I planted several fruit trees in my yard years ago: apple, pear, and more. While my apple trees seem to flake out year after year, my pear tree and a few others produce generous amounts pretty consistently. Embarrassingly, though, I usually struggle to take full advantage of my Fall harvests and end up throwing away a lot of the produce.
Well, this year, I think I’ve finally stumbled on a simple way to make better use of my yields. As long as I can make the time to get out in my yard and harvest my ripened fruit–and make the time to do the processing afterwards–I just peel, de-core or otherwise remove the seeds and then blend up the fruity bits. The simple secret is in the storage: I pour the blended results into sandwich sized zip-lock bags. I try to remove as much air as I can, seal up the bag, and lay the bag flat like a pancake in my freezer. (For good measure, I label my storage bags with the name of the fruit and harvest date before filling them up.)
Depending on how big my harvest is, I can fill up dozens of bags. Initially, it can be difficult to find the necessary space to freeze my concoctions, but once frozen they can be moved around to more convenient areas of the freezer, stacked together and so forth.
Having these thin bags of frozen fruit works out really well when I’m ready to use them. My family and I enjoy fruit smoothies–especially protein-filled smoothies after a hard workout at the gym. When I’m assembling the contents of my smoothie in the blender, I just pull out one of my sandwich bags from the freezer. I grab either side of the bag and press the bag into the edge of the counter to break the fruit pancake in half, being careful not to rip the bag. I’ll usually repeat that step a few more times to break down one of the halves into smaller chunks. Then, I’ll open the bag and throw those small chunks into the blender. I’ll then seal the bag back up and save the other half for some other day.
The small chunks blend pretty nicely and make for a great shake, full of home grown goodness. Now I can’t wait for next year’s harvest!
I switched to ebooks several years ago, finding it quite convenient to pack my ebook reader with hundreds of tomes that I tote around with me to school parking lots while I wait for my kids to finish their practices, haircut establishments while I await my turn, the DMV while I wait…forever, etc. Nevertheless, I still have a backlog of physical books spread throughout the house and occasionally pick one up to read in-between electronic ones.
One of these I read recently was James Rollins’s The Last Odyssey. The Last Odyssey is a fast-paced, modern day adventure that pits a secret, U.S. government special operations team against the stereotypical bad people bent on sending humanity into the dark ages.
The thread that most endeared me to the novel was the interweaving of historical texts and mysteries–especially Homer’s The Odyssey–into the fabric of the story. I find it reminiscent of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum or Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Or maybe National Treasure, if you’re not the reading type. The villians and protagonists are out to retrace Odysseus’s 10 year trek home, which turns out to be more true than myth (thanks to much literary license). What awaits at the end of the trek could spell doom for the masses in the hands of the wrong people.
If you’re like me, you’ll want to read the author’s notes at the end where he enumerates all the books and events from which he drew inspiration. I’ve already added several of these to my watchlist.
So, if you need a break from your daily grind, The Last Odyssey will entertain you without overly taxing your exhausted prefrontal cortex.
So far in my family genealogical endeavors, I’ve scanned over 3500 photos, including old ones on tin. Most of the photos I’ve scanned have been loose in shoe boxes and the like, but sometimes I run across an old scrapbook.
From my research, these scrapbooks usually are not the best way to preserve the photos they contain, so here are some steps I follow to better protect those images.
Take pictures of the original book
Before I start removing pictures from the original scrapbook, I’ll take pictures of it, cover-to-cover, page-by-page. For one, it’s nice to simply have a record of how the images were originally stored and ordered. Furthermore, once you start removing each photo, it may be helpful to have a reminder of what page each image came from and what other images surrounded it.
Take care removing the photos
Removing your photos might be tricky, depending on how they were mounted to the original scrapbook. I have found a standard business card a helpful tool in the effort where I slide it beneath an open edge and very carefully use it to pry the picture free. Check with the Internet, too, as you may find other helpful advice.
Scan and document each photo
In the past, I’ve discussed how I scan and document family slides. With photos, my approach is much the same:
File format? I’ve toyed with preserving my images as PNG or even TIF, but I predominantly stick to JPG, more for concern about disk space than anything else.
Naming convention? Long ago, I devised a naming convention that includes a person’s name along with a number in case I have multiple pictures of the same individual. For example, the file smith, john4.jpg would indicate the fourth picture I have of John Smith. This formula gets more complicated when there is more than one individual in a picture, which may make for a decent future blog post.
Documentation? For better or worse, I’m still quite “old school” when it comes to documenting my images, authoring something akin to a “read me” file in the folders where I store my files–I’ve talked a little about that approach in two previousposts. Long ago, I recall Leo Laporte recommending the book Digital Asset Management for Photographers for tips on photo storage and organization. That may be worth checking out as well as this old podcast episode.
Regardless, when documenting photos, I try my best to answer the Five Ws. If you’re lucky, your ancestor may have had the forethought to write some of those answers on the back of the photo (which is another reason to be able to gently remove the images from the original pages).
Remount the photos in a photo-safe scrapbook
Once you’ve scanned and documented your photos, you could pack them away in a photo-safe container. However, how about sharing them with the rest of your family in a photo-safe scrapbook?
I buy acid-free cardstock paper on which I mount the photos, slide them into clear, acid-free sleeves with holes for a three ring binder, and snap the pages into a nice, three ring binder. To mount the pictures to the paper, I use self-adhesive photo corner stickers.
Before I start mounting images to paper, I try to do a little planning. It may make sense to mount the pictures in the same order as they were in the original book. However, it might make more sense to group pictures by person–if you have several pictures of Aunt Sally, it might make sense to group all those together on a page or two labeled “Aunt Sally”. It might make sense to group pictures by event–if you have multiple pictures of a Christmas in 1955, it might make sense to keep them together on a page called “Christmas 1955”.
While the self-adhesive photo corners do make it much easier to remove your pictures and look on the back for any notes, I try to add labels of any important information below each photo, so that it shouldn’t be necessary to pull out a given picture just to see what may be written on the back. You can check out the picture I took of one of my scrapbook pages (above) for details. One change I’ve made since I put that page together, though, is that I now use an easier-to-read font like Arial for my labels.
Include your pictures of the original scrapbook
Remember how I recommended taking a picture of the original scrapbook? I like to include copies of those pictures in a page or two of the new version, especially if the original had a neat look to it. You may not want to include every picture: maybe just the covers and an example page.
Include a cover page
Finally, it may be helpful to include a printed cover page in the new scrapbook describing how you migrated the photos from the original scrapbook to the new, safer version. Include the date(s) you did the work and your own contact information, so family knows who did this great work and who has electronic copies of the images.
Good idea for those loose pictures, too
While it might not be feasible to make scrapbooks for all your loose photos, your family might be well served by mounting many of your loose pictures in photo-safe scrapbooks, too.
So, how are you dealing with your old scrapbooks and loose photos? I’d love you hear your thoughts and suggestions!
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