Hello Blog Friends!
Well, we have finally reached the end of the Easter Season, of course, this year, Easter Sunday came at the end of March, which is the earliest it can fall.
The beginning of this week saw my time occupied by quite a few things to do with general office support for Junior Youth Camp, as they have just signed the site rental contract for the camp, which will be happening in early August.
With all of that out of the way I returned to my focus on badgering (politely!!) potential Day Camp communities. There is one church that had a camp last year and has requested a copy of the form, of course I sent the link straightaway, since then the coordinator has asked twice more for the link but still hasn’t filled out the form. AGH!!!
All the craft sample photos have now been added to the Resource Package folder but Jillian is held up completing the PowerPoints as the audio files of all the songs have not yet been recorded. We really need to have the Resource Package in the hands of the communities BEFORE the Kick-off, on June 1st, as coordinators and helpers are encouraged to bring to the event any questions they have so that we can troubleshoot.
Lots more messages have been sent out across the country in the hopes of finding more host communities. I have dug into backfiles and sent personalised emails to a number of people who coordinated Day Camps in past years as well as collecting new names from various friends in the hopes of connecting with churches of other denominations. No responses, but I’m not yet ready to throw in the towel for summer 2024 😊.
Tuesday morning, after carefully checking the weather forecast, I hauled myself out of bed super-early and spent over 2 hours mowing the lawns for the first time this year. We have had so much rain that the grass was really long and, because I only have a manual push-mower I absolutely had to find a dry day on which to cut it or I would have had to borrow a power mower. As it was the going was slow and, although my knee is almost fully healed, I did feel it by the time I had finished my mowing marathon. Fortunately, after a hot shower and a cup of espresso, I was soon back in business, hammering out emails and texts on my laptop. The lawns look WAY better and hopefully, going forward, we will have better weather so they won’t have a chance to get so long again before I can mow.
Thursday, being Ascension Day, it behooved me to tour the house, removing all the Easter-themed decorations! Since there were literally over 100 Pysanky, arranged in various bowls and baskets, this task took quite a while, as they must all be carefully packed in nests of Easter grass before being stored away, leaving a clearer field for next weekend when it will be time to tackle the much large job of “changing the decorations” to the Pentecost/Summer decor.
An extremely generous friend has sent me some money with which to buy some perennial plants from a Montreal-based nursery. Today, I have carved out some time to make a final (excruciatingly difficult ) choice and will place my order. I was not previously familiar with this site and they have a huge variety of plants suited to our hardiness zone. Woot, woot!!! Before I spend a happy hour deciding between echinops, foxgloves and hollyhocks I do need to finish up the weekly Bake.
First thing this morning I did some touch-ups of exterior house paint and washed both the basement and kitchen floors so there was a late start in the kitchen😊. Next Tuesday I will be attending an in-person meeting of Diocesan Council and so Jessica will be here to hold the fort with Mr. T. I want to leave a nice supper for her to enjoy and shall be packing the same meal for myself as the catered food at the meeting will not be organic and I would rather not risk getting ill due to any food colourings or non-GMO ingredients. So today’s Bake includes a fluted dessert tart as well as sourdough bagels, chocolate digestives and cream crackers.As it is now time to tackle that list, we had better close off with our recipe.
This week my fruit box contained a giant pineapple so I made a variation on…
Pineapple Fried Rice
- 1 large ripe pineapple
- 2 Tbsps. olive oil
- 1½ cups cooked short grain brown rice
- 1 cup broccoli florets
- 1 red pepper, diced
- 1 small onion, diced
- 1 large clove garlic, minced
- 1 tsp. each ground cumin and coriander
- 2 Tbsps. Tamari
- ½ cup cashews
- ½ cup fresh cilantro leaves
Halve the pineapple vertically, cutting down through the leaves and the fruit to the base. Scoop out the flesh and cut into cubes, discarding the woody core sections. Reserve 1 cup of the cubes for this dish and refrigerate the rest. Place the pineapple “boats” in 2 shallow serving bowls. Heat the oil in a large wok or frying pan and sauté the onion, garlic, broccoli and red pepper until crisp-tender. Stir in the spices then fold in the rice and pineapple, until well combined and heated through.. Finally, stir in the Tamari and cashews. Divide the mixture between the two pineapple boats and garnish with cilantro. Serves 2