Did I sound as if I was bragging yesterday when I wrote about all my neat little freezer containers of food for winter? If so, I apologize, because I certainly got my comeuppance today.

The day started off well.  I followed my own rule about settling down to writing this morning, and by lunchtime I had cranked out some 1900 words -- a product good enough for a NaNoWriMo performance (but more about that later!) For now, we're talking about what happened after lunch.  Despite several crockpots full of applesauce, I still had 18 apples to use up, and I couldn't bear the thought of any more sauce.  So I checked the internet for ideas and found a promising Rachel Ray recipe for baked apples. Now to be honest, I don't much care for Rachel Ray, but this seemed too good to be true.

Take McIntosh apples (which is what I had), cut the tops off, take out the core and seeds with a melon baller, stuff the centers with a mixture of granola, chopped walnuts, butter, and brown sugar, stand each apple in a muffin pan cup and bake for 20 minutes at 425 degrees.  Simple enough, right?

Oh no.  Do you remember those grade school days (your own or your kids) when you built a paper mache mountain, added vinegar and baking soda to the crater and watched the volcano explode?  There's even a current commercial that features this kind of fun. But when it happens in your own oven . . . .That's right.  My apples exploded.  Every one of the eighteen, at approximately the 17-minute mark. They split their rosy little skins, the apple flesh expanded into marshmallow fluff, and then poured forth their syrupy stuffing all over the muffin tins and down to the floor of the oven.

Sigh! Add oven-cleaning to the list of the week's chores.  As for the apples, what I salvaged of them looks and tastes pretty good, but truthfully, it still tastes like applesauce.

 . . . or maybe I'm just nuts! Whatever the truth, there's something about cooler weather that kicks me into "storing up for winter" mode. So that's what I've been up to this weekend.  We've been traveling for the past two weeks, so I've been collecting supplies.

First stop was  a roadside cheese store in Missouri that featured a 12-foot mouse outside.  The pleasant  irony there was that when I got inside, I found that many if not most of their items were supplied by Troyer Cheese Company -- a company owned by the husband of one of my Ohio cousins.  All the more reason to add a few jars of Amish goodness, some summer sausage, some corn nuts, and some jam. 

Later in the week I brought home a peck of Macintosh apples from Michigan -- the small, tart kind that I just can't find in my southern supermarket.  And then I added 10 pounds of new sweet potatoes and seven pounds of luscious-looking tomatoes -- the last of the season.

Today the kitchen has taken on the appearance of a soup kitchen, except that the end products are all destined for the freezer.  In the oven, the sweet potatoes were baking into carmelized creaminess-- destined to be mashed up with butter, orange juice, and crushed pineapple for accompaniments to a host of pork chops. The crockpot was full of apples for Lazy Applesauce. (That's the world's easiest recipe.  You just fill the pot with quartered and cored apples, peel and all, sprinkle with cinnamon or what-have-you, pour a little lemon juice and a half cup of water over them and cook for four hours. Then you take an immersion blender to them and the end result is healthy, sugar-free, and the silkiest applesauce you've ever eaten!) And on top of the stove bubbled an eight-quart stockpot of tomato sauce -- with green peppers, onions, garlic, and the last of the basil from my front porch.

Now the containers are lined up all over the counter, cooling just a bit before heading for the garage to be added to my pile  of winter "nuts."

Is there any good reason for the stockpile?  Well, I keep telling myself that -- starting tomorrow -- it's time to get back to writing, which will leave relatively little time for cooking. 

I've had several long and productive days this week, so I'm a little punch-drunk and ready for some big time silliness: