I didn’t mean to take a blog break, but it happened.  I could push at least part of it off on the old ‘busy’ excuse, but the fact is, it’s been a hard couple of weeks here.  Every time I sat down to write in this space, all I could do was talk about was how hard this fall has been in Charlottesville.  Many of you outside of our town are probably familiar with the Hannah Graham abduction and murder, the now infamous Rolling Stone article on UVA Rape, but there was yet another tragedy in our town that hit very close to home on the heels of all that, that wasn’t in the national news.  A double murder of a single mother and her teenage daughter, just a few blocks away. Our entire neighborhood is reeling.Horrifying enough, I discovered that the daughter had been Edie’s book buddy when she was in kindergarten and that Edie’s bus goes by the crime scene twice a day.  Edie and I went to the candlelight vigil at the high school in their honor last night, which I think helped give Edie some closure on this.

I’ve not done a lick of holiday decorating with the exception of Santa up there.  The canning project I’ve been working on since last summer has moved into its second phase – selling the Apple Pie Jam we’ve been making this fall at the Holiday Market this month.

My friend Emily came out and shot some fantastic pictures of us at work that were featured in this wonderful article a few weeks ago. We’ve had some good response to our jam – a huge thanks to friends who saw my posts on Facebook and came out to support the project.  After the first of the year, we will be holding a few seminars on topics that are also part of having a small business on topics like Marketing & Branding, Bookkeeping and more. I reached out to the vendors at market to see if they were interested in attending as well and the response has been enthusiastic.  Which is definitely awesome.

That ugly looking smoked duck pot pie with its half assed lattice crust is included only so I can share that my new camera (!!!) can take decent food shots in my dark kitchen.  That’s right, I finally got a decent camera again that I’m slowly learning to use.  I really have no excuses for bad food shots anymore do I?  I can also report that after 15 years, I have finally figured out how to add more lighting to my kitchen and have an electrician lined up to make it so.  Because when I get an idea, I like to make it happen as quickly as possible. In this case, the extension cord currently running through my kitchen is driving that quickness.  Something about a safety hazard Pat keeps mumbling about.  Whatever.  The light is wonderful.

And that pot pie was amazingly good.