It has been a full week around here, culminating in this afternoon’s Day Camps Kick Off Event, which just finished a short while ago. It went very smoothly, although only 5 of the 7 communities were present. I did hear ahead of time from one of the coordinators ,give his regrets but the other one who didn’t show up had seemed particularly keen and was supposed to share the link with some of her team but none of them appeared, strange. It was special to be able to put faces to names that I had, so far, only seen in print on application forms and emails. I really I hope everyone felt the event was worthwhile.
Of course, since the inception of Day Camps, there has always been some sort of annual day training event for the local communities to give them a brief overview of the program being offered. Pre-pandemic we held in- person sessions in Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton. Now, with the advent of so many more online events, it made sense to hold the Kick-Off on Google Meet as the camps we have are scattered across 4 provinces and this way we were all able to meet in one (virtual) space 😊.
The Kick-off provided another opportunity to ask if any of the participants could help us in trying to find a few more communities interested in hosting a Day Camp. Although there were no immediate suggestions, we can only hope and pray that someone who was present might just reach out to a friend or colleague and encourage their church to jump on board.
This past week had also included our monthly Day Camp committee meeting, which gave us all a chance to make final arrangements for today’s event as well as to discuss other upcoming activities. Since then I have been reminding the alumni to sign up for our summer Team Gathering. Thursday marked exactly one month to that date and so that day I specially sent out messages on a variety of social media. Plans are pretty well in place for it and I have a meeting, next Friday, with the two girls who are preparing the worship music. I must remember, before then, to check in with our Speaker, Jessica, to see if she has yet chosen a Scripture passage for her talk.
We also discussed some initial ideas around Season 7 (yes SEVEN!!!) of the Day Camps Cook-Along. We are not sure weather to try again with a Harvest Thanksgiving Theme or if another Christmas Cookie Theme would be better received. If we go with Harvest we should begin publicising it later this summer but if we focus on Christmas then, obviously we will wait until the autumn to send out the promo information. The general consensus was to aim for Harvest/All Saints time, maybe we can even find some recipes that honour Saints, such as the Santa Lucia bread made in Sweden, this could be an interesting theme 😊.
Thursday afternoon the CTM Treasurer, Mark messaged to say he had finished work early and offered to pop by and see if he could fix the office printer. He spent over an hour and managed to reset the Wifi network connection, so the printer is back in business. YAY!!!
There hasn’t been much spare time for crafting, although, evenings, progress has been made on the pullover I am knitting for baby Eloise and later today I plan to start work on my Godson, Tighe’s, Birthday Crown, as his birthday will be happening later this month.
Come rain or shine, there have also been daily gardening sessions featuring systematic crawling through all the flowerbeds, ridding them of MILLIONS of maple keys. Having almost completed this Herculean task, my attention can soon turn to regular maintenance jobs like weeding, edging and general fussing . But before donning apron and gloves for todays episode of the “maple keys wars” we must have a recipe!
In recent months I have been deep diving into Korean cuisine and recently put together some Korean flavours meatballs, served over Linguine. They turned out pretty tasty, so do give them a try 😊.
Korean Meatballs
- 1 lb. lean ground beef
- 1 ½ Tbsps. raw honey
- 1 tsp. ground pepper
- 2 Tbsps. toasted sesame oil
- 1 Tbsp.brown rice vinegar
- ½ cup finely chopped firm pear
- ½ Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 large egg (or duck egg)
- 1/3 cup dry bread crumbs
- 8 oz. Linguine
- 2 Tbsps. ketchup
- 1 tsp. hot sauce
- 3 green onions, sliced
Combine the first 10 ingredients and mix well. Form into approximately 15 balls. Chill for at least 1 hour. Heat a cast iron skillet and cook the meatballs for 6-7 minutes on each side. Meanwhile cook the linguine and drain, saving ½ cup of pasta water. Place the noodles on a serving dish and top with the meatballs. Add the ketchup, hot sauce and pasta water to the skillet, scraping up the brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Bring to a simmer then pour over the meatballs. Garnish with the sliced green onions and serve immediately. Serves 2-3.