It's all about dessert tonight :-)

Yesterday was the Quinte Youth for Christ Chili Cook-Off and Pie Auction. As I lay flat out on my back with the "Death Cold" (circulating the county apparently I found out today), Kev dutifully made a delicious huge pot of chili, and three incredible pies. Why I didn't take photographs, I'll never know. The pies he made were found at www.recipezaar.com, and were called Caramel Crunch Apple Pie, Preacher's Wife Peach Pie, and Pear and Apple Streusel Pie. These three pies were auctioned off for a grand total of $310!!! The proceeds to the event fund the local Christian Youth worker at our high school (and our dear friend) Andrew MacKay.

Tonight, Andrew's wife made my day! This part is also entitled "Why I Love gmail!" Those of you who use gmail understand. Those of you who don't, I must teach you ;-). Once you have a gmail address, there is a list to the side of your computer screen of all your friends who also have gmail. Each name has an "avatar" (small photograph), and a line affectionately known as the gmail tag. Groups of friends communicate all day through their tags, keeping abreast on projects, attitude, prayer requests ... you name it.

Today, Ann-Marie posted a very fun recipe (below) for "Coffee Mug Cake". I looked at it and thought "How fun! What are the chances it will work gluten-free". Then, twenty minutes later my lovely last-minute son announces that there is a French party in his class, tomorrow, and that he has to bring cupcakes or something. So, off we went. It worked! Here is the result:


We added chocolate chips and turbinado sugar on top to decorate. You could easily ice, or glaze, or use marshmallows or mm fluff. It needs something else (cinnamon? vanilla?) but still, fast and tidy! We made one for tonight, one for Iain tomorrow, and now Alison is making one for her and Claire's lunch tomorrow ;-).

Thank you gmail and Ann-Marie for this quick and easy fix to Iain's emergency snack need!!!

"COFFEE MUG CAKE"
http://www.dizzy-dee.com/recipe/chocolate-cake-in-5-minutes

60 mL flour (4 T) (Bette Hagman's gluten free mix works great)
60 mL sugar (4 T)
30 mL cocoa (2T)

Mix the above together in a regular coffee mug.

Add 1 egg to mug. Pour in 45 mL (3T) milk or milk replacement and 45 mL (3T) oil, and mix very well (if you're doing this with children, make sure you use a fork and mix in the corners at the bottom of the mug).

Microwave for 3 minutes in a 1000 watt microwave (in our 1100 watt microwave, 2 minutes 50 seconds worked).

Riding Lesson and New Hens

Alison was true to her word, and used up one more of her "banked" riding lessons to give Claire a turn. Here is Claire receiving instructions; once again, a lesson on Chevy. This horse is worth his weight in gold. He "reads" his rider's ability, then behaves correspondingly. If he senses a rank beginner, he does everything by voice command, and plods around like a downtrodden cart horse. If he has a beginner on board, he listens to the crudest aids. Once you hit intermediate, he picks up in energy level, and in his expectations of your ability to guide him, and can be downright naughty if you mess up at this point!





Claire has incredible posture; I fought my whole riding career with rounded shoulders and she looks like a dressage rider first time. She figures it's because of all of her voice lessons!


And of course, a video of Claire's first trot :-). You go girl!




This morning, Alison was working at the barn, and Kev and Claire headed off to an "Annie" practice. Iain and I hopped into the van and headed north of Shannonville to bring home these 8 lovely ladies. They are barred rock laying hens, and they are just starting to lay now. We purchased them from a 55 year old gentleman named Tom, who delayed his midlife crisis until age 54, when he convinced his wife they had to sell their lovely rural-home-on-1-acre, and buy an old farmhouse and barn with 16 acres so he could raise sheep and chickens/turkeys/ducks/you name it! We purchased 8 of his crop of 90 2008 day-olds.



First one in the coop! Plymouth Barred Rocks are a heritage breed. Nowadays, backyard breeders tend to purchase hybrids that can be easily sexed as day-olds, and that have increased egg production. Up until now, we've only had hybrids; the last hens were a Barred Rock/Rhode Island Red hybrid. But look at those gorgeous barred feathers!


All in and getting used to the new "digs" ...


Here's a close-up. (Janna, you must know that I'm specifically thinking of Eli when I post all these chicken photos!!! He does love his farm animals ;-) ...)


And lastly, a video ...

Baa baa black sheep ...

Another busy week. Work, homework, working on our homestudy for fostering purposes, picking up fresh lamb (yum)!

Each year I aim to ship the boys at 90 pounds. Last year (my first year) they ended up at about 105 and 120 pounds live weight. Oops. And "over-conditioned" (a kind euphemism for FAT).

This year, I did not pour the feed into the ram lamb. He has basically been grass fed only. Plus, being half Shetland, he is smaller. I took him in last Wednesday, fearing again that he might be too big. We do not have scales. There is a way to guesstimate based on heart girth measurements etc. which is quite interesting; every year I contemplate doing this in order to compare to the results after slaughter. Every year, time gets away from me, and I just wing it. (I just looked for the link and it appears to have disappeared from internet-land!)

Kev picked up our frozen lamb today. Total weight of lamb home is 42 pounds, which is ROUGHLY a live weight of 84 pounds. So this time, I sent him a little early. Oh well ... still closer than last year, and this meat will be even that much more melt-in-your-mouth tender.

We are also doing a "first" this time around. No photos though. We are currently salting his pelt, drying it out fully to get it ready for processing. Lamb skins are incredibly expensive to purchase, so we thought we'd try it once. I imagine we'll ship it to a processor rather than doing the tanning ourselves.

More farm news. Our most recent flock of black sex-link chickens was donated to the local food bank (via a kind gentleman who processes them for free!) and we have been busily readying the coop and pen for the new small flock. Originally we were going to take the winter off and get layers in the spring. It seems like a great idea ... until we look at store bought eggs. The ones that look like our eggs (but not quite as nice) are up to $5 per dozen (hello???). Then, I noticed a post at the Eastern Ag News board advertising ready-t0-lay Barred Rock hens. Well. Even the boy who does the majority of the chicken chores is excited again about having chickens, because he has always wanted Barred Rocks! Iain and I head out tomorrow morning to pick up eight new laying ladies, while Alison is working at the barn and Kev and Claire are at an "Annie" practice. Photos tomorrow!

Claire LOVES reading and writing poetry ...

I am organizing and decluttering today, and I came across this poem. Claire wrote it when she was just 5, and I still think it is quite extraordinary. I have her original copy, with a little picture of a girl on a sailboat, and age appropriate spelling (aim instead of I'm! although now that I look at it that was her only spelling mistake).

Sailor

I'm gonna be a sailor and sail out to sea;
I'm gonna be a mother and take care of three;
I'm gonna be a zookeeper and feed wild cats;
I'm gonna be a bug catcher and catch yellow gnats;
I'm gonna be a dancer and dance across the stage;
I'm gonna have a canary and keep it in a cage;
I'm gonna be a sailor and sail out to sea;
I'm gonna be a mother and take care of three.

copyright 2002 Claire Audrey Stenhouse


I love finding gems like this, and I'm so glad I've kept some of their earlier work! Each of the children have a file in our filing cabinet where the best school work gets saved each year. This was VERY helpful for Alison's Venture application this past April.

Mucho miscellaneous!

Okay, I'm playing catch up here, so this is a real hodge podge post ... my apologies. First of all, update on Kevin ... he has not used a cane in a month! He's doing very, very well! The last time he went in to the doctor's office sans cane, Dr. Blanchard was pretty much stunned, in the nothing-short-of-miraculous meaning of the word. (Sadly, Kev's cane, the cool one with the flames, was actually STOLEN while Kev was at the car wash in Picton. Can you imagine??? I guess it looked a little too much like Dr. House's cane!).

Secondly, two Picton Fair submissions:



Here is the felted purse that Claire made for the Fair this year. It won first place! It was a lot of work for her, and took her most of the year -- she's not as much in to fibre-y stuff as other pursuits. However, she did do everything but attach the handles (and I helped her by designing the loop closure as well). So fun!

And below is Iain's entry; "A Selection of Heritage Tomatoes". There wasn't really a category for his entry, but it was so fun he put it on display anyway :-). The tomato plants were given to 4H members by Vickie's Veggies in the County. We have had a glorious August eating tomatoes with names such as Trent, Quinte (canning varieties from this area), German Striped, Sungold (the BEST and FIRST tomato I can pop in my mouth like candy!!!), Yellow Pear Tomato, and others whose names escape me at the moment. We will definitely do this again next year.



Now some shots from last weekend's Milford fair. Milford is a village in the south County, and they put on an adorable one day fair. We don't make it every year, but this year since Claire is playing "Annie" she (and Kev) had to be on the Marysburgh Mummers Float.

This is Mount Tabor Theatre, in Milford. This is the old church, build by Dr. Bredin, that has become the home of the Marysburgh Mummers:


Just down from the theatre, across the road, is the mill pond that Milford is known for:


Here is the Mummers' float, with Claire in front. She was pretty nervous but managed to do the smiling and waving thing for most of the route. Daddy Warbucks is played by the son of Claire's voice teacher! For the production, we'll put a rinse in her hair and do ringlets; she had a wig provided by the theatre company but vetoed it instantly :-).




Side view of the Mummer's float ... Kev is wearing the cool hat, and our good friend Ann-Marie is up their as well! They both have 3 plus parts each. Kev was initially asked to consider being Daddy Warbucks, however it's a bad time of year for him to be that invested in a performance so he's pleased to be playing several minor roles, including the policeman.



Here is my friend Michelle. Her family (the Frasers) are a big county family. One of her sons is in the front seat ...


... and here is her oldest son, Blake, playing as part of Grandpa's Goodtime Gang. Blake was Alison's fiddle teacher.


I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE a good rural Fair!!!

It's fun movie trivia night (not a normal event on this blog!)

Tonight our family watched "Camp Rock", with the Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato. It was a fairly plotless, completely predictable teen romp, however we kept eyeballing the scenery and saying ... wow, that looks familiar. A few minutes on Google, and we came up with the filming locations of this movie, all in Haliburton/Minden, Ontario! One camp, a boys camp on Gull Lake, called Camp Kilcoo; the other camp called Camp Wanakita outside of Minden on Koshlong lake. Camp Wanakita (mom and dad, get this) is the YMCA camp of the Hamilton and Burlington area YMCAs. Here's a link to a map of the area ... I tried to embed it but wasn't able to.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Minden,+ON&ie=UTF8&ll=45.006564,-78.634644&spn=0.464115,0.64682&z=10

You'll see Gull Lake at the bottom. Minden is sort of centre. To the north of Minden is Boshkung lake; to the left is a very skinny lake called Lake Kuschog, a lake where I spent some time while growing up. My dad's two sisters own cottages on this lake. To the northeast of Minden is Lake Kashagawigamog. Kev and I stayed at a lovely resort on this lake for our honeymoon! And directly to the right of that lake is a small lake that doesn't have a name on the map, but it is Koshlong lake, where the other filming location was.

Just one more example of the long list of American films that have been shot in Canada. One of our personal favourites? "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was filmed in Toronto. "The Day After Tomorrow" was filmed partially in Toronto and Montreal. "Fly Away Home" was actually filmed in Prince Edward County (Sandbanks Provincial Park, as well as flying scenes over north county and Quinte area, and Toronto! It always struck me as odd that the movie "Chicago" was filmed in TO. "Fantastic Four" was filmed in Vancouver. Portions of "Titanic" were filmed in Halifax and Vancouver. Others are at this link (interesting article):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2007/nov/01/kellynestruckthursampic

Wow.

Very, very busy.

Sorry ... no time to do much here.

We do have a home visit with CAS coming up on Thursday. This past weekend was Fair Weekend. I have TONNES of work right now ... which is impinging on my time here.

Hope to fill in later in the week!