Pentecost 10

Hello Blog Friends, welcome to August!

As mentioned in the last post, there were no Day Camps happening this week but there has still been plenty to keep me occupied 😊.

 Monday morning, following my usual practice, I sent off emails to the communities who had hosted camps the previous week, sharing with them the link to the fillable evaluation form and letting them know about coming events such as the next Cook-along series and Carols & Cocoa. I also included a plug for our “Come Together” e-book in the hopes a few more churches would purchase it as a resource for ongoing intergenerational ministry.

Tuesday good news arrived in the form of a text from Josiah who has agreed to create the logo for Day Camps 2024! Josiah is a talented graphic designer who also happens to be a Day Camp alumnus and a recently ordained Anglican priest! He has created several of our program logos, in fact this one may be the only one he hasn’t designed, so I KNOW the finished product will be “spot on” and am already looking forward to seeing it😊 . That day I also sent out a plea for more photos from the camps that have taken place. I think I shall wait until the end of the summer to make a “Postcards from Day Camps” post in the hopes that, by then, we will have gleaned a bunch of photos as well as a number of quotes to share.

Progress has also been made on putting together posters for the Autumn Cook-Along Season 6 as well as for the Harvest Thanksgiving Team Gathering and fleshing out details of the Alumni Advent Study Program.

Wednesday the mail brought the last of the Police Check applications so I quickly entered all the info I needed to add, popped everything in a big envelope, assured Thomason I would not be gone long and rode my bicycle to the local post office. My heart sank when I arrived and found myself 8^th in line, with only 1 clerk serving at the counter. Little did I know that I would end up waiting for FORTY FIVE minutes!!!!! If it hadn’t been so ghastly, it would have been the stuff that sit-coms are made of 😊. The debacle included a customer who only spoke Ukranian and was trying to send a bunch of documents somewhere, the computer system breaking down, the original clerk going on break  so that the woes of the Ukrainian lady started all over again with a new clerk- etc. etc. etc.

I finally made it home an hour later and was greeted by a VERY anxious dog who, fortunately had not trashed anything in the house as has happened on previous occasions. That evening was our monthly committee meeting and there was plenty of update to share with the others including the responses to the evaluation form and progress on all the other projects.

Thursday there was another complicated Junior Youth Camp issue as, at the last moment, they were required to send an insurance certificate to the campsite that CTM rents for the week. I spent a long time waiting on the phone with the insurance company, sent several emails, discovered the agent who normally handles our policy has retired and finally had success procuring the document with only 48 hours before the staff needed to arrive on site at the camp. AGH!!!!

Outside of office hours this has been quite a ”lunch visitors” week. Monday my long time friend, Barb came for the first time since before the pandemic. She has suffered with long COVID and had also been coping with extensive house renovations but things have now improved and so we had a very pleasant time breaking bread together. Tuesday Mae Anne came for her monthly visit and I made Gyeran Bap, which she very much enjoyed.

Then Thursday Emmanuel finally came after the lunch we were supposed to have last Saturday was postponed. Emmanuel has had a very tough year, since the death of his mother last October followed by that of his beloved dog. He came several times last winter to share breakfast with me as he was working not too far away from my home at that time but since then he has had a rough patch although things are better now and he will be starting a new job next week. Over the last few months we have talked on a several occasions but Thursday was our first in person visit in a long time. He really enjoyed the crostina, which I served with whipped cream and coffee and the whole pie vanished as we chatted. 

 There are 2 more lunch guests and 1 dinner guest scheduled for next week so I am getting plenty of opportunities to come up with creative menus 😊.

The weather has been off and on but there has still been quite a bit of gardening happening and I have so enjoyed putting together colourful bouquets of mixed blooms. Knitting on the Christmas socks continues apace, although it is quite a challenging pattern 😊 but there hasn’t been time for any other crafting.  

 This morning I tackled some garden work, digging up some ornamental grasses that had begun to invade one section of the flowerbeds. Once I had showered I then processed some green beans form this week’s CSA share and made a batch of basil pesto and am about to start the weekly bake so we had better finish this rather rambling post with the recipe😊.

I recently started making mayonnaise from scratch and have accumulated a bunch of egg whites so today the plan is to make my Mum’s Angel Cake and thought you might enjoy the recipe. 

Angel Food Cake

• 1 cup flour
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 1 ½ cups egg whites (11 or 12)
• 2 Tbsps. water
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. vanilla OR almond extract

Whisk flour and ½ cup sugar together. Beat egg whites until frothy. Add salt and continue beating until stiff peaks form. Slowly add remaining sugar to egg whites, folding with a whisk. Add vanilla or almond extract. Add flour mixture, 2 Tbsps. at a time, folding over and under with a wide spatula. When well blended, pour into an ungreased 10” tube pan. Cut through the batter with a thin knife then bake at 350ºF for 1 hour. Invert pan to cool.