July is wound down, days are getting a bit shorter, and while the heat is with us for another month or so, I can already see the end of the year. Time seems to go a bit faster with each passing year, eh? But summer isn’t over yet: the tomatoes, as you saw below, are in full production.
I took most of that stack and made a red sauce yesterday: 20# of tomatoes, a couple of onions, a bunch of garlic, half a cup of olive oil, two small cans of tomato paste, five bay leaves, and a bottle of 2007 Turning Leaf Merlot. That simmered all afternoon, making the house smell wonderful.
Today, I used up the rest of the potatoes, making up another two week’s worth of lunches (with mild Italian sausage and spinach). Late this afternoon, I browned up 3# of turkey, and added some chopped peppers from the garden, some more sautéed onion, a couple of large cans of dark red kidney beans, some chili powder and dried cumin. To that I added about a third of the sauce that I made yesterday, for a big pot of killer chili. Between the wine and the fresh tomatoes, the sauce is a bit sweet, but that mostly cooks out over time.
In between all the cooking, I made a big dent in the third SQL project for my database class. I’ve got until next Sunday evening to get that completed.
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Dammit! I skipped a beat there. For just a second, I thought there were no new casualties reported since last weekend! Too good to be true, and my eyes picked out the one report … Our condolences to the families and units of these fallen warriors:
2nd Lt. Jered W. Ewy, 33, of Edmond, Oklahoma, died July 29 at Paktia, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.
Spc. Augustus J. Vicari, 22, of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, died July 29 at Paktia, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.