Appetizing

We ate the squirrels last night from A.'s most recent hunting expedition. They were combined with a very old rabbit that has been in the freezer since last spring to make hasenpfeffer. Except with the squirrels I guess it would be hasen-squirrelpfeffer?

Whatever, I dumped our random dead wildlife in the Crock-Pot with a bottle of red wine and some spices and called it good. And it was good. Of course. You really can't go wrong with that much wine.

However. Since yesterday was somewhat sultry despite being ALMOST OCTOBER HELLO, I put the Crock-Pot out in the shop to do its thing, so it wouldn't heat up the kitchen. Also in the shop? The two squirrel hides that A. salted and laid out on a board to dry. The gustatory enjoyment of such a dish is not much improved by confronting the splayed-out skins of one of the main ingredients every time one must enter the chamber of horrors to check on the food component of the animals.

Welcome to my life.

ANYWAY.

In addition to eating some rodents last night, I finally (FINALLY) finished canning pears. The grand total (this is where you do a drumroll on your desk, if you wish to be kind of lame and also irritate your co-workers) . . . 54 quarts. That's right. A five and a four.

That is, indeed, a shitload of pears.

Now I just have to make and can some green tomato chutney--Cubby is a great fan of it on his corn tortilla with cheese--and do some more pickled jalapenos. Plus snap the ends off of approximately 80 million green beans and then blanch them and freeze them. And blanch and freeze the chard. And then, maybe, I'll be finished with the food preservation for the season.

Or maybe I'll be offered five tons of free apples again and spend October giving myself arthritis in the hands making applesauce. You just never do know what fun might await in the kitchen.