Return To The Mountains

West Prong Trail - Great Smoky Mountains National Park

February 2, 2012

I am writing this on Sunday evening because tomorrow morning when this posts, I will be on my way to hike in "my" Smoky Mountains for the first time since May 1.   It is no secret that summer is not my favorite season to hike, but the mountains still call and when I can find someone willing to travel to the highest elevations, I am more than willing to go.  Even here in the valley, our temperatures have finally moderated to "normal" levels, but in the area where we will hike tomorrow, the predicted high is 67 degrees.  That's pretty near perfect!!  It will be a brand new trail for me and although it will take a while to get to the trailhead, the trail itself is a mere seven miles.  That's about the same as the longest distance we did while in New England, so I should be good to go.  I am so excited!

We spent a most enjoyable and quite productive day with MIL on Saturday.    The pantry had become woefully bare, so these..........................

 after a full day of hot, hard work, became these...............................

and these.........................

We canned 48 quarts of tomatoes!   In the past, we'd often spent a summer Saturday canning tomatoes with Bill's mom and dad, but had not done so since his dad died two years ago.   With the stock down to almost nothing, it was time to revive the family tradition.  We had a lot of fun, enjoyed some walks down memory lane and did a lot of laughing.   There'll be some good chili and soup this winter.    

 

After we finished, there was some of this......................

On another subject, Karen @ Garden Girl posted a link which I found very interesting so thought I'd pass it along.  Found here on the BBC News Website, by entering very basic data (age, height, weight), you'll be shown some interesting (and quite telling) information as to how your BMI ranks GLOBALLY and also in the specific country where you live.  I'm always interested in knowing what my personal BMI (body mass index) is and whether or not I am "normal," but can't say I'd ever thought about where my current statistics ranked among the rest of the population.  Check it out!

I came across another article recently that was of interest to me and I remember bookmarking it thinking I'd stick it in a post one of these days simply because I wondered how my blog friends might react.  (Obviously, I have no deep philosophical thoughts flowing out of my brain this evening, so the mishmash will have to do!  LOL!)   The article as seen here ranked the 12 Worst Grocery Stores in the US. It was first released back in early April and the survey had asked 24,000 people to rank 52 grocery store chains on a list of criteria.  Those who have read this blog for any length of time know that I have a love affair with grocery stores and thoroughly enjoy visiting new ones just to see what they have that is different.  Having just spent seven weeks in unfamiliar territory, I've visited a lot of new grocery stores some of which just happened to show up on this list.  Of the twelve stores, only one is found in my area (you'll be able to figure out which one when you read the list), but we actually shopped at two of the others while in New England. Both were new stores and very nice.  Needless to say, I was surprised to see them on this list.  So, I'm curious!  What do you think of this list?   Do you shop at any of these stores?   If so, do you agree that it belongs on the list or is a "generalized" list such as this unfair?  

Well, I've got a backpack to load and lunches/snacks to pack so that's all for now.  I'm excited to say that I'm inching ever so slowly, but ever so closely to goal and will be there soon.  Have a couple of new recipes that I'm hoping to try this week including the correct version of the now famous, Summer "Steel Cut Oats that is Supposed to be Quinoa" salad!!  (You'll have to read my last post to figure that one out!)

What Does Your Week Look Like?