Meaningful things

We went to Arnprior last week, and found these napkins in a little store. After we stopped laughing, we decided we would buy these for some friends who have four children. She enjoyed them too!

The best gifts are those that help others. This gift represents stocking a medical clinic. Very nice.

And this gift represents helping start a small business. Terrific.

In our usual Christmas tradition, we go over to some friends for the Christmas dinner. We had been so busy lately that we hadn't had any time to vaccuum, so we cleaned the floors before we went over. The dogs were kept in the solarium while we were doing that so they wouldn't track wet footprints all over the house... Poor doggies - NOT!

When we go to potlucks, some people have favourite things that they always ask us to make. Helen and Steve like our Golden Crumb Broccoli Bake.

We actually make this recipe with cauliflower as well as broccoli - it adds a touch of sweetness as well as some colour. We also use real cheese instead of 'American' cheese. I used Colby cheese this time.

The cooked broccoli and cauliflower is covered with a mixture of condensed mushroom soup, mayonnaise, grated cheese and lemon juice. After that, some crushed crackers and the rest of the grated cheese are sprinkled on top of the sauce. This is what the dish looked like when it was ready to go in the oven.

And this is what the dish looks like after it comes out of the oven. It smells very nice too!

We also needed to take a pumpkin pie - as Steve loves pumpkin pie.

When I was buying the ingredients for the pie filling, I wanted to buy pure pumpkin, as a lot of the pumpkin pie filling is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d with squash. The only pure pumpkin pie filling was a large can, so we would have enough filling for two pies. This is not such a bad thing... :)) So, Freda made two pie crusts and we baked them. While they were baking, I mixed up the filling. This photo shows the pies after the filling was poured into them. It smelled very tempting!

One of the best side-benefits about baking is that it fills the house with delightful aromas. Pumpkin pie is certainly no slouch in that department. This is what the pie looked like after taking it out of the oven - hmmm, looks good enough to eat (haha!).

Of course, you need to have whipped cream to accompany pumpkin pie. The recipe called for 'spiced' whipped cream, which basically just means adding a bit of cinammon and ginger when you're whipping the cream.

And this is what the pie looked like later on -- yummy! The pumpkin pie recipe called for cinammon, ginger and allspice - no nutmeg, surprisingly. Although the pie was delicious, I think I would add nutmeg the next time.

I'll close off this very long post by wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and best wishes for a Happy New Year!!!

Food and Friends

This fall has been much milder than last year. In fact, one year and one week ago, Freda and I saw a deer laying at the edge of the water on the other side of the lake, being 'guarded' by two bush wolves. We walked around the lake with the dogs to scare off the bush wolves and give the deer a chance to escape. Unfortunately, the deer had broken one of his front legs when he broke through the ice while crossing the lake, and was probably exhausted from swimming across the ice encrusted lake. Click to read the full blog entry: The saga of the young deer.

One year and one week ago was also memorable for another reason - that was the day that Freda fell through the ice and was rescued thanks to the efforts of our neighbours Emma, and her mom Colleen. Also, Emma and Colleen would not have been around to help Freda if it wasn't for Maddy visiting at our next door neighbours. We were too traumatized to think straight last year, but we needed to say a special thank you to our neighbours for helping Freda. So I decided to make a special meal and invite them over.

This is what we had on Saturday (after the Christmas parade in Carleton Place).

This was the appetizer - baked brie. It looked yummy and it was very yummy!! I served it with Triscuit crackers, which was a nice accompaniment. This was the first time I had done anything with phyllo pastry, or made this dish before, so I was very happy that it turned out.

I guess I got busy with things and forgot to take photos of the other dishes. The other dishes were maple glazed baked butternut squash, roast beef (sirloin tip), and spinach and tomato salad. For dessert, I made a four minute chocolate mousse which was so very delicious! I garnished the mousse with some grated milk chocolate and it was pretty as well. Yum!!

Actually, making the "four minute" mousse took me about two hours - but that includes the measuring and the cleanup :). Obviously the "four minute" part of the title must exclude the measuring and cleanup. It took me so long because I kept messing up the meringue. The first time I put the sugar in the meringue before I started whipping the egg whites and of course it wouldn't make stiff peaks. The second time, I crunched up the sugar too much in the coffee grinder (I cleaned it out thoroughly first) so the meringue was just kind of gloppy. I was crunching up the sugar because I couldn't find caster sugar in any of our regular grocery stores. The third time I was lucky and it worked out.

But what to do with the extra meringue? I thought of the Pecan Sandies I had made before. So I grabbed some pecans, chopped them up a bit, mixed them into the egg whites and plopped them on a tray into the oven. Except for making them too big, they were perfect and were super delicious!

This is Freda with our heroes, from left: Emma, Maddy, Freda, Colleen. Thank you very much!!! And thank you also to Steve who didn't mind that a soaking wet person was sitting on the seat of his new truck when he had only had it for two days!!

Carleton Place Christmas Parade

We were having our neighbours over for supper on Saturday, and they suggested that we go to the Christmas parade in Carleton Place. We hadn't been to an evening parade before, so that sounded like a good idea. I turned the oven down to 300 instead of 325 so the roast wouldn't get all dried out.

Another first - we'd never seen a float with sheep on it before!!


Or how about a Christmas parade with a cow!!! Pretty cool!!


Hmm, not feeling the effects of the cold yet. It was pretty chilly.

Okay, Emma was feeling the cold though... I'll bet she was looking forward for a nice hot supper!

Fall colours

It's now fall, so the autumnal colours of the maple trees start to show themselves. This photo is taken from our solarium -- we so enjoy drinking our coffee while we're looking out the solarium window at the beautiful colours of this maple.


As it's fall, we also enjoy wishing a Happy Birthday to our neighbour's daughter, Emma.

The Wedding - Sat Sep 19, 2009

The main purpose for our trip was the wedding, of course. This was the bride and groom making the speeches in the reception hall, which was a huge indoor riding arena that had been converted for the reception. (A lot of work went into that.)

The bride's family has a horse farm, or something like that, and her aunt and uncle prepared a special dressage display for the newlyweds. It was a beautiful day, as you can see. It was truly amazing to see these massive animals trotting along like synchronized dancers, and doing the Las Vegas showgirl walk, etc.

Of course, one of the best things about being away is coming home afterwards. And both Freda and Tawny were very happy to see each other!!

A beautiful day for a beautiful wedding

On Saturday, one of Freda's former co-workers was getting married and we were invited. It was a stunningly gorgeous day and a beautiful ceremony for the happy couple. It was a very touching ceremony and a wonderful reception -- we felt very honoured to have been invited.

Weekend for firsts

Freda took one of our neighbour's daughters horseback riding. You can see Emma in the background. Unfortunately Freda pinched a nerve or something and wasn't able to go to work on Monday because of the pain.

Emma's sister Maddy (in green shirt) came by to see if we wanted to buy a raffle ticket for her camp. The girls kept telling each other to shut up, so they had some fun with a small strip of packing tape and a marker.


I was walking the dogs this morning and saw this little dead bird on the side of the road. I brought it home to give it a proper burial but thought I would try to find out what it was first. I thought it might have been a brown jay, but no such luck. Note the yellow tips on the tail feathers.

If you know what the bird is, leave a comment please.

Update July 24th 2009: The bird looks like a Cedar Waxwing, which has yellow on the tips of its tail feathers. Thanks for the tip, Mum.

A full moon

There was a full moon today. Freda took this photo around dusk with her camera, and you can see how bright the moon is. There is a reflection of the flash off the glass there because her camera automatically fired up the flash - whoops! It's a pain having to turn the flash on/off on these cameras. I wish there was a button that would just be on/off instead of auto/on/red-eye/off.

This was taken as we were going to visit friends for supper. The moon is very bright.

I stopped on the way and took this photo. The moon was so bright but it doesn't look that way in this photo. You can see a lot of sensor noise due to low light levels on. I had to do some post-processing on this one, including some noise reduction, but it is still marginal.

This is Lily, she is about 11 months old and she is a pretty young girl. When we rang the door bell, we got "hello" and then "I thought it was next Saturday that you were coming over?" Whoops! My bad! They invited us to stay for a cup of tea but my headache was too throbbing, especially considering the stupid mistake I made.

Hockey Night in Carp

Some good friends just down the road had an urgent road trip come up, and asked us if we could look after their daughers on Saturday evening (Jan 3rd) and take one of them to her first hockey game. We were very happy to help out. Things were a bit rushed for supper, but there was no problem because we had already planned to have pizza, so we ordered it a bit early, ate, and then started to get ready for Maddy's first game of the season.

Here is Madelaine (or Maddy), getting her equipment on (aka armour!) at home before we left. Those disembodied hands are Maddy's mom helping with the straps.

Here we are at the rink. Maddy has her skates and her team's jersey on, and with the exception of her helmet, is ready to go... I think she's pretty happy about it -- what do you think??

Here is Freda and Emma (Maddy's sister) fooling around while waiting for the game to start.

All the players' names were announced, just like in the NHL. It was very very fun to watch the game. There was a big size difference (maybe 18 inches in height!) between the smallest and biggest kids, but they were all having fun and enjoying themselves, skating and playing hockey.

I tried to take some photos of Maddy when she was on the ice, but they were all very poor because the lighting wasn't bright enough for a good photo, and the camera flash isn't powerful enough to illuminate the scene. Nevertheless, I was able to get a few passable photos. This is Maddy, on the left with the pink laces and blue/white socks, driving to the net with the puck

It was quite a cold evening to be at an outdoor rink, but it just made the hot chocolate from the canteen even more delicious!!

Update on wind damage etc

We had some neighbours over for supper on Saturday. They are going to Florida for a trip in a week and had asked Freda a while ago if we could dog-sit their little schnauzer named Max. Max gets along famously with Tawny and Taz - it is actually quite comical to watch. When they were over they mentioned this and e had forgotten. Actually, one of the grandparents had wanted to watch Max and Freda thought that was the new arrangement. Because of this oversight, Madelaine stuck notes up all over the house to remind us about Max. We have left them up because it is so comical!


We lost a piece of fascia in yesterday's high winds, but Freda found it today when she took the dogs out for a play. It is a little bit bent but is not damaged too much. I will straighten it out and put it up today. The weather is pretty nice today, -2C and no wind. It was quite tricking lifting the ladder up in yesterday's high winds.