I pulled some of the celery from my garden and made this celery soup using an oxbone for the broth; onion, garlic, celery, carrots, zucchini and kale; and a blend of spices - cumin, star anise, tarragon, tumeric, fresh oregano, parsley and cilantro, and salt and pepper.
After the veggies cooked, I put about 1/3 of them through the blender, but left the rest so it would not be a creamy soup. It was so good, it was addictive - one bowl led to another, and then another. I took a quart jar of it on our camping trip last weekend, and it was the first thing we wanted for a meal when we arrived at our campsite.
I finished canning one whole box of peaches - actually, the top layers of two boxes. The rest do not seem so ripe, so I'm leaving them to ripen over the weekend. Depending on that, I'll either can the rest or make some peach pies or shortcake.
This was the subdued early morning image of my kitchen counter following an intense day of processing peaches. It is not only the bottle-scrubbing, the sterilizing, the fruit-sorting, the blanching of skins, the syrup making, but learning how to pack the jars right, clearing out the bubbles, setting the seal correctly, and then doing the clean-up. I finally finished mopping the floor and washing up the dishes at 9:30 p.m. It is only upon waking the next morning that a feeling of appreciation can set in, and I can breathe a sigh of relief that it is over. However, now I must go through all my preserves - the apricot jam, plum syrup, strawberry jam, applesauce...and find room for all these peaches.We are going up to Neah Bay on the Makah Reservation today, to spend three days at a Baha'i conference. We'll be camping, and cooking our own meals, and George will provide the sound system. Wouldn't you know it - just as it finally warmed up here in Tacoma (90's, with full sun) we'll be camping where it will be 61-65 degrees during the day, cloudy, and in the low 50's at night...with fog. Now, that sounds like a damp cold weekend, but fog nestled in the bluffs at the ocean sure sounds tranquil and lovely. I'm looking forward to it!
I researched images of Neah Bay, and most of them were of happy fishermen, holding up chinook salmon, quillback, yellow rockfish, tiger rockfish, ling cod, halibut and a lot of seagulls flying around waiting for those fish to be gutted.
It is also a down-to-earth practical place, no nonsense, where things die and hunker down.
Rusting in the truck cemetary. (josiehen's photostream)
And - a beheaded truck. 
