More work on the garage and what I've been up to in the kitchen

This weekend Matt and I put our heads together and really got moving on the garage. As you may remember, we are regrading the side next to our neighbor, Mike, because, well, it's currently graded really stupidly (i.e. so the water runs into the garage). Matt's been busy already painting the boards and this weekend we started to put them up.

Here's the first board going up:

And a close up of the mitre cut corner (this was necessary, as you will see later, to putting the aluminum corners back up over the new board)

From the first board, we just kept working our way down. The real challenge was hitting the studs from the outside. Since the end of the garage outside and the inside of the garage don't exactly line up, we had to drill a couple of holes through the walls and do some hard thinking (and math) to figure out where exactly to drill. After a couple missteps on the first board, I'm proud to say we hit every stud after that. 

Here's the last board we put up over the weekend, the small corner pice between the garage proper and the workshop (which we think was added on at some point)

Then Matt went back and caulked the top, to keep water from wicking down the seam.

Doesn't the corner look great?

After that he wood puttied the holes and the next day (today) he came back to sand them down.

And put up the aluminum corners that those mitre cuts were so key for:

He also painted, but it got too dark to take a picture once he was done, so you'll have to enjoy this action shot of him getting started and I'll post a finished product pic soon, I promise.

And what was I up to while Matt was finishing up sanding and painting (I helped put the boards up, don't you worry). Why, I was in the kitchen, of course. Testing out my new toy, a vegetable and fruit strainer attachment for the KitchenAid. Now, you might wonder why this purchase was made, since Matt and I are pinching pennies a bit here. Well, I had been peeling and coring the apples by hand, and actually I made three batches of apple butter that way. Then, this weekend, Matt offered to help. And at about the second apple, he asked "Isn't there a better way?" To which I replied that this food strainer would allow us to cut out the peeling and coring process and voila, three days later, here it is.

 I gotta say, its pretty great. No peeling, no coring, and not only did I make apple sauce tonight, I also took some of our first tomatoes and made tomato sauce. Turned out pretty great despite the fact that beefsteak tomatoes aren't really the ideal tomato for sauce.

 As a recap, so far this season I've made and canned (from the left) apple sauce, apple butter, caramel sauce, and pickles. Ok, so the caramel sauce did not come from the garden, but I did make it to dip apples in and it turned out AMAZING. Its a little intense to make, but with only four ingredients, not very complicated and I would certainly make it again.

Next culinary adventure? Tomato sauce, and lots of it given the 8 bursting tomato plants in our garden.