Look!

My weekend of baking and cooking continues, and today I made pumpkin soup. 

I was a bit disappointed, though, because I was sure I had two cans of pumpkin in my pantry but I could only find one, so I couldn't double the recipe like I'd wanted to.  Oh well, it's enough for me, and I can always make more later on.  The only thing about pumpkin soup is that my mind tends to want it to taste like pumpkin pie, but it doesn't.  I suppose it could, if I added sugar to it.  I know some recipes call for maple syrup, but I didn't use one of those.  I think it might be good with just a touch of brown sugar in it.  I might try that next time I have a bowl.  

On a similar note, look at this!  

I found a baby tomato from my second planting!  I might end up with a late harvest after all.  I'd thought about making salsa, but I don't know if I would have the patience to chop all of those tomatoes so finely.  I didn't even chop my tomatoes for my soup very finely.  I just used my immersion blender after I'd cooked it. 

Wonderful tool, that immersion blender...but somehow I don't think it would work for salsa.  

Before we go on, I wanted to show you a photo of my spare room. 

It's a mess, isn't it?  Full disclosure, not all of that stuff is stuff I want to donate.  I've got my paint sprayer and several cans of the stain I'm using on my fence in that pile.  I had thought about getting some of that staining done this weekend, but we've got the chance of showers off and on for the next several days.  You know how that goes.  If I paint, it'll rain, but if I don't, it won't.  

There are also several bags of aspen shavings, which I will need when I change the bedding in my snake tanks, and my soaker hose system is somewhere in there.  I'll take care of that in the spring, before I plant my beds, then move the rest of the hose out to the shed.  

I was going to try to box up a bunch of stuff to take to the thrift shop, but I ended up being a bit disappointed, because several of my Subscribe And Save items arrived from Amazon.  I was hoping they'd be in a bigger box.  Not this time.  Oh well...I'll have to make multiple trips.  

Now for a bit of good news, the tree guy showed up!  He looked at the tree, gave me a quote, and when I asked him if he'd leave the limbs so I could cut them up for firewood, he knocked $100 off the quote.  I'm not mad about that. And he didn't get mad when he said he'd call me before he started, and I told him I wasn't allowed to have a phone at work.   

Hey, it's happened before.  

He asked if I could get texts, and laughed when I said it's easier to sneak my phone out to check a text than it would be to try to answer a call.  Anyway, he's going to come back not this coming week, but probably next week, and if he does, that'll be one more thing I can cross off my to-do list.  

The rest of the day was spent watching football and knitting.  

I had a little fun with AI while I was watching Navy vs Air Force and asked the three I have on my phone -- Chat GPT, Grok, and Gemini -- all to create a graphic which reads Go Navy Beat Air Force.  This is what they came up with.  This is what ChatGPT gave me:  

This was Grok's offering:  

This time, I think Gemini beat them all.  

Alas, Navy is in a rebuilding year and did not in fact beat Air Force.  More's the pity, but they lost a lot of good players to graduation last year, including most of the offense.  At least, it seems that way.  

I also finished another sailor hat while watching.  

Yarn:  Red Heart Super Saver Bitty Stripes

Colorway:  Rainbow

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5 mm

That's about all I did today, other than laundry, but I'm sure you don't want to hear about that.  But now, I reckon I'd better go get my kitchen cleaned up before the next ball game comes on.  

Laters.