Hello Blog Friends. Welcome to August!
There has been plenty going on this week to keep me occupied. As mentioned before, Tuesday evening we held our monthly committee meeting and it was quite a marathon session 😊.
All but 2 members were able to be present and we spent most of our time revisiting the 3 questions I had posed to everyone last month; the first dealing with the viability of Day Camps, the second around how to reach a market for the program and the third as to whether or not it seems worthwhile to try and tide ourselves over with some sort of grant funding.
At the meeting I planned to give each member time to speak (without interruption!!) on each of the points and to feel free to share both positive and negative comments. Some excellent thoughts were expressed and I scribbled down a bunch of notes for things requiring immediate attention..
As of Wednesday morning I was busy texting and emailing people and also compiling various documents that I had promised to share with the rest of the committee. Happily our meeting secretary, Christopher, sent me the full Minutes on Thursday afternoon so I have been able to make sure I didn’t overlook any tasks and have also forwarded them to the committee along with everything else that I compiled. At present we are tentatively moving forward with initial planning for a 2023 Day Camp Program, but ultimately it will depend on our finding funding to keep going until we could begin to see Program revenue in 2023.
On the general “office” side, there have been several small tasks connected to Junior Youth Camp, which will be starting tomorrow. The Staff have travelled down to the site today so I think, for the present, they will not require any more office support although there is always some follow –up work after Camp 😊.
First Filipino Baptist Church is also holding its Day Camp next week so there has been a small flurry of activity from that quarter. They are the only community who requested a CTM mentor and we paired them with Jessica, who will be carrying out this role via Skype, while spending time with her husband who is on a training course with NASA in Houston Texas (ah the joys of modern technology 😊). I also needed to arrange for FFBCM to have a Lamb from the small “flock” that lives in a storage tub in my basement. For a number of years FFBCM served as a Training Day Camp location and the committee decided that we wanted to gift them with a Lamb who will live permanently at their church. Mikaela, who is one of the Day Camp Coordinators has asked Mrs. Agustin if she can pick Lamb up tomorrow following their morning Service and we are sure Lamb will be well taken care of in Lamb’s new home 😊 .
As always, whenever I have a spare hour or so, I continue to edit the older blog posts. I’ve made it to May 2017 and am learning new skills along the way. I recently found a couple of posts that had not transferred over from the old Blogger site, only the titles were present on WordPress but I was able to find a way to go back into Blogger and retrieve them, so that was small technological triumph!!
Garden work is also a daily chore, but I do love spending time among the flowerbeds and even enjoy mowing the lawns so I never begrudge those tasks. I’m also making good progress on my shawl although I have had to start the second skein of yarn and am now nervous that I might run out when it comes to knitting the lace border. I might have to make the main section a bit smaller in order to save yarn, sigh.
Today I debated whether or not to do my usual Saturday bake, since having very little flour on hand, currently challenges me. As mentioned in a previous post, the Organic Grocer is closed for two weeks while the staff takes a well deserved vacation, I will be receiving my next order this coming Wednesday but, meanwhile I need to be creative and use other types of flour 😊.
As we are expecting a high today of 40C I have decided to bake early, starting with another batch of Macarons as I’m still trying to perfect my technique and they do not take any flour! Plus I enjoy experimenting with recipes for scones and so have found one I’m going to adapt for spelt flour, of which I have plenty on hand.
All that to say I need to wrap up this post now and share the scone recipe, which means I won’t be pressing the publish button until I can take a photo, once they are out of the oven 😊.
Blueberry Spelt Scones
- 3 cups organic spelt flour
- 2 Tbsps. baking powder
- 1/3 cup raw cane sugar
- 1 tsp. sea salt
- ¾ cup cold butter
- 1 cup cream
- 2 Tbsps. lemon juice
- 1 cup blueberries
Combine the dry ingredients and cut in the butter. Make a well in the centre and add the cream and lemon juice. Mix just until moistened and then fold in the blueberries. Turn out onto a floured board and pat into a circle. Cut into 8 triangles and transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush with a little additional cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake in a preheated 400ºF oven for about 18 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool on a rack.