Believe Me

You'd better believe I kept a watchful eye in the barn yesterday.  There are plenty of places where Francois could have gotten in and I didn't want either of us coming up on the other unexpectedly.  When a skunk yells, "Surprise!," it's accompanied by a cloud of nauseating fumes, the last thing I wanted, for sure.  Fortunately, there was nothing in the goat barn but goats and the morning passed without incident.

I had gone down to Cam's to pick tomatoes as invited and came back with a box of yellow strawberry tomatoes and a lot of little cherry Sungolds.  Both yellow varieties are so sweet and lack the acid of the reds.  The Sungolds never make it in to a recipe because they get eaten as a snack out of hand.  The strawberries make a great sandwich, but are too sugary to make a good sauce alone.  I did, however, pull one of the bags of diced tomatoes from the freezer and added some of the yellows to make a tasty marinara.  I had never had Calabrese sausages before and wasn't sure the best way to fix them, but browned them well and then simmered until cooked through in the sauce.  The sausage was spicy, similar to linguica or chorizo, and went really well with marinara.  Believe me, good stuff, Maynard!  Thanks, Pete, for a new taste experience.  There was enough sausage for two meals, and tonight I'll throw some frozen shrimp into the leftover marinara for dinner.

Beau and his youngest daughter stopped by in the afternoon.  I'd sent a message asking if he might have time to split some of those logs in the big pile.  It's dropping into the 30s at night and not getting out of the 50s during the day, and we're due for more rain this week.  I'm pretty frugal with the firewood, but still....  Beau said he'd come back today.  I can run the splitter, but he'll have to handle those logs.

Holy cow!  Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and we all know what comes after that.  Believe me, I'm not ready.  I'm trying to cope with the time change.