Hello Blog Friends!
Here we are at the last Saturday of June! It has been an exceptionally full week, which also included a confusing mid-week holiday as, Wednesday, the province of Québec celebrated Fête St. Jean. Although it was delightful to spend a weekday morning working in the garden instead of on my laptop, it was also hard to know which day(s) some others were taking as holidays so making contact with people has been problematic, at best.
Sadly, there is nothing yet, to report about the first Day Camp of the summer, which is concluding today (due to the disruption of the midweek holiday). I have been assured that some photos are forthcoming so, if they have parental permission, I shall share a couple in the next post.
Most of last weekend was occupied with Synod, which took place all day Saturday. Sunday, after morning worship, I began working on the first draft of the Minutes. Since then, the draft has been completed, as far as I can go, but I’m still waiting for some other files that need to be collated into the document.
Over the week, preparations for the upcoming Team Gathering, have also been underway. Thursday, the slide presentation template was finished and shared with our Speaker, Josiah, and with the musicians, who will be choosing the songs and inserting both the lyrics and the audio files into the template, ready for next Friday evening’s TG. This coming Monday, the Meet link will be shared and, whenever I think of someone else who might be encouraged to attend another quick text or Insta message is immediately sent off!
Outside of random office hours, I have been able to do some intensive garden work. With the deluge of Maple keys finally come to an end, the task of crawling through the flower beds, picking them up needed to happen. It has taken several days, but the majority of the keys has now been eradicated and I have also been able to prune back the “jungle” as we have had a lot of rain, resulting in rampant weeds and other unwanted plants. It has been wet work since a brutal thunderstorm, last Sunday, and a couple of lesser ones since then, hence the jungle!!
Once having showered off the layer of mud, I have done a bit of sewing. Some dear friends in Halifax recently welcomed a baby boy and I wanted to make him a special gift. I found a c tutorial some cute for dungarees and sewed those, plus a gift bag in which to wrap them. The same day the bag was made, I took the opportunity to sew a furoshiki for the Birthday gift, gardening apron, made a couple of weeks ago.
The sister of a friend has recently asked me to do some vegan/gluten-free baking for a party she is having, so today’s Bake has included testing out a couple of those recipes, along with making some Peanut Miso Cookies and Brownie Brittle to have on hand for unexpected Tea visitors! Before the last items come out of the oven, here is a new summer recipe…
Poke Bowl
For Tuna-
- ¼ cup Tamari
- 2 Tbsps. rice vinegar
- 2tsps toasted sesame oil
- 1 tsp raw cane sugar
- Chili flakes
- 2 tin safe catch tuna, drained and broken into small chunks
- 1 green onion, sliced
For Rice-
- 1½ cups sushi rice
- ¼ cup rice vinegar
- 1 ½Tbsps raw cane sugar
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1/3 cup homemade mayonnaise
- Hot sauce
For Toppings
- Strips of Nori
- ½ cup frozen peas, thawed
- 1 Fresh mango, sliced
- ½ English cucumber, sliced
- 2 green onions, sliced
- 1 ripe avocado, chopped
- Pickled ginger
First, in a medium bowl, combine the first 5 ingredients. Add the tuna and toss gently, leave to marinate. Next, prepare the sushi rice by placing it in a sieve and rinsing well, in cold water. Place in a saucepan with 2 cups cold water and soak for 15 minutes. Stir, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and cook until tender and all the water is absorbed (15-20minutes). Meanwhile, combine the ¼ rice vinegar, sugar and salt in a small pan and heat to dissolve the sugar, set aside. Remove rice from the heat and let stand for 10 minutes, then fold in the vinegar mixture, cool for at least 30 minutes, OR prepare ahead, both the tuna and rice and refrigerate, separately, for up to 24 hours.
To serve, place the tuna, rice and toppings in separately serving bowls. Also mix together the mayo and hot sauce, for drizzling. Diners place a helping, each of rice and tuna in their bowls and garnish with chosen toppings, finally drizzling with spicy mayo. Serves 4.