The, Uhhh, Perfect End to a Vacation

The very end of my vacation couldn't have been better planned.

One of my children acted like such a dick to me that it made me cry and made me perfectly happy to be heading back to work.

I know, I know. They are wonderful boys.

They are teenagers.

I will survive.

Just as well I have to go to work this morning though.

The day before that was perfectly nice....I got into a Sunday mood which often means cooking. In the winter I make soups for the week's lunches....in the summer I do something with all the fresh produce. I have been flooded with Japanese cucumbers so explored ways to preserve them. I came across several recipes that call for preserving them in a brine and freezing them....supposedly they retain some crunch. We shall see. I also made a batch of apple butter from the apples on our apple tree. I did the easy cheater version in which you through quartered apples, (peel, core, stem and all) into a roasting pan, dot with a bit of brown sugar, a bit of butter, a dash of salt and roast the hell out of them in a 450 degree oven until they have carmelized and most of the liquid is gones. They I put them through a food mill. It beat the more conventional version I'd made the other day...that one still needed some more cooking down so I mixed them up and put them in a little slow cooker for the night.

Hopefully those efforts will be more successful than my parenting for the day.

Rascal seemed exhausted by it all too.