food

What Kind of Wednesday | 100DayProject Day 39

What Kind of Wednesday

What kind of Wednesday are you having? My daily theme has generally been about me. Now it’s time for me to wonder more about you? What is your theme for today? So far it’s an average day here. Not too warm. Not too cold. I was up in time to take Luna for a short walk after putting out the compost bin and paper recycling. It’s not a ‘cans and cans’ day (a term I adopted from a friend for the biweekly days that we put out garbage cans and cans/glass recycling).

Roland had another early morning shift at the the Canadian Ringette Championships then stayed out that way and worked from there until Heidi’s 1:00 game. I went to 8:00-10:00 Pickleball then made some pasta sauce for an early 11:30 lunch with Kevin. Lots of dishes had accumulated (my experiment of doing my own and leaving Roland and Heidi to do theirs is turning out as expected: an accumulation of dishes) so I got them cleaned up before heading (late) to Heidi’s game. Nancy’s hosting bookclub at my place tonight so I wanted to get the kitchen cleaned up. After the game I continued to transform the past sauce with some noodles into ‘lasasga’ – I find it easier to just use a layer of rotini or other such small noodles rather than actual lasagna noodles when making lasagna.

The game was good, with Heidi’s team winning which puts them first in their pool and advances them to the quarter finals tomorrow morning at 9:45 with no need to play tonight which is nice because otherwise I would have had to miss a lot of book club. Karen and Kevin were out to watch the game so I had a good catchup with Karen since we ended up sitting side by side. We see each other briefly at pickleball and curling but rarely get much time to catch up. It was kind of like the good old days when we had more time to hang out with ringette parents while the children were in the change rooms and during the games.

Some of the other ‘What kind of Wednesday’ thoughts that arose today. Such as wishing for different weather. Not me, but a lot of other people get quite perturbed by the weather. I find it a lot easier to accept that we’ll continue to have winter weather occasionally at least until the end of April rather than expecting the weather to be good and being disappointed when it isn’t. This reminds me of an episode of a life coach podcast that I listen to by Jody Moore entitled ‘wasted wishes‘.

At pickleball we self-organized because we were without an ambassador – it worked out fine. We all waited out some turns. As usual there were some ‘where is my phone’ and ‘what did I do with … (my keys)’ occasions for me during the day. And ‘what is his/her name’ at pickleball. Usual memory deterioration I expect but I’m going to make a more concerted effort to remember names – and to pay more attention to where I leave things. I’m back to listening to some ‘Better Brain Fitness‘ podcast episodes for some motivation to get back at activities that are great for developing and maintaining cognitive function.

I made some soup while Nancy put the finishing touches on the dinner she’s prepared for book club. Very yummy vegetarian tacos. We all loved the roasted cauliflower, grilled Halloumi cheese and mango salsa. And the brownies and lime cheesecakes for dessert. I’ll have to get the recipes from her. And actually make it. I seem to accumulate recipes to make much faster than I actually make recipes. And, of course, we loved the conversation and laughter.

100DayProject Day 39

I didn’t make any progress at all on making cards or even watching videos today. But I did send out two cards – at bookclub everyone who was able to attend signed the cards to send to 2 of our friends who couldn’t make it because they were sick. We didn’t send cards to those who couldn’t make it due to travel. Too bad that postcards seems to have been a thing of the past. It would be fun to receive postcards from them on their travels. It’s always interesting to see where others go on their vacations.

Sleet on Sunday | 100DayProject Day 36 | Card 25 | Card 26

100DayProject Day 36

I made 2 cards today: Card 25 based on Lesson 5 of the Altenew Easy Ink Blending Techniques which covered Faux Watercolouring. Card 26 was a slim shaker card using the technique in Lesson 6 of the Altenew Easy Ink Blending Techniques course entitled Putting it into Practice. Since it’s almost 11:00 p.m. already I won’t be posting the details of how I made the cards. I do hope to get those posted tomorrow since I’ve been trying to use the colour scheme in the Color Throwdown Challenge #289 to which I can link my cards using that colour combination until tomorrow.

Card 25

I have been using my Gardenia Duo stamp set quite a bit lately for my class assignments. I need to get busy making thank you cards to send out to everyone who so kindly made donations to the Dementia Society in my mom’s memory. I have quite a few nice card designs featuring the Gardenias that will be perfect for those cards. Gardenias were my mom’s favourite flowers.

At 26 cards made by the end of Day 36 I’m at about 72% completion rate. I definitely have some catching up to do, both on making cards as well as posting about them. If I continue to do 2 a day for the next week that would put me at 40 cards by the end of Day 43. Definitely an ambitious goal! I did get one lesson from my next course, For the Guys watched entitled Geometrics.

Card 26

Sleet on Sunday

As forecast, there was freezing rain today. Luckily it turned to just rain later in the day and we didn’t get nearly as much freezing rain as they had been forecasting earlier. We opted to take Luna for a short walk on the road followed by a short walk in the woods when we realized that it wasn’t raining too hard and that it was actually slipperier on the roads than on the forest, especially because we stopped back at home and put on our spikes. We definitely had a sluggish start to the day. And Luna came back rather soggy from our walk. We packed up and headed home before lunch in case the roads got icier. I did some grocery shopping at Costco and Farm Boy for Heidi who has a big week coming up with her ringette Nationals here in Ottawa starting tomorrow. I also made her some pasta sauce and will make a few more things including some soup early in the week. I’ve got the carcass from a Costco chicken boiling with some celery, carrots and onions overnight. She had a practice this morning and did some school work before opening ceremonies then had lots of laundry and other prep for the week to tackle before making her egg bites, getting her smoothie ingredients packaged into baggies and back into the freezer, boiling her pasta and assembling pasta and sauce containers.

Apple Crisp

Background

This has long been a family favourite. The recipe came from way back in high school and was in the first cookbook I ever bought which was by Betty Crocker. It’s high time I added the recipe to this blog. I did post it on my other blog way back in 2010. It’s handy to have it available electronically rather than just a paper copy. I do prefer using a paper copy, but I don’t yet have a paper copy of my favourite recipes up here at the cottage. Of course I had to have 2 servings. After I’d already eaten one serving, I decided that I should have a different photo for the featured image for this post than the photo at the top of the page. So, I had to serve up another portion. I figured that since the bowl was dirty I might as well enjoy eating the second serving rather than just putting it back into the bowl.

The featured image is from the original 2010 post. I really love that pie plate. I bought it many years ago when I was downtown on French language training and went with a few of my classmates down to Laura Secord ice cream and chocolate shop for a much needed afternoon break. Exactly why the shop was carrying ceramic pie plates I’m not sure (I guess for a nice fall display), but I came away with a pie plate as well as an ice cream cone that fall afternoon.

Ingredients

4 cups sliced tart apples (about 4 medium)

2/3 – 3/4 cup brown sugar (I use 2/3 cup)

1/2 cup flour (whole wheat is nice)

1/2 cups rolled oats (I use quick cooking)

1 tsp cinnamon

1/3 cup butter or margerine, softened

Method

Heat oven to 375′. Arrange apples in baking dish. Mix remaining ingredients (a pastry blender works well to combine the ingredients); sprinkle the ‘crisp’ mixture over the apples. Bake until topping is golden brown and apples are tender, about 30 minutes. Serve warm, optionally with ice-cream or whipping cream.

Notes

I really like using McIntosh apples for this recipe. They soften up very nicely by the time the crisp portion is crisp.

Source: Betty Crocker Cookbook

Wide Open Wednesday | Day 18 of my 100DayProject

100DayProject – Day 18

No progress to report on my 100DayProject although I might try to sneak in a wee bit of work on it before going to bed. But it is 10:10 as I write this because I’m just back from book club where we celebrated pi day a bit early. We enjoyed quiche, chicken pot pie, apple pie and a berry pie. I wish we had had a family tradition of having a pie meal on pi day every year. Heidi was mentioned that she never gets to celebrate pi day with her math students because it falls on March Break so I think she’ll be happy if we develop a new family pie on pi day tradition.

It’s now10:47 and I did take about 10 minutes (or was it more?) to try out the Garden Delights stamp set. I just realized that there is actually a few more small stamp layers to fill in the centre of the flowers but that will have to wait until tomorrow to add it. I haven’t decided if I’ll go for the darker two shades of green or for the lighter 2. And I haven’t decided if I’ll do a mix of the two types of flowers or just the one type. I’m leaning towards just using one for simplicity, although I think I will include some of the second variety of leaves. Tomorrow’s 8:00 swim is now in as much jeapordy as my Tuesday one (which I skipped). Fingers crossed I get up when my alarm goes off at 7:00 despite me being so poor at adjusting to the time change.

It’s beginning to look a lot like I’ve at least started my Card 10!
This is definitely not a card that I’ve made, but rather it is thefeatured project for my Altenew All About Layer 4 Class 4 which I will be using as my design inspiration for my Card 10 of my 100DayProject. I had better pick up the pace since it is now Day 18

I received my Advent Calendar on December 6 and did the first card on December 9th. While I’m currently only batting 500 on my 100DayProject, I am making much faster progress on my daily Altenew card quest than I had on my daily Advent Calendar quest.

Wide Open Wednesday

It took me until the turn around point of this mornings walk for me to decide my theme for today. The stream was finally wide open after having been covered in snow and ice for many months. It was also a theme quite consistent with a thought after I set out when I figured out why the toes of my socks were wet: while they weren’t wide open, there was certainly an opening in the toes of my boots where the soles meets the upper part.

On my way back home I considered what I would do if I had a wide open day. It’s definitely a good thing to think about every once in a while. How much of the things you do every day would you want to include if you started your day with no routine or any commitments? If your ideal wide open day would vary tremendously from your typical day I think its definitely time to start thinking about making some small tweaks each week to better align your typical day with your ideal day.

I definitely had a good day. I enlisted Heidi’s help in tackling the disasterous kitchen rather than just doing it myself. There is still lots more disaster areas to tackle on the main floor, but somehow the kitchen always takes priority and all of my energy. Having some help is less draining for sure. It’s not what she was planning for the middle day of her March Break I’m sure. Here’s to hoping I can tackle some my disasterous desk in the family room tomorrow. I had a crafternoon at the Dementia Society with 2 of my Crafty Crew volunteers and we got a very good start on making 2 sets of cards. I decided that I really like the two cards I made with the Spellbinders Advent Calendar bee dies (back on January 5 and February 21 which were doors 6 and door 18) so we’re making them for my online class to do.


I liked the Spellbinders Advent Calendar card featuring the sequins from door 18 along with the bee die from door 6 that I’m making card kits featuring this design for my Dementia Society class.
I liked the Spellbinders Advent Calendar card featuring the bee die from door 6 that I’m making card kits featuring this design for my Dementia Society class.