Platte City was also holding city wide garage sales, where we scored some good cheap and free stuff. I found lots of tops for myself for 25¢ and 50¢ each. When you're as messy as I am in the kitchen, you don't want to spend much on tops that will inevitable get grease spots on them.
Someone had an EdenPURE heater in the free pile with a note that says it "works, but heats slowly". We grabbed that right up. It may be just that they didn't understand how an infrared heater works, or it may need new elements. If we have to replace elements, at $80-$100 it's still a bargain for this kind of heater.
We drove by one home where several people were picking apples from their trees. We pulled over and asked if they were selling their apples. They told us they'd already picked and canned all they wanted and that we were welcome to pick as many as we wanted for free! We picked about a bushel, but could have picked many, many, many more if we could have reached them. They are very nice apples, both Granny Smith and a blush type, perhaps Gala. We gave some away, we'll eat some out of hand, and I'll can the rest as pie filling. I might make cider vinegar with the peels, too.
We didn't come close to seeing all the garage sales, but we had a late lunch date with Kat, my daughter T. and my son-in-law M. My daughter's birthday was on Labor Day, so this was a celebration of sorts. T and M follow a vegan diet, so they chose Cafe Gratitude. (They have a really neat concept; click through to read about it.) Cafe Gratitude serves a vegan and mostly gluten-free menu that focuses on local and organic foods. They make the most amazing homemade ginger ale and a wonderful coconut milk, almond butter and vanilla smoothie. The food was very good -- and filling -- the atmosphere was fun, and place was busy but not overcrowded at that time of day. We all had a great time.
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| M, T, and Kat. |
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| Shane and me. Our table was in what used to be a storefront display window. |
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| My hand-rolled veggie tamale with black beans and Mexican coleslaw. |
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| M's "nachos" made with cashew "cheese and sprouted grain crackers. |
We also saw this from the restaurant window. I have no explanation. I don't even have a logical guess.
Saturday afternoon my dad visited and spent the night. It wasn't really a planned visit; he was in town for other reasons and needed a place to sleep, and left fairly early on Sunday morning to do his own thing.
We stayed home on Sunday and did this and that around the house: laundry, a fall planting of lettuce and radishes, housework, etc. We had no real plan, we just looked around and did things that needed to be done.
This week promises to be busy. I still have those peaches in the freezer to work up, and now apples. Kat gets out of school early on Thursday, and we have a fun weekend with my sister next weekend to get ready for.
How was your weekend? And what do you have lined up for this week?
