Hello Blog Friends!
Oh my goodness, the last day of July!! Where did July go? It would seems that while still living in a sort of limbo between a Pandemic and Post- Pandemic world, time would drag, but no summer seems to be hurrying by far too quickly for my taste.
This week has been full on E-Book writing. I am just about at the end of creating and compiling content and am ready to switch into formatting. Jessica gave me some suggestions about creating watercolour sketches as page borders and said that she can digitalise them when helping with layout. It will be fantastic to do some painting after days of typing but I shall need to curb my ardour as I’m currently out of watercolour paper.
Jillian offered to come to my rescue, as she needs to go to an art supply store soon and said she could pick up a block of art paper, which would be awesome😊 Fortunately I am well stocked with paints and can do some preliminary sketches in pencil while waiting for the paper.
I also submitted an article on Day Camps to the Diocesan Newspaper “Anglican Montreal”. Nicki, the editor, sent around a notice a couple of weeks ago asking for submissions and I hemmed and hawed about it since I didn’t want to write something all doom and gloom as everyone has had quite enough of that mindset over the past eighteen months. Nicki is a sweet person and said I should write something, as it would be “cathartic”. In the end I compromised, telling the truth about our lack of Camps this summer but also expanding on our autumn plans including the Cook-Along, Day Retreat, the E-Book and Carols & Cocoa. After I completed the text I sent it to our President, Chris, for his approval and then fired it off to Nicki on Monday morning.
Outside office hours there has been plenty of garden work and the weekly lawn mowing. I have ordered a few fall bulbs and will be excited to see them arrive although I shan’t be planting them until October. Wednesday afternoon I also tackled the quarterly job of cleaning all the pantry shelves, quite a marathon task 😊.My most recent sewing project is a patchwork tea cosy that will be a wedding gift for one of the DC committee members who is getting married in the fall. Tea cosies tend to be my go-to wedding gifts and of course I shall also include some teas! I had wanted to make a start on my eldest Godson William’s Birthday Crown but although he has chosen the colours for the outside and lining, he still has not sent me a list of the items for the appliqués, sigh preteens. It looks as if more badgering will be required on my part.
Last weekend the yarn arrived for some of my Christmas projects and I started straight away on a sweet cardigan for two and a half year old Serena. I’m very much enjoying the pattern, which is knit top down, pretty soon I’ll need to be thinking about buttons for it. Once it is completed I’ll be moving on to socks for the four Godsons 😊
As usual today is “Bake & Blog”; the plan is to bake this afternoon as I’m making a Mexican Pizza for supper. I’m currently almost out of all purpose flour due to the organic grocer still being closed for vacation but happily I had a ball of pizza dough in the freezer and since I’ve carefully selected other baking that involves gluten-free flour, or rye I think I shall be ok and the good news is that there is now only one more week before the shop is open again 😊
Last evening I enjoyed a Middle Eastern dinner of Caramelised Fennel with Haloumi so I’ve chosen that for our weekly recipe. Haloumi cheese can be quite easily found in larger supermarkets, failing that you can use any goat cheese for this dish.
Caramelised Fennel
- 4 small fennel bulbs
- 3 ½ Tbsps. butter
- 3 Tbsps. olive oil
- 2 Tbsps. raw cane sugar
- 1 tsp. fennel seeds
- coarse sea salt & pepper
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 2 tsp. dried dill OR 2 Tbsps. fresh chopped dill
- 5 oz. Haloumi
- Lemon juice
Take off the fennel fronds and root ends then slice each bulb lengthwise into ½’ thick slices. Melt half the butter and oil over high heat, then add a layer of slices, frying on each side for about 2 minutes or until golden, remove from the pan and keep frying the rest of the slices adding more oil and butter as necessary. Add the fennel seeds, sugar, salt and pepper to the pan then return all the slices, caramelising them briefly, just to coat them with the melted sugar mixture. Allow them to cool on a plate then toss them in a bowl with the garlic and dill. Meanwhile fry the haloumi in the remaining mixture for 1-2 minutes each side Arrange the fennel and haloumi on a platter and garnish with some of the fronds. Sprinkle lightly with lemon juice.
Serves 2-4, with a loaf of crusty bread.