Adventures in tomato sauce making

Since my garden is exploding with tomatoes, I thought I'd try my hand at making & freezing tomato sauce. Again, another attempt at food blogging...

The bounty from the garden


Boiling and blanching to get rid of the skins




Endless chopping and seeding


Adding garlic and basil from the garden


Cooking and reducing


The end result


One little container of sauce! So, lessons learned from my adventure in tomato sauce making:
1. Use Roma or another kind of tomato that has no seeds and lots of flesh. The bright red juicy goodness kind of tomatoes I grew are useless for sauce.
2. Do it with a friend. It is labour intensive, much better with chatting and laughter
3. Remember to savour this one little lovely container in the dead of winter when we are all eating Californian tasteless tomatoes!

The end.

PS. At least my house smelt lovely all afternoon!

More pictures!

11 years ago...

11 years ago two young kids bumbled their way through their vows of love to say 'I Do'.
He had more hair, She had less.
They both sported a leaner look about them...Him especially!
They had little, now they have much.
They were kids, now they have kids.

Much has changed in 11 years and it is beautiful! I am a blessed woman to have Hubby....in so many ways. He understands me, he supports me, he loves me and the girls so much...

In honor of the 11 years, we had some good friends do a little photo shoot for us to try and capture us as a family and us as a couple. Here are some of the shots from last night!

Our Family





Me & Hubby



Our beautiful girls...please also notice the new sidebar picture!

Chasing the money. . .

Hubby and I are blessed, for sure. We have 2 beautiful daughters, a roof over our heads, food in the pantry and good friends and family. We even have jobs we enjoy. But here is the kicker, not once in our almost 11 year marriage have we been "ahead" in the money game.

For the first 7 years of our marriage we were missionaries, dependant on the generosity of family, friends and churches. Then we did various ministry jobs that we LOVED, but paid...ummm...not so well...This past spring we were starting to get ahead, slowly but surely. Mostly on the back of Hubby who is amazing and doing lots. Then last Thursday I got half my work hours taken away due to recession/budget cuts at my work. We are so thankful that I still have work, but now are faced with re-thinking what I should do in terms of finding more work or not.

As I write this, there is a slim possibility that a friend of a friend will want to buy our apartment in Vancouver. And another slim chance that I will apply and get a job that would be full time and pretty good paying...But here is the thing. Every single time Hubby and I have 'chased the money' the door has been slammed shut. And furniture piled against it, so that we know that it is not opening.

So, here I sit, trying to hold both the job and apartment in open hands so that God can work in me/us and through me/us. But every so often I am tempted to curl my fingers around these things and try to manipulate it or own it or control it or dream about it.

Ahhh...this must be one of those wait on God things that I'm so horrible at....

(edited to note: just got the email back from the potential buyer, and it is a no go)

Me and my Cowgirl

Bear was invited to a birthday party for her friends, A & O, twin girls. The party was held at the girls' grandparents farm with a cowgirl/boy theme. We panned for gold, lassoed a pony, shot pop cans, pinned the tail on a donkey and went on a hay ride. It was a great time to see Bear interact with all the kids and to go to a party just with her.

My beautiful cowgirl



Lassoing her pony



On the hay ride



Wow, I love that girl!

Overheard in a coffeeshop

Strangers: Hello little girl. How old are you?
Kid:
Mom of Kid: She is six, isn't she tall for her age?
Strangers: Yes, and so beautiful. All ready for first grade?
Kid:
Mom of Kid: Oh yes! She is so smart.
Strangers: What is one plus one?
Kid:
Mom of Kid: Come on honey, one plus one...you can do it...she just told me this last week....OK, how about you show your eyebrow trick!
Strangers: Eyebrow trick?
Kid:
Mom of Kid: Honey, show your trick...please...she must be tired..(it's 10 am)

At this point I actually just needed to get out of the coffeeshop. It was both amusing and sad to see the mom force her kid to interact. The worst part is that at the end, it was like the mom was getting her daughter to perform like a puppy...and making excuses and bragging...it was a trainwreck.

I want my kids to be polite, and I insist on manners and answering people when they ask you questions or say hello. But I draw the line at forcing them into situations where they are clearly uncomfortable. It goes without saying that Bear struggles with this, but even Pookie has her moments where she is shy. I don't force my kids to hug and kiss people (family excluded of course) and I'm pretty sure that I don't make my kids perform tricks....feel free to correct me on this...

I just felt bad for the kid...

Picture of the week.

Not sure if the 'ones' of readers noticed a nifty new addition to my blog...Picture of the week. I love taking pictures, especially of the girls. As I carve out time to learn more about my camera and all its fun features, I put that addition up to motivate me to get at least one good shot a week. Plus, I don't have any photo editing software, so my shots are what they are. Saskatchewan was a fun place to get some pictures, so that is what will be featured for the next little while.

Of course, any good girl shots will make the cut too!

Conversations with a 3 3/4 year old

Bear: Auntie, when are you going to have kids?

Auntie S: When I find a good husband.

Bear: Just pretend he is dead and have kids anyway!

Auntie S: I never thought of that...

Amazing

This morning my beautiful daughters woke up before 7 am. However, they have been happily playing in their bedroom since then! 2 hours and counting!

It is a whole new world....

The dreaded dinner conversation

Tonight I was quite proud of myself. Almost everything we were eating came straight out of my garden, fresh nugget potatoes, peas and carrots...the only thing we added that wasn't all that local was farmer sausage. (we did have fresh caught local salmon in the freezer, but Pookie hates it!)

As we were eating, we were talking about how great it was that we were eating food that we had grown. Pookie asked where the sausage was grown. I have been able to avoid this conversation for a long time, and despite my attempts at diversion, Pookie wanted to know. Now, Pookie is not a great meat eater to begin with, so I REALLY was NOT looking forward to explaining that we are eating animals that she has seen at a farm.

So, I told her that meat came from different animals. She asked if it just got cut off them. I said, kinda, but they are dead when the meat is cut from them, otherwise it would hurt. I reminded her that she loves eating chicken nuggets, which, you know...comes from chickens. Dead ones? Pookie asks. Yep...and then the silence as Pookie assesses her dinner. I am literally holding my breath thinking that it is all over and I'm going to need to start figuring out how to make beans taste good so that Pookie will have protein in her life when....she scoops up a big chunk of sausage and then asks for seconds and thirds.

Disaster averted. I think. Bear had been watching this whole process/conversation and refused to finish her sausage. I am hoping it is more due to the spicy nature of the sausage rather than the whole meat issue....