Hello Blog Friends, Happy Birthday of the Church 🙂
There has been plenty of office work to keep me occupied this week, although still no Day Camp Applications. Wednesday morning I sent yet another message out reminding people especially of our Virtual Experience package. This option does not require any dedicated planning on the part of a church apart from advertising the availability of the program to families with children. We will see if I get any nibbles from the list of people to whom the info was sent.
Other office tasks have included finalising all the content for the CTM newsletter and, yesterday morning, hitting the “publish” button. If any blog readers wish to subscribe you can do so here. Also on my list was preparing and sending off the agenda for the June Day Camp committee meeting, taking place this coming Tuesday evening and the agenda for the CTM Board meeting, which will take place on Sunday, June 12th.The latter document needs to first be sent for approval to our President, so that extra step takes a couple of days.
Happily Jessica will be able to join for part of the DC meeting in order to discuss the possibility of Day Camps applying for a grant that would help us to complete the major task of transitioning all our programs into the new format.
Then there was the need to put together a PowerPoint for the July 8th Virtual Team Gathering. The good news is that Janice Agustin is available to be our Speaker and that both Miriam and Donna will be preparing and leading the Taizé worship that evening, woot! woot! Now we just need to work at full on badgering in the hopes of securing a decent turnout of Team Alums 🙂.
Afternoons, as well as spending hours sweeping and raking the gazillions of Maple keys, I also completed a summer dress “Eileen” from a Tina Givens pattern and evenings I finished knitting the first of many pairs of socks I’m stockpiling as gifts for Christmas 2022. Tuesday evening was also the monthly drop-off from Dwight, our local organic farmer. I have a standing order for 6 lbs. of offal, which I use to make Thomason’s food. This time my friend Sue very kindly ordered a dozen of Dwight’s duck eggs as a treat for me, they are absolutely ginormous and I’m already planning special things to cook with them. Yum 🙂
Yesterday I enjoyed a pleasant lunchtime visit from Jenna. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of months so it was really good to catch up. I had small box of dollhouse furnishings that I had promised to send to her two little nieces so she was able to collect that. We enjoyed an Asian-inspired meal of Okonomiyaki followed by some Butterfly Pea Tea Bubble Tea and I got to hear about her work at Christian Direction and the recent conference she attended in Seattle.
Today has not been a usual Bake & Blog Saturday because this morning I logged in to a funeral on Zoom. Pat Dearling was a former long time Director of CTM’s Junior Youth Camp and died just over a year ago when we were still in pretty strict lockdown mode so the memorial service had to wait until now when there are still certain restrictions in place but it is possible to hold an in-person gathering. I worked out my baking schedule around the 11am start time as today I was making gluten free sourdough for Sue and that requires very exact timing. It all worked out and it is now late afternoon. I have been working on editing older Blogposts and need to stop in a moment to begin dinner preparations.
I thought for this week’s recipe I would share mine for Okonomiyaki. It makes such a tasty lunch or supper and the homemade sauce adds a real touch of umami 🙂.
Okonomiyaki
- 4 bacon slices
- 2/3 cup flour
- 2 Tbsps. cornstarch
- ½ cup warm water
- 1 tsp. vegetable stock powder dissolved in the warm water
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup finely shredded cabbage
- 1 green onion sliced
- ½ cup frozen corn
- 1 Tbsp. sunflower oil
- 1 sheet Nori, shredded
- ¼ cup Veganaise or mayonnaise
Okonomiyaki Pancakes: –
Combine the flour and cornstarch in a medium bowl, in a separate bowl whisk together the eggs and stock water. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir just until combined. Lastly fold in the shredded cabbage, green onion and corn.
Heat a cast iron skillet and add 2 of the bacon slices. Spoon ¼ of the batter over each slice and spread with a spatula to make a large pancake about ½ “ thick. Cook for about 5 minutes until firm and lightly browned on the bottom. Flip over and cook another 2-3 minutes. Transfer to a plate and keep warm while repeating the process with the remaining bacon and batter.
When all the pancakes are cooked arrange 2 on each serving plate and drizzle decoratively with Veganaise and Okonomiyaki sauce, sprinkle with shredded Nori.
Okonomiyaki Sauce: –
- 4 Tbsps. ketchup
- 2 Tbsps. Tamari
- 2 Tbsps. Worcestershire Sauce
- 2 tsps. honey or agave syrup
Combine all ingredients in a jar and shake until well mixed.