About friggin Time!

A new blog post...It's only been, what, 9 months? LOL

A lot happens in 9 months. I am entering a time of changes and new discovery. My husband and I have split up and so I am going through a rough patch. However, I feel I can blog a little about it because there are only maybe 4 people that will read this. I am not going to make this a long post, I am at work using the computer due to not having a place of my own yet. I will be living in a church converted to a a house! How cool is that?! I am looking forward to it for sure. I will get a dog and a car. The car will be mine on tuesday, the house in October, and then everything will fall into place.

I am not goin into too many details here, for obvious reasons. It's the INTERNET! lol

Happy blogging y'all!

have a great weekend!

The Rise of Semolina

Who here bakes bread?

Who here bakes bread WITHOUT a machine?

Who raised their hands for both questions? LOL

I don't have a bread maker, I AM the bread maker. I don't have a food mixer, I AM the food mixer, I am quite handy with the wooden spoon. (just ask the kids! lol j/k) I am trying a new recipe today. Semolina Sandwich loaf.

Sounds like a good one, it sure is a pretty yellow colour in the pictures, but will MY loaf turn out as nice? Only time will tell.



The reason I decided out of the blue to make this bread is because I actually had some semolina flour sitting in the cupboard. I was not doing anything with it, I did not know what to do with it, so I started tooling for recipes for it. I didn't find any I wanted to try, so back in the cupboard it went.




Last Thursday we ran out of bread. I had to make some for sapphire for school the next day. I started my dough for a big batch of whole wheat bread when I noticed a foul smell. After a few inquiring sniffs, I discovered that my whole wheat flour had gone stale! the whole bag smelled awful. So, in the trash the bread went. Feeling a mite discouraged, I decided to visit my favorite baking site, The Fresh Loaf.

After about 30 minutes of browsing for a nice white bread recipe and not finding one I was able to make, I found the recipe for the panini. It makes 6 paninis, and they tasted awesome. We made them into grilled cheese sandwiches...but before you wonder HOW I could ruin a great specialty bread by making it in to grilled cheese....Let me tell you what KIND of cheese we had! I have a block of sun dried tomato and herb Havarti cheese that I got for 2 dollars off at Coopers! We added a bit of deli meat to it, and had cinnamon apple slices and cheese cubes on the side. It was great! Kids will eat anything if there is a toothpick in it! But I digress...

On the same page as the panini bread was a link to this interesting yellow bread. I clicked on it thinking it would be a lemon loaf, because I love lemon loaf, but it said "Semolina Sandwich loaf" After checking out the ingredients, I realized that I HAVE them all! so I planned to make the bread. I finally got to making it today and as it cools on the cooling rack, I tell my tale, The Rise of Semolina.

Very good sliced while warm with butter and Havarti cheese. Mmmm.....more......

Scavenger hunt!

I was tagged by my friend in her blog, and so here I am with all my picture answers. I tag....Jo! Happy hunting!

Instructions:
Answer the questions below, do a Google Image search with your answer, take a picture from the first page of results, and do it with minimal words of explanation.

Your age at your next birthday..did you really think I would make this easy?

Favorite place I would like to travel to

My favorite place

Favorite Food

Favorite Pet

Favorite Color Combination

Favorite Piece of Clothing

Favorite Movie

Town I live In

First Job

Dream Job

Bad Habit

Worst Fear

Something you would like to do before you die

Four things

Four things I did today:
1. Buy new clothes for work
2. Try on all my new clothes over and over again in as many possible combinations just to see how they look.
3. I took all my old/broken electronics in to the next town where they will be recycled.
4. Played "Dora the explorer, around the world" with Raven. Mainly just the singing and clapping bits.

Four things on my to do list:
1. Organize all the closets
2. Bring the spare bed to the storage locker across town
3. Scrape and paint the bathroom ceiling
4. Wash the car mats. I spilled some coffee on one the other week, and though I cleaned up what I could, it still smells funky.

Four of my guilty pleasures:
1. Coffee, especially with the hazelnut flavoured cream, or the hazelnut icedcapp from Tim Horton's.
2. Cream cheese. I am like that angel on the Philadelphia cream cheese commercials. A sliver of bagel under a mountain of cream cheese, and I STILL wind up thinking it could have used more.
3. Reading when I should be doing other things.
4. Posting in blogs and on forums and playing stupid games on Facebook when I should be doing other things.

Four random facts about me:
1. I love vintage style clothing and jewellery. I am going to be a flapper for Halloween.
2. I love to collect rocks. Where I live you can find all sorts of semi precious gems and stones, just laying out there on the river's edge.
3. I love to cook, It's like brewing a potion that cures hunger and satisfies my family, at the same time showing how much I love them.
4. I love hats, and cool knee socks.

My sister didn't tag me, so I tagged me on her behalf. lol Love ya Jo! I don't think enough people read this blog for me to tag anyone, so If you like, consider yourself tagged if you haven't done this one already!

Garbage Guts II

When Mister was small, he would eat anything. Peanut butter mayo and m&m sandwiches, his sister's left overs, you name it, anything but fish. His sister used to always call him Garbage Guts for all the gross stuff he would eat.

They say that the apple does not fall far from the tree, and here is a little story of what happened today.

There is a new garbage guts in the family! I love pickled garlic, and when I pickle garlic I do several batches at once. This time around I was doing 4 batches. That is 6 pounds of garlic total. It is very time consuming to blanch and peel all that garlic, so I do it over a few days.

As I was sterilizing the jars in preparation I was also peeling the last few cloves. As I was going through the garlic to make sure I hadn't missed peeling one, Raven asked if she could have one. She is always asking for some of whatever I am cutting at the time, it is usually carrots, or peppers, or celery. Of course I told her she would not like it. "But I lub it!" she insisted.

So I gave her a whole garlic clove, freshly peeled, and strong. She popped it in her mouth and started chewing. Her eyes got wider and wider as she kept chewing. Too proud to admit that she might not care for eating raw garlic, she walked on her tippy toes with her arms held half way out, perhaps for balance as she concentrated on keeping a poker face.

She stayed in the living room for a bit and I called out to her "Did you eat the whole thing?"

"Yeah!" came the reply.

A moment later Raven came back into the kitchen with her head low saying in a small voice, "I don't like it." so I let her spit it into the trash.

I was laughing my butt off so I went upstairs to tell Mister what happened. When I came back downstairs she was eating some old popcorn out of the trash! Thankfully it was still in the popping bag and not actually touching other trash.

Move over Mister! There's a new Garbage Guts in town!

Introducing Princess Garbage guts!

Busy and FOrgettful

I am so forgetfull I cant spell. LOL Just a quick note to say that MIster is home for the season, and having some health issues, We are dealing with this, plus I am looking for work, and taking 2 courses by correspondance. I will be back for a REAL update soon.

Summer Fun

I have an unexpected day off so we decided to go hiking. My sister in law and niece came with us. We went to an intermediate trail called The Spirit Cave Trail. It leads to the Spirit Caves. We were looking forward to seeing the spirit caves, but since we had a 3 year old in attendance we were unable to go the distance. Part of the trail got so narrow there is no way she would have made it without falling down the mountain. Here is Raven having a rest.

Jewel is quite the hiker. She was always way ahead and more than willing to meet the challenges of a difficult trail. This trail is advertised as intermediate, but it's harder than than. Much of the trail was steep with a drop off on one side. Next time I use this trail, I will bring rope and less kids.

Two of the kids whined and complained the whole way up "I want to go home now," " lets turn back," "I don't want to hike anymore" As soon as we got back to the car, I asked "who had fun?" The one that complained the most was the first to say "ME!" Here is the view from not even half way up.

Afterwards we went to dairy queen and had some ice cream. It probably wasn't the best idea, since we probably ate as many calories as we burned, but the kids did such an awesome job on such a difficult trail that we decided they needed a treat. We were quite the sight I am sure. We walked into that dairy Queen all sweaty, smelly, covered in dust and dirt, our clothes were so dirty it was unclear what the original colour was, We sat down right next to a group of people that were dressed in their Sunday best hair perfect, dresses pressed, shoes shined. The kids were staring, I bet they were wishing they had as much fun as we did. lol If you are not dirty, you weren't having enough fun. ;-)