A Beautiful Sunset, Skywatch Friday

This was the view on many nights from my hotel room in downtown Vancouver. Some of my old readers will know that I stayed in a hotel for 4 months last summer after a fire in my building. It was nice to be away but nice to get home too. After all, a hotel is only novel for so long *smile. One thing I do miss is the fantastic water views and sunsets. 

Thank you for dropping by and a big shout out to all my new readers. You make me happy and I hope you will come again soon.

For more sky scenes from around the globe, click here

A Little Bit of Knitting and A Little Bit Italian Chicken

Well today (Wednesday) was a very busy day dashing to the medical laboratory for early morning tests, stopping at the post office, doing some thrifting, dropping in on my travel agent, stopping for a lunch of Thai food, stopping at the dollar store, then rushing home to do some laundry, boil some beans and put the dinner on.

At the thrift stores I bought a number of skeins of yarn and various sized needles. I only go for "newish" yarn and needles that are not bent and well worn. I am creating my stash for when I want to branch out with new projects. For now, I am focussing on improving my very newly learned knitting skills with a simple dishcloth pattern. So far I've made four. I finally felt like I could knit on the fourth one. I am on my way! Yeah!

Here are my four facecloths. I will probably give the green/blue ones to my mom and keep the other two for myself. A friend has already asked me to make several but I want to practice other things right now as well as get better at knitting before I try to knit for others.

Given the busyness of the day and the fact it started raining I felt like having something comforting. I don't know what to call this made up and simple recipe so am calling it A Little Bit Italian Chicken *smile.


Recipe:

- 4 medium to large chicken thighs with legs attached
- Italian seasoning
- 1 large can of diced tomatoes
- a handful of parsley.

I baked the chicken pieces with a sprinkling of Italian seasoning on top. The chicken was baked at about 350 Farenheit oven until crispy brown. Once it was browned, I drained out as much fat out of the pan as possible. I then added a large can of diced tomatoes to the chicken along with some chopped parsley and more Italian seasoning. Continue cooking at same temperature for another 20 minutes or so.

Side dishes

Brown Rice
Red Kidney Beans


I bought dried beans and soaked them overnight changing the water twice and rinsing them after the 2nd soak and just before boiling. After such a long soak it didn't take so long to cook them by bringing them to a gentle boil for about 45 minutes. Now if you decide to make your beans this way, you can cook them longer or shorter depending on how crunchy you like your beans.

I like bland foods more than some so if the rice and beans are too bland for your taste you can add other seasonings. Likewise with the chicken, if the tomatoes and Italian seasoning is too bland you can add something like crushed garlic to the "sauce" before baking.

To serve place one piece of chicken leg and thigh on plate alongside a few scoops of rice. Top the rice with your beans and the tomato mixture. Season with salt and pepper as needed and a sprig of parsley to garnish.

Another Sunrise ~ My World Tuesday

All week I have had difficulties sleeping. I go to sleep but wake up all night long. I don't sleep well at the best of times but this week was the worst in awhile. I pulled an all nighter last night.  Since I was awake at sunrise I took some photos.

I never cease to be in awe of a beautiful sunrise or sunset.  I also love all of natural creation and any living or growing thing. I know that's a lot but I simply love God's creation.

Click here to share your world.  http://showyourworld.blogspot.com/

Big Blue Bowl of Congee

It has been awhile since I had Chinese rice congee in my big blue bowl. Rice congee is a type of rice porridge/soup eaten in many Asian countries.

In this instance, I had mixed meat congee with a sliced Chinese donut (not sweet) on top.  I had a side dish of noodles with veggies, seafood and chinese mushrooms. I got these dishes from the restaurant in my building on one recent, cold and rainy day.  The congee hit the spot and the blue bowl is always my favourite as it is just the perfect size to have a generous serving without things spilling over.

Thanks for joining me on Blue Monday. 

For more entries from around the globe, please click here.

Simple Joy Saturday

My Kenyan friend, Pastor Jonah's auntie is ill with a form of nose cancer and requires surgery. Since they are humble villagers the cost of the $900. Canadian/US required for the treatment is astronomical and beyond the means of individual villagers.  So they held a Harambee on Saturday (Harambee is a Kenyan tradition of community self-help events, eg. fundraising or development activities. Harambee literally means "all pull together" in Swahili).

Here are photos of the Harambee.  You can see they went into the night with the fundraiser even though it was raining. These gentlemen are counting the funds.

Here is auntie addressing the participants.

I was pleased when I learned they raised $400. of the $900 fee required.  That is less than half of the total required but is a significant amount of money for those that only earn a few dollars a day.

Please pray that this family would be able to raise the rest soon to give this auntie the best chance at successful surgery. Thank you.

 Thank you to Jan of Australia for creating the Simple Joys meme.
Click here to participate.

Flight Paths: Skywatch Friday ~ May 14, 2010

The following photos of flight paths were taken at different times of the day. The first one was taken at around 3:00 in the afternoon. There was a buzz on the streets and lots of hustle and bustle. I paused to view the sky.

The second photo was taken around 6:00 in the morning. I so seldom get to see the sunrise so this was a real treat.

I love the stillness of mornings, don't you?

Click here fore more sky photos

Sunrise in Vancouver

A glorious day awaits. I hope yours is a great one!

I'm Learning to Knit

Today I woke up rather tired and with a lot to do. On days like today I really need a reason to get out!

Today was my knitting lesson. I had been so excited to take it but frankly I was feeling so lousy that I really didn't feel like going. I did not cancel however as I didn't want to wait until next week for something I've long looked forward to learning. *smile

I'm keeping my promise to post here about what I'm learning. I realize my first attempts won't be that exciting for you, lol, but for me they are. Here is my practice swatch. I guess it isn't too bad but isn't so great either. More practice will make it better of that I'm sure.

For now I was really concentrating on learning to cast on, practicing knitting and pearling, decreasing & increasing stitches and binding off. I was also very keen on learning to regulate my tension as I've always had a problem of the tension of yarn being too tight whenever I've tried to teach myself to knit. Having a teacher today was I think really helpful for the tension issue.

In my photo below you can clearly see that the beginning part of the swatch is narrower than the top. I didn't deliberately increase the swatch. I think I probably increased stitches accidentally and also as I practised I was making sure my yarn remained loose so as not to have the issue of my tension being too tight.
I also have a whole in the middle of the swatch. I don't know how it got that way, maybe it was a case of tension being way too loose.

Lessons learned today from my practice swatch:

- It is good to learn what to do with your fingers and thumbs and how to hold the yarn
- There are different methods to knitting. None of them are wrong and it is important to find what works for you. I hadn't really realized this before and having a teacher showed me that some approaches work better for me than others. I'm excited about that.
- I have a tendency to lose stitches and also to gain stitches. I will need to pay close attention as I embark on learning to knit.
- It is okay to pull the swatch to see the pattern of knitting and how the stitches "fit" together. As I develop an "eye" for what I'm doing,  I will be able to correct some of my knitting errors.

Well that is it for now. I hope to make a dish cloth soon out of the same yarn. Hopefully there won't be any big holes in the middle.

Blue Monday on May 10, 2010

It is going to rain again today, blah! It was supposed to be another one of our few sunny days, but now I have to wait for that until tomorrow. I found this picture taken on a beautiful, picture perfect summer day though though you perhaps can't tell because this side of the building is taken in the shade. I love this shade of blue.
Happy Monday!

Another Scenic Sunday

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

to all the mothers out there in the blogosphere.

May you have a wonderful day.

Click here for more scenes from around the world. 

Peek Out My Door

Click on the arrow to start the video.

I was trying to upload a second video blog but I don't seem to have enough room in Blogger for the upload.