Hello Blog Friends!
My goodness, here we are already in November! It has been a full week, although it got off to a bit of a rocky start.
Sunday evening I had a text from a friend to say she had heard that the power would be off, across the whole neighbourhood, the next day from 8:30am-3:30pm, EEK! Sure enough the electricity was cut Monday morning, thus derailing my work plans, all of which require both power and Internet, sigh.
Of course it also happened to be quite a cold day (-4ºC) and the house got steadily more frigid as the hours slowly ticked by. I kept busy, trying to find household tasks that did not require electricity (such as the quarterly cleaning of my food pantry shelves) and by 3:30pm was very ready for a hot mug of tea!
Thus, Tuesday was largely spent catching up. I had scheduled a video meeting for 9:30am that morning with Mark (CTM’s Treasurer), who is also a youth leader at his church and who wanted to discuss with me the possibility of his youth group helping, as a service project, at a Day Camp next summer. We had a productive conversation and I promised to reach out to one community that, hopefully, will be interested in being involved. Also on Tuesday, committee member, Mikaela, was joining me for lunch so we had plenty of time to talk about this project as well as other Day Camp topics. She and her husband had recently spent a week in Portugal and so I was also treated to her picture “gallery”, which was very interesting, plus she, thoughtfully, brought me 2 tiny Portuguese tiles, so sweet!
By Wednesday office work was back on track, the backlog of emails dealt with, and the usual quota of “badgering” messages sent out. A Day Camp Coordinator from out West had contacted me, kindly offering to do some publicity at an upcoming Synod she will be attending. Because she might want to print out the promo information, I needed to do a bit of editing hyperlinks, replacing them with conventional ones. That morning I also uploaded the draft template for the Alumni Advent Study Program so I could share it with an alumnus in London, England, who has agreed to lead one of the sessions. It is taking such a long time to find three more reflection leaders but I’m slowly inching towards the goal.
Thursday morning I had another online meeting, this time with a priest in the suburbs of Montreal who might possibly be interested in hosting a Day Camp next summer. Grace is the daughter of well known, children’s ministry author, Gretchen Pritchard, who many years ago was invited to Montreal to lead a couple of workshops when I was Chair of Kidstuff, the Diocesan Children’s Ministry committee. We had a good conversation, the next step being the need for her to convince people in her parish to get on board. They do have an active Messy Church group and so I remain hopeful that she can find someone ready to take on the role of Day Camp Coordinator.
Yesterday morning it was great to see Jillian, as she had not visited since Labour Day. As she is now back teaching ESL ,full time, at a Francophone private school and with her little daughter in daycare, it is hard to schedule visits. But she had a day off and, despite having two other morning appointments, made time to drop by for an early coffee, such a good start to a rather wet day.
All week there have been mountains of leaves to rake. The combination of fluctuating temperatures, rain and wind, has brought the majority of them down and the race is now on to get the last of them cleaned off the lawns and flowerbeds in order to spread my compost before we have a hard frost and snow. This morning I did manage an hour’s work but I think it will take several more days before everything is shipshape.
It’s good to be in a warm kitchen with the oven on as it is pretty chilly today. On my list are dog biscuits, cream crackers, granola and a ginger cake. I had hoped to also make a large batch of “Snoball Christmas Cookies” but I fear that will have to wait until next week as a certain furry person is anxious to go for his second long walk of the day.
So I guess it is time for our recipe. One night this week I made this simple (and autumnal!) supper, it is extremely tasty!
Honey-Glazed Mushrooms with Black Sesame Noodles
- 8oz. fresh, black sesame noodles
- 1 Tbsp. Olive oil
- 4 oz. Cremini mushrooms, thickly sliced
- 2 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 cups shredded green cabbage
- 1 Tbsp. Tamari
- 1 ½ Tbsps. raw honey
- 2 Tbsps. butter
- Salt and Pepper
- 2 green onions, sliced
- 2 tsps. toasted sesame seeds
Cook the noodles, rinse with cold water, drain and set aside. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and stir-fry the mushrooms for 8 minutes. Add garlic, salt and pepper then drizzle with 1 Tbsp. of honey. Add 1½Tbsps. of butter and toss, then add the noodles, Tamari and cabbage. Toss for 2 minutes until everything is heated through . Remove from heat and add remaining honey and butter, with salt and pepper to taste.Toss well then scatter with green onions and sesame seeds. Serves 2.