Death of a Summer
Yes, there it is. Death of a summer. One usually asks, “Where did it go?” but there’s no need for me to ask… because I know. This knowledge does not stop me from mourning its passing, however, and well into my first week of the next semester, I am still wistfully looking back. So I must peruse what has happened to my summer--that precious time whose value is equivalent to that of fine gold.
In May, Jolene graduated. This was a Big Deal. As a graduation gift, her siblings sponsored a trip for her to see New York City. Sara, Sharon, and I accompanied her to the Big Apple for about four days. In addition to my 30th birthday and a visit from Alvin and Doretta, this pretty well took care of May.
The months of June and July were spent in summer classes. I took Anatomy and Physiology in June. What a difficult subject that is. But I am so glad it’s done and off the list. In July, I took Medical Terminology as an online class. This class ended the first week in August, which is when my 3 ½ week break officially began.
In between the two summer semesters (aka the weekend of July 4th), Sara, Sharon, and I went to a college retreat in Pennsylvania put on by Faithbuilders.
In June, Martin, Jolene, Sharon, and I went to the lake, and on July 9, Sharon, Jolene, and I accompanied Dee to Holiday World for the day.
The same week that my July class ended, Martin, Jolene, Sharon, and I went to D.C. to spend the weekend with Alvin and Doretta. The next week, my wisdom teeth were taken out, after which I spent about a week recovering from that nasty ordeal. And during the several weeks between then and now, Sharon and I have spent sewing, cleaning, assembling furniture, and putting up food for the winter. We even cleaned out the refrigerator and defrosted our freezer.
We’ve had this problem with our freezer wanting to put frost and freezer burn on our frozen foods. This makes us very leery of eating anything out of the freezer, and our food usually just frosts over and dies a frozen death. So we faced the dilemma of how to freeze food for the winter when the home it’s stored in is not a friendly one. I’m sure defrosting the freezer will help, but we went one step further. We decided to vacuum seal our items with Mom’s little vacuum sealer. One of the items we vacuum-sealed was chicken and vegetable kits.
I’m not overly fond of many of the stir-fry vegetable packages you buy in the stores already frozen, mainly because many of them have unfriendly things in them such as water chestnuts or huge onions or huge broccoli stems, etc. So this is what we did: We took a very large dishpan, and into it, we dumped five bags of frozen broccoli, two bags of frozen peas, two canisters of already cut celery, a canister of chopped green pepper, and several bags of green beans. We chopped up and fried about five huge bags of chicken breasts. Then we took one cup of chicken and two cups of the frozen vegetables and vacuum-sealed them into their bags, thus making healthy little supper kits for these two time-challenged college kids. We tried a kit out tonight for supper for the first time. It was a very pleasant experience. I pulled it out of the freezer, microwaved it for two minutes, stir-fried it for about five minutes in a little bit of very hot olive oil, added my own special blend of seasonings, and voila! Supper was served about seven minutes later. How is that for speedy?
The second thing we did was can green beans. Mom actually canned them for us, but we did help work them up. Then I made a big pot of chili the other night, although it kind’ve got out of hand. I was planning to make about five quarts and then freezing it. I’ve never made chili before, so I asked Mom how to do it. I didn’t listen very well evidently, because I forgot about the water. The first thing I knew, I had five quarts of pure tomato juice. So dear Mother brought her ten quart pot over, and we transferred the chili over and added enough water to make things right again. Then followed a series of dumping in a lot of things. I didn’t have any particular recipe, so I just started dumping in things that I thought would be good: onions, peppers, pinto beans, rice, hamburger, and multiple seasonings. I thickened it finally, and found that it was good. We filled up these little cup-sized freezer containers with the chili and froze twenty of them for lunches this winter. Those were all the containers we had, so we’ve been enjoying the chili leftovers ever since.
And as we look at our chicken-n-veggie kits and our cans of green beans and our cups of chili, we can’t help but feel a bit of satisfaction. We like fast and easy and homemade. Do any of you have any clever ideas of other things we can do to prepare for the drudgery of these long months ahead?
And that, my friends, is how my summer was spent. I am not entirely certain I shall take summer classes next year because there is just this lingering sense of having been cheated out of a break. At any rate, I have now officially earned 43 credit hours, and that, I believe, puts me down on the books as having Junior status.
In May, Jolene graduated. This was a Big Deal. As a graduation gift, her siblings sponsored a trip for her to see New York City. Sara, Sharon, and I accompanied her to the Big Apple for about four days. In addition to my 30th birthday and a visit from Alvin and Doretta, this pretty well took care of May.
The months of June and July were spent in summer classes. I took Anatomy and Physiology in June. What a difficult subject that is. But I am so glad it’s done and off the list. In July, I took Medical Terminology as an online class. This class ended the first week in August, which is when my 3 ½ week break officially began.
In between the two summer semesters (aka the weekend of July 4th), Sara, Sharon, and I went to a college retreat in Pennsylvania put on by Faithbuilders.
In June, Martin, Jolene, Sharon, and I went to the lake, and on July 9, Sharon, Jolene, and I accompanied Dee to Holiday World for the day.
The same week that my July class ended, Martin, Jolene, Sharon, and I went to D.C. to spend the weekend with Alvin and Doretta. The next week, my wisdom teeth were taken out, after which I spent about a week recovering from that nasty ordeal. And during the several weeks between then and now, Sharon and I have spent sewing, cleaning, assembling furniture, and putting up food for the winter. We even cleaned out the refrigerator and defrosted our freezer.
We’ve had this problem with our freezer wanting to put frost and freezer burn on our frozen foods. This makes us very leery of eating anything out of the freezer, and our food usually just frosts over and dies a frozen death. So we faced the dilemma of how to freeze food for the winter when the home it’s stored in is not a friendly one. I’m sure defrosting the freezer will help, but we went one step further. We decided to vacuum seal our items with Mom’s little vacuum sealer. One of the items we vacuum-sealed was chicken and vegetable kits.
I’m not overly fond of many of the stir-fry vegetable packages you buy in the stores already frozen, mainly because many of them have unfriendly things in them such as water chestnuts or huge onions or huge broccoli stems, etc. So this is what we did: We took a very large dishpan, and into it, we dumped five bags of frozen broccoli, two bags of frozen peas, two canisters of already cut celery, a canister of chopped green pepper, and several bags of green beans. We chopped up and fried about five huge bags of chicken breasts. Then we took one cup of chicken and two cups of the frozen vegetables and vacuum-sealed them into their bags, thus making healthy little supper kits for these two time-challenged college kids. We tried a kit out tonight for supper for the first time. It was a very pleasant experience. I pulled it out of the freezer, microwaved it for two minutes, stir-fried it for about five minutes in a little bit of very hot olive oil, added my own special blend of seasonings, and voila! Supper was served about seven minutes later. How is that for speedy?
The second thing we did was can green beans. Mom actually canned them for us, but we did help work them up. Then I made a big pot of chili the other night, although it kind’ve got out of hand. I was planning to make about five quarts and then freezing it. I’ve never made chili before, so I asked Mom how to do it. I didn’t listen very well evidently, because I forgot about the water. The first thing I knew, I had five quarts of pure tomato juice. So dear Mother brought her ten quart pot over, and we transferred the chili over and added enough water to make things right again. Then followed a series of dumping in a lot of things. I didn’t have any particular recipe, so I just started dumping in things that I thought would be good: onions, peppers, pinto beans, rice, hamburger, and multiple seasonings. I thickened it finally, and found that it was good. We filled up these little cup-sized freezer containers with the chili and froze twenty of them for lunches this winter. Those were all the containers we had, so we’ve been enjoying the chili leftovers ever since.
And as we look at our chicken-n-veggie kits and our cans of green beans and our cups of chili, we can’t help but feel a bit of satisfaction. We like fast and easy and homemade. Do any of you have any clever ideas of other things we can do to prepare for the drudgery of these long months ahead?
And that, my friends, is how my summer was spent. I am not entirely certain I shall take summer classes next year because there is just this lingering sense of having been cheated out of a break. At any rate, I have now officially earned 43 credit hours, and that, I believe, puts me down on the books as having Junior status.
Now let’s hear about your summer.
posted by Kris at 8/31/2005 11:56:00 PM
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