It has been a very full week around here.
A couple of my morning “office” sessions also included meetings with clergy, one via Skype and the other actually face to face over tea and scones, very civilised! There have also been gazillions of emails shooting back and forth indicating just how quickly the Day Camps season is approaching AGH!!
I think we now have all the evening speakers in place for the Retreat week and are only lacking a couple of workshop leaders, although I have reached out to a keen Day Camp alum about one of those and earnestly hope he will say “yes”. It is proving difficult to find anyone who is available to lead the “Games” workshop, which includes a combo of both theory and practice at a park close to our rented church hall venue. One area of Retreat planning that still needs to be settled is that of the billets. I think we now have 3 firmly in place but 3 more are needed and unfortunately a couple of the households I had counted on are not able to take a Team after all.
As for host communities, one more has been confirmed, and two possible ones are not going to work out, sigh, back to the drawing board 😞 And then there is the sticky issue of finding more Team Members. There has been news of one more 15-year-old girl, the young sister of an experienced Team Member. She seems like a sweet girl but extremely shy and quiet, but then Day Camps does have a way of bringing people out of their shells 😊 so hopefully a few weeks on Team will bring her along nicely.
Afternoons I committed to completing the rest of the craft samples, after the gang who worked so hard last Saturday afternoon was unable to finish everything.
Two afternoons I also treated myself to couple of small sewing projects, a second anniversary gift for some special friends and a sweet outfit for Alexander and Sarah’s newborn baby girl. I also FINALLY got the cords on all the Team medallions as Chelsea’s new job has prevented her being able to complete them with me.
Today we have a house full as the Huyers spent last night here and will only be heading back to Ottawa later this afternoon. As an Isaiah 40 Board member Victoria wanted to be in Montreal to attend the Service this morning marking the closing of the Friendly Home building that has housed that ministry for around 15 years. So while she and Timothy are over there I have had some time to hang out with my Godsons although Mark, who is Godfather to the two younger boys, is coming soon to take them out for a lunch visit.
After a VERY wet Friday the sun is peeking out this morning, so once the boys are safely taken care of I hope to be able to get a little work done in the garden. Quite a lot of spring flowers are now in bloom, which is exciting but soon the maple trees will be dumping down millions of seeds and the hard work of sweeping and raking them will begin. Ugh!
Well before I head out with my garden tools we had better close off with a recipe. Do watch for the special ”Crafts Samples” post, which will publish very soon 😊
Thursday of this week we enjoyed one of my favourite Asian dinners-Momos. These Tibetan dumplings can be made with a wide variety of fillings, this time I made Cabbage Momos.
Cabbage Momos
Dough-
- 2 ½ cups flour
- 1 tsp. salt
- approximately ¾ cup warm water
Mix the dough ingredients, adding more water as necessary to form a stiff but pliable dough. Turn out onto a board and knead until smooth, cover and leave to rest while preparing filling.
Filling-
- ¼ of a medium cabbage, grated
- 1 carrot, grated
- ½ a large onion, grated
- 1 tsp. ginger
- ½ tsp. cayenne
- 2 Tbsps. olive oil
- 2 tsps. cornstarch
- 1 Tbsp. Tamari
Boil the grated carrot in a small pan of water for 2 minutes. Drain well and squeeze out excess moisture, place in a large bowl. Heat 1 Tbsp. oil in a sauté pan and add the cabbage, onion, ginger and cayenne. Sauté until the cabbage is fully softened. Dissolve the cornstarch in the Tamari and stir into the mixture then add the mixture to the cooked carrots in the bowl. Cool in the freezer until room temperature. Once the filling is ready, divide the dough in half and roll each piece out to 1/8” thickness. Cut into 3” rounds, you should have 18-20 in total, after rerolling all the scraps. Place a generous tsp. of filling on each round and pinch the edges together tightly, forming a small pouch. Put the other Tbsp. of oil in a small shallow dish and dip the base of each momo in the oil then place in a bamboo steamer tray. Steam the momos over simmering water for 15-20 minutes. Serve with a dipping sauce of Chinese black vinegar or balsamic vinegar. Serves two, generously, and can easily be doubled.