My Tuesday

Hello friends,

It's another glorious and beautiful day here in Vancouver. After a period of heavy rainfall early in the Fall we have been having warmer than average temperatures and lots of mostly sunny days. I'm happy about that.

As you can see from my garden everything is pretty much finished for the year. The hardy geraniums are hanging on and their bright colours still make me smile when I look out. All the other plants are done for the year except the trees on my patio garden.

Even the pansies are done for the year. In fact the leaves look like they have some black spots on them which I didn't notice earlier.

I have an appointment on Wednesday morning so I'm using today to get caught up on my housework and cooking. First I've prepared a vegetable medley to go in the oven. It is primarily made up of cubed butternut squash, some eggplant, onions, a couple potatoes and whole cloves of garlic. I've mixed them up with olive oil and fresh rosemary and thyme. This will all be roasted at high heat, uncovered for about half an hour to an hour, depending on how small you chop the vegetables and how fast your oven cooks.

These vegetables are meant to accompany the barbeque ribs which I'm marinating in the bag (in photo below) with a mix of brown sugar, ketchup and vinegar.  Sometimes I add other ingredients like mustard or Worcestershire sauce for more intense flavour.  The ribs will be roasted for a couple hours on low to moderate heat (275 to 325 Farenheit) so they will be popped into the oven to cook for an hour or more before I crank up the heat and add the vegetable medley.  I don't usually make ribs because of the sugar that goes into the sauce. I think once in awhile won't hurt the blood sugar too much as long as I eat healthy most of the rest of the time.

Also I have a pot full of dried chick peas in my rice cooker.  I boil them for a minute after soaking for a short while. I boil them for 1-2 minutes then turn it off the cooker and let the chick peas sit in the pot for an hour or so. Then I boil them again in the same pot and water until cooked. I always have chick peas on hand whether canned or dried.  They are versatile and I never know when I will get a craving for hummus.

I used to be one of those people who was put off of using dried beans because of the time it takes to prepare them. I would soak the beans overnight and then cook them up the next day.  I found this rather inconvenient for my schedule.  Several of my readers suggested I prepare beans using the  quick method (boil for a minute, sit for an hour then boil until cooked). It does save time and doesn't require much pre-planning.  If you have the dried beans on hand and the time on any given day to prepare them, you are good to go.

On the stove top I am boiling up some vegetable stew made with the left over butternut squash, eggplant and onions. I've added green onions and carrots for more flavour and colour and a few potatoes will be thrown in as well. The base of the soup is chicken bouillon (store bought not home made) to which I will add some tumeric powder.  Finally, I will add a few cans of chick peas to make it nice and thick. This stew is intended for lunches Tuesday and Wednesday.

I hope to mix up some no knead bread before I am done for the day. It will need to sit overnight and be baked tomorrow.  I've made it before and posted on my blog but for the time being I can't locate the post. It is a nice bread if you don't like kneading but it does require time to let it rise overnight or all day before baking.

After all this cooking I still have to sweep and wash floors  and vacuum the front room. Fortunately I did most of the laundry on Tuesday. There is still more to do. Where does it all come from?

So that's what I'm busy doing today. I'd love to hear what you are doing.

Joining Our World Tuesday today.

Enjoy your Tuesday.

Boyhood

A friend invited me to a movie she's been wanting to see for months and it seemed like we could never get together. But Friday we finally made it. Believe it or not, the same movie was playing at the same cinema as when she first asked me. That is very rare!

The movie is called "Boyhood" about a young boy of 6 or 7 named Mason.  He  ages throughout the movie and we see his life unfold in different situations until he leaves for college at about age 18. It is touching and realistic.

Mason, his sister Samantha (played by Lorelei Linklater), and his mother Olivia (played by Patricia Arquette) first live in a single parent household.  As time progresses you see them live their lives through 3 failed marriages and all the milestones that come as children age and parent's achieve different milestones of their own.  Their biological father, Mason Sr. is played by Ethan Hawke.  It is nice to see him in a role where he learns and grows and takes his fatherly responsibilities seriously.

It was intriguing to see a movie made over such a long time span with the same actors, playing the same parts.

I laughed a lot.  I nodded my head too a the realism in the scenes.  I cried too.  Especially when mother Olivia, single again, is moving into an apartment on her own.  As her son Mason prepares to get in his truck and make the drive to college, she starts crying and says “I just thought there would be more to life.”

Olivia has been in several failed relationships and marriages, earned a master's degree, had a successful life as a college professor and raised two well adjusted children.  But as her children leave the nest and moving on to make lives of their own, she realizes she is on her own.  She realizes that her life will totally change.  No longer to be measured by her children's birthdays, achievements and graduations, she says the next milestone is her funeral.

Her son asks "aren't you jumping ahead 40 years!?"  That cracked me up in a good way.  At the same time there is this intensity of motherhood, life and letting go, there is also levity.  So much like real life.

The music tracks are a wonderful feature of the movie.  The tune that plays in the trailer (above) is one that stayed with me. It also plays as Mason Jr. drives along the highway hurtling toward college and his future. So I had to look for it on line. The song is called "Hero" and is sung by The Family of the Year.

Just before Mason sets off on that longish drive along the highway, he and his first love have had a huge argument. His girlfriend has also broken up with him and he cannot understand why.  It makes his drive all the more touching.

Young love. I don't miss it at all.  But everyone must pass through it. 

If you get a chance check out the movie. It is so well done. All the actors are wonderful, the music is great and the scenes of life are very touching and realistic.

Protest

Some of my readers may have heard about some key resource developments in this part of the world.

One of them is the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project which would see the construction of twin pipelines from Bruderheim, Alberta to Kitimaat, British Columbia.

This project was proposed in the mid -2000s and has been postponed several times. The project proposal was submitted to the National Energy Board in 2010.  It was accepted by the federal government in June 2014 and here are hundreds of issues that must be addressed during the next phase of development.

There are several competing projects.

Kinder Morgan, a US based company has a proposal to expand Trans Mountain Pipeline, which runs from Strathcona County, Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia. This project would see a tripling of the company's capacity to transport oil and if approved is expected to be operational in 2017. The weird part is that building is going on to accommodate the increased capacity even though the approval hasn't been given. It makes me cynical about the process since I don't think a company would spend this kind of money if they didn't feel they would get approval.

The other project is is Trans Canada Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed 1,179-mile (1,897 km), 36-inch-diameter crude oil pipeline beginning in Hardisty, Alta., and extending south to Steele City, Neb.

The oil would be piped through Canada but on it's way to other markets including the USA.

With all these resource projects in development added to ones like the Alberta Tar Sands project it is no wonder that people are concerned about detrimental environmental impacts.

The peaceful protect was overseen by the police and the protesters shut down the gas station for about 4-5 hours on Saturday passed. You can see the pink bands around the gas pump while people stand around talking, playing music and dancing in solidarity.  This was a relatively small protest.  There have been other protests on the related issues and I'm sure many more protests to come as people demonstrate their opposition to the resource development projects.

Linking to Our World Tuesday.

A Gift

I had to go downtown on Tuesday for an appointment. I definitely didn't feel like venturing into the heart of the city since it was pouring rain.  The place where I had to meet is a construction zone right now. But I couldn't postpone my appointment any longer and in the end it turned out to be a very short appointment.

Getting home took more time. But as I'm wont to do, I stop somewhere along the way for a coffee and to read a good book. That day was no exception but when I got off the bus and went to my neighbourhood Starbucks, every seat was taken!  It was pouring rain outside and I've noticed that the neighbourhood shops are always full when that happens.

There was no free table and I couldn't sit outside in the rain. So I bought a lemonade to go and went across the street to the grocery store where they have a little dining area. There I also bought a hot cup of coffee and proceeded to read a few chapters of a book I'd left unfinished for a few weeks.

After my foray into the grocery store I stopped by the post office.  A wonderful surprise parcel was waiting for me there.

The parcel was from a blogging friend, Joanne, who has a delightful blog called Cup on the Bus.  Joanne is a talented crafts person and she made these beautiful, woven tea towels.

These will be used as covering for bread dough when I set it aside to rise. I think they are far too wonderful to just sit and look pretty but I don't want to use them for drying dishes just yet. That will come later ;-)

So I want to send a big  "THANK YOU" to Joanne for her kindness and generosity. 

I absolutely love my gift.

Go on over and have a look at her blog. She is an amazing grandmother and caretaker to several teens.  She also amazes me with her very full schedule of gardening, chaperoning, accounting, etc.

On Friday I went to meet some friends I haven't seen in decades, literally! Wow I can't even believe it's been that long. One of them is my Sunday School teacher and the other is her son. We had a really nice lunch together and tried to catch up on as much news as possible in the time we had.
If all goes well we will see each other again next year.

 After a full week of rain I'm happy to see the sun again.

Have a wonderful weekend. xx

Saturday

It's Saturday today and a glorious sunny day it was.  Though I am feeling much better, I am still having issues with my digestive tract after food poisoning just over a week ago. I didn't realize that convalescence would take so long.

I'm not doing much yet but I have gotten back to regular appointments and errands.

Thursday a friend and I went to a movie called "The Giver" with Meryl Streep, Jeff Bridges and Katie Holmes. While it wasn't the best movie I've seen, it certainly was good enough to make a person think about the world we live in. In the movie, people live in a world where there is no colour or emotion, no sickness or war, no pain and no human touch, no books or knowledge of history.  It makes one realize that there can be an absence of all these things for all the "right reasons", usually idealistic reasons.  Yet the world can still be missing something and there can be hardship of another kind like no joy, no love, no touch, no feeling.  With all the warts, flaws, sadness and suffering in our world, it is still a rich world and preferable for most of us to living in a tightly run world of ideals for the common good.  At least that was my take away from the movie. If you see it yourself, I'd love to know what you think of it.

Yesterday, I went for my weekly appointment in the Kitsilano neighbourhood. I called a friend of mine the night before and we planned to meet for coffee and lunch afterwards. It was nice getting together with her and she had some gifts for my birthday which passed in May. It was such a nice gesture and surprise. She also bought me lunch to celebrate her recent promotion at work. We went to a new to the both of us place called Tang's, located at Broadway & Macdonald.  The food was delicious and I will have to go there again some time.  My friend had a deep fried tofu dish with chili and I had a beef and broccoli dish which came with hot and sour soup and pickles.  A nice added touch. The last time my friend and I got together I was treating her and her son to dinner at an Indian restaurant called Nirvana.  We were celebrating her new job but neither of us were impressed with the food or their miniscule portions.

At the post office today I picked up a parcel I've been expecting. It was my new Eurosteam iron (mine is blue not black).  I don't iron that much anymore but from time to time I need a really good iron for ironing cotton fabrics and shirts. If this iron is half as good as the demos, ironing will be a breeze.

I  bought this iron on line at a really good sale price and can't wait to try it out. I'm looking forward to being able to steam out wrinkles in a fraction of time than the usual.

After the post office I went next door to the grocery store and I bumped into a neighborhood friend I haven't seen for some time. It reminded me that the last time we bumped into each other at the coffee shop we exchanged phone numbers.  We both said we should make plans to get together rather than simply bumping into each other all the time.  I am not even sure where I have her number so I guess I should look for it. I'm either very good at keeping in touch with people or very bad.  Also, if I make a few efforts and the other party doesn't reciprocate then I drop all efforts because life is actually very busy and there is always someone else to see or something else to do.

Just yesterday I was also thinking about my former chiropractor.  I haven't been to him for adjustments in years since I worked at a downtown job  Unfortunately he was diagnosed with MS and recently retired from practice because the disease has advanced too much.  He and I promised to get together after his retirement but we haven't done so yet. I guess need to contact him and see how he is doing and whether and when we might get together.  He and his wife are just the dearest people you would ever hope to meet.  I think of him like a dear brother.  His wife is one of the most supportive spouses I've ever met. She gave up a promising career to be her husband's main office receptionist and supporter.  It was always a pleasure to go to the office and have a chit chat with the both of them.  When you meet people like that it is really important to try to stay in touch though it can be challenging in this busy age and time.

It has been raining this week but today the sun came out in all it's glory.   It is supposed to be another nice, sunny day tomorrow too.

I'm going to church and maybe after that I will get out to one of the southern "burbs" along the waterfront. There is a touristy kind of store that I want to check out because it might have some unique gifts.  I also want to take some photos by the waterfront because it will be the last opportunity  before summer officially ends.  If I don't get out that way tomorrow I will have to wait another week or two.  Rain is expected back in these parts on Monday and will likely last for most of the week.

Reminiscing about my safari in Kenya,

  I hope you are all enjoying your weekend.

A Craving Fulfilled

Hello friends,

I've been very sick this past week. I contracted food poisoning and I think it was from some boxed fish purchased at the supermarket. I ate it a week ago and by the next evening I was suffering. By Thursday noon I was suffering even more. I finally went to the doctor on Saturday.  I'm happy to report that I'm doing better and am finally getting back to normal.

Just yesterday it started to rain here. It didn't rain a lot but the sky is gray and the earth is a bit wet. have to say we have had a LONG run of sunny, hot or very warm weather. I guess Fall has now caught up with us.

As I was taking a shot toward the mountains, a plane flew overhead. It looks lonely up there against a dismal sky.

Whenever I have a bout of sickness, combined with overcast weather, I tend to want some home cooked "comfort" foods. I seldom make white bread any more but today I made both pizza dough (using Wolfgang Puck's recipe) and French Bread rolls (actually these recipes are almost identical
with the bread rolls requiring more flour).  Yesterday I made home made lentil and vegetable soup. I wish I had some today to go with the rolls but the rolls with butter will be nice!

The pizza dough will be use used today to make one vegetable pizza.  I think I will use cauliflower, peppers, eggplant and feta.  The other ball of dough will be used to make one meat pizza (pepperoni, salami, onions).

While my bread bun dough was rising, I roasted the vegetables for my pizza. It would have been nice to use some cherry tomatoes. Usually I have some on hand but none today.

A mix of garlic, yellow peppers, eggplant and cauliflower. I would have added cherry tomatos but I didn't have any on hand.

Before it goes in the oven.

After baking.

I almost left it in the oven too long.

Sorry about the shadows in the photo.

The buns are nice and crusty on both sides. I guess that's why they are called French bread rolls but I almost left them too long in the oven.

I'm off to eat. 

Tomorrow I will make some vegetable soup to go with the buns.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Afterwards: Taste test for the buns. These buns were absolutely delicious. So soft and fresh inside and slightly crunchy on the outside. The pizza was slighlty salty with the feta and the crust was nice and crunchy.   Just how I like it though I know I will love it more with the addition of cherry tomatoes.

Joining in with Skywatch Friday here. Happy weekend to you and your loved ones. xx

Fading Colour & Parting Gifts

I've mentioned in earlier posts that my garden did not grow well this year. I also didn't do much to try and help it along other than watering but that didn't seem to be enough.  It was so hot and humid this summer and it wasn't until a very late season heavy rainfall that the plants started perking up a bit.

Despite all that, my garden is still giving me some brilliant pops of colour and I am grateful for these gifts.

I apologize for the quality of the photos. I tried hard to get some clear ones but it just wasn't happening today. Perhaps my camera has seen it's better days. In any case, I wanted a photo record of what the summer ended like.

Joining Skywatch Friday this week. Happy weekend!