Morning time plans

Sunday, July 25, 2010

I finished the pork off, so we have 5 more meals waiting for us to eat! And we ate a whole stack of pork in kebabs today. Was so hot we bbq'd including the crumble. Got to love gas bbq's.

We had a happy lazy birthday party on Sat, for a little boy who was 3. There was a splash park, sand pit and play ground and stacks of green green grass, all surrounded by a big fence that little ones couldn't escape from. Relaxing.

Speaking of birthdays I missed some british ones so


Happy Birthday Meg
Happy Birthday Gwennie
Happy Birthday Becky.
Love you all lots and will visit the post box soon x x x

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Big cook

For a while now there have been few of us planning to do 'The Big Cook'. It's where you gather together with your friends and prepare and freeze masses of meals in sandwich bags ready to pull out whenever needed. The sample recipe looks good to try too.

Seeing as beef and pork were on sale this week, we concentrated on those. And because strawberries and peppers were a good price too we got stuck into adding more to the schedule of the day!

So,

2 batches of freezer jam
25 peppers roasted, skinned and frozen for future use. Mmmn I love roasted red peppers in things but never remember to take the time to get organised before I cook! (Does that surprise anyone!?)
4 beef fajita meals
2 marinaded steak meals
1 roast prepared ready for beef dips
2 sweet and sour pork meals
1 mango pork meal
and 1 1/2 joints of pork for me to stuck into today because we ran out of time!

They look nice all lined up in the freezer, neatly labeled. Ready for the day I have no time, or cannot think of anything to cook.

I would recommend it, get together with some friends, buy a whole bunch of what ever is on offer, and get it prepared and ready to roll.

We also got to visit with a lady from church who is pregnant, and has hyperemesis gravidarum but was feeling up to sitting and chatting a little (once we had cleared up from the big cook!). Anyways, she is a talented seamstress and I had taken some fabric out that I had pulled off my shelves thinking of putting a quilt together. I was after advise, and for people to pull out any they didn't think coordinated. We had been too busy all day cooking to get to it, and so I sat them down for her to look through. In record time, she had divided them up into 3 piles and sorted out that I actually had 3 quilts in the package not one! Wow, I have to say, it was so obvious, but I couldn't see it. Talented. The problem is, which one do I start first?

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Guide to Stampede

You must start Stampede the way that Stampede is supposed to be started, down town, ridiculously early and with 300,000 other people to watch the parade.




Because it is the hottest day of the year so far, you eat strawberries in the shade, the best way you know how. And you can hose babies off, because it is so hot.


And then on Sat. morning, you get up early again, and go to the Bowness parade (still in Calgary, just a specific part) and get a free breakfast before the fun begins.
Doesn't Tom look like he is having fun?

It is the perfect time for babies to get their first pancake, although it should be rescused off the plate before the syrup is slathered on!


Then the fun part of this parade begins. Sweets are thrown by every float, and all that the kids have to do is run run run and collect more sweets than is good for anyone.
And the adults sit and direct the kids as to where to run to!

These people were cute, and threw good candy!

And this girl thought all her Christmases had come at once!


Then on Monday you drag yourself out of bed again, and head down to the Stampede ground to do some watching of your friend

And see her win these in the Miniature horse show. Cool outfit Sarah!

Then there's fake horses to ride.....

And cute babies to watch you ride them!

All this would be enough, but you must must press on for the most free meals in 10 days, and so on Wed we headed out for another pancake breakfast. All ran according to plan, except I brought home a little member of the armed forces. Can Brits be in the Canadian armed forces?


Not sure I'll have the camera for the breakfast tomorrow morning, but I will be there. Free food is a must!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Is it wrong for your three year old to be playing lets pretend to pick up the almost dead kitten and put in a bag and dispose of it?

Just wondering!

While we helping a friend finish cleaning her latest house renovation we came across a dieing kitten in one of the farm out buildings. So, the wonderful Mariah took on the task and put us all out of our misery (neither Holly or I wanted to be involved with this part, but it does seem that Heidi would have been happy to tag along!). I was glad she was there for many reasons, but perhaps this one most of all.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Creation

I have so been enjoying the flowers in the garden these last few days.


The Irises took forever to bloom (or so it seemed) but here they are, delicate and pretty, somehow surviving being buffeted by the winds.


And I love this plant, although I will never have it again as I have no idea what it is.

I thought that I would like to have a purple and orange garden, dramatic and unusual, but my Heidi girl said to me at the beginning of the season, 'lets have a garden full of flowers' and so all the seeds are multi coloured cosmos, and black eyed susans, and scarlet runner beans and sweet peas. We shall see, next year I may restrict it down, but truth be told the perennials are a hotch potch of thrifted plants so a colour scheme may prove to be ambitious.

At the weekend we popped out to the Sewlal's farm for a spot of this.

It takes at least 3 hours to get the garden mowed, and Tom enjoys to do it, so Heidi got to have a ride too. She certainly enjoyed it.

Nicole's garden is something wonderful to look at. She is trying something new out and has made raised beds (in the shape of an 'S' for Sewlal!) with a few more curvy beds thrown in. It looks fabulous and the inbuilt paths are so easy for kids to get a clear definition of the right place to walk. The mounds are supposed to conserve heat too and therefore make the plants grow and grow and grow.

Saturday was all about weeding, and we had a lot of fun putting the world to rights while weeding the main bend.




After lunch it was time for the kids. The little ones weeded the potatoes, fairly simple to tell the difference between a potato and a weed! Heidi was just the right size to squeeze in between the potato plants! The bigger ones did onions and beans.
30 mins of hard work = ice cream cone!



She's trying an experiment with the potatoes growing in tyres, you heap one on top of the next and fill with dirt. You are supposed to get something silly like 25lbs of potatoes from one plant! I am watching to see how it goes, so I can perhaps do one or two in our small garden next year. Mmmnn new potatoes......

Sunday, July 4, 2010

"I could own my own grocery store and that still would not eliminate “the 5 o’clock stare” into my cupboard every day. Someone please just tell me what to make!"

I was reading a web page tonight from a meal planning company. You sign up, and then every week you get the meals, recipes, and shopping list for your choice of supermarket to download.

Wouldn't this be great! But, I am not about to pay $5 a month, especially as it is US based and therefore the ingredients list is does not coordinate with the offers in the Canadian Walmart. My other main one is that some members of my family are restricted in their likes and dislikes(!!) so for the one I looked at tonight only 2-3 meals would be eaten by my gang. There were many options for specialist menus like low carb and low fat, but none for picky eater!

So, it is time, to sit down and try and make a meal plan for the week based on what is on offer in the flyer and what I have in the pantry.

Because I would so love to not stare into the cupboard everyday with the slight sense of dread when I really cannot think of anything to make!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Happy Canada Day!

The 1st of July has rolled around again and we get to join in the celebrations for Canada day. As far as I can tell it means that everyone gets the day off, and there are a great deal more red and white flags fluttering around. I discovered today that there are many ways to tie a flag about your person and walk down the street.

We joined friends for a trip to Princes Island Park which is in the middle of the Bow river. It was a great day out, lots of things going on. We watched a kids drama, and some martial arts, before chilling out under a tree listening to a band play and watch Heidi get dancing along!

Tom had an important conversation with Heidi tonight about sweets and teeth, and that eating sweets is not good for your teeth, they can rot and then need metal bits put in. He went as far as showing her the metal bits in his teeth. So, she made a well thought through decision. No, she has taken no stand against the perils of sweets and decided that she would not like to have them. She has decided that she would like metal in her teeth so she can eat the sweets! Whoops, not quite the ending we were looking for.