And then, the rains came

(Todays harvest from the garden, I don't remember the variety of cucumber, the tomatoes are Amish Paste. This time last week, nothing was close to ready to pick, and then, it rained...)



Mostly home and hearth magic lately.

Yesterday I spent a few hours filling gelatin capsules with ground tumeric-I try to do as many as I can at one time, since the tumeric dyes my fingers a shade of marigold yellow, and stains my nail polish. It is exceedingly grounding work, and I always feel so stable and "here" when I've finished. I tried to look up any other associations it might have in the "Encyclopedia of Natural Magic," but the not-quite-17 year old has made off with the book and shows no signs of being willing to give it back any time soon.

Today is baking. Tomorrow morning, DH and I will pack up 2 cakes and 8 cinnamon rolls and take them off to the County Fair. Yes, this hearthwitch actually lives in a place that still has such things. I've lost track of how many years I've entered the baking competition at the fair. Some years, I come home with blue ribbons, some years, not. I do best with bread, rather than sweet things, the problem being that the judges discontinue catagories when someone wins it more than 2 years in a row. So this year, the bread catagories are not very interesting. So I will try sweet items. I've one cake entered in the "anything but chocolate cake" catagory, and one in the "made with a commercial mix as an ingredient" catagory. I don't have a lot of hope for the second one, as I only have cheaply made bundt pans and the pans do not conduct heat evenly. Oh well, good tools, good results. Not so good tools...

So,I baked 2 bundt style coffee cakes with chocolate bits and walnuts, 2 amazing almond cakes, and everything for the cinnamon rolls except the actual baking. The rolls will rise slowly in the refrigerator overnight, and I will bake them at the crack of dawn tomorrow, that way they will be fresh for the judges (winner of that catagory gets a huge purple rosette ribbon, and I don't have one of those!). All of this done in addition to the usual daily stuff. Tomorrow, while the rolls are baking I will choose which of the cakes to decorate and enter. Then, fortified with much coffee, the baked goods gently wrapped to keep the dust off (and believe me, you do not want the dust from an agricultural fair on anything you are going to eat!), we will hand the entries over to be judged.

Now, I am going to bed!