Window Garden, Fish and Chips Night

I guess I don't need to repeat my angst again...winter winter please go away! The huskies do love it though...

Yesterday we didn't feel like having a proper lunch and I'd forgotten I had a lone bag of tortilla chips in the cupboard that I bought, last month, the month before...???...out of sight, out of mind really does work! Anyway, we made a Mexican Dip and watched a movie in bed. I'm so happy that the chives I bought last July have kept producing all winter long! I'm taking such good care of them so they'll keep growing for a long time! :)

I decided yesterday evening, the heck with waiting...I'm starting my garden! Well, at least my window garden! :) I planted parsley in two pots, I use a lot of that and my old plant died in January.

After reading a little more about cold weather crops, and with a suggestion from my Year Round Vegetable Gardener book...I decided to start some spinach and beets. I only did 6 pots of each with 2 seeds in each pot as a trial. In the book, the author says that these two (of many) crops will withstand frost and cold weather, so I'm going to transplant these outside when they are ready - despite the weather. I'm hoping that I will have something to harvest in late May when I'm starting to plant my summer garden. I'm trying to implement the ideas of the year-round gardening!

The basil is coming up nicely!

And the original lonely lemon is gradually continuing to yellow! I know it needs more sun and so do I!

So with the yellowing lemon, I have five growing! The four small ones all started blooming in February. I never thought I'd get lemons. I always thought of them as a southern crop, but it just goes to show that anything is possible!!!

So this is my window garden. As you can see, I'm being stubborn...I just don't want to toss the rosemary bush out, even though all bets are on that it's done. I'm going to put it outside this summer anyway. It can find it's way back to the earth!

Last night we had the rest of the fish and chips with my Homemade Tartar Sauce. Another Mel Brooks movie under our belt and it was an early night. The wind was howling last night as it poured rain. When I woke up to snow this morning, all I could do was roll my eyes!

New Cutting Board: The Maiden Voyage

I think I stood there looking at my cutting board and the veggies for a good 5 minutes...It's funny when you get something nice and new, you don't want to upset its balance! Alex had to remind me why we bought them so I took the plunge!

Done! Now my new-cutting-board-cold-feet-syndrome is gone! :)  What a pleasure to cut on this board though. I did notice that a new set of knives might be in order, but a good set will be too expensive for us at this point in our lives, so we'll make do! We actually had our knives sharpened last summer but the guy did a horrible job. I remember as a kid, there was a knife-sharpening "guy" who drove around in his truck through the neighbourhood. All the moms would run out wildly with their knives so as not to miss him...funny scene!

This was last night's dinner. I had a spaghetti squash in the fridge and wanted to have something more healthy since we've been eating a lot of melted cheesy food lately! This is my own recipe, Spaghetti Squash Bake. My recipe titles are more functional than creative lol...I do admit though, I didn't use the cutting board to chop the squash in half! I was afraid that I'd rip it in two, these squash can be hard to cut. This was a nice light meal and we finished up the strawberry shortcake for dessert. Alex added some raspberry jam to the whipped cream bowl, the strawberries and the leftover spongecake and it tasted very nearly like the English Trifle I made for Christmas!

We are lucky that the pet store delivers on all orders over $65, so we order dog and cat food monthly - never have to drive all the way there and lug it home! Oh wait...this isn't dog and cat food! We got someone's bird order yesterday instead! This is the first time they've goofed up and luckily we have enough food for another week, so I'm giving them a break. Someone else got our order and had just called before I did. It's a nice feeder though!

It's another miserable day up here in the Laurentians. But at least the ground is back! What you can't see is that it is filled with water. We have a rainfall warning today and tomorrow so we are not going out until probably Saturday when the sun is supposed to come back! I really hope our basement doesn't flood.

I made myself a "coffee-cino" this morning! I'm trying to gussy-up my mornings on really gray days, but I think it might be another day of sitting under the blankets reading my gardening book!

What are you making for dinner? Lazy day = freezer food...I'm thinking fish and chips again.

Strombolis and Strawberry Shortcake

Land ho? Land NO. Eegad, it snowed a lot yesterday and it's raining this morning. I feel like I'm in some kind of apocalyptic winter world...oh wait...according to Hygge, I'm in a cozy winter wonderland and I need to take advantage of this day by cuddling under blankets with Alex right? I think I would be more accepting of that concept if this were January, not April!!! :) We make the best of things! I'll still be happy to cuddle, but I do miss being outside in the sunshine! 

And poor Charlie is depressed again, she won't eat...well, she'll eat her banana pumpkin cookies, but that's about it. She just wants to lie in Alex's office all day on the futon. We know she needs to be outside and we're doing the best we can, but it's never enough for her. Once the snow starts to really melt and we get warmer days, I spend most of my day out on the porch and this summer I'll be in the garden. She's happy as a clam on those days because she's outside a good 12 hours a day. But winters are long for her, we just aren't equipped to let her stay outside all day. When we buy our place in a few years, a large yard, fenced in doggie area will be one of our first priorities! But I think that Charlie and I feel the same way about this long drawn-out winter! :)

Last night I made strombolis, have you ever had one? They are basically a type of calzone. Very delicious! I started with sauté-ing some onions and fresh mushrooms in butter, then added some sliced sirloin for Alex and sliced chicken for me.

I made my usual pizza dough and divided it up in two large rectangles.

The next step is to layer some shredded cheese on to the dough, then your meat filling, roll, seal, brush with melted butter, sprinkle with Parm and bake! I overfilled them and I had to really stretch out the dough to seal them, so they leaked a little...but oh so worth the clean-up for all that yummy filling! :)

Last night was Philly Cheese Steak and Philly Cheese Chicken Strombolis! Usually the Philly style cheese steak has green peppers too, but we can't digest them too well so I omit them. Alex wanted to try half with Cheddar and half with Mozzarella but usually you stick to either Mozz or Provolone. The last time I made a stromboli it had just Mozzarella and ham and it was so delicious! We each had half and have leftovers for lunch today. There is so much you can do with pizza dough and any type of filling!

For dessert I made the strawberry shortcakes! They were really good. Alex had a double-decker. We mixed the leftover strawberries into the whipped cream and we'll definitely be eating that today!

The dogs got lucky and licked the whipped cream off the whippers!

I don't have much going on today...just waiting for the nice weather to come back! I have a list of "shoulds" though...

1. I should wash the curtains...
2. I should dust the shelves and ceiling fans...
3. I should look at recipes for the next meal planning cycle...
4. I should this, I should that...

But I don't feel like it!

So I'll spend the day reading my Year Round Vegetable Gardener book. That's much more pleasing to me. Her book is filled with stuff that I didn't know about and I've been taking notes as I go. It's going to be a lazy day, but not a wasted one because I'll be learning much more about year-round gardening!

A Nice Outing

Here's Alex with the canine kids! :)  Yesterday was such a nice, mild and sunny day. We had plans to go to that craftsman's workshop to buy some new breadboards this week, and since there is snow and rain in the forecast until Sunday now, we decided to go yesterday. He lives in a nearby town so we decided to bring the dogs with us so they could have a little walk by the river.

I wasn't surprised that Charlie jumped into that cold river...she LOVES the water...the shore was filled with burr bushes and we had to pick them off Charlie when she came back to the shore. This town is only about 30 kilometers south of us, but the snow is nearly all gone there.

Our snow is still hanging on. I took this photo this morning, the weather keeps jumping from rain to snow to freezing rain. It's supposed to be like this all week.

Whenever we go out, we try to hit the local thrift stores and flea markets. What a find yesterday! We are big fans of Trivial Pursuit and we found these four at a church bazaar. The "Young Players", "History of Music", "Genus 2" and "1980's" editions. Alex and I are collectors and this was a great bargain for us. It started our day off really well.

We already have the original "Genus" and "Baby Boomer" editions that we also found at a thrift shop. And for a Christmas gift, I found the "Silver Screen" edition for Alex since he's such a movie buff. Now we have 7 of them! :) We like to sit in bed  or if the weather is nice, we sit in the hammock, and ask each other trivia questions. :) 

But THIS was the real reason we got out of our pajamas's and drove to town! Look at these lovely cutting boards! We got such a good deal on them. They are made of many different woods including maple, cherry and a wee bit of walnut. We're lucky we got them when we did because the guy said he's in a transition where he might stop making them. He said people don't want to pay his price (which is really inexpensive), people come in and say things like "I can get the same thing at Walmart for $10". That kind of made us feel bad for him because he puts so much work into these products. Sure, you could buy a $10 bread board at a big discount store:

Just like we did before Christmas. One broke and the other cracked. And not for lack of taking care of them. Alex sanded them, oiled them and we are careful not to soak them etc...they lasted 4 months. Since we both have sensitive stomachs, we were kind of worried about bacteria getting into those cracks. We feel so much better with the good quality ones now. I think it's sad that good quality homemade craftsmanship is something people will turn their noses at now just because they can get it cheaper somewhere else. We did that out of need for a while, which is understandable, nobody has a money tree growing in the backyard! But to compare his work to what discount stores sell...I would be a little insulted.

A glimmer of hope!!! Could my big green lemon be finally turning yellow???

We were so tired when we got home that we just heated up a freezer pizza and brought it with us to bed! Cozy! :) We watched a few movies and then played Trivial Pursuit. I really love my life! :)

Baking Day Saturday; Sunny Warm Sunday!

Since I was hunkered down yesterday due to the snow and wind, I made it a baking day. Our youngest husky Charlie has leaky anal glands, without going into too much detail, feeding her some pumpkin helps with her natural musk so to speak...but she hates it! I have to mix a little into her food and hide the rest in cookies. She gets two of these each day and it helps. I tried a new recipe as opposed to my regular Pumpkin Peanut Butter Dog Cookies. It was terrible to work with and the blog poster never answered many questions people had over the last few months, so I won't grace my blog with the link. I want to try to stop using peanut butter since Alex has an allergy, it could be dangerous if I miss something, so I was looking for a recipe with pumpkin and banana. I found it, but...anyway, I couldn't use my dog bone cookie cutter, boo hoo, too sticky. Next time I'll use my own recipe and substitute the peanut butter with mashed banana. Solved. The dogs still loved these though!

I gave myself a baking challenge to make homemade cheese nips since the batch I bought at the store was burned. I made these Cheese-It's and though they turned out nicely and looked the part, we still found them a little too flour-heavy (for our taste). I'll keep trying different things in the future to see if I can perfect this recipe. I'm glad I only made half the recipe though. Even with the floury flavour, they are all gone as I type this lol...beggars being choosy? :)

After I read Sam I Am's post about her lemon cakes, I just had to make one! Sorry Sam, I hope you don't think I ripped apart your recipe...but I didn't have self-raising flour, nor a fresh lemon...so I scoured the internet for a similar recipe that I could make based on what I had. Plus instead of a lemon/sugar syrup drizzled on top, I made it my own and drizzled it with Limoncello. DELISH! Here's my adapted recipe: Lemon Drizzle Cake.

We had breakfast for dinner last night! Blueberry pancakes with bacon and my fricassee potatoes. I just cut up 2 small potatoes, a small onion and cook them in butter in a frying pan on low, stirring occasionally, for about half an hour...they are really good! Since we had the lemon cake, the strawberry shortcake will fall to tonight's dessert...or maybe a sweet lunch :)

What a difference one day makes!!! It's sunny, mild and all that snow we got yesterday should be melted by sundown!

I see the lawn in the middle of all the doggie prints!

April 2nd, the first day that I sat out in simply my pj's and slippers! It's 5 Celsius on the thermometer, but in the sun, it felt about 15. I stayed outside for 3 hours this morning, reading my anxiety book. I needed some real Vitamin D...gosh I hope this isn't just another weather tease! That's the thing about our "spring"...it's complete winter then boom! Over a week's time it's spring, then a week later we're into a heat wave...I saw a few flies while I was out which reminds me that Alex is going to make me a screened-in porch at the end of April. Last year I hung pieces of an old camping dining tent...it worked but tore a lot in the wind so he's going to make it nice and permanent! Alex uses the bedroom screened-in veranda during the summers to hang out on his hammock...the backyard porch is mine! :) I spend time out there in the yard, this year will be also in the garden and with the dogs. It's nice to have our own outdoor spaces that we can share once in a while too. :)

I finished this book while I was out on the porch this morning. I wrote my review here. Generally speaking, I go into the why's in the review, I didn't really find this book eye-opening. Probably because years ago I did all the same research on my own and implemented mostly the same ideas that she has in her book. I was expecting something different. Anyway, I've found in the last few weeks, that just eating sensibly, practicing a cozy lifestyle, exercising on the rebounder daily, getting outside, staying hydrated and meditating has pretty much squashed the anxiety bug in me as long as I keep it up. I eat sugar, gluten, dairy and grains. I drink coffee and wine too. These are some things she suggests eliminating. But I think I've found my balance and I feel so much better. I don't regret buying the book because I learned a few new things, but in the end, self-help books are always a bit of a gamble anyway!

One thing though, she mentions that companies are not required to list genetically modified foods on their list of ingredients (this book was written in 2011 and she is referring to the States). I feel so ignorant, because it would be a good assumption that companies ARE required to do so. I just looked it up on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's website...no requirement. But they do say that Canada produces 4 GM products: modified corn products, sugar beet, canola and soybean. That doesn't mean that we don't import other GM foods from other countries though...We really need to watch what we buy and consume!

As for this book, The Cozy Life, I read it yesterday. I did like it, it was better than the Little Book of Hygge in my opinion! I took a lot of notes as I read it, and I wrote my review here if anyone wants to read it, it's rather long so I put it on a separate page that I posted! I also wrote a list of hygge activities to bring more coziness and comfort to your life - this list is customized to my own home life, but it's a good motivational list to get you thinking about how to make your lifestyle more cozy and comfy for you. I think this book is worth the read!

But again, I'm already doing most of these things that the hygge concept suggest doing! Even sitting on the porch in my pyjamas this morning with my coffee felt so cozy. Actually it's funny because Alex and I thought we coined the phrase "Pyjama Lifestyle" which is how we describe our own way of living. Little did we know the Danes have been doing it for years already!

The girls, husky bookends, enjoying the sunny warm weather.

Ooh! Too bright for Jack!! :) Maybe some sun glasses would help! :) I hope everyone has nice weather and enjoying their Sunday!

And as I often say, thanks for reading!

Fondue and Snow

It's still snowing this morning. It started yesterday late afternoon, and it's coming down really lightly - it's actually very beautiful!

I was hoping that the forecast was an evil April Fool's prank, but no such luck lol...there should be more snow after the weekend, then some fun rain to make things all muddy and slushy. :)

The dogs love it though. Even Jack wandered around a little more than he usually does. For him it's usually out/quick business/back in to burrow under covers! I spent some time outside just enjoying the quiet, it's so peaceful when it snows. I was lucky, the tourist neighbours were still asleep when I went out, so there was no unwelcome noise to ruin the experience.

My efforts to be cozy seem so natural, that I resist calling them efforts. I built a little fire when we all came in and we all just chilled and enjoyed the dancing flames. I don't like to make fires too often just because this fireplace, as gorgeous as it is, is an energy-sapper and we already pay enough monthly for Hydro. 

I think a big part of living a cozy lifestyle is fragrance. I baked bread yesterday and I just love how it makes the whole house smell cozy!

And of course, to celebrate our new fondue pot, Alex made his Italian fondue! We were looking through the fondue cookbook to maybe try a new recipe, but we didn't want to start buying all sorts of big ingredients so we stuck to what we had on hand. It's fun to eat different food, but I must stick to my food budget!! Though we didn't manage to bring the fondue to bed :), it was still a comfy, cozy meal. I'm already planning some different fondues for April and May's meal plans!

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Besides reading, today I'll be doing some baking. I'm challenging myself to make those Cheese-It's. If anyone else makes them, let me know so we can compare! I'm also making some dog cookies, ran out last night...and IF I have it in me, I'm going to try Sam's English Lemon Drizzle Cake. I may wait on this though because, as suggestible as I am, Mama Pea mentioned strawberry shortcake last week, so I have that planned for dessert tonight! :)