Well, I think you can put my accomplishments down as "incremental". I did manage to make the pickled green tomatoes and even took a picture to prove it to you. Do you know, though, that pickled green tomatoes don't really look all that nice? I used a cold pack (raw food put into sterilized jars) and at the start they were a brilliant emerald green. After processing they're more a greenish whitish tone and...not lovely. I'm sure I'll appreciate them in winter's martinis where I don't really have to look at their rather ickish color.

With the rest of the green tomatoes, the non-cherry sized ones, I don't know. I had tossed around that tomato mincemeat idea but...I really don't want to end up with a bunch of jars of something that no one's going to eat. I only know one person (my dad) who enjoys mincemeat and he probably means the real thing when he says that. Does anyone actually make mincemeat anymore, or is it all this veggie and fruit business? The recipe is nothing more than a chutney, although a non-spicy one, and it just might be nice in little button-sized tarts at the gingerbread house party. See? I talk myself out of something and then talk myself right back into it again. No wonder I don't get much done. Too busy prevaricating.

And worrying. I haven't yet finished the gift for my oldest sister because I've been so totally exhausted from a few nights in a row of worried awakeness. I come from a long line of overnight worriers. My people, they could have been clog dancers or ice wine makers or a political dynasty but no, their contribution to the world is worry. All night long for nights and months at a time. It is, literally and figuratively, tiresome.

I won't tell you what I worry about - some of it totally legit scary stuff, some most of it ridiculous - as I don't want to set you worrying and don't wish to further imprint the list on myself, but here are some things I thought about in between bouts of breathless panic:

1) Where I might have laid the lavender thread I bought to finish a pillow case for the Girl. The poor girl gets the most incredible knots in her hair from sleeping on cotton. Mom to the rescue (maybe) with lavender satin pillowcases with a bit of Daisy Kingdom fabric peeking out from inside. I could use white thread, sure, but where is the lavender?

2) Would everyone like a bit of chocolate bread pudding this weekend? I haven't made any in a while and it's supposed to be kind of rainy and yucky, if unseasonably warm. Maybe I'd be better off waiting for a colder day.

3) Whether or not I should start reading the Outlander series. I've been very keen lately to find books that won't feed this cycle of worry - I want nothing that Julia so aptly described as "depressing, depressing-but-redemptive, intensely thoughtful, or nonfiction unless it is funny". Where Outlander falls in these requirements I don't know, but people keep telling me I need to read it.

4) Whether Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Domesticity is going to be made available here in the States.

5) Why is it, do you think, that last year we had few apples on the apple trees but rather too an abundant a showing from the gingko but this year the reverse was true with lots of apples and mercifully few gingko berries. Those of you know understand what a highly fruiting gingko tree is all about also understand why we're so happy about the switcheroo and probably also get why we're trying to figure out what happened so we can encourage it to happen again next year and the year after and so on.
6) Reading older books and memoirs of days gone by can be very helpful with the worrying stuff. It's very nice to know that despite a drought in France in '49 that convinced the country that the end times where near, coupled with crushing shortages and rationing of just about everything, did not stop Julia Child or anyone else there at the time from enjoying what there was to enjoy, no guilt involved. I also appreciated reading of Delia Lutes' belief that the Christmas celebrations she knew as a child in the 1880s were nothing at all like the "soul killing" consumption-oriented orgies of the "children of today" (Lutes wrote in the 1930s). And in The American Frugal Housewife, Lydia Marie Child bemoans the focus that mothers place on their children's clothing and activities - to the detriment of their useful educations, and that so many of her fellow citizens spend more than they earn trying to match the lifestyle of the wealthy and famous.

In short, it is nice to know that the more things change...and with that in mind, perhaps tonight I will finish my sister's gift.