Brother and family came to visit yesterday. 8-year-old niece, we’ll call her “Rainbow,” was curious about Chuck’s cooking techniques. He cooked boneless chicken thighs in barbecue sauce on the stove in a cast iron pan. The original plan was to grill the chicken, but Mother Nature delivered steady rain that made the grill less attractive. 

Rainbow decorated the chalkboard on the drop-down table. That’s her job when she visits. We hand her the chalk, and she knows what to do. 

Rainbow was curious about the barbecue sauce that Chuck had made from my homemade ketchup, which started as leftover liquid from canning salsa. The concept of making something from scratch that might be available in a jar or bottle caught her attention. Her mother is an excellent scratch cook; she must not have made her own barbecue sauce recently. 

After supper the fun began. We set ourselves up in the garage (still raining) and began chopping apples for cider. Rainbow was, shall we say, excited? She took part in every step of the process: chopping, crushing, pressing, and of course, tasting. She came inside with me to watch the pasteurizing step. She ended up leaving before the cider cooled, so she didn’t take any home. Yet. We’ll definitely find a way to get some of the finished product to her family sometime soon.