Good Times

Okay, so I didn't do a very good job of updating this week; I was down and out with a nasty stomach flu. It was not a pretty sight!

Anyhoo, last weekend was a lot of fun! All of our prep time was well worth it. And all of my worry over two dogs in a little apartment was for nothing! They both behaved quite splendidly! Nothing broken, no running around; it's all good...

 
Little Jonah was a great guest to have and (we believe) had a good time exploring a new place. He was even awesome when we went to a restaurant on Sunday night and his nap schedule was all messed up that day. What a polite little man! He's obviously got a great example from his two parents. Way to go Megan and Jer!!

Since I will spare anybody the details of the stomach flu, there isn't much else to say about the past week....

We were getting the two dogs confused all weekend....

Getting Ready!

Currently, we are in the midst of getting ready for some exciting visitors!  Megan, Jeremy, Jonah, and Wembley are all coming up to visit us.  Yes, that's right, we will have 4 adults, 1 adorable baby (see Smooshie-Face post below), and 2 adult dogs in our little apartment!  It is going to be an exciting weekend to say the least!!  We are definitely looking forward to it!  We are baking up a storm to get ready!

This week was relatively uneventful; nothing too big happened.  So, in light of this, I thought that I would list some of the more interesting books I have read lately:

Dog Tricks?

I just realized that as of yet, the third of the "Three" in Orillia has not received very much attention. So, I thought I would remedy that by showing off some of Nikko's lesser known skills. We have tried to bring out his many innate abilities with varying degrees of success. Here is a list of some that we have discovered:






Sentry:














Mover:

Thuggin':












Satellite Dish:











And of course my personal favourite


Jedi Mind Tricks:






I am sure this list will continue to grow......

Attempt #1

So, what did we try to do this weekend??

We attempted to make homemade pasta. We have recently obtained a pasta maker (roller?), and so we thought we would try it out this last weekend.

So, the big question? How did it turn out? Well, it tasted like good pasta, but it wasn't quite what we expected either. It was a little stuck together, and well, the strips weren't very long. Did I mention it tasted good??

Hmm, I'm sure we'll get better......

Busy, Busy Week!

Wow, this past week has been a very busy one!

For me, it was my first full week back in the classroom, and I was busy getting together some lesson plans, as well as catching up on things that were behind there. As well, I got a student for online English instruction; putting together those lessons has been a challenge! I know English spelling, grammar, punctuation, and all that, but how do you explain to somebody about pronunciation and accents?? We'll see how this adventure shapes up.....

Lakehead has been putting on a series of lectures and debates this year, which they called the 3i Series. We've been to a couple, but this week was a big week for them. First, on Tuesday night, they had a debate between a representative of Oil Sands Development Group,, Don Thompson, and a leading author on the movement to stop the development of them, Andrew Nikiforuk. It was a very lively debate. Thompson, of course, had a very slick presentation that was very polished. Nikiforuk had a decent presentation, but was a bit all over the place in his slides and layout. Then, when it came time to the question and answer period, their positions were reversed. Thompson didn't answer the questions very well and just had standard answers for everything. Nikiforuk had some very well thought answers, and some plain common sense ideas to back him up. All-in-all, it was a very interesting, well done debate.

Then on Wednesday came the most important 3i lecture of the whole year! The one where Thamara was part of a discussion panel that centered on Challenges in Sustainability. There were 6 professors from various disciplines that were part of the panel; each of them speaking for around 10 minutes. It was really well done presentation by the group as a whole, and naturally, Thamara was the best of the group! It was a great presentation that showed off her future research plans. Everybody in the audience was rapt with attention! The whole idea went over really well with the group that was there. There were a lot of questions and great ideas coming from people that have been involved in sustainability and conversation in the area for a long time. You could feel the hope from the audience that now, with a university in the area, maybe something positive will really begin to happen! It was definitely a great feeling!

Whew! Then on Thursday, we went to a local place to try out cross-skiing. Wow, that was a decent workout! It sure is a lot different than downhill! We had fun out there, though. It was quite cold when we were first out there, but once we were moving for a while, it was actually nice out there; both of us were warm!

Stay tuned to find out what we are up to this weekend.....it will be interesting to see how it turns out......

Adventures in the kitchen

 Mmmmm... the house just smelled delicious... We put 10 pounds of fantastic McIntosh (Guelphian) apples in a pot (in two really) with a few cinnamon sticks and after a few hours of very slow cooking (the first half hour covered as to make the apples "sweat"), voila! tasty, tasty apple sauce. Mmmm and the whole house smelling amazingly! 10 one-cup jars of delicious apple sauce (plus a little bit that didn't make it into a jar...).

A few days later we did lemon curd. Honestly, the reason was because we wanted to get rid of our store bought egg, before we received our fantastic farmed fresh eggs. A quick google search of "what can I do with a lot of eggs" and the answer was right there: Lemon curd! True, it's not lemon season right now, but c'mon, we were getting new eggs! So, have you ever had lemon curd? I've had just in cakes, but apparently you can buy the stuff to put it on toast. So, given that I had never done this, we used little jars, the really little ones: half-cups. The recipe: 6 egg yolks, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 3 lemons (zest and juice). In a heavy bottom pot mix yolks and sugar with the wire whisk, then switch to a wooden spoon (apparently doing the whole process with the whisk aerates the curd instead of smoothing it) and add the lemon zest and juice. Cook it (stirring all the time) at a really low temperature until it covers the back of the wooden spoon (~ 170 F). And that's it! Seriously easy and even more seriously delicious! Mmmmm.... The recipe yields a mere tiny pint, or 4 half-cup little jars. I guess it'll last... two weeks maybe? :) If you know anything I could do with the egg whites (aside from merengue and suspiros) let me know. They're sitting in the freezer in a jar right now.

 What else did we do? Ah yes, the granola. Mmmm... I love Granola! It used to be my staple breakfast but lately, with Mike's bread and all the delicious toppings we've been getting (home made or farmer's market bought - aka cinnamon honey) I've been switching to toast in the morning. Nonetheless, my snack at school is still granola with yogurt. The granola is made here and so is the yogurt. The basic recipe (original of my friend Megan) is: whatever you want in the cereal with some melted butter and honey (or maple syrup) to coat. Oven in at 250 and out in about one hour (mix it throughout during that time). The picture shows also one of Mikey's breads just 'cuz he happened to have been baking at the same time.

So, if after all this deliciousness you feel hungry, come visit! We have tons of other stuff we haven't even mentioned here and we give goodie-bags when you leave!

Smooshie-face

So we went to Guelph last weekend; we visited our friends and had a blast (aside from accomplishing all the missions - seeds, apples,...). Amanda and us visited Jonah, Megan, Jer and Wambs! And Jonnah is THE cuttest! If you ask him how big he is, he lifts his hand right up, 'cuz he's "SO big!" And he claps when you sing if "you're happy and you know it". But my personal favourite is the "smooshie face" You have to see this baby. He seriously smooshies his face. Here's proof... :)

Eggs!!

We finally found it! We've been trying for a little while to find somebody local that has chickens that we can buy eggs off of. And we found it finally! He is a local organic grower that uses the chickens to clean up his gardens using the infamous "chicken tractor." No, seriously, google it, "chicken tractor." It's awesome!

So, anyhoo, we buy a couple of things every Saturday at the farmer's market from him and we mentioned about eggs. He didn't have any with him, but he delivered them to us on a Monday morning at 7:00am!! Now that is true service.

Snow Day!

The beauty of living by two lakes is that the weather (especially during the winter) is a little drastic.
Yesterday was a beautiful day and even though they were calling for an overnight snow storm, most people "knew" there would be no such thing... Ha, guess you really can't know!
Same routine this morning as any other: Nikko excited beyond belief after a whole night of sleeping; grind coffee while Mike takes him for his a.m walk, get dressed for school, Nikko comes back (stomping up the stairs, you can hear him from a mile away) and then Mike's voice "I think you should check the school website"
Yes! My first snow day in Orillia! I don't know who's loving it more, Nikko or me!
The picture shows what we woke up to...