Mini Pies Ease the Pain

Well we did get our chickens moved over that day.  I still haven't received any "proof" that we are legal, but the officer said we were good to go.  

It took me a while, but I did get that pie filling canned this weekend.  I used my new peeler slicer corer and think it's better than my last one, which I hated.  I didn't do a ton of apples, and I didn't slice them since I wanted them thicker for pie filling.  The peeling is the main issue, and this one did miss some of the peel, but I'll have to process more to get a better idea of how well it works, but it seemed to be okay.  It did get better reviews.

Here is a side by side of the pie filling I made this year with the stuff I made two years ago.  Huge difference and I'm sold on the Clear Jel.  The filling on the right tastes delicious, but it is ugly.

I had a quart and a half of the filling "sauce" left so we decided to make mini pies tonight.  I convinced Aaron to make the crust while I ran to the store for surge protectors and ice cream.  A big storm came through today.

Which flooded our basement.  Not fun.  We aren't sure if we are on a spring or what, but our sump runs every 5 minutes when it's raining.  It was going every minute during the heaviest rain today.  But this was not the issue, the problem was this drain at the bottom of our basement stairs.  We don't know what feeds into this drain, but there was water pouring out of it and into our basement.  Also water coming in along every wall in small amounts.  Luckily we knew this might happen and had everything up off the floor for the most part.  We're feeling like the sellers were dishonest about the severity and frequency of this, but what can you do.
Thank goodness the power didn't go out, as we don't have a battery back up system yet (it'll be here Wednesday).  When we realized the generator that came with the house wasn't powerful enough to run our pump last night, Aaron grabbed my parent's and had it all ready to go.  We knew we'd only have minutes before the basement would flood without power to the sump.

Thankfully these mini pies did help us feel better.