Fish and Chip Night!

Something my boyfriend and I have agreed on is that we have failed at our attempt to create a good fish and chips dinner! One time I made the most delicious fries...but we both soon realized that the 'fragrance' of cooked oil turns our stomachs! Olive oil is okay, but we've tried Canola, Grape Seed, Safflower, Sunflower and good old Mazola...we can't get used to that smell. So, although my goal is to eliminate processed foods as much as possible, we bend the rules for fish and chips :) These are store-bought. Until we get a deep-fryer that we can let cool off and air out on the porch, we're sticking to frozen stuff. We shared a bottle of "Newkie Broon" too, that's how my Scottish grandfather used to say it! 

But at least I can say I make my own tartar sauce!!! Next step is making my own mayo. I used to put fresh cilantro in my tartar sauce too and it was so good, but I don't have any this time of year!

The last of my seeds arrived! I made a promise to myself to STOP now, lol...I'm obsessed. My boyfriend has trouble with peppers, but we thought we'd try to see if he still has the same issues if they are homegrown. Plus the orange ones are so mild, hopefully he won't get reflux from them. And I really wanted some pretty flowers for the porch too, so I got the Nasturtiums and Marigolds. And that company sent me another free pack of the Canada Day zinnias! I have to plan pots for all of these beauties.

Here's my Speedy Gonzales :) ...I've mentioned that my boyfriend and I have been watching all of the Looney Tunes lately. We got through the 50's and 60's and now we're finishing up the 1940's. The 1930's were a little too "old" for my taste...a lot of whistling and singing, so he can watch those on his own! He just downloaded the Flintstones, so that's the next series we're watching! We love cartoons. I remember coming home for lunch from grade school...as soon as the Flintstones was over, it was time to walk back to school. Anyway, I drew this on a piece of paper with a little reminder that there is leftover taco mix in the freezer for his lunches. I try to make everything a little fun.

It's a nice sunny day today but cold again. The flyers in this area come out on Tuesdays and Wednesday so I'm spending the next few days going over the sales, jotting down what's still in the freezer and cupboards, then planning our meals for the next 4 to 6 weeks. I really enjoy that process a lot! Sam I Am was talking about bullet journaling - if you don't know about it, you'll find lots of pictures on Pinterest. It's an organizational tool that allows you to be creative too. I do this kind of journaling for my meal planning and shopping, for my garden, my daily to-do and also my self-therapy/self-improvement efforts. I have 4 different journals and it's a nice structure to keep me on track. I also paint, lately I've been into watercolours, so I made covers for all of the journals :)

It's relaxing for me now to plan our meals. I remember a time when I lived paycheck to paycheck and it was a frenzy going over the flyers on Wednesdays, planning 2 weeks worth of meals in one day and then shopping on Thursdays with all of the crowds. It brought me a lot of stress and we both knew that every two weeks for 2-3 days, I couldn't eat solid food. Crazy how that stress got to me. I used to coin the term "the dreaded shopping day". Now I'm lucky I can shop for a month's time because I was able to set aside a little money each month since last summer so I'd have a pool of money for just this purpose; and go when I want to, Mondays are good days, not as many crazies out there lol. The only downside is in the winter, the produce isn't as fresh, so by weeks 4-5-ish, we have to eat frozen veggies. I try to plan the fresher food for the first few weeks of the meal plan because my goal is not to use the car as much, the grocery stores are just over an hour's drive each way. This month I broke down and drove 15 minutes to an overpriced corner store just to get fresh tomatoes...big no-no! This is one of the goals as well - a winter garden! Does anyone else meal-plan this way? For me it's a lifesaver!

Need Dog Advice; Dog Quirks; Food Stuff

I can't wait until Rain's Garden has posts about Rain's GARDEN...that tease of warm weather really got to me! Yesterday we actually had a thunderstorm. This is unusual for a February in the snowy mountains of the Laurentians. My boyfriend caught this with his phone camera from our bedroom. We lost power for a little while off and on. Today of course, it's back down to -14C (7F-ish).

So here is where I'm seeking any and all advice and suggestions. This is Marlene, one of our rescues. She has lots of issues and one of them is a fear of loud noises. Many dogs have this, but I personally have never seen it THIS bad. She pants very heavily, shakes and jerks, paces the house, ears down, whines, hides, has to constantly pee and poop but won't go outside...and then she has the runs for about 24 hours after. In the photo, she's wrapped up. I did so much research to try and help her. I made this full-body wrap that mimics the "thunder shirt". It's supposed to apply pressure to certain areas on the dog to comfort them. And these are the four products we've tried over the last year as well. If we know a t-storm is on the way, we put the wrap on her early in the day and give her chamomile tea with her meals. Rescue Remedy worked so well when I had my pugs, but not with Marlene.

Save me Mommy!

Poor girl. She hides between my table and my dresser, shaking furiously the whole time. Advice says to ignore them so that they can get used to it...but it's so hard to do that when I see her suffering so much. Has anyone had any luck with anything??? Our other dogs have their quirks...

Jack chews on his ears and he holds one in his mouth like a security blanket...problem is he gets sores on the ears because he really does CHEW them...again with him, I've tried everything. He has plenty of bones and balls and chew toys, lots of exercise and love...I made a "snood" for him (it's like a head wrap but he kept shaking it off). I even tried bitter apple and rubbed it on his ears and he LOVED the taste ha ha...It's hard to break an old habit, we got him when he was 9 years old. Every time I catch him, I tell him "drop your ears" and he does, then goes to hide and chews them again...at this point it's just maintenance to make sure the sores don't get too bad.

And Charlie thinks she's a cat and jumps up everywhere. She's very sneaky and we often just find her on top of things. She's a growing little gal, and she gained 15 pounds in the last year. We're afraid her weight might not hold wherever she's up, I'm afraid she might hurt her legs when she jumps down. Again, every time we catch her, we teach her it's a "NO". We put stuff up to stop her but she barrels right through the barriers. Anyway, I'll take advice for all three if anyone wants to offer it!

Onto my next favourite subject - FOOD!!! I make my own yogurt because it's SO MUCH cheaper than buying it. One batch lasts just under a week and costs less than $2.00. We go through a lot of this, because we both love our morning fruit shakes; and because Marlene is such a nervous dog that she often has trouble with her bowels. We give her probiotic supplements mixed in with the yogurt. It helps to keep her "regular"! My yogurt tastes more like sour cream because I don't add any sweetener, but adding maple syrup makes it so yummy. It's super easy to make to:

Homemade Yogurt

1. Heat a liter (4 cups) of milk to 200F over medium low heat, whisking often so it doesn't burn.

2. When it reaches 200F, take the pot off the heat and put it in a sink of cold water.

3. Whisk often and check the temperature often, you want it to reach 110F.

4. When it reaches 110F, scoop out a bit and mix it with 1/4 cup of yogurt and pour it back into the pot, whisking it all together. (I always have to remind myself to keep a 1/4 cup for the next batch!)

5. Pour into Mason jars and seal.

6. Incubate: there are many methods, the one I like the best is wrapping up the Mason jars in tea towels and placing them on my heating pad on medium for 8 hours. 

It turns out really well! Though I've tried adding vanilla one time to the process and the yogurt never set, so I just don't wake the sleeping yogurt bear anymore and always stick to plain-flavoured!

I'd forgotten...this is a photo of my birthday dinner in 2016...FONDUE lol...that was the first time I'd tried the Italian fondue. My boyfriend made a pot of that and a pot of Swiss cheese fondue (I don't have the recipe for the Swiss though). Susan asked me for the recipe for the Italian fondue, it couldn't be easier:

Italian Fondue

Ingredients

1 can whole tomatoes (we use my canned tomatoes, but we used to use the Aylmers 28 oz can)

1 red pepper, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 block Mozzarella, shredded (the block is 450g which I think is 15 oz)

Directions

In a pot, heat up the tomatoes (with juice), pepper and garlic. Using a hand blender, mash it up to your favourite consistency.

Add the cheese and let it all melt and blend. We never transfer it to the fondue pot because it's just easier clean up in the pot we made it in. But it's always just the two of us, so we don't have to get too fancy! The first time, we put the fondue warmers underneath, but we eat it so fast that we don't need to anymore ha ha.

I LOVE being creative in the kitchen. My boyfriend came downstairs from his office at about 2pm yesterday and said he was starving. Our fridge is getting bare...shopping day is next week! But I did have eggs and all the fixins' for Deviled Eggs! The filling is just some mayo, fig vinegar, fresh chives, Dijon and S&P...oh and the egg yolks. I usually wing it so I don't have an exact recipe. He made himself some toast and I heated up the leftover fondue for me. 

For dinner, I used the last of the fresh lettuce and made a Chicken Cesar Salad with roasted chicken, bacon, Parmesan petals and croutons...mmmm! Can't wait to make this with my homegrown lettuce!! I had some pizza dough in the freezer that I defrosted so I made a Mozzarella/garlic bianca pizza topped with basil. I have a week's worth of food left for meals, and missing most of the fresh ingredients...so I have to start getting creative!

Aging: Can't Believe How Quickly Time Flies!

My birthday was last week but I was too sick to even think about it. Yesterday though, I felt better, so my boyfriend made the day pretty special. He got me a bottle of Maple and Canadian Whisky liqueur. I'm a huge fan of Canadian Whisky and I love maple syrup...this is like an adult dessert in a bottle! Yum!

He made these special coffees for us. He is quite the bartender and loves to try new things. For Christmas, "Santa" brought us a bottle of brandy cream liqueur, so he made us these layered coffees with milk/liqueur on the bottom, coffee in the middle and a sweetened foam on the top. Boy were they good!

My other prezzie was a subscription to Martha! And it's funny, because I laughed about our ripped couch together while I saw the nice one on the cover of the magazine. I don't think Martha lets her dogs up on this couch lol! 

We spent the whole day together watching movies, taking the dogs out and listening to the old Jack Benny radio show on You Tube. I can't believe I'm 49 years old, I have to say I DO NOT feel it. I really did have a rough time growing up and I have to say that I feel like my life started being joyful only about six or seven years ago. I've been through a lot and sometimes feel like three decades of my life were taken from me. I think that's why I have such a zest for life now, I don't want to waste a moment in the past. Not many people know this, but there is quite an age difference between my boyfriend and me...20 years to be exact! I'm the older woman and sometimes (especially on my birthdays), I get a little sad about it. And really, there is no reason to be because he never makes me feel old at all. But you know, sometimes I think about how we'll look together when I'm in my 60's and he's in his 40's! He knows I think about that once in a while, though I'm getting better at it! So he always reassures me and makes me feel so loved, I feel quite lucky I met him. And honestly, for the rest of the year, I really do feel like it's just a number. I feel young, and I am enjoying my life. Though I do have more aches and pains than I used to, I try to stay limber and strong with yoga and exercise. So...he made the day very special. I even got a glass of champagne before dinner!

My birthday dinner is one of my favourite dishes. Italian Cheese Fondue. This was a BIG test on my insides...all that cheese and a day of cocktails...but I fared well! I never tried Italian fondue before I met my boyfriend. His family made it all of the time; I was always used to Swiss cheese fondue. This one is made with tomatoes, red peppers, Mozzarella and garlic. It's all melted up and served with bread. The cheese never melts completely but that's part of the gooey yumminess :)

And for dessert, he bought a Ferrero Rocher cake. We cut it in half and froze the other half because it's so rich, even half a cake will take us a few days to eat! I feel I have gained a good 5 pounds from yesterday but it was worth it! :)

Holes, Dogs and Food

They all have different personalities, but really, most dogs have the same bad habits!! I wanted to show this photo especially to Kristina at Pioneer Woman at Heart, just for solidarity lol, she wrote a post the other day about her dog Zuri who was chewing things up. About a year and a half ago, this couch actually was in good condition! Ever since we got the three rescue dogs in the fall of 2015...well, as you can see. And this is the good side, I turned the pillows over for the photo! We are reduced to putting bed sheets on everything now because we are a pet-house, i.e., they are allowed to be up on the couches and the beds because we just adore their company! Every time we're at a bazaar or rummage sale, we pick up all sorts of sheets and pillow cases to hide or protect our furniture! I feel like I'm one step away from putting those plastic covers on the furniture. When we buy our home in a few years, we'll likely keep one room as our bar/lounge where it will be a doggy/kitty-free zone so we can have a few nice fur-free pieces of furniture! Then again, it's hard to close a door on those sweet faces so we'll see!

More holes...imagine my surprise. I'm out in the yard with the three dogs when suddenly my foot gives through 3 feet of snow! I actually got stuck for a few moments until I got my bearings. Did any of the dogs come to my rescue? Nah...they thought I was playing! I decided on the tuck and roll method to get myself out lol...it was quite the scene. I was up to my hips.

Charlie the Ostrich: Our huskies love to dive head first into the snow. Charlie keeps her head under there for the longest time. I took this picture today because I wanted to show Susan from ei-ei-omg!. She posted a really sweet video yesterday of her dogs. One of them, Bertie does the same thing. It's very precious :)

I'm still on the mend from that bout of food poisoning, but you can't keep me out of the kitchen. My boyfriend has been fending for himself since Monday but last night I wanted to make him a nice healthy dinner. I made a pork tenderloin with some boiled potatoes and green beans. I haven't bought a bean since August! He loves them so I bought a bunch when they were a good price at the market and portioned them out in the deep freezer. I still have enough for 8 more dinners. I follow this recipe for the tenderloin, it's the easiest recipe to make and turns out delicious each time, though I cook it a total of about 35 minutes in the oven: Simple Roasted Pork Tenderloin. The rest of the pork will go into a stir fry in a few days.

And this was my pathetic looking dinner! My first real meal since Sunday. Boiled potatoes and steamed tilapia (notice I sneaked in some butter???)...all is well :)

I used to LOVE drinking tea. But lately I suffer the worst heartburn when I have a cuppa. I was reading about how the tea bags for most of the teas out there are bleached with chlorine and can cause stomach upset when you drink the steeped tea. I'm trying so hard to get rid of all processed foods, our digestion is very fragile. So I thought I'd give it a test and buy some loose tea to see. Was I prepared to pay $7 for this tiny little tin? NO. If I can drink this without the heartburn, I will have to find a less costly source! Nice tin though...and a breath of fresh air. NO FRENCH on the tin. I live in Quebec and the law states that French must be the dominant language on all marketing and advertising. Twinings got away with it by putting a very easily removable sticker on one side with French writing. I just pulled it off and there we go. I won't get into the politics here but basically English people are not welcome in this province. Our hope is when we buy a property, it will be in another province.

Since I was feeling so good this morning when I woke up, I decided to make brunch. I just took a bunch of different ingredients and made a scramble. I'm usually a stern recipe-follower, lack of confidence perhaps? But today I went hog-wild and made up my own, as nervous as that made me! Here's my creation:

Breakfast Scramble (for two)

(Rain's Scramble? - Patent Pending ;)

Ingredients:

2 small red potatoes, diced

1 small onion, diced

4 eggs (or in my case, 2 eggs, and 3 whites for me since I have trouble with yolks)

Sliced ham, chopped or shredded

1 cup shredded Monteray Jack cheese

2 chopped tomatoes

Butter for cooking, s&p for seasoning

Directions:

- Melt the butter in a large pan over medium heat and add the potatoes. After about 5 minutes, add the onions. At this point, I turn down the heat to medium low, cover the pan and stir now and then until the potatoes are really soft, about 20-30 minutes depending on the size of your dice.

- When the potatoes are nearly done, you can push them to one side of the pan and add the eggs to the other to scramble them. 

This is what I do. I LOVE these little pans! I scramble them separately then add them at the end.

- Add the ham and the tomatoes and let them cook together a few minutes.

- Sprinkle with cheese and mix it all up until it's melty and gooey! Yum!

- Get your boyfriend/hubby to do the dishes.

Just cooking this morning took a lot out of me. I am better digestive-wise, but the bout of food poisoning really left me weak without much energy. So now I'm in bed with Jack and our cat who thinks he's a dog, Oscar. He's another rescue from the fall of 2015. We can't walk into the shelter anymore! We already had 2 cats and within 3 months time in 2015, we added another cat and three dogs. We definitely have a full house!

Milkshakes and Baking

This has been my diet for the last few days. I have no clue what the heck happened, but I somehow came down with a nasty bout of food poisoning Sunday night. We can't figure it out because my boyfriend and I have been eating the exact same things and he's okay. The only thing I ate that he didn't was a bowl of chips...could they somehow have been contaminated??? I'll spare the world the details, but let's just say I thought I was dying for about seven hours that night. I couldn't even keep water down until Monday night! I never want to go through that again ever! I take food safety really seriously and I can only think that it was something from the store...more reason to try to be as self-sufficient as possible. Eegad.

But I'm feeling a bit better today...I might try a little soup and toast. I'm bored to tears. I'm not the type who can stay in bed for a long time! I decided to post my recipe for beef jerky that I make for my boyfriend. The dehydrator is PERFECT for this! And the house smells all beefy and smoky all day when I make it...gosh I wish I could eat this!!! I use this recipe:  Doc's Best Beef Jerky. (I follow all of the ingredients, except that my "meat tenderizer" is balsamic vinegar). After 3 hours or so in the dehydrator, they're done. I usually let it all marinade overnight in the fridge for the most flavour. I also find that the best cut of meat for this is the "sandwich" cut that is pre-packaged at our grocer. It's never expensive and the slices are pretty thin. I don't have a good enough knife, nor a steady enough hand to thinly slice a cut of meat! If anyone hasn't used liquid smoke before, beware...get that stuff on your fingers and be prepared to smell like a hickory barbecue for days! I always wear gloves when I make this!

And I can't forget the fur kids. I have yet to find a good cat treat recipe so we stick to Greenies for them. For the dogs though, I make these little cookies.

Pumpkin Peanut Butter Oatmeal Dog Biscuits 

Ingredients:

3 cups oats 

½ cup peanut butter 

1 cup pumpkin puree 

1 teaspoon baking powder 

2 eggs 

Instructions:

1. Place the oatmeal into a food processor and pulse it until it's not so coarse, but it doesn't need to be a fine as flour. 

2. Add oatmeal, pumpkin, peanut butter, baking powder and eggs to a bowl and blend until it's all mixed. 

3. Roll out with flour and cut with cookie cutters. I end up using a lot of flour because the dough is quite sticky.

4. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. 

5. Cool on a rack until completely cooled. These make lots of dog cookies! My bone-shaped cookie cutters are about 2 1/2 inches long and the recipe makes a good four dozen but it depends each time how thin I roll them out. I keep half of them in a cookie tin and the other half goes into the freezer. The dogs adore them and one of our three cats loves them too.

My lovely fellow Blogger, Mama Pea, asked me for my milkshake recipe. This is a photo from last summer and I WISH I could have some of that right now! We got lucky last summer and found a box full of these glasses. There were 5 Sundae glasses and 10 milkshake glasses, all for $5.00. I can't wait for garage sale and flea market season to start again!

Strawberry Milkshake For Two

Ingredients:

1/2 to 1 cup of vanilla ice cream (depends on your thickness liking) 

1 cup half-thawed frozen strawberries

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp pure maple syrup

1 cup milk (again, add more if you like it thinner)

**Note: in the summer when the berries are much fresher and sweeter, we use fresh berries and omit the maple syrup

Instructions:

Shake shake shake

I have an old Osterizer blender that is circa 1983 I believe. I lived on the East Coast of Canada for a year on Prince Edward Island. That was a lovely time for summers by the ocean, sunsets, lobster dinners and bargains! They LOVE their flea markets over there and I accumulated a lot of old kitchen appliances. I love this blender, but every time I use it the motor stinks! I hope I don't have to replace it anytime soon because the quality of everything has declined so much lately that it's criminal...I could go on and on about how many returns and re-returns I've had to make since Christmas, it was unbelievable...but I choose to try to see only the positive! Anyway, we eat a lot of ice cream, any season actually. I've made chocolate cherry shakes as well, replacing the vanilla ice cream with chocolate and adding the juice of canned cherries...magnificent! I love kitchen gadgets, I do have an excellent ice cream maker that is getting very good use! I used to make ice cream by hand, but for $40 (back in the early 2000's) that ice cream maker was so worth getting.

And for those cozy nights, you can also make an adult version of a milkshake! My boyfriend mixes these up for us now and then in the cocktail shaker with some ice cubes. It's milk with maple syrup and a jigger of your favourite spirit or liqueur. Lately we've been big on brandy in these cocktails. Just strain and pour. Just a note: we use pure maple syrup as a sweetener whenever we can to avoid processed sugar, so you'll see it a lot in my recipes! (please excuse the dust on my night table lol!)

Fishing!

This is me setting up my fishing line and making knots. My boyfriend and I go through this ritual every year in early spring. We LOVE fishing. We both started out with catch and release fishing only. We didn't have it in us to keep a fish for dinner. We still have a few more months until the lakes thaw out, but this ritual lifts our moods in mid-winter! 

These are my favourite lures! I mostly use crawfish (the first box) and when we've been lucky enough to be in a boat, I use the bigger lures (the second box) to try to catch bigger/different fish. The choice of lure depends a lot on where you are, the weather, the season and if it's day or night. We've learned a lot by trial and error over the years. My boyfriend has boxes of his own favourite lures too. We also have a huge amount of plastic worms and once in a while we'll get some real worms from the backyard as well. We want to start a worm farm if we have time this summer. 

Last year we bought some fly fishing lures. My boyfriend's father used to fly fish and gave him his old rod. We don't really know the technique but it's something we plan on doing in the near future. I have to get a fly fishing rod at some point down the line too. We also want to do some ice fishing once we're settled into our new home in a few years. We mostly fish for bass but sometimes we catch some perch and once a few summers ago, I caught this monster:

You can't BEGIN to imagine how I was shaking during this catch lol...these muskies (muskellunge) look so prehistoric and those teeth aren't anything to play with. They are strong! It was quite the workout when I caught this guy and I was very happy to release him back. Given the chance I'm sure he would have made one of my fingers a nice afternoon snack! I kept murmuring under my breath "Hurry up! Hurry up!" while my boyfriend was taking this picture!

But last summer, one of our neighbours brought us out trout fishing and we kept a few for our dinner. It's not easy transitioning from sport fishing to actually keeping them and eating them! But in my quest to become as self-sufficient as possible, I thought I'd give it a go. Notice I still say "keeping" a fish? Why can't I just be realistic and use the proper term, sigh? Our boating friend did the deed but at one point, we'll both have to learn how to humanely kill the fish. Our friend is 78 years old, an old sea dog and he does it like it's nothing. I need to build my confidence. I wonder how people do it? How do you become someone who hunts for your food, or butchers your farm animals? Has it always been in you or did you learn as time goes by how to do it and be okay with it? I struggle I have to say! But being purposely ignorant about how food gets to my plate doesn't serve me well anymore.

These three trout would have cost between $60 to $75 here if I got them at the grocery store, and who knows how fresh they really would have been? Our yearly fishing permit costs $29 for the two of us, so it had already paid for itself. These are gray trout (or lake trout). The lake in our town also has Rainbow and spotted trout, which were a little more difficult to fish for last summer. We caught some spotted, but they were tiny little fish and after tasting one, we opted not to keep them anymore. They're kind of...let's say..."sea-weedy" tasting. My boyfriend caught a Rainbow, but it was just too small so we put it back. We are rule-followers, so we can only have 2 trout per fishing license in our possession at one time and they have to fit the length requirements to be keepers. If we freeze one and keep it, that's considered part of our daily limit. Since we had three, we gave one to our neighbour. She gave us fresh lettuce in return...how cool that we practiced bartering! :) These fish are so good when they're fresh. After a lot of nervous anxiety, we just gutted them and baked them whole...and they were delish! I got over my fear of catching, (not killing), but gutting and cooking a live fish and I actually enjoyed eating it. This got me thinking about hunting too...but that will be for future consideration! I don't know that I have that in me at all!

This was the biggest fish I caught last summer. It's a small-mouthed bass and not big enough for a keeper. Fishing off the local dock brings in smaller fish and sometimes we have to give up going because it's also a local hangout for teenagers who want to smoke and drink beer all night (we were all young once...). Finding spots where we can fish off the shore has become a big challenge for us. Either the public docks are overfilled or the property is private. We spent many hours just scouting out locations within driving distance and couldn't find a good spot.

This is me last summer on my favourite fishing boulder! This lake is called Bass Lake and we got lucky a few years back and met the caretaker of a kid's camp that sits on acres of land by the lake. He lets us come and fish there when the camp is closed. It's a gorgeous spot, but we can only go at the beginning of May; and then after Labour Day. Also, it's an hour's drive each way and it's just not feasible anymore to go there often. We did the drive a lot for the last few summers, but our priorities are changing a little bit - we want to drive less and be outdoors more.

We've made a very big decision lately. We decided to invest in a little row boat this spring. The store where we plan to buy has a one year no interest, no fee equalized payment plan so we are going to take advantage of that offer. We both love that it'll give us more fishing time and together time doing something outdoors that we truly love. Not only will we save a bundle on gas money, having a row boat will allow us to catch a bigger variety of fish for our dinners - whenever we want to be out on the lake. We didn't fish as much as we would have liked last summer. Our goal is to pay back debt and save money; and after talking about it, we feel this little boat will be a great investment not only to enjoy our summers, but also to catch our dinners! After one season of fishing, the boat will have paid for itself. Spending a lot of money is difficult for us since we want to buy a property in a few years, but sometimes you have to spend to save right? If we can, in a year's time we might buy a little trolling motor so we can go farther into the lake for that yummy Rainbow trout!