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Some tea, some new moccasins and some babbling about food

My new moccasins are done, and I think they are very pretty, despite what my not so bright pictures say. You can't really tell but the pink beads are shockingly hot pink with a chrome like finish on them. The hide is as black as black as be and the fur is so shiny and soft...and so black. They are pretty but they do not smell like a warm comforting fire, it seems to be a constant reminder that they are "fake" in some way. I like them though and because they are so pretty they will be my indoor moccasins....maybe I can smoke them in my BBQ or something.
I only had one injury making these,  I sewed the 3 sided hide needle right through my thumb nail, yup, had to get a nail clipper and clip off my fingernail and yes I was a geek about it and took a picture.

Just barely missed my finger

ok, once the picture of my moccasins was up here and enlarged, the color just looked so off, so I took it off, (is that too many offs in one sentence?) I will try to take a better picture in the morning with better light and insert it here.

I have just concluded that black is difficult to photograph, but here they are

So, I don't have anything interesting to write about so I will just give you the recipe for my favorite healing tea.  In the morning I usually peel an orange or two for my lunch, If I just have one orange I put the peel in a 500 ml canning jar, if two oranges in 1L jar, I fill the jar up with boiling water and put in a cinnamon stick and sometimes a clove or even a piece of ginger....whatever I have on hand. When you pour the hot water in the jar place it in the sink, once the jar shattered on me from the sudden temperature change....what a mess first thing in the morning so now I take extra precaution and put it in the sink. Let it stand there all day (or night if doing in the evening) When you are ready to have tea, pour the water only into a little pot and heat up....add some honey and you have a very nice tea that your body will thank you for by not catching any nasty cold viruses. Spice it with either ginger, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and honey or with all of it. Find your favorite combination. You get double use out of your orange this way....and all the vitamin C it has to offer.

Speaking of my lunch,  a long time ago I wrote a post about my New Years plan to better eating and I have been sticking to it for the most part, although I still snarf down a bag of potato chips once in a while. (and we will not talk about all the tacos I ate in Mexico) I find the easiest way for me to eat healthy is when I am working because I always take a packed lunch to work with me. I pack my lunch in the evenings, sometimes I will even pack a whole bunch of lunches on the weekend. By pre-packing them I put more thought into what to pack instead of being stuck with whats in the fridge at the last minute and I am also avoiding packing what I am hungry for at the time, when time is limited I tend to pack unhealthier stuff. A fairly common lunch for me these days is a baggie with a cut up orange and two cut up apples, I always cut up my fruit because it's easier to eat with one hand when you're driving a tractor, I squeeze a lime in the bag and spice it up with my favorite spice that I bring from Mexico called "Tajin Clasico" which according to the ingredient list is just Chili, salt and lime...so good, the best part is drinking the juice that is left on the bottom of the bag. I also pack a baggie of cut up vegetables, which is a bit sad tasting right now but soon I will have garden produce, the baggie gets bigger then. We are only working 8 hours days right now so my lunches don't need to be that big, once I start working 12 hour days my lunch is so big I have to make two trips to carry it to the car in the morning, just kidding...but seriously I pack a lot of food then. Working outside seems to make me so much hungrier plus I love snacking when I am mundaneisly (I know that is not a word) driving a tractor all day so I make sure I pack plenty of fruit and vegetables to munch on all day. My favorite last year was a big bread bag full of my home grown cherry tomatoes tossed with a wee bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt....could munch on them all day long. I can't wait for garden produce, the organic produce in our local grocery store is very limited so I can't be too choosy right now.

My lunch today

Yesterday we had an overcast day, although it threatened to it didn't rain or (heaven forbid) snow. I still love my job even when the weather is bad, I always find something to make me smile when I am out there.

The robins are out and about

One of my favorite trees....so tall and slim.....and green

I challenge you to find this guy out there when you are golfing, I hung him up the other day....just because

No residents yet in house #5

A little disclaimer here about all my plastic lunch baggies, after writing a post about trying to get the plastic out of my life or at least away from my food. When I pack a big lunch I do put my fruit in a big glass Pyrex bowl but I take so many vegetables that a big plastic glass bowl is too bulky to take on a tractor and just doesn't fit on there and I can't have it rolling around on the floor or it would break. I did try cloth bags but that makes them dry out too much in the heat. I have tried a few thing but keep coming back to a plastic bag......It's a bit of a problem, I do wash and reuse them though.

A major setback, a dog attack, and some cheese

We had a major setback today, woke up to snow, a lot of snow, it was a big fat Christmas like snowfall....on April 29th. Disgusting it was. The picture below shows how unhappy ol' Blue is, you see ol' Blue is a summer loving truck. He loves going to the dump to drop off tree trimmings, garbage (mine and the neighbors), he loves going for a summer drive out to the country to get a load of manure, he even enjoys coming to the golf course and hauling firewood and bags of leaves......he does not like winter. He gets parked all cozy and toasty in a shop all winter and waits for spring. Even his previous owner never made him work in the winter. I pulled him out of the shop a week and a half ago and we made a  trip to the hardware store (he likes the hardware store too) for a load of wood for some new garden boxes....it was a fun day. Today, not so much fun. 

Poor ol' blue

Major setback

 Despite the crappy weather I had a fairly productive day. Some 10 years ago I started making a pair of moccasins from a kit I had bought....yup, I said 10 years ago. Anyway, I did not know how to make moccasins at the time, I figured how hard can it be? If they sell it all in a kit it should come with instructions and  away you go....well, not quite so. I got as far as cutting it all out and found out I could not poke my needle through the hide...nope, was not possible to get a needle through it, so I put it away...awwwaaay back in the closet, but not forgotten. Last fall just before I left here for Mexico I had the opportunity to take a class and learn how to make authentic moccasins, taught by a lovely native lady (bless her), it was so much fun and I am so happy that I had that opportunity. I learned that the reason why my needle would not go through the hide is because it is a chemically tanned hide as-apposed to hand tanned, when a hide is tanned that way it is so solid a beading needles cannot poke through it, whereas a hand tanned hide is softer and a beading needle just slides through it. I made a pair of moccasins in the class with a hand tanned and smoked moose hide, this is the ultimate hide to work with, deer and elk are nice too but the hide is thinner and floppier, moose is more durable. The smell from the smoked moose hide was just so soothing and comforting when working with it. It smelled like there was a wood burning stove, cozy and warm in the background. As I was stitching away my mind would wander at how it must have been in the days long ago, when the fire was heating a cozy cabin out in the woods with the wind blowing and the coyotes howling and the family was seated around the fire stitching away and telling stories. I found the bead work to be very soothing and relaxing and knew I would be making many more. This weekend I was supposed to take a hide tanning class taught by the same lady but it was canceled (postponed) ......guess why? Snow! And cold....I was so disappointed. A smoked hand tanned hide is hard to come by these days, the natives have become modernized too and very few still practice their native traditions.

These were my first pair of moccasins.....I wish you could smell them

To wear them outside I wear them with the little rubbers when the weather is yucky, which is how the natives wear them as well. So, when I went to a friends house I took them off at the door and while we were having tea in the living room her dog got them and attacked them .... viciously....it was ugly and it was very sad for me, but they do smell like something smoked...like maybe sausages, which could be tempting to a dog I guess. Now they look like this;

I never ever would have thought they would be as warm as they are in the rubbers.....love them. 

So, today I decided to finish the other pair (the 10 year old pair), in order to bead on the top you have to bead on a piece of stroud, which is a woolen like fabric, almost felt-like but thicker. I was making pretty good progress until I got to the fur and I decided I didn't like the black fur I had, I thought white would look better so off I went to buy some white fur.....you know you live waaaaay too far north when you can just go downtown and buy a rabbit pelt, just like that. I get to the store and I can't decide if white really is the answer, ,the chocolate brown looks very nice too, and the black and white bunny looked nice too....aghhhh! So I do the only thing I could do and buy the chocolate brown one and the white one.....so now I have 4 bunny pelts....oh I bought a light brown one last fall to redo the pair that got attacked by the dog. That is how far I got today....so no picture of the new moccasins...yet. I got sidetracked with another project....Cheese. I was given (ok..I begged for it) a gallon of fresh cow milk from a friend of a friend....oh yes, I rushed to the library and checked out a book on making cheese.....I've seen it there before and have fantasied about making cheese...seriously.

Lovely lovely cheese book, I might need to own it

This was the recipe I used to make a cheese called "queso blanco" which just means "white cheese", easy peasy instructions

This was my dripping method

My cheese turned out a little harder and drier than I would have liked which means I left it dripping too long......while I was downtown bunny hunting, but it is still good, sometimes multi tasking isn't the answer.

 This cheese reminds me of the cheese that is very common in Mexico called "queso fresco" it is a soft cheese that does not melt when heated, which I love. I don't like goopy, gooey, sticky, stringy and sloppy cheese. Which makes queso freso my favorite cheese. Perfect with eggs and nopales (cactus).....but, no nopales here so I opened a can of chili I had in my freezer and heated it up in a saucepan and added some cheese. Then I dolloped a bit of olive oil in a pan and tossed in about 3 minced garlic cloves and stir fried up some sno-peas and added some cheese.....the cheese browned beautifully. The whole meal took me about 6 minutes and again it was worthy of a glass of wine.
Oh.....don't even try cheese making with store milk.....befriend a farmer.

I love how shiny the peas are when they are tossed withe olive oil

wow, that was a lot of rambling again, but now I have a movie to watch, a few months ago while I was sitting under a palapa by the ocean having a meal and cold coconut or two with some friends we had a conversation about a song, I can't remember what song or why we discussing it I just remember that the rest of the party was surprised that I had never heard the said song, I am not surprised because I was raised in a home without television and dads 5 old records were the only music we had. Now a days it's called raising your children "media healthy" back then we called it "having other things to do". So my knowledge of old music and movies are 0.  Anyway....it was suggested I watch "West side story", if I watch it I might find the song and remember what the conversation was that we had about it.

oh.....hows the spinning coming along you ask?.....

It ain't art just yet.....and so not relaxing yet either, I have some library books coming on the subject of spinning......it worked well with the cheese making

Spaghetti Squash worthy of a glass of wine......and a new dress

I had two spaghetti squash left over from last fall, if you read the post "Yes sir, yes sir two bags full" you may have noticed that I store my squash under my spinning chair for the winter. That is my entry room and is very cool in the winter unless the "cheesy fireplace" is on, which it hardly ever is because the gas company just chuckles at the other end of the line every time that switch it flicked, and so that room has become my cold storage and apparently the perfect temperature for squash....my potatoes however...whoooo, like a box of creatures from out of a horror movie, something Steven Spielberg would create....anyway. Today I cooked up my squash, it was so good! Here is my recipe;

First poke holes in the squash all over about 2 inches apart (or else she explodes in your oven), put the whole thing in a roasting pan and bake at 350 F for about an hour.....nothing else in the pan, no water, no butter, no nada. Easy peasy, go have a nap for an hour. (set a timer)

After an hour take it out of the oven and let it cool on your cutting board. Meanwhile to make my special marinara sauce put a good dollop of Olive oil in a deep sided frying pan and dice a few garlic cloves (about 6) and a medium sized onions.....or more or less depending on taste, garlic and onions are so good for you so don't be shy. Then I put some chicken broth....remember the post "let me tell you about soup" you all went out and made a bunch of chicken broth right? Grab some out of the freezer and dump the whole frozen chunk (about 2 cups) in your pan and let it slowly melt. Once it's melted get a can of tomatoes from the freezer that you froze last year (remember I told you how to freeze tomatoes super fast and easy in the post "mary mary quite contrary how does your garden grow") dump that frozen chunk in there too and add some dried oregano and basil and the ever so special Tomato consume, however much you like, add some pepper, I usually stick my hand blender in there as well and puree it so that it is nice and smooth. Let it sit there and simmer while you deal with your squash which is now cool enough to handle.
Cut it in half and scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff, you know the stuff that looks like the inside of a pumpkin. Now take a fork and scrape out the flesh, it will come out stringy like spaghetti, scoop it into a serving bowl. It looks magical doesn't it.
Now, your sauce is all pretty and red, take a baggie of frozen green beans out of your freezer....you did pick and freeze some green beans from your garden last fall didn't you? Well, if you didn't you can buy some frozen green beans and add to your sauce now, you don't want your beans to be over cooked and all limpy and soggy that is why you leave it to the last. If your sauce is a little runny at this time, which mine was, take a little container and put about 1 heaping tsp of cornstarch in and some water and shake it until it is smooth and no longer lumpy and pour into your sauce and stir over high heat until it thickens. You are done....that is my marinara sauce. Pour on top on your spaghetti and sprinkle some fresh Parmesan cheese on. This is a meal worthy of a glass of red wine, garlic toast and ceasar salad are great with it as well.....then you might even need 2 glasses or wine.

Having homemade chicken broth and frozen tomatoes in the freezer makes making quick meals so much easier and healthier. Freezing tomatoes is so easy. I just wait until I have a a bunch of ripe tomatoes and cut them into quarters and stuff them in a 500 ml canning jar and stick my hand in there and squish them so the juices comes out, leave about 1 inch of head room for expansion and stick in the freezer. Some people peel their tomatoes first and stew them up with all kinds of spices, which is all good but so much work. ( I used to do it like that too) I add the spices when I am making the dish anyway and they get stewed then, so I don't feel there is any need to do all that. This way you can freeze them in small batches and as they ripen and it's not a big messy production. There is so much you can do with frozen tomatoes, don't ever be afraid of having too many jars of tomatoes in the freezer.

By the way, now is a good time to start some tomato plants indoors, mine are already about an inch high

 A few weeks ago I went to see my mom and sisters in La Crete which is about an hour drive East of here, when I am there I like stopping at the second hand store there. I discovered something incredible this time, there is a door that leads to a separate little room that I had never seen before, it's a hidden door. I was invited in this time...oh my. Had I not had my grandma with me I would still be in there. It is a little room full of sewing patterns, every kind of pattern imaginable from every era, yes, old old old patterns....vintage patterns selling for 25 cents each, I know....shocking, exciting and just so incredible, but I didn't want to keep my grandma on her feet for too long, although she was almost as excited as I was, she was a seamstress (still does lots of sewing). If you would have been on the other side of the wall you would have heard this "oh grandma look at this one" "wow, look at the this," "oh, I remember these dresses...oh those sleeves", " this used to be the dress to have", "oh grandma look at this one", "look look look" and so it went......I bought a dress pattern, dropped grandma off and drove to the fabric store as fast as I could in search for some green cotton with white polka dots.....and they didn't have any, I was heart broken, I had an imagine in my head of this dress in green with white polka dots. I had to have this dress, so I bought some other green fabric....I am still on the hunt for the green/white. Then I drove to my moms and she whipped me up a new dress in about 2 hours. It;s always good to come home for a visit. My mom phoned me a few days later and said grandma wanted the same dress....in beige, I have the coolest grandma. Next time I visit I am taking her to "the room" again....without her there I might spend the whole weekend in "the room". We'll bring refreshments and some snacks.....I wonder if I should make a reservation?

I haven't yet figured out how to take a nice picture of myself and the dress hanging empty looked a bit silly. See the brown dress on the right, that's the one my mom made.....it would be amazing in a grass green with white polkas....am I wrong? 

Alleluia He is risen!

This statue of Jesus stands on a hill on the outskirt of Cusco Peru 

"It is Finished"

How did this get in here?

How on earth does a Bougainvillea tree branch end up in Northern Alberta Canada? Well, imagine my surprise when I get to the Edmonton airport and for some unknown reason I decide I need to get something out of my suitcase and I open it up and there nestled in between my damp dirty laundry ....yes I travel with damp dirty laundry, is a little Bougainvillea tree branch, must have fallen out of my hair as I was packing (remember the time I had coconut in my hair?), well there it was still damp (my hair must have been wet)  so I took it out and put it in a bottle of water (which I just happened to have with me)  for the rest of the journey home and it seems to like it here.....it's got little new leaves.

I am hoping I can keep the fact that it is now living in Alberta and not on a beach in Mexico a secret from it by keeping it in my greenhouse and then I will keep it as a houseplant for the winter months....this is my plan, not that I planned this of course, one would never smuggle plants across 2 borders, that would be foolish. Of course it will never be all that it can be confined to a pot, they are most beautiful if left to grow at their own pace. Some of the most beautiful ones are the ones growing on the side of the roads with no one tending to them. I will try to keep it happy and comfortable.
While it is heating up in my greenhouse it still looks like this at the golf course.

Last fall I strategically hung 9 birdhouse throughout the course in areas where they most likely would not get hit by golf balls and possibly may not even be seen by golfers unless they are looking for them. I numbered them all so they is no confusion as to who's house is who's, and of course so they all get their mail :) House #  7 can be seen from my office window and so far no action there. We have many many ravens up here and they are such a nuisance, not only do they steal golf balls by the 1000s from the driving range they steal the eggs right out of bird's nests and kill the babies birds before they even get out of the nests, this is always so sad for me when I see a pillaged nest with broken eggs laying on the ground. I managed to find a guy that built birdhouses and so I bought 10 of them (gave one to my mother) If I see the birds liking these I plan on buying 10 more this fall. I will slowly create my very own little bird sanctuary. Now if I can just find a way of keeping the coyotes from eating the baby ducks, although when we discovered a coyote den with 3 little very fat, furry, tumbling, funny and sooooo cute coyotes pups I thought "how can I deny them food?"  I don;t believe I am interfering with the wildlife food chain by protecting the birds from the Ravens, they have other food sources but for the most part I believe we humans should just admire wildlife from a distance and mind our own business....for the most part, I won't get into hunting because I don't want to get into a debate about that.
Anyway...there you have it, still snow, still cold. Today I am putting on my mittens and toque and heading outside to help a friend build some raised garden beds....maybe, just maybe 2 more for me...what do you think? This is a picture from last summer, I"m thinking of putting 2 square 4x4 beds in front of the two beds on the right. It would mean hauling about 2 more loads of dirt. I don't have access to my back yard by truck so it all has to be hauled by wheelbarrow from the front driveway to the back, each year I think I am done hauling dirt but I can't seem to ever get enough. It's hard being a farmer when you're a townie.