Wonderful and Scary Day!

Thanks to my friends for the nice anniversary wishes yesterday!! It was so nice to feel special like that...gush. It will take me a few days to catch up on your blogs!

We had a very nice day yesterday. We started off the morning in the sunshine. There was some snow in the forecast for the evening, but our outing was planned for the afternoon, so we figured we were safe...anyway, more on that a little later! I made Alex's grandma's signature "Toast-ettes". This is a variation on the toad in the hole. Alex's side of the family is French Canadian, though he was brought up in the States, and we live an English life here. His grandma didn't pronounce the "t" at the end of toast, so we call them "tosettes"...yummy!

I have so many food allergies and intolerances...so I make mine without the yolks. They're so good. The toast itself tastes almost like melba toast around the edges!

We went out after breakfast because we wanted to get some anniversary gifts for each other. It has sort of become a tradition that we get fishing gear! We decided to buy these ice fishing rods, see how tiny they are? We will eventually use them for ice fishing, but in the summer we will use them for small crappy fishing. We're building our collection! We just need to find some reels.

We also got some new insulated rain boots for spring and fall fishing. They were on sale so we took advantage of the lower price. So..while we were in the store, the weather got really bad. What started as a sunny day with snow forecast only to begin after 8pm, turned into a white-out blizzard - NOT what was in the forecast and we were a 90 minute drive from home. We hurried to get the food we needed for dinner, then started back at dusk in a blizzard. Alex doesn't drive yet, so it was up to me and I have to say my hands are still sore today from white-knuckle driving for 2 hours.

I went onto Google Maps to take a print screen of this hill. This is the ONLY way home unless we backtrack for two hours, then take the other way, which would total 5 hours. It's beautiful going up the mountain in the summer, but last night...it was frightening. The onslaught of snow, the cars skidding, ice, lack of road clearing...see the exclamation mark? That's where we got stuck. Thankfully I made it just beyond that point so I could slide back into someone's driveway (thank you to those people for having a clear driveway!). I actually started crying from fear because people were all over that road, it was so dangerous and we nearly got hit a few times. We were stuck there about half an hour, waiting for the trucks to clear and sand and even then, in the lowest gear with my foot to the floor, we only inched up as the tires whirred. Things go through your head in situations like that...the pets are alone, what if we can't make it home, what if the car slides down into the lake or the river or what if some yahoo with a four-wheel drive and an impatient attitude hits us...I heard stories this morning of people stuck ALL NIGHT in their cars on the highways near Montreal - what a disaster.

We were both traumatized from that. It was really scary folks. We don't have studded winter tires, just the regular ones, and a front wheel drive and the lack of control was terrifying. We agreed that we will try to put the thousand dollars aside as soon as we can to get new winter tires that are studded because we aren't ready to buy a new car with four-wheel drive, and we do live in the mountains so winter is going to happen whether we like it or not! The fishing boat might just have to wait a few years now sigh...but our safety is so much more important. But we made it home safely - much later than planned, the dogs needed to pee and we needed a drink when we got back! This is a nice Moscato wine called Nivole, it's sweet and we relaxed, listening to the Jack Benny radio show, sipping on wine! Jack Benny is a master comedian...I'm so glad these radio shows are available on You Tube, this kind of comedy doesn't exist anymore.

We honestly didn't feel like cooking, but we agreed that we can't let what happened ruin our plans. We really wanted to celebrate our 4 years together, so we tackled the recipes together which was so nice! The appetizer was a Tuscan Tomato Soup that was really fresh and yummy!

For our main course, we had more appetizers :) I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but we had Steak Tartare - well Alex did. I used to eat this and LOVED it, but my fear of beef getting stuck in my esophagus outweighs my desire to eat this lovely appetizer. Yes, it's raw meat, that's why we know it's not for everyone! For me, I made a Smoked Trout Mousse with Orange and Chives.

For dessert, we thawed out the other half of my birthday cake! That Ferrero Rocher yummy cake. There is just a little bit left! The meal was so delicious and we stayed up intil 4:30am watching a series called Alone. It's just about people being dropped in remote locations all by themselves to see how long they can survive fending for themselves, we are hooked on it and had to force ourselves to turn it off for some sleep. But we were kind of riled up from the trauma of that drive home.

We woke up to about 2 more feet of snow this morning and it's still going! We had to shovel out just to give the dogs a place to "go". I say this every March when spring seems to be arriving. "We ALWAYS get a horrible snow storm around St-Patty's Day". And we got it again this year! It never fails.

Jack didn't last long outside but the girls loved being in the snow, watching me shovel for them lol...now I'm headed back to bed, after very little sleep, to watch more tv shows with Alex...we have no intention to take the car out ever again in any type of snowstorm, no matter what special day it falls on! I remember the days of commuting to work and back and I'm so grateful that we have built a life together that doesn't require back and forth driving to an office. Simplicity and planning...despite the scary experience from yesterday, I feel lucky to be living where I am and having my loving relationship and my wonderful fur family. Can't take any of that for granted!

Ham and Cheese Crepes, Lacy Hash Browns

I took this photo of Alex in the summer of 2013, during the first year that we met. He taught me how to fish and we spent many evenings by the lake together! Today is our 4-year anniversary so I will be posting a short blog post today because we have lots planned! 

As per my plan, last night's dinner was supposed to be blueberry pancakes...but just to show how spontaneous I am, I changed things up MAJORLY.

We had ham and cheese Crepes instead :) That IS a major change for me!! Same basic meal but I really wanted to use up some Monteray Jack cheese I had from last shopping cycle so I stuffed the crepes with ham and cheese and let them sit in the oven for 10 minutes or so to melt. I also made some Lacy Hash Browns from the Williams Sonoma Breakfast book - YUM! Those potatoes are delicious but my gosh, you can taste the butter...they'll be a once in a while side dish that's for sure.

Baking Day and European Hot Dogs

I was in a baking mood yesterday so I made some more Pumpkin and Peanut Butter Dog Cookies. I got 46 out of this batch.

Since my boyfriend is allergic to peanuts I never bake with peanut butter or peanuts. But Jack knows that when he smells peanut butter, it's cookies for him! He waited very patiently by the oven until they were done! Someone asked me why I bother to cut them with the bone-shaped cookie cutter. Why? I don't know, because it's FUN! I know the dogs don't care one way or the other, but I do!

Since we ate our last freezer-pizza on Saturday, I decided to make two more with the leftover ham in the freezer. Everyone has their own favourite dough. I got mine from a cookbook called 500 Pizzas and Flatbreads. It's Basic Pan Pizza Dough - but I roll it out quite thin to make 2 large pizza crusts. It's SO HARD not to want to eat the pizza as I'm preparing it, but I had to keep reminding myself it's for a quick lunch or dinner when I'm too tired to cook!!

And a baking disappointment :(((  I'm a huge fan of Williams Sonoma and I have 22 of their cookbooks. Once in a while I come across a disappointing recipe. This was one of them! From the Breakfast book, I made a Cranberry Coffee Cake with Streusal Topping. I've included the recipe for anyone who wants it, but I really didn't have a good result. I switched the cranberries for cherries and mine is dark because we use brown sugar. It wasn't sweet at all and the topping....all you could taste was the flour, sigh. I re-checked the recipe to make sure I didn't flub up, but no, I followed it to a T. I was so bothered by this...I really don't take it well when a recipe doesn't work, I guess because I put so much time and love into it! My boyfriend Alex said to me "In our 4 years together, you've made me over a thousand dinners. One disappointing recipe out of thousands is still very good darling." He ate it anyway...he's so nice, he knows how sensitive I am! But I think this will be fed to the garbage bin today while I think of something else to bake!

How many meals have you made for your significant other/family/self/fur-kids? I'm sure you can all out-do my 1400 or so! (I just did 365 x 4 years for an estimate - not to mention breakfasts, lunches, sweets and snacks...) When you come up with your number, you should feel pretty proud of yourself :) I'm going to remind myself of that the next time I have a failed recipe!

Alex made dinner. We had what we call European Hot Dogs, though I'm not quite sure how European they are! We use Italian sausages and Alex makes a honey mustard sauce, which I don't have any recipe for since he's the master of "winging it" - which I cannot do. He loads his hot dog up with sauerkraut.

Mine has no sauerkraut - I'm not a fan of it. We caramelize mushrooms and onions too, it's SO GOOD...and so filling too. I made the homemade potato chips to go with it. These are tricky to make because we don't deep fry. I started them in the microwave but then had to finish them in the oven. We found out that our microwave can't handle the workload very well, it got SO HOT to the touch after about 12 minutes of cooking off and on plus not all of the chips cooked well, half were soggy. I won't include a recipe this time. I need to find a better one. The chips that did turn out were crisp and yummy though!

Despite the hair-freezing weather again today, the huskies got their 45 minute walk! Charlie walks on the snow banks while Marlene and me are on the side of the road...Charlie always thinks she sees something in the woods!

Despite the deep freeze, the river flows on. How poetic lol...that water must be frrrrreeezing. That's where the huskies swim in the nicer weather every day after their long walk, they get so hot in the summertime. We bought a kiddie pool for them last summer, but they only use it as a big water dish, I think they prefer to smell like the river!

Greens and Scenes From My Kitchen

For the sake of husky happiness...I put on my fifteen layers of clothing and took the girls for a walk. Oh gosh, I almost wish I had a ski mask over my face, the windchill is a killer. There have been a few "hair-freezing" days in our mountains and today was another one. I think I have a collection of photos of my hair and eyelashes frosty and white! The sun helped a little bit with the cold though so I'm thankful for that!

But you know what? Charlie ate her whole breakfast when we got home; and she bounced around the whole 45-minute walk. While we were out, she was looking for deer, chasing little squirrels (well, trying to!) and sniffing out rabbit tracks! :) Or is that wabbit twacks? Elmer Fudd influence :) When the temperatures remain mild, I'm out with all three dogs every morning for an hour's walk, but lately...I can't handle it too well, I'm making a big effort for Charlie though! Only the huskies can handle this cold, Jack stays home eating bones to keep him quiet :)

I love how winter and wood burning mix into such a gorgeous fragrance! Seems like the entire village had a fire going. When I got home, the first thing I wanted to do was build a fire in our leaky fireplace! We try not to use it too much because our Hydro bill soars when we open it up. It's such a paradox...the fireplace is to make fire to keep us warm, which it doesn't because it's so badly insulated. It's really just for atmosphere. When we buy our place, there will be wood stoves, NO fireplaces!!

From the "not surprised at all" file:

Last November, I sent a complaint to Glad for faulty garbage bags. This is the EXACT SAME WORD FOR WORD response I got in November, that I got yesterday for my complaint about their cling wrap. They don't care!!! But I'm $7 richer I guess because the cling wrap was $3. What am I going to buy??? I don't buy their garbage bags anymore, and I'm done with cling wrap...I have to hunt out some other Glad product I guess. And check this out:

See the arrow? We bought new hoses for the washer and dryer at Canadian Tire. That's a store that usually has decent quality items. When we opened it, it was missing the steel hose end-thingy!!! Oh my gosh...it NEVER ENDS!!! I feel like I could start a "rip-off of the day" blog! At least it was just one of the two hoses that was faulty...We both went on a well-deserved rant about bad quality, out-sourcing and uncaring companies lol...we have decided we need to learn how to make our own washer dryer hoses...okay that was just part of the rant, but really...We're going back to the store on Tuesday anyway, so at least we can replace it, but my gosh...anyone else having such bad luck lately with quality?

Greens and Scenes From My Kitchen:
Here is some freshness to warm up a freezing winter day.

All these veggies are now blanched and in the freezer, except the Italian Parsley which is sitting in a Mason jar with water in the fridge. I was slow in doing this. My shopping day was March 6th and I only got to it 5 days later. I'll have to be quicker next time, I don't want any of the food to spoil! All these veggies are reserved for a meal during the next 5 weeks :) So basically that's what I did yesterday! 

For lunch yesterday we had the last of my frozen pizzas. I have to make some more today I think! It's so nice to take one out of the freezer and not have to deal with dough-making. I got the idea from this website: How To Make Homemade Frozen Pizzas. I think that fresh is always best, but it's so convenient and I don't know why I never thought of getting some ready for the freezer before! I had just cheese pizzas made, but today I'll probably add some ham and olives too.

Last night for dinner, I made Chicken Aloha! with my homemade Rice Pilaf for Alex, that's my boyfriend's name :)

I have trouble with rice, so I just had some orzo pasta with mine and I don't like pineapples so I gave mine to him. We finished up the asparagus too, yummy dinner! It's weird, I love pineapple juice, but don't like the texture of a pineapple.

I always post photos of the dogs, but we also have 3 cats. This is Dana, the oldest of the three. He fell asleep on my hand last night when I was watching British comedies before bed. For a while he was a terror, attacking the dogs...but over the last year and a half, he's calmed down a lot and gained his confidence back. He would never come up on the bed if a dog was up there, but you can see Jack's butt in the front of the photo and Dana is very comfy! Harmony at last!!! :)

Stay warm my friends! :)

Two Questions and Two Dinners

Premium Plus sent me a coupon for those burned soda crackers. They never answered me on whether I should send the poor quality items back to them for quality control or not, they just don't care. Refund the customer to shut them up is the new policy for most businesses now! I'll probably buy my favourite Peak Freans cookies with this coupon, so not all is lost! And I'm at it again:

Do you see anything wrong with this Glad cling wrap? It was packaged so badly that most of the wrap is bunched up on the left side, making it impossible to pull out in one piece. It gets all tangled up and rips. I tried to gently fix it and pull it out by hand, without success. So guess what? I just sent an email to Glad Canada and all bets are on them saying they'll send me a coupon. It starts to get to me, the poor quality of everything. I just have to slowly move towards not buying these products and accumulating glassware. I hate cling wrap!!!

Question number 1:  Will my formerly beautiful green rosemary plant come back to life or is it just done? I've had it in the window all winter and slowly but surely, it's dried out completely. I followed directions I've found about sunlight, watering and keeping it away from drafts, but I think I killed it! Any suggestions?

Question number 2: Does anyone have a dog that seems depressed? Charlie seems to go through this every spring/end of winter. She was an outdoor dog as far as we can figure, before we adopted her. But we can't let her loose or allow her to stay outdoors all day long because of the bad neighbours whose dogs are always loose and causing trouble. I'd love to build her a nice dog house and turn our yard into a fortress but it's not feasible in a rental. It's worse on days like today, in the -30's when I just can't be outside too long to walk her. She won't eat all of her food...she lies under my boyfriend's desk all day...she's healthy otherwise. Any advice from the doggie people out there?

Food Time!!! Thursday night I made pork tenderloin with an apricot brandy glaze and fresh steamed asparagus. That pork, omg....it's so tender. I had previously posted the recipe from my Williams Sonoma Grilling book, but I made some changes, so here is my version: Roast Pork Tenderloin with Apricot Brandy Glaze. The asparagus is $1.50 a pound and we had more than enough for the both of us, plus I'm going to serve the rest with dinner tonight. I love our market, I'll miss it when we leave this area!

Last night was burger night again!! This is my chicken burger. It's just a chicken breast cooked in teriyaki sauce, but it was just okay. I need to find a good chicken burger recipe that doesn't involve frying. I have McChicken burgers on the brain...even though I'm quite sure they are not all chicken, they do taste good!

I made our Fries last night. The basil made NO difference, but they sure looked good :)

This is my boyfriend's burger...he loads up the toppings more than I do! And I made the Strawberry Milkshakes again. It was a fun dinner! Usually I wait a little bit between burger nights, but we had this really good melty Cheddar that needed to be eaten up. It's perfect for the burgers, so I made them earlier than I'd planned.

We're in a deep freeze again, so I'm going to spend my day blanching and freezing veggies, and maybe baking something sweet. :)

***PS: My boyfriend convinced me to get a domain name so that in future I can get away from Blogger and try my own web designing. So you'll see my name in the address bar as www.rainfrances.com. So far it still points back to Rain's Garden on Blogger. I'll let you guys know if I ever get the courage enough to make my own site and host it!!!