Today's quest list

I looked forward to a nice lie-in followed by productivity, but this was truncated by Spinach Cat taking a leaf (haw haw) from Chaos Cat and dumping a pile of CDs off my dresser sometime around daybreak. Slogging towards functionality now. I am feeling a little bit enervated, though whether that's processing from the wake last night or hormonal stuff or what, I do not know.

Point of self-aggrandizement: my funky new galoshes came through yesterday's snow/sleet/rain/slush horrors with flying colors, and were therefore an entirely justifiable purchase. Because, honestly, the average snow boot is useful maybe once or twice in a New York winter (barring last year's silliness), whereas something like this will be useful on a near-daily basis.

Anyways, on to the list:
1. Pay bills, balance metaphorical checkbook (by which I mean Moneydance), go through paperwork, etc.
2. Make hotel reservation for next weekend.
3. Pickle the backlog of squash.
4. Tack down lining of red wool gown, and possibly the checked wool as well, so that they can be PUT AWAY.
5. Wind the 2nd skein of current-project wool into a ball.

Extra credit:
- Pick a day to hit up Butterfly Silks (anyone wanna go fabric shopping?)
- Pick a day to exchange camisoles that are too big, preferably before the 90-day return period is up, ahem
- Noodle a bit on rental sites, see where apartment-hunting efforts should be concentrated when the rubber hits the road.
- Morally, I oughta get some stuff written up for work.

Tomorrow's priorities:
- Procure and mail a birthday card for Mom
- Call Callen-Lorde and shout some more since it seems they still have not submitted the bill for various tests to the correct insurance company. (Quaere: does it work to call the testing company and give them my insurance info directly? or will it then be rejected because it didn't come through the primary care provider? YES WE HAVE THE BEST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD)
- Send back the last Netflix disc lest I own a copy of it forever. When I switched my account to "no DVDs just streaming" the other week, I expected them to have the clue to say "oh we'll delete your DVD queue then". Not so much.

Tales from the Experimental Farm Share Kitchen: A Peck of Pickled Pumpkin

I still have some of last week's soup yet, and three winter squashes staring accusingly at me, so it seemed that the traditional way to deal with this was to put some in pickle. Therefore:

1. Peel, eviscerate, and cube 1 butternut squash.
2. Peel, eviscerate, and cube 1/2 acorn squash. Peeling raw acorn squash really, really sucks.
3. You now have about 8 c., or a little under 3 lbs, of orange vegetable. Put it in a bowl.
4. Put in a saucepan 3 c. cider vinegar, 2 c. water, 2 c. sugar, 20 peppercorns, 15 cloves, 15 allspice berries, and some cinnamon bark. Heat gently while stirring 'til the sugar is dissolved.
5. Let it come to the boil. This will take a bit.
6. Look around for something to put the end result in. There's a 1L mason jar, but what to do with the rest?
7. Start turning out cupboards and fridge and what-not. Put the remaining maraschino cherries in a pyrex bowl, and wash out the 3/4L jar they were in.
8. Take the two empty jars and put them in boiling water to sanitize.
9. Oh, the brine is starting to boil. Let it boil for a few minutes, then turn down to simmer.
10. Find a 3/4L jar that is mostly full of lavender simple syrup. Look around for something else to put that in.
11. Pour out the last bit of Benedictine, from a bottle that you don't even know where it came from but it was at least since you lived in Jersey City. There's only a half-ounce anyways. Wash the bottle.
12. The brine's done. Pour it over the bowl of pumpkin, which makes it more full than the measuring bowl. Oops.
13. Wipe that up.
14. Strain the lavender syrup into the Benedictine bottle. Wash the jar that the syrup had been in.
15. Extract the now-sterilized jars from the pot and put the syrup jar in it instead.
16. Fill up the sterilized jars with pumpkin and brine, and chuck them in the fridge.
17. Drink the Benedictine Shot of Victory.
18. Time passes. I think. I am not sure how long one waits before eating some.

Recipes differ as to whether one cooks the squash before or not. I am trying not, since I don't want mushy things.