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Well, shucks - whadda you know? You actually can grow mini calla lilies in Calgary:
I have one blooming in my backyard, and another bud that will open pretty soon. I must say that I'm tickled that my two calla bulbs actually germinated! The foliage looks nothing like I would have imagined ...
It had been awhile since I picked up my One Smart Cookie low-fat cookie cookbook. The chocolate cookies that I'd made for holiday baking hadn't really impressed me - they were more just *sweet* than chocolate-flavoured, and really sweet desserts aren't really my thing. I like depth of flavour, tartness, things like that. But I had a cookie-baking complusion this weekend, and made two batches of the chocolate-chip recipe from One Smart Cookie, and they're actually pretty good. Crunchy edges, soft middle, and most of the sweetness is provided by the chocolate chips. I know they're not low-carb potatoes, but I'm still cheered!
Still loving my silpat, btw!
Last night Chris and I were in line at Canadian Tire, right at closing time. We were buying some oil for my car, a bottle of fuel injection fluid, new air filtres, and a package of extra large garbage bags so that we can mow the lawn again. As we reached the front of the line, Chris reached for our big wad of Canadian Tire *money*, and blew it all. The cashier counted out slightly over $20 worth of Canadian Tire money ... very glad the customers in line behind us were patient folks!
I'm sure that if I took a random survey, and asked 100 ordinary people the question "What sheds the most in your home?", dogs and cats would win by a landslide. I'm not sure that many others would give the answer I would: a floormat. Chris and I bought a checker-board pattern mat from Ikea a few years ago, and I think that everytime we step on it, about three hundred little crunchy dried fibres loosen and scatter about the floor. Lots of sweeping for me. I'm not sure why this particular mat ever made it to the market. Maybe there are better vacuum cleaners in Sweden? I think that the next time that I make a quilt, I should start saving the mat fibres instead of buying costly batting :)
At the beginning of the month, I posted that I was going to try to figure out where the internal leak in our fridge is coming from. I made no progress in this department until I was unpacking some groceries yesterday and saw a drop of water fall from the roof of the fridge behind the light bulb. Noticed a considerable puddle on the shelves beneath. Aha ... but I'm still not an appliance repair-person!
In May, I was sitting in our computer room, happily blogging, when I was interrupted by a bumblebee. I panicked and ran, shutting the bee in the room for Chris to deal with when he got home from work. The bee was nowhere to be found when he checked in the evening, but this weekend I discovered a dead one on the floor on the far side of the futon in the computer room ... :)
And this weekend we finally kicked off the "Raised-Bed Gardening Experiment" - the dirt is in, and so are snap peas, some yellow onions, and some heads of romaine lettuce. Hopefully the neighbourhood squirrels don't mistake the lettuce for La-Z-Boys and settle their big furry behinds in ...
I was little surprised to see something pretty close to local reference as I leafed through the June/July issue of Saveur over lunch yesterday - a blurb about the Medalta Potteries company from Medicine Hat, Alberta. I guess that one of the writers has a few fond childhood memories of pickled delights housed in Medalta ceramic crocks. I can't remember reading anything in Saveur about Alberta before, so I think that this little write-up about Medalta is kind of neat.
A few years ago, Gourmet mentioned Calgary's Rocky's Burgers in an issue. Rocky's Burgers is notable because the retaurant is housed in an old Calgary Transit bus. I kid you not.
Today Chris and I become the proud new owners of a 7.0 cubic foot deep freeze. It may sound silly to make a big announcement over an appliance, but this is the first appliance that we've ever bought, and we spent a ridiculous amount of time picking one out. The biggest reason why it's ridiculous is because there really are only two manufacturers of chest freezers sold in North America, no matter whose brand name is slapped on the front. Yet we price-, feature-, and delivery-shopped Frigidaire, Kenmore, Woods, and their counterparts for at least three months. The wackiest encounter with a salesperson that we had was at Sears, where the salesperson explained that their delivery charge was $X, if they could leave the freezer in the front yard. It would cost $X+Y if we wanted the freezer delivered to the specific spot in our house where we wanted it ... I'm still scratching my head over how that policy is supposed to make people want to buy their appliances at Sears ...
I am happy to say that after spending a few months using my serger for the menial task of hemming flannel blankets, I finally delved into some of the more challenging stitches last week (it was too rainy to do anything in the garden ... poor plants!). I put together a sleepsack out of lilac waffle fleece for the little person, and I am still rather chuffed about having successfully followed the pattern, re-configuring the serger many times for both overlock and coverlock stitching, and installing my very first zipper. I only broke one needle, when I was sewing in the zipper, actually, and that was on the sewing machine. It's not perfect, but for someone of my sewing ability, it comes pretty close!
Here's a close-up of how the coverstitch turned out - I used it to hem around the neck and arm holes instead of straight-stitching on the sewing machine:
Chris has reminded me today, the start of the Euro 2004 championships in Portugal likely being the big hint, that we established ourselves as a couple four years ago. We were in Paris for the start of Euro 2000, and had taken the ferry over from Dover with a bunch of those fun English soccer hooligans (no wonder the pubs used to close so early in England) ... We watched the match between England and Portugal in a pub in Paris - I can't remember exactly what it was called (Hemingway or James Joyce or something in that literary vein), but it attracted quite a crowd that night. England lost, if anyone is curious ...
... funny how he remembers all of our anniversaries by sports events - he proposed in NYC about a week before the end of the World Series back in 2001.
I'm not sure that this would surprise anyone, but many of our favourite places in Calgary are purveyors of foodstuffs of one variety or another. We swear that the best bread on the planet comes from Manuel Latruwe's patisserie, and it seems that we feel the same way about the homemade sorbet, as we've taken to topping off our order of sliced rye with a pint of strawberry or lime on a regular basis. Over the last couple of years, I've stashed away a number of recipes for sorbet, and also read through the ingredient list on the back of the Manuel Latruwe pints, and there doesn't seem to be much to making it. Basically fruit and sugar, all frozen. I'm seriously thinking of trying out a batch this summer, probably pineapple. It can't be that hard, can it?
I'm freshly inspired again because I found this article on ice-cream making in the Toronto Star, and am now trying to decide if I should ask for an ice-cream maker for our anniversary :) The article has a nice survery of currently popular ice-cream makers (including the very swank-looking Kitchen-Aid Frozen Dessert Maker), and some practical tips for a successful finished product.
