Hello Blog Friends!
It’s been a pretty full week around here so let’s do a recap….
After much careful calculation and the creating of an hour by hour schedule, Monday morning I set my alarm for 4:45am in order to be able to watch the Queen’s funeral, coverage of which started at 5am EDT. 😊 I leapt out of bed, rushed through my whole rota of morning chores and was sitting down with a tray of breakfast at 6am when the Service began. It felt as if to witness this event was to take part in a very important piece of world history and the beautifully choreographed pageantry was to me secondary to participating in a Christian funeral for a person who had exemplified a life of service to God and God’s people. Thomason was super confused as to why we were sitting in the living room when it was dark outside but finally gave a gusty sigh and settled down on his bed. The funeral ended soon after 7am, which put us on track for our usual long morning walk and we even managed to get home again before rain set in for the rest of that day!
I put in a full morning of office work, starting off with typing up the minutes from the previous afternoon’s Board meeting. As our Treasurer had been unable to attend and was very anxious to meet and talk about CTM’s financial situation, we had decided at Sunday’s meeting to meet again Thursday evening, just to talk about finances. This entailed my preparing and circulating a second agenda for that meeting.
Later that afternoon Jessica joined me and we discussed what had been happening in both our lives since she left for her trip to Houston early in August. Once we were caught up on “news” we launched into Day Camps talk and, happily, she has agreed to edit the Special Events Chapter of the 2023 Manual (she will also be doing formatting and layout of that whole document) and has signed up as Chef for Episode 1 of the Christmas Cookie Cook-Along (woot!woot!!). Since Jessica has also been offering her expertise as the DC committee tackles the Grant Application, we also had a good conversation about that and I promised to send her a copy of the document with the ongoing additions to the answers I have written as part of the application process.She stayed for dinner and then left to pick up her Lufa order after which I washed the dishes, took the dog out (still raining!!) and had an early night after a very long day, 😊
Tuesday I began work on the Manual sections for which I am responsible; first reading through the Creative Connection chapter and checking out the Liturgical Dance song that was used the last time we mounted the “Something to Celebrate!” program (in 2015) and then launching into inventing 5 crafts for the Registration time slot as this innovation occurred in 2018 and so needs to be added to the new Manual.
Wednesday I began pulling together some ideas for the “challenges” that we plan to include as an optional extra during the upcoming Cook-Along. Now that I know the types of cookies that will be demonstrated for all three episodes I can plan challenges for the whole series 😊. That day I also heard from CTM’s President Chris with the bad news that he had slipped and had a nasty fall the day before while attending the Clergy Conference and would be having knee surgery on Thursday.
As mentioned above, Thursday evening was scheduled as the special Finance meeting and Chris urged us to go ahead and meet without him as, in any case, our Treasurer, Mark, would be facilitating the discussions so I promised Chris I would take careful minutes for him to review once he is feeling better, which I have done (FIVE pages of them 😊). Suffice it to say that the meeting was rather difficult as the financial situation is pretty grim. I’m not really at liberty to give further details here but can be reached any time at the CTM office office@crosstalkmiistries.ca for further information.
And so yesterday, after typing up those minutes, I continued work on the Harvest/Fall Networks newsletter, sent out more badgering messages for the upcoming Team Gathering and finished up a few “end of the week” odds and ends.
This morning it was super cold as we took our early walk but once we got home I still went out and put in an hour or so in the garden. Today’s special task was cutting back the daisies in the North bed, as they were past their prime. Next weekend (weather permitting) I plan to move the furniture in from the deck and plant my pots of chrysanthemums in the flower beds, hopefully there will still be at least another month of decent weather in which to enjoy those bright spots of autumn colour.
Now I’m deep into the Saturday Bake with a batch of brown sugar shortbread, an Apple Crisp and a dozen chocolate muffins out of the oven and 3 baguettes ready to go in. I also plan to mix up some cornmeal muffins as we are on the cusp of Chilli season and they make a perfect accompaniment to that fall dish.
So today we have our last “September Bowl”. This week I tried Taiwanese Meefun. I had to do some adapting as I cannot find an organic brand of the rice vermicelli called for in the original recipe, but it turned out very well with fine Udon noodles 😊
Taiwanese Meefun
- 5 oz. fine Udon
- 4 dried sliced shiitake mushrooms, soaked for 10 mins. in warm water
- 3 Tbsps. olive oil
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 small onion, thinly sliced
- Coarse salt
- 1 large carrot, cut into thin matchsticks
- ¼ small green cabbage, shredded
- 8 oz. firm tofu, cut into matchsticks
- 3 Tbsps. Tamari
- 1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
- 1 tsp. ground pepper
- ¼ cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
- Hot Sauce to serve
Cook the Udon, drain and set aside. Heat a large cast iron skillet and add 1 Tbsp. of oil, swirl to coat the bottom of the pan then pour in the eggs and swirl again so they form a very thin layer. Cook until set then slide onto a chopping board and cut into matchsticks. Reheat the skillet with another Tbsp. of oil and sauté the onion and mushrooms for a few minutes. Add a little more oil and stir in the carrots. Cook for another minute then add the cabbage and stir just until softened. Now add the tofu, Tamari, stock and drained Udon and toss together until everything is heated through. Finally return the omelette strips to the pan and toss to combine. Divide between 4 bowls and garnish with cilantro. Serve with Hot Sauce to taste. Serves 4