Making soup

So I decided to make a batch of vegetable soup. The comments for the recipe I chose said "filled up both my crock pots", so I figured I would need to use our big stock pot.

This is our big stock pot, after all the peeling and cutting and chopping. It includes carrots, celery, green onions, green peppers, cabbage, squash, parsley, mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic, chicken stock, and zucchini. Except for the tomatoes and the garlic, everything else was fresh. The squash was the last thing I put on top, and that was before the addition of the tomatoes and chicken stock.

Freda said "oh my, that pot isn't big enough". So we divided the contents up into another, and then another, and then another pot, so we ended up with four pots of soup.

That is a lot of soup! I also added salt and pepper, and white peppercorns and some chili too. It wasn't ready in time for supper last night, so we ended up having something else. I had it for supper tonight and it was quite yummy.

The downside is that there is so much soup that we don't have room for it in the fridge. We put quite a bit in the fridge, but the rest we put in containers outside, since it is below zero quite handily right now...

The Million Dollar Storm

The first winter storm is OVER!

Pano - December 10th, 2009

I took this panorama this morning before I took the dogs for a walk. We got something on the order of 20 cm of snow. You can see the lake is still open in places (might need to click on the photo to see the full size version). The press is reporting that the snow clearing for this storm cost a million dollars, as if it's a big deal or something. Well, that cost was budgeted so it was expected - I think they just like to throw big numbers around.

The really tricky part was that although the snow had stopped falling, the wind was pretty strong and created a lot of drifting. I had to call for the road to get plowed when I came home. Someone had made a path down the road before the snow plow went down the road.

At least it wasn't cold (like it is out west), except for the wind.

Making cookies

What to do on a blustery, snowy evening? Well, how about making cookies!!

I decided to make two different kinds of cookies. This first kind is called Molasses Crinkles. The description reads:

The zing of ginger and the sweetness of molasses combine in perfect proportions in this cookie, sent to us by Jane Booth Vollers of Chester, Connecticut. Her grandmother, Helen Dougherty, made batches and batches of them every holiday season.

Hmm, it sounded yummy and it reminded me of the cookies my mum used to make. So I had to give it a go. Here it is in Freda's pink (yes, pink!) mixer, just before adding the flour.

The second kind of cookie I thought I would try was Macadamia Butter Cookies with Dried Cranberries. These sounded yummy too! The description for this one read:

We love these thick, satisfying cookies as humble as peanut butter cookies but not as crumbly. Dried cranberries provide a slightly tart counterpoint to the macadamia nuts' richness.

This was after mixing up the dough, and adding the chopped cranberries, but before they were mixed in (yah, so obvious, I know!!).


Here they are after they came out of the oven. The molasses crinkles are all done, and the first tray of the macadamia cookies just came out.

I left Freda to take the last tray of the macadamia cookies out of the oven while I went out to snowblow the driveway. That wasn't too much fun because there was a fierce wind blowing...

Sometime later...

As the photos on the store-bought cookies say, "enlarged to show texture". This looks almost good enough to eat, doesn't it? Actually, they are very yummy, although they are crisper than my mum's cookies.

I had a difficult time finding the coarse sugar (also called 'sanding sugar') that the cookies were dipped in. Stores just don't seem to carry it. Strangely enough, I had a difficult time finding caster sugar, or extra-fine sugar, that is used to make meringue. Some stores had that, but they called it 'instant dissolving sugar'.

This is the one of the macadamia butter with cranberries cookies. The recipe said to dip them in regular granulated sugar, but since I had extra of the sanding sugar in the bowl, I just used that. I like the look of the extra texture that it gives.

Guess what? The cookies were all awesome!!! In fact, we decided that we needed to freeze some of the cookies otherwise they would all disappear far too rapidly! :)

December 8th

It was quite cold today. I guess Mother Nature is setting us up for the 15-20 cm of snow that we are forecast to get tomorrow. Taz feels the cold a lot more than Tawny, so I got him a vest that is like a windbreaker. This photo shows Taz modelling his new vest which has some retro-reflective strips on it. Taz is also licking his lips, anticipating snacking on foolish burglars...

Pano - December 8, 2009
Click on the photo to see the full size version. The lake isn't much different from yesterday's photo - still large expanses of open water. There were geese out there early this morning, honking away, but they flew off before I took the dogs out for their morning walk.

Tonight I made a pot roast encrusted with rosemary and peppercorns. It smelled wonderful.

Oh, I also made a green peppercorn gravy - yummm-mmy!!!

World's Best Security System

Here are the two employees of the World's Best Security System. Well, maybe Tawny doesn't really contribute much for the guarding, but Taz sure does. Taz is a big, black, fearsome looking dog, and he sure has a 'guard dog' attitude (barking) when people come to the door. If you don't know the dogs, they are fast and unpredictable, have big teeth, sound scary, so that's probably the best deterrent for burglars.

And besides keeping the floor clear of extra food, they also make nice bed warmers!!!


We put up the Christmas tree on the weekend. This photo turned out quite well, all things considered.

Canada Geese

I was beavering away on applying for a job on Friday morning, when suddenly Taz started barking up a storm, as if we we were being stormed by a horde of banshees!! I looked out the window and saw all these Canada Geese on our lawn, which is obviously what Taz was all excited about. By the time I got out the camera, they had strolled (yes, if geese can stroll, that's what they were doing) across the road and started down towards the lake.

Pano - Dec 6, 2009
I took this panorama on Sunday morning for several reasons. First, I had just been reading the news about the big snowstorms that hit Calgary and Edmonton, and was feeling thankful that we didn't have any snow yet. Second, this was the first morning that we could see notable coverage of ice on the lake, although it is not frozen over. And thirdly, there were no geese on the lake!!

Okay, I spoke too soon about the 'no geese on the lake'. When I was taking the dogs out for a walk, the geese starting flying in, honking at everyone to get out of their way.

Wow! What a lot of geese! And there were more coming too!!

As the geese were coming in to land, most heading right for the water. A few came in over the ice and skidded around. The ice was strong enough to hold their weight, well - maybe not if a whole lot of them were together.

It was interesting to see that some geese saw their was ice below them as they came in to land. When they got fairly low, maybe 5-6 feet off the ice, they leveled off and started flying towards the open water. You can see four of them doing just that in this photo - at the bottom right , behind the tree. You can also see a couple of geese standing on the ice at the middle centre of the photo.

Yummy supper

This week pork tenderloin was on special at Metro. The flyer said to check out their web site for recipes. So I did just that and found an interesting recipe for Pork Tenderloin in a Gingered Pear Sauce (click here for the recipe).

This is what we had for supper last night (and leftovers tonight too - yummy!!!). Besides the pork, we had a spinach and tomato salad, mango acorn squash, and basmati rice. For the squash, I cut an acorn squash in half, cooked it in the microwave, then scooped out the innards into a bowl, mixed it up with butter and a dash of mango juice that livened it up nicely.

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!!

Panoramas

It's been a while since I posted some panorama photos, so here are a set of them.


November 14, 2009

Just a reminder that you can click any photo to see a full size version of it.


November 29, 2009
We had a light dusting of snow in between the first photo (Nov 14th) and this one. As you can see, it all disappeared.

November 30, 2009
Ahh, it looks like a winter wonderland. That must mean it was Grey Cup day, and of course it was, and Saskatchewan lost due to a stupid penalty (too many men on the field).

November 29, 2009
This photo is of a neighbour across Howie Rd who has built a number of inukshuk's in his front yard, amongst his flower beds, etc. He keeps the grass trimmed around them very nicely so it always looks very neat.

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!