It's been a cool rainy weekend. We walked down to the Ramble and Ride yesterday and found ourselves wishing we'd brought a couple of toques. Fortunately the wind was behind us on the way home (the hot chocolate and fresh donuts helped too). My garden looks wonderful and bushy. I should really pull up some carrots. The beets need to be pulled up too. I'm planning to pickle them but I'm not sure I'll get to that this afternoon. It might wait a little longer. We've had lots of (damp) squirrels and birds at our feeder, much to Abby's delight. There's been quite a bit of knitting. My cardigan is now almost an inch past the underarm divide. I should probably try it on before I go much further. Just to make sure the fit is nice through my shoulders. The critters have been snoozing in various parts of the house. Ollie and Fred have been taking turns monopolizing my lap. Especially if I happen to be knitting.

I was uploading last week's pictures off my camera this evening and thought I'd share this little guy. The noise from my camera disturbed him a bit at first but all he did was yawn and settle into a new position. He stayed like this until the sun left his spot.

Or, what I did this weekend.

While we were in Vancouver I got a new canning book called Food in Jars by Marisa McClellan. It's full of lovely sounding recipes that don't make huge amounts of food; something I especially appreciate if I'm making something new and don't know for sure I'll like it. This weekend I tried my first recipe: Small Batch Mixed Stone Fruit Jam. It's one of those smart recipes that is meant to help you use up the fruit you bought to eat but won't finish before it goes bad, and it really is a small batch. The recipe only calls for three 250 ml (half pint) jars and I only got two when I was finished.

I just used peaches and I bought them just for making the jam. The recipe has you chop everything up (I also removed the skins) and mix it with the sugar and leave it in the fridge for up to two days. Breaking up the making time made it so much easier to do. I did all the peeling and chopping on Saturday morning and then didn't think about it again until Sunday when I was ready to do the cooking and canning. My kitchen smelled wonderful the whole time the jam was cooking. Peaches must be one of my favourite smells. I used a thermometer for the first time making this jam and it was really helpful when it came to reaching jell stage without over cooking my jam. One of my jars didn't seal after being processed but that's okay because I'd have opened one of them right away anyway; it just means it gets stored in the fridge instead of the cupboard.

I tried some of the jam this evening (I had nothing to eat it on at breakfast time). It's amazing. I thought at first it was going to be very sweet and syrupy tasting but it's perfect. It starts off sweet and peachy and finishes with a wonderful hint of bitter (I suspect from the lemon zest) that balances out the sweetness perfectly and gives it an almost marmalade like tang. Part of me thinks I should have used the little 125 ml jars so I could share it around but really I want to keep it all to myself. I can always make another batch.