve much in the UK especially canning. I’m amazed how much more you can do with fruit and vegetables other than our jam and chutney culture.
Thanks for your kind words Yvette!