Falling into Autumn

Although we had an early first frost, autumn has been a bit on the slow side. We've had a few warm days, but mostly, the weather has been normally cool. A couple of frosty mornings, with rime on the car windows, but not yet a blast of bitter cold. So the leaves have mellowed slowly, at least up until Sunday morning. Saturday, this is a tree that struck me speechless as we rounded a turn on the way to The House At The Top of The Hill.



And then there was this beauty on the grounds of the condo complex:



Sadly, Saturday was the only pretty day. By dawn's sullen light on Sunday, the sky was pewter and blasting down a cold, bitter rain. When Ms. P came in with Charlie from his morning walk, and the poor little devil was soaked and shivering so that we threw him in the tub and sluiced him down with warm water before popping him into his crate with a clean towel.

Weather like that was, however, ideal for Ms. Packratty's major projects - sorting through junk and making soup.

There are 2 soups Ms. Packratty loves to make and feels she makes well - one is leek and potato soup (with bacon) and the other is ham and bean soup. There's only one trouble with ham and bean soup. You need a ham bone to make it. And generally, the only way to get a hambone is from a ham. That means eating the ham. Which is simply not a practical matter for Ms. Packratty who most of the time is cooking for one. So she was delighted to discover mention that HoneyBaked Ham stores that have attached cafes use their own hams to make sandwiches and then sell the resulting bone. So a week ago, while erranding, Ms. P nipped into the Sandy Springs HoneyBaked and purchased 2, depositing one at Marleen's house.

Well, such a deal. The bones cost $5 and they were hardly mere bones. Ms. Packratty sliced off ham sufficient for 2 sandwiches, a large batch of ham salad, breakfast for 2 and then tossed the bone in with 2 large packages of assorted beans (having found some bagged beans that included the beloved chickpea)and put them in the nice Calphalon pot with the dome lid and put it on the very lowest of simmers. There were also a couple of onions and a few other oddments tossed in, but other than that, all it got was a long slow cook. Sunday dinner and Monday lunch came from the pot and there are now about 12 serving either in the Packratty freezer or waiting to go to Mar's downstairs freezer. Total cost for about 18 servings of good soup? $8. Ms. Packratty is also very pleased with the inexpensive set of food storage items purchased at Ikea, although she figures she will toss at least 2/3 of the teeny-tiny containers and their lids. Typically, she does not need to store 4 tablespoons of anything and anticipates that keeping track of the teeny tiny containers and their lids will be an exercise in futility and a waste of space. At $5 the set, Ms. P can afford to keep only the sizes that please her and toss or give away the rest. The tiny containers would indeed be ideal for someone with a baby to feed, but that is not the case at Chez P.
Deciding that it is OK to toss items that she will not use and which will just take up space and be annoying is a big step for the Packrat. Formerly, she would have felt compelled since they were new and MIGHT be useful SOMEDAY to try to hang on to them. Not anymore. She might keep 2, but not 6. And the set is still a bargain even with the discards.

Ms. P also tracked down a pair of pinking shears and stuck them in the laundry where she has already used them to turn several t shirts and a nightgown that were too holey to wear into cleaning rags. Putting the scissors in the sewing basket might make more sense for most folks, but for Ms. P, having them at immediate hand when she decides to render something into rags is far more likely to be sure it happens. Sometimes you have to work with your quirks instead of trying to iron them all out.