I have a blog called Low Carb Cooking and I post recipes in there frequently. The other day I posted a recipe for a BBQ sauce that I made from a recipe that I have in a book. I modified the recipe quite fiercely - and I felt comfortable posting it, as my own.
When I went to have a look at it though, there it was, poof! Gone.
I was puzzled, but I posted it again and all was well.
Today, I came here to post my coffee blog - and there was the recipe.
Hopefully it is still on the other blog (where I intended to put it) and I'll be more careful figuring out where I am in cyberspace before I hit publish.
I'm glad this mystery is solved - Anyway - if you are looking for the Calling All Captains BBQ Sauce recipe let me know and I'll direct you to the Low Carb recipes blog!
:-) Jane
Monday 27 June 2011
Just trivia stuff
I don't know about you, but I remember odd things - and they kinda litter my head, fill up my brain and are not very useful in normal conversation (where, I might add, I feel compelled sometimes to strew them!)
So here goes. Random facts.
Magpies make nests with roofs. Their tails are so long that they make a front and back door to their nests so that they don't have to turn around in the nest to leave.
Everything in the universe within a very short time after the big bang was Hydrogen. Everything else (including us and our planet) was created inside stars. So that song that says, we are star dust, is absolutely correct.
Deer like clematis plants. (I only discovered this one yesterday.)
The Bay of Fundy has some of the highest tides in the world.
There are many right ways to do things. (And many wrong ways too.) Just because something is not done MY way, does not make it wrong automatically.
Just because an idea is not MY idea, does not make it a bad idea.
My computer is set for the Dvorak keyboard. This is a setting in the control panel. My keyboard LOOKS the same as yours (QWERTY) but when you press the key with an S on it on my keyboard, the screen types an O. Supposed to be faster and better for your hands - I can type about 85 words a minute when I have been typing a lot, on the Dvorak keyboard. There is a good article on Wikipedia on the Dvorak keyboard. It took me about 6 weeks to train myself to type on it. I went from 75 words a minute to 7, the first day. Oh, and now I can't touch type on the QWERTY keyboard - I have to look at my hands - and I can only type about 40 wpm - I find it very frustrating, and will, if possible change the settings to allow myself to use the Dvorak keyboard. I can ONLY touch type. Looking at my hands is no use at all! :-)
When I changed from QWERTY to Dvorak I discovered that I didn't actually type letter by letter. I actually had the patterns of the words in my head somewhere. I had to relearn those patterns when I switched. THE thing that was hardest to unlearn and relearn? Keyboard shortcuts. And URLs - I still, occasionally try to type www using the key that has a w on it - which is actually punctuation in Dvorak - a comma.
Lowe's Building Supplies (the American website) have some of the best How-To videos I have ever seen! We learned how to build a deck on their site.
Deer love tulips. They will even dig up the bulbs and eat them. Daffodils, on the other hand, grow wild in Nova Scotia. If a plant grows in the wild, there is a good chance that the deer can't or won't eat them. They either taste bad or are poisonous.
Well, this isn't all. But I can't empty my head all in one fell swoop, apparently. There may or may not be more random facts at some point in the future!
So here goes. Random facts.
Magpies make nests with roofs. Their tails are so long that they make a front and back door to their nests so that they don't have to turn around in the nest to leave.
Everything in the universe within a very short time after the big bang was Hydrogen. Everything else (including us and our planet) was created inside stars. So that song that says, we are star dust, is absolutely correct.
Deer like clematis plants. (I only discovered this one yesterday.)
The Bay of Fundy has some of the highest tides in the world.
There are many right ways to do things. (And many wrong ways too.) Just because something is not done MY way, does not make it wrong automatically.
Just because an idea is not MY idea, does not make it a bad idea.
My computer is set for the Dvorak keyboard. This is a setting in the control panel. My keyboard LOOKS the same as yours (QWERTY) but when you press the key with an S on it on my keyboard, the screen types an O. Supposed to be faster and better for your hands - I can type about 85 words a minute when I have been typing a lot, on the Dvorak keyboard. There is a good article on Wikipedia on the Dvorak keyboard. It took me about 6 weeks to train myself to type on it. I went from 75 words a minute to 7, the first day. Oh, and now I can't touch type on the QWERTY keyboard - I have to look at my hands - and I can only type about 40 wpm - I find it very frustrating, and will, if possible change the settings to allow myself to use the Dvorak keyboard. I can ONLY touch type. Looking at my hands is no use at all! :-)
When I changed from QWERTY to Dvorak I discovered that I didn't actually type letter by letter. I actually had the patterns of the words in my head somewhere. I had to relearn those patterns when I switched. THE thing that was hardest to unlearn and relearn? Keyboard shortcuts. And URLs - I still, occasionally try to type www using the key that has a w on it - which is actually punctuation in Dvorak - a comma.
Lowe's Building Supplies (the American website) have some of the best How-To videos I have ever seen! We learned how to build a deck on their site.
Deer love tulips. They will even dig up the bulbs and eat them. Daffodils, on the other hand, grow wild in Nova Scotia. If a plant grows in the wild, there is a good chance that the deer can't or won't eat them. They either taste bad or are poisonous.
Well, this isn't all. But I can't empty my head all in one fell swoop, apparently. There may or may not be more random facts at some point in the future!
Friday 24 June 2011
Just the Rock Garden...
We have a little bank on our property - behind the flat part of the yard behind the house.
I need to go back in time to the summer before last (2009). We bought a lot in 2008 that was entirely covered with scrubby trees and brush, and I had NO idea about the shape of the lot. I'm pretty sure that Barry had sort of a topographic 'picture' of the lot in his head, but not me!
The builder (because we were in a different province whilst this portion of the project was going along) cleared the lot for us. And he discovered that we were going to be able to have a walkout from the basement (if we wished) and we decided that we did wish...
However, he also discovered that we had quite a hill on the back part of our property.
More info that you need to have to make sense of this: this house is a Kent Home - which means that it is a modular home or a manufactured home. In other words, it was delivered by two huge trucks, each with wide load signs and little trucks with whirly orange lights on top. AND one part of my house (I think the back part) took the stop sign on Cottage Street out when it turned the corner, as Brunswick Street was closed because new sidewalks were being put in. (As a side note to this, they are STILL replacing sidewalks on Brunswick Street!)
In order to put the house on the lot, they needed to make a 'temporary road' behind the foundation and bring in a huge crane and then lift the two halves onto the foundation.
And when they made that temporary road they made that little hill steeper - and they killed several small trees and one larger one.
We have been pondering what the heck we were going to do with that hill. We thought about it in the fall of 2009 while we had 4 truckloads of top soil put on the lot around the house and I went out and spread grass seed by hand (very patchy first effort, I might add.) And while we created and planted a small semi-circular garden with all the plants that we moved from Ottawa to here, we thought about it.
And we thought about it throughout the fall and winter while we finished the basement of our new house and while I painted the interior. (These new houses are painted completely white inside - very boring!) And we thought about it in the Spring of 2010 while we built a stone deck in the backyard, and in the summer of the same year while we built a wooden patio in the front, where we covered the pit of doom and reduced our front outside stairs from 8 to 4...
We thought about it while we planted trees, and expanded the garden, planting many plants that Helen gave me from her beautiful gardens!
We discussed it when we went for walks and looked at our neighbour's efforts with retaining walls, ditches and gardens.
And this spring we received in the mail, a list of things we could buy from a local supplier, that included river stones in a couple of sizes, and shale in several sizes (as well as mulch, triple mix topsoil and several sizes of gravel.)
So one rare sunny afternoon, we headed over to see what they had and how much it would cost. And we bought a pallet of shale in various sizes that we thought we would be able to lift by hand. And we got them to deliver it to us.
And we thought about how we were going to put these things on the hill and what they were going to look like and I finally got tired of thinking of it. I decided that we might just as well put the stones out there like flagstones and plant some sedum and other things that will drape over the rocks and get it over with. They would either hold the rocks there or they wouldn't. We'd be no further behind than we were now. We have been watching the bank and neither one of us thinks that the silly thing is moving - and if it is, the long roots of the perennials SHOULD hold it still.
We headed out to Great Village where there is a Garden Centre called Lowlands - and they must have had 5 different kinds of sedum (which I have been spelling wrong for 8 years!) and I bought several of them. I also went to a plant sale a week ago and bought three different kinds of sedum at it - wee, not-so-wee and f---ing huge!
And we brought them home, I took them into the back yard and set them on the Stairway to Nowhere (just like the Stairway to Heaven, only different!) and poured myself a drink and sat on the sun porch with my book.
This morning, I thought I ought to plant the sedum and geraniums, but Barry suggested that we go for a walk. I made soup for Edna and I and then made dessert (see the last blog!), which was ready to go in the oven just as Edna got here to play cards.
Mom, Dad, Edna and I sat on the sun porch and played cards all afternoon with me looking at my rocks, which Barry had laid out for me on the hill on Monday... and Dad complimented me on how they looked. Sigh!
Supper was easy. Leftover soup from lunch (a new broccoli soup, mmm!), leftover oven fritatta from yesterday and leftover dessert from lunch. After I was finished dinner I asked after tomorrow's weather. Now it seems that we are going to have typical weather - that is, it is supposed to rain. And rain, and rain and rain. And I looked at my two shopping boxes of plants out there and FINALLY managed to get myself motivated to go out there and do something!
I planted geraniums in an old enameled canning pot.
I planted a sunflower in a smaller one.
I added potting soil to the Hoy Plant, and hung it up on the deck.
I added soil to the Norfolk Pine and found a spot for it on the deck for the summer.
So, there you have it. Just the rock garden.
I need to go back in time to the summer before last (2009). We bought a lot in 2008 that was entirely covered with scrubby trees and brush, and I had NO idea about the shape of the lot. I'm pretty sure that Barry had sort of a topographic 'picture' of the lot in his head, but not me!
The builder (because we were in a different province whilst this portion of the project was going along) cleared the lot for us. And he discovered that we were going to be able to have a walkout from the basement (if we wished) and we decided that we did wish...
However, he also discovered that we had quite a hill on the back part of our property.
More info that you need to have to make sense of this: this house is a Kent Home - which means that it is a modular home or a manufactured home. In other words, it was delivered by two huge trucks, each with wide load signs and little trucks with whirly orange lights on top. AND one part of my house (I think the back part) took the stop sign on Cottage Street out when it turned the corner, as Brunswick Street was closed because new sidewalks were being put in. (As a side note to this, they are STILL replacing sidewalks on Brunswick Street!)
In order to put the house on the lot, they needed to make a 'temporary road' behind the foundation and bring in a huge crane and then lift the two halves onto the foundation.
And when they made that temporary road they made that little hill steeper - and they killed several small trees and one larger one.
We have been pondering what the heck we were going to do with that hill. We thought about it in the fall of 2009 while we had 4 truckloads of top soil put on the lot around the house and I went out and spread grass seed by hand (very patchy first effort, I might add.) And while we created and planted a small semi-circular garden with all the plants that we moved from Ottawa to here, we thought about it.
And we thought about it throughout the fall and winter while we finished the basement of our new house and while I painted the interior. (These new houses are painted completely white inside - very boring!) And we thought about it in the Spring of 2010 while we built a stone deck in the backyard, and in the summer of the same year while we built a wooden patio in the front, where we covered the pit of doom and reduced our front outside stairs from 8 to 4...
We thought about it while we planted trees, and expanded the garden, planting many plants that Helen gave me from her beautiful gardens!
We discussed it when we went for walks and looked at our neighbour's efforts with retaining walls, ditches and gardens.
And this spring we received in the mail, a list of things we could buy from a local supplier, that included river stones in a couple of sizes, and shale in several sizes (as well as mulch, triple mix topsoil and several sizes of gravel.)
So one rare sunny afternoon, we headed over to see what they had and how much it would cost. And we bought a pallet of shale in various sizes that we thought we would be able to lift by hand. And we got them to deliver it to us.
And we thought about how we were going to put these things on the hill and what they were going to look like and I finally got tired of thinking of it. I decided that we might just as well put the stones out there like flagstones and plant some sedum and other things that will drape over the rocks and get it over with. They would either hold the rocks there or they wouldn't. We'd be no further behind than we were now. We have been watching the bank and neither one of us thinks that the silly thing is moving - and if it is, the long roots of the perennials SHOULD hold it still.
We headed out to Great Village where there is a Garden Centre called Lowlands - and they must have had 5 different kinds of sedum (which I have been spelling wrong for 8 years!) and I bought several of them. I also went to a plant sale a week ago and bought three different kinds of sedum at it - wee, not-so-wee and f---ing huge!
And we brought them home, I took them into the back yard and set them on the Stairway to Nowhere (just like the Stairway to Heaven, only different!) and poured myself a drink and sat on the sun porch with my book.
This morning, I thought I ought to plant the sedum and geraniums, but Barry suggested that we go for a walk. I made soup for Edna and I and then made dessert (see the last blog!), which was ready to go in the oven just as Edna got here to play cards.
Mom, Dad, Edna and I sat on the sun porch and played cards all afternoon with me looking at my rocks, which Barry had laid out for me on the hill on Monday... and Dad complimented me on how they looked. Sigh!
Supper was easy. Leftover soup from lunch (a new broccoli soup, mmm!), leftover oven fritatta from yesterday and leftover dessert from lunch. After I was finished dinner I asked after tomorrow's weather. Now it seems that we are going to have typical weather - that is, it is supposed to rain. And rain, and rain and rain. And I looked at my two shopping boxes of plants out there and FINALLY managed to get myself motivated to go out there and do something!
I planted geraniums in an old enameled canning pot.
I planted a sunflower in a smaller one.
I added potting soil to the Hoy Plant, and hung it up on the deck.
I added soil to the Norfolk Pine and found a spot for it on the deck for the summer.
And I planted ALL the darned sedum in the rock garden. Now it can rain ALL weekend long and I don't care. I do have two Eunonymus to pop in somewhere, but I'm going to get Barry to dig the holes for me - I wasn't really able to trowel deeply enough - and the deer, sadly, like them, and have already been sampling them... so they are looking a bit sad anyway....
Tuesday 21 June 2011
Just Cooking stuff
It was Father's Day on Sunday and I called my Dad. I usually go over there for coffee on Wednesday's, but this Wednesday I'm going on a FART (Fabric Acquisition Road Trip) to Avonport. So I made arrangements to visit Mom and Dad today. And I decided that I ought to make a nice dessert or something, and take that with me.
I knew I had a recipe in one of my cookbooks for a Cinnamon Coffee Cake, but when I found it, I didn't have all the ingredients that it called for. So I tried an internet search. And I found a recipe that would do.
When I write out a recipe, I write the ingredients down in the order that they appear in the recipe - evidently the writer of the original recipe wrote the ingredient list in random order! AND they assume that the cook is going to actually READ the recipe.
Well. Not me. I saw the first few dry ingredients and put them in the bowl. When I got down to the wet ingredients, I figured I'd better get the oven turned on... and see what size cooking pan I needed to get out.
In one bowl, read the recipe, to my horrified eyes, mix part of the first two ingredients, the 5th ingredient, 7th ingredient and last ingredient.... Ooops.
So I hastily scooped out part of the dry ingredients, mixed in the 5th and 7th ingredient, and put that in the bottom of the pan.
The rest of the dry ingredients were still in a bowl, to which I confidently added an egg. No wait, there was a layer before that. I cut the cream cheese up and layered it very carefully on the crumbs from the first bowl. Then I added the blueberries. THEN I read the recipe again.
The cream cheese is supposed to be mixed WITH stuff and then the blueberries go on top of that. Oops!
I abandoned all hope at this point - this recipe was going to be a big flop. It was now time for me to have left - and things were still RAW - so I mixed the last few ingredients in with the rest of the stuff, and carefully dumped it in on top of the berries.
Reading the recipe again, it told me to carefully sprinkle the crumbs on TOP - WHAT?! The thing they had me make first was the topping???? My cake was sort of upside down and ALL wrong. I stuck plastic wrap over the whole thing and headed off to Mom and Dad's. I emptied Mom's oven of the cookie sheet she stores in there, turned it on to preheat and enjoyed a visit, culminated with a piece of Jane's Blueberry Coffee Cake...
So all this is to say... I made up a new recipe today! It was really good! And here it is.
Jane's Blueberry Coffee Cake
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×9 inch pan.
Mix:
1/2 c. Splenda
1 c. ground Almonds
4 T butter
1 t cinnamon
1 pinch of salt
I knew I had a recipe in one of my cookbooks for a Cinnamon Coffee Cake, but when I found it, I didn't have all the ingredients that it called for. So I tried an internet search. And I found a recipe that would do.
When I write out a recipe, I write the ingredients down in the order that they appear in the recipe - evidently the writer of the original recipe wrote the ingredient list in random order! AND they assume that the cook is going to actually READ the recipe.
Well. Not me. I saw the first few dry ingredients and put them in the bowl. When I got down to the wet ingredients, I figured I'd better get the oven turned on... and see what size cooking pan I needed to get out.
In one bowl, read the recipe, to my horrified eyes, mix part of the first two ingredients, the 5th ingredient, 7th ingredient and last ingredient.... Ooops.
So I hastily scooped out part of the dry ingredients, mixed in the 5th and 7th ingredient, and put that in the bottom of the pan.
The rest of the dry ingredients were still in a bowl, to which I confidently added an egg. No wait, there was a layer before that. I cut the cream cheese up and layered it very carefully on the crumbs from the first bowl. Then I added the blueberries. THEN I read the recipe again.
The cream cheese is supposed to be mixed WITH stuff and then the blueberries go on top of that. Oops!
I abandoned all hope at this point - this recipe was going to be a big flop. It was now time for me to have left - and things were still RAW - so I mixed the last few ingredients in with the rest of the stuff, and carefully dumped it in on top of the berries.
Reading the recipe again, it told me to carefully sprinkle the crumbs on TOP - WHAT?! The thing they had me make first was the topping???? My cake was sort of upside down and ALL wrong. I stuck plastic wrap over the whole thing and headed off to Mom and Dad's. I emptied Mom's oven of the cookie sheet she stores in there, turned it on to preheat and enjoyed a visit, culminated with a piece of Jane's Blueberry Coffee Cake...
So all this is to say... I made up a new recipe today! It was really good! And here it is.
Jane's Blueberry Coffee Cake
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×9 inch pan.
Mix:
1/2 c. Splenda
1 c. ground Almonds
4 T butter
1 t cinnamon
1 pinch of salt
This will be crumbly. Spread this in the bottom of the pan.
Thinly slice (just less than 1/4 of an inch) 1 block (8 oz) of Philadelphia cream cheese and lay a single layer of cheese on top of the bottom layer.
Sprinkle 2 c frozen blueberries evenly on top. Set aside.
Mix well:
2 c. ground Almonds
1/2 c. Splenda
2 eggs
1/2 c. sour cream
1/2 c. sour cream
2 T oil (I used peanut oil, but canola oil would do just as well)
2 t vanilla
1/2 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
Pour this mixture on top of the blueberries, trying not to disarray them too much.
Bake 35 minutes at 350. Use the toothpick test for doneness. Enjoy!
Sunday 19 June 2011
Just the Garage...
 |
| About three weeks ago, I started a Spring To Do List |
.
The top item on the list is to put the lattice on the side entry - but there has to be a let up in the rain before we get out there doing that! The second item on the list is Build Shelves in the Garage.Before we could head out to buy the materials I had to have a little panic search, during which I couldn't find my plans for the shelving (and my list of what we needed to buy in order to build the shelves). However, when I calmed down, I remembered where it was. (Isn't that always the way?)
After I found it, Barry and I went to Kent Building Supplies and bought the wood, which we strapped it onto the roof of the Jeep. Our stock joke (only I'm pretty sure Barry is NOT joking) is that the Jeep is NOT a truck... That was pointed out, yesterday, as we drove home with 14 one by four spruce boards that were 12 feet long. We did manage to get them all here without blowing over (the wind was wicked yesterday) AND without getting rained on. Which is why we went out in the morning! We moved all the 'stuff' away from the wall, and into the middle of the garage floor.
We had bought some beautiful industrial brackets at The Home Depot in Dartmouth. They didn't have enough for us that were all the same size - but there were enough (we thought) for three shelves. The bottom one would be deeper than the top two. (It turned out, we have enough for another shelf - that'll be on the other side of the garage, but I haven't broken the news to Barry yet!)
Barry desperately wanted to use his laser level, so after some 'discussion' in which I pooh-poohed that, we gave it a try. And what do you know - it worked slick! We used the chalk line (which was my idea) to connect the dots - and had a lovely line on the wall to get the brackets lined up. I forgot to bring the camera out at the beginning of the process, so I don't have a picture of the lower shelf's line before we put the brackets up (and I wasn't convinced that the laser level was going to be a useful tool at that point anyway!)
We had to move Barry's work bench out of the way (heavy!!!) and we moved it over far enough that he could put his white tool box into the corner. The bottom shelf is shorter than the top two. We wanted, specifically to put the two or three tools we have on tables (the table saw and the belt sander) UNDER the shelves. At the time that these were being built, those tools were under the canoe, which is hung on the back wall.
Barry has a chop saw, which is the handiest tool going!! He did all the cutting, I did the design, measuring and marking. At one point he took the pencil from me. I gave him the 'look' and he handed the pencil back immediately.
When we do these projects we ALWAYS, INVARIABLY forget something when we buy the parts. It doesn't seem to matter how careful I am when I make the list, I just don't seem to be able to list everything - and this was no exception. I forgot to buy screws that would join the shelves to the cross pieces to make the shelves into one piece. However, Barry found some exterior quality screws of the right length that would do the job. It took us about half an hour to figure out what we had bought them for initially (the lattice, as it happens.)
Here I am figuring out how the small shelf goes together. We put the small braces across, and Barry screwed them together.
This is one of the long shelves. We also screwed the shelves INTO the brackets, using a proper length wood screw AND a little washer. We had JUST enough washers in the package. There should have been 36 in the pack and we used 33 and there were none left.... Hmmm.
Barry told me that there was no reason why he shouldn't sit down while he did the work! :-)
Barry made sure they were attached really firmly!
And when we got them all done, we put the 'stuff' on them. I have a pile of stuff to get rid of, and I might have a couple of other things to go on the top shelf. But once you put the ladder away, getting the top shelf's stuff down or up, is a bit of a pain.
We swept the garage and there is so much dust in the air that it looks like sparkles in this picture! The stack of give aways have the yellow life jacket leaned up against them. When they are gone, the garage will have so much space!! Barry is going to take the chop saw downstairs - he is concerned that it will get rusty in the garage (and I think he is right!)
Barry spent part of the evening (while I went in and made dinner) disassembling some old shelves, and went back out this morning and did some more. When we get the stuff that is to give away, taken away, I'll take another picture. It looks SO good!!!
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