Holes, Dogs and Food

They all have different personalities, but really, most dogs have the same bad habits!! I wanted to show this photo especially to Kristina at Pioneer Woman at Heart, just for solidarity lol, she wrote a post the other day about her dog Zuri who was chewing things up. About a year and a half ago, this couch actually was in good condition! Ever since we got the three rescue dogs in the fall of 2015...well, as you can see. And this is the good side, I turned the pillows over for the photo! We are reduced to putting bed sheets on everything now because we are a pet-house, i.e., they are allowed to be up on the couches and the beds because we just adore their company! Every time we're at a bazaar or rummage sale, we pick up all sorts of sheets and pillow cases to hide or protect our furniture! I feel like I'm one step away from putting those plastic covers on the furniture. When we buy our home in a few years, we'll likely keep one room as our bar/lounge where it will be a doggy/kitty-free zone so we can have a few nice fur-free pieces of furniture! Then again, it's hard to close a door on those sweet faces so we'll see!

More holes...imagine my surprise. I'm out in the yard with the three dogs when suddenly my foot gives through 3 feet of snow! I actually got stuck for a few moments until I got my bearings. Did any of the dogs come to my rescue? Nah...they thought I was playing! I decided on the tuck and roll method to get myself out lol...it was quite the scene. I was up to my hips.

Charlie the Ostrich: Our huskies love to dive head first into the snow. Charlie keeps her head under there for the longest time. I took this picture today because I wanted to show Susan from ei-ei-omg!. She posted a really sweet video yesterday of her dogs. One of them, Bertie does the same thing. It's very precious :)

I'm still on the mend from that bout of food poisoning, but you can't keep me out of the kitchen. My boyfriend has been fending for himself since Monday but last night I wanted to make him a nice healthy dinner. I made a pork tenderloin with some boiled potatoes and green beans. I haven't bought a bean since August! He loves them so I bought a bunch when they were a good price at the market and portioned them out in the deep freezer. I still have enough for 8 more dinners. I follow this recipe for the tenderloin, it's the easiest recipe to make and turns out delicious each time, though I cook it a total of about 35 minutes in the oven: Simple Roasted Pork Tenderloin. The rest of the pork will go into a stir fry in a few days.

And this was my pathetic looking dinner! My first real meal since Sunday. Boiled potatoes and steamed tilapia (notice I sneaked in some butter???)...all is well :)

I used to LOVE drinking tea. But lately I suffer the worst heartburn when I have a cuppa. I was reading about how the tea bags for most of the teas out there are bleached with chlorine and can cause stomach upset when you drink the steeped tea. I'm trying so hard to get rid of all processed foods, our digestion is very fragile. So I thought I'd give it a test and buy some loose tea to see. Was I prepared to pay $7 for this tiny little tin? NO. If I can drink this without the heartburn, I will have to find a less costly source! Nice tin though...and a breath of fresh air. NO FRENCH on the tin. I live in Quebec and the law states that French must be the dominant language on all marketing and advertising. Twinings got away with it by putting a very easily removable sticker on one side with French writing. I just pulled it off and there we go. I won't get into the politics here but basically English people are not welcome in this province. Our hope is when we buy a property, it will be in another province.

Since I was feeling so good this morning when I woke up, I decided to make brunch. I just took a bunch of different ingredients and made a scramble. I'm usually a stern recipe-follower, lack of confidence perhaps? But today I went hog-wild and made up my own, as nervous as that made me! Here's my creation:

Breakfast Scramble (for two)

(Rain's Scramble? - Patent Pending ;)

Ingredients:

2 small red potatoes, diced

1 small onion, diced

4 eggs (or in my case, 2 eggs, and 3 whites for me since I have trouble with yolks)

Sliced ham, chopped or shredded

1 cup shredded Monteray Jack cheese

2 chopped tomatoes

Butter for cooking, s&p for seasoning

Directions:

- Melt the butter in a large pan over medium heat and add the potatoes. After about 5 minutes, add the onions. At this point, I turn down the heat to medium low, cover the pan and stir now and then until the potatoes are really soft, about 20-30 minutes depending on the size of your dice.

- When the potatoes are nearly done, you can push them to one side of the pan and add the eggs to the other to scramble them. 

This is what I do. I LOVE these little pans! I scramble them separately then add them at the end.

- Add the ham and the tomatoes and let them cook together a few minutes.

- Sprinkle with cheese and mix it all up until it's melty and gooey! Yum!

- Get your boyfriend/hubby to do the dishes.

Just cooking this morning took a lot out of me. I am better digestive-wise, but the bout of food poisoning really left me weak without much energy. So now I'm in bed with Jack and our cat who thinks he's a dog, Oscar. He's another rescue from the fall of 2015. We can't walk into the shelter anymore! We already had 2 cats and within 3 months time in 2015, we added another cat and three dogs. We definitely have a full house!

Milkshakes and Baking

This has been my diet for the last few days. I have no clue what the heck happened, but I somehow came down with a nasty bout of food poisoning Sunday night. We can't figure it out because my boyfriend and I have been eating the exact same things and he's okay. The only thing I ate that he didn't was a bowl of chips...could they somehow have been contaminated??? I'll spare the world the details, but let's just say I thought I was dying for about seven hours that night. I couldn't even keep water down until Monday night! I never want to go through that again ever! I take food safety really seriously and I can only think that it was something from the store...more reason to try to be as self-sufficient as possible. Eegad.

But I'm feeling a bit better today...I might try a little soup and toast. I'm bored to tears. I'm not the type who can stay in bed for a long time! I decided to post my recipe for beef jerky that I make for my boyfriend. The dehydrator is PERFECT for this! And the house smells all beefy and smoky all day when I make it...gosh I wish I could eat this!!! I use this recipe:  Doc's Best Beef Jerky. (I follow all of the ingredients, except that my "meat tenderizer" is balsamic vinegar). After 3 hours or so in the dehydrator, they're done. I usually let it all marinade overnight in the fridge for the most flavour. I also find that the best cut of meat for this is the "sandwich" cut that is pre-packaged at our grocer. It's never expensive and the slices are pretty thin. I don't have a good enough knife, nor a steady enough hand to thinly slice a cut of meat! If anyone hasn't used liquid smoke before, beware...get that stuff on your fingers and be prepared to smell like a hickory barbecue for days! I always wear gloves when I make this!

And I can't forget the fur kids. I have yet to find a good cat treat recipe so we stick to Greenies for them. For the dogs though, I make these little cookies.

Pumpkin Peanut Butter Oatmeal Dog Biscuits 

Ingredients:

3 cups oats 

½ cup peanut butter 

1 cup pumpkin puree 

1 teaspoon baking powder 

2 eggs 

Instructions:

1. Place the oatmeal into a food processor and pulse it until it's not so coarse, but it doesn't need to be a fine as flour. 

2. Add oatmeal, pumpkin, peanut butter, baking powder and eggs to a bowl and blend until it's all mixed. 

3. Roll out with flour and cut with cookie cutters. I end up using a lot of flour because the dough is quite sticky.

4. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. 

5. Cool on a rack until completely cooled. These make lots of dog cookies! My bone-shaped cookie cutters are about 2 1/2 inches long and the recipe makes a good four dozen but it depends each time how thin I roll them out. I keep half of them in a cookie tin and the other half goes into the freezer. The dogs adore them and one of our three cats loves them too.

My lovely fellow Blogger, Mama Pea, asked me for my milkshake recipe. This is a photo from last summer and I WISH I could have some of that right now! We got lucky last summer and found a box full of these glasses. There were 5 Sundae glasses and 10 milkshake glasses, all for $5.00. I can't wait for garage sale and flea market season to start again!

Strawberry Milkshake For Two

Ingredients:

1/2 to 1 cup of vanilla ice cream (depends on your thickness liking) 

1 cup half-thawed frozen strawberries

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp pure maple syrup

1 cup milk (again, add more if you like it thinner)

**Note: in the summer when the berries are much fresher and sweeter, we use fresh berries and omit the maple syrup

Instructions:

Shake shake shake

I have an old Osterizer blender that is circa 1983 I believe. I lived on the East Coast of Canada for a year on Prince Edward Island. That was a lovely time for summers by the ocean, sunsets, lobster dinners and bargains! They LOVE their flea markets over there and I accumulated a lot of old kitchen appliances. I love this blender, but every time I use it the motor stinks! I hope I don't have to replace it anytime soon because the quality of everything has declined so much lately that it's criminal...I could go on and on about how many returns and re-returns I've had to make since Christmas, it was unbelievable...but I choose to try to see only the positive! Anyway, we eat a lot of ice cream, any season actually. I've made chocolate cherry shakes as well, replacing the vanilla ice cream with chocolate and adding the juice of canned cherries...magnificent! I love kitchen gadgets, I do have an excellent ice cream maker that is getting very good use! I used to make ice cream by hand, but for $40 (back in the early 2000's) that ice cream maker was so worth getting.

And for those cozy nights, you can also make an adult version of a milkshake! My boyfriend mixes these up for us now and then in the cocktail shaker with some ice cubes. It's milk with maple syrup and a jigger of your favourite spirit or liqueur. Lately we've been big on brandy in these cocktails. Just strain and pour. Just a note: we use pure maple syrup as a sweetener whenever we can to avoid processed sugar, so you'll see it a lot in my recipes! (please excuse the dust on my night table lol!)

Fishing!

This is me setting up my fishing line and making knots. My boyfriend and I go through this ritual every year in early spring. We LOVE fishing. We both started out with catch and release fishing only. We didn't have it in us to keep a fish for dinner. We still have a few more months until the lakes thaw out, but this ritual lifts our moods in mid-winter! 

These are my favourite lures! I mostly use crawfish (the first box) and when we've been lucky enough to be in a boat, I use the bigger lures (the second box) to try to catch bigger/different fish. The choice of lure depends a lot on where you are, the weather, the season and if it's day or night. We've learned a lot by trial and error over the years. My boyfriend has boxes of his own favourite lures too. We also have a huge amount of plastic worms and once in a while we'll get some real worms from the backyard as well. We want to start a worm farm if we have time this summer. 

Last year we bought some fly fishing lures. My boyfriend's father used to fly fish and gave him his old rod. We don't really know the technique but it's something we plan on doing in the near future. I have to get a fly fishing rod at some point down the line too. We also want to do some ice fishing once we're settled into our new home in a few years. We mostly fish for bass but sometimes we catch some perch and once a few summers ago, I caught this monster:

You can't BEGIN to imagine how I was shaking during this catch lol...these muskies (muskellunge) look so prehistoric and those teeth aren't anything to play with. They are strong! It was quite the workout when I caught this guy and I was very happy to release him back. Given the chance I'm sure he would have made one of my fingers a nice afternoon snack! I kept murmuring under my breath "Hurry up! Hurry up!" while my boyfriend was taking this picture!

But last summer, one of our neighbours brought us out trout fishing and we kept a few for our dinner. It's not easy transitioning from sport fishing to actually keeping them and eating them! But in my quest to become as self-sufficient as possible, I thought I'd give it a go. Notice I still say "keeping" a fish? Why can't I just be realistic and use the proper term, sigh? Our boating friend did the deed but at one point, we'll both have to learn how to humanely kill the fish. Our friend is 78 years old, an old sea dog and he does it like it's nothing. I need to build my confidence. I wonder how people do it? How do you become someone who hunts for your food, or butchers your farm animals? Has it always been in you or did you learn as time goes by how to do it and be okay with it? I struggle I have to say! But being purposely ignorant about how food gets to my plate doesn't serve me well anymore.

These three trout would have cost between $60 to $75 here if I got them at the grocery store, and who knows how fresh they really would have been? Our yearly fishing permit costs $29 for the two of us, so it had already paid for itself. These are gray trout (or lake trout). The lake in our town also has Rainbow and spotted trout, which were a little more difficult to fish for last summer. We caught some spotted, but they were tiny little fish and after tasting one, we opted not to keep them anymore. They're kind of...let's say..."sea-weedy" tasting. My boyfriend caught a Rainbow, but it was just too small so we put it back. We are rule-followers, so we can only have 2 trout per fishing license in our possession at one time and they have to fit the length requirements to be keepers. If we freeze one and keep it, that's considered part of our daily limit. Since we had three, we gave one to our neighbour. She gave us fresh lettuce in return...how cool that we practiced bartering! :) These fish are so good when they're fresh. After a lot of nervous anxiety, we just gutted them and baked them whole...and they were delish! I got over my fear of catching, (not killing), but gutting and cooking a live fish and I actually enjoyed eating it. This got me thinking about hunting too...but that will be for future consideration! I don't know that I have that in me at all!

This was the biggest fish I caught last summer. It's a small-mouthed bass and not big enough for a keeper. Fishing off the local dock brings in smaller fish and sometimes we have to give up going because it's also a local hangout for teenagers who want to smoke and drink beer all night (we were all young once...). Finding spots where we can fish off the shore has become a big challenge for us. Either the public docks are overfilled or the property is private. We spent many hours just scouting out locations within driving distance and couldn't find a good spot.

This is me last summer on my favourite fishing boulder! This lake is called Bass Lake and we got lucky a few years back and met the caretaker of a kid's camp that sits on acres of land by the lake. He lets us come and fish there when the camp is closed. It's a gorgeous spot, but we can only go at the beginning of May; and then after Labour Day. Also, it's an hour's drive each way and it's just not feasible anymore to go there often. We did the drive a lot for the last few summers, but our priorities are changing a little bit - we want to drive less and be outdoors more.

We've made a very big decision lately. We decided to invest in a little row boat this spring. The store where we plan to buy has a one year no interest, no fee equalized payment plan so we are going to take advantage of that offer. We both love that it'll give us more fishing time and together time doing something outdoors that we truly love. Not only will we save a bundle on gas money, having a row boat will allow us to catch a bigger variety of fish for our dinners - whenever we want to be out on the lake. We didn't fish as much as we would have liked last summer. Our goal is to pay back debt and save money; and after talking about it, we feel this little boat will be a great investment not only to enjoy our summers, but also to catch our dinners! After one season of fishing, the boat will have paid for itself. Spending a lot of money is difficult for us since we want to buy a property in a few years, but sometimes you have to spend to save right? If we can, in a year's time we might buy a little trolling motor so we can go farther into the lake for that yummy Rainbow trout!

Saving Money On Food

My boyfriend and I are pretty honest with each other. We both love to eat and drink and we both have gained weight since meeting each other. As long as we're healthy and active, we just say "more of us to love" lol...Having said that, we often overindulge in fatty foods, especially cheese. So last night's dinner was a homemade chicken soup. We like to give our digestions a little break now and then! (grudgingly, a big cheesy pizza would have been nice!)

For the soup, I used up the last of my freezer celery. It fared pretty well for being in the freezer for nearly 5 months! This is good because now I know that the supply I froze should be doubled the next time celery is very fresh and on sale. We rarely eat it raw so this really works for us. Back in the fall, I just washed, dried and chopped it up; wrapped it in foil and then a freezer bag and this method has been working for all of my freezables. We've had our deep freezer for a year and a half now and it's so wonderful! 

That got me thinking about my birthday last year when my boyfriend bought me a water bath canner. I started food preservation probably in the fall of 2015 when we invested in the deep freezer. So far I've only used the water bath canner last summer when I bought 80 pounds of tomatoes at the farmer's market for $24.00.

I was so proud of my canning efforts and I definitely got the bug! We still have about a third of this supply in the pantry for the rest of the winter. It was SO worth it! 

I was talking about dehydrating oranges lately. We love our cocktails and go through about a Mason jar of these a year. Last fall I used my dehydrator to dry out all of my herbs that I knew I couldn't use fresh. Since my planned garden probably won't produce enough to can a lot of stuff this year, I'm going to take advantage of that farmer's market so that I can get some fruits and lots more tomatoes to can for next winter. And I am now squirreling away a little bit of money each month to buy myself a pressure canner in 2018! This is very exciting! It's funny when I think back...I thought the whole idea of food preservation was so overwhelming, but if you start a little at a time and buy supplies when you can, you quickly have everything you need! 

I'm now doing some research on freezer meals for those lazy summer nights when I don't feel like cooking. I've already adopted a monthly grocery shopping day and it's been really successful! I took a few days and made a meal plan for a month, then wrote my list based on the flyers. I've saved money, not only on food but also on gas and wear and tear on the car. I used to dread shopping day every two weeks. Now I'm looking forward to next month's plans. Actually I still have enough food for another few weeks, so my "monthly" shopping turned into a 6-week endeavor. Nice huh? I stray a little from the plan, but I have all of my ideas on paper. All of this is so rewarding!

Burger Night!

Last night was burger night. Whenever a nice cut of top sirloin goes on sale, I try to stock up for the freezer. I don't eat beef, but my boyfriend loves it. I have a horrible ailment where food gets stuck at the bottom of my esophagus and beef is the worst culprit. I've had that problem since I can remember as a kid, it's mostly due to stress but some foods make it worse. It's traumatic when it happens because one naturally thinks one is choking...but I always have to remind myself it's the esophagus, not the trachea...it will go down eventually...I've learned to adjust though, but my boyfriend really helps me through the panic. I made myself a chicken burger instead. Mmmmm...whenever we have "diner" style food, I always make milkshakes too, last night was strawberry :)

Have you ever bought something and completely doubted its quality? Last October I did with this meat grinder. It was on sale from $35 to $30 at one of those kitchen outlet stores. It was also on liquidation for 50% off, so I figured why not? It looked so cheap...I didn't think it would really grind meat very well. Oh my gosh was I wrong! I LOVE this thing!!! I haven't bought any ground meat, ground chicken or ground pork in nearly 6 months now. It's perfect. My last shopping day I bought a pork shoulder roast to grind up into sausage patties. This little miracle has a sausage attachment too, but I have no idea where to find casings...I'll have to do a little hunting.

This is my future Moon Garden, formerly my garden! I put everything in that tiny little space last summer because I wanted to fence it off so the dogs wouldn't get in. 

Charlie found her way in anyway last fall. I'll have to do a better job of blocking it off because the Moon Flowers are toxic to animals and I don't want any curious pups eating those flowers. Plus it's right off the porch so I can enjoy seeing the blooms and colours at night from the comfort of my lounge chair. We are lucky that we have a lumber yard close by and they gave us all of these lattice boards that I turned into fences. Some of them were rotting, but we weeded out the good ones. I wonder if we'll be just as lucky this year.

It's pouring rain today, the dogs don't mind though. But I'm wondering where all this snow is going to go as it melts if the balmy weather continues! Hopefully not in our basement!

Garden Plans For 2017

My big seed order arrived!! I've been holding off on starting a full-fledged garden because I'm currently renting. Although I have a landlord who doesn't care much about what I dig up, the biggest issue is all of the tree roots and since my boyfriend and I will be (fingers crossed) buying our property in 2019, I don't want to go to all that effort. I decided that everything I plant this season will be in containers. I just couldn't wait any longer. I started small last year with some tomato plants, a strawberry plant (that the squirrels ate all up!) - which I hope comes back to life this year; and some herbs. My plans are a little more lofty this year!

I kind of went overboard...but I'm in all or nothing this year! I'm planning a few areas for the garden. The first will be a Moon garden. The white Morning Glory species Moonflower blooms at night. The Blue Fescue is a shiny blue/silver ornamental grass that will also shine and the blue Morning Glory will give some colour during the day. I have to make some trellisses for the flowers to climb.

My porch garden will be herbs. I used to plant a dozen different herbs, but I chose these five because they are the ones I use the most. 

I had great success last year with my herbs, except the thyme and oregano didn't even bloom. It could have been the seeds though, they were old. I still have some chives from last summer in my window garden and they are thriving. My rosemary...it's so dry no matter what I do, but I'm hoping it'll come back to life!

I have an area that currently has some wildflowers. I'm going to add these Pollinators to that area and some lavender for my Bee and Butterfly garden. I have a lilac tree that attracts hummingbirds, and I hope they like the flowers as well!

My Vegetable garden is my biggest hope. I chose a lot of different varieties and now I'm in the midst of doing research on container sizes, seed starting, drainage and soil needs. I'm going to get all of my containers at bazaars, flea markets, second hand stores or last resort...the dollar store. We are lucky that once a year, the town has an Earth Day and gives away compost. You just have to bring your containers, so that'll save me a little money. We have a lot of wood lying around too so I'll likely build some raised beds for the lettuce and spinach.

The garden I'm MOST excited about is my pumpkin patch! This is the only seed that will go directly into the ground. I have to assess my space when spring comes to see how many I can plant. I chose most of the seeds because they either grow well in containers and/or are very hardy for Northern climates.

This will take some work to begin with because I'm going to dig up an area that is currently packed with these. I have no clue what they are, nor does the landlord, he said a previous tenant planted them. THESE grow like weeds and took over a big portion of our yard last summer. We liked them for privacy but I want to clear an area for the pumpkins this year. 

I'm going to put up a little fence and some netting around the patch as well, my neighbour says these grackles love to eat the blooms.

I also got a little gift from the seed company, red and white Zinnias for Canada's 150th. I'll put those on my porch too! And I went a little more nuts and ordered more seeds yesterday gasp...yellow peppers, marigolds and nasturtiums for my porch. I have to stop!

And of course, from last year, I still have my Meyer lemon tree. In the last few weeks we've been getting more sun and I've noticed 6 new lemons beginning to grow!

This big one has been the same size since I brought the tree in last fall, it never turned. The nursery where I bought it is closed until March 15th so when they open, I'm going to visit and ask for some advice. I really hope we get some YELLOW lemons this year! 

I've heard advice to start small...but honestly? I'm starting BIG. I don't work, I'm on a disability income, so I have the time to spend outdoors. Plus I have the motivation! Last year I pretty much spent April through the end of October on my porch anyway, I love being outside and this winter is long and hard to handle. But doing things to plan for the garden is cheering me up. I started keeping my eggshells and they are periodically drying out on my seedling shelf - I read that they are good for calcium for the soil. I also am keeping my coffee grounds to add nitrogen where needed; and to keep the feral cats away - I do hope that works, this town has a problem with feral cats unfortunately.

And I'm keeping track of everything in my Garden Journal. I'm really having fun with this! My hope is that when we have bought our property, I'll have some experience and then slowly move from container gardening to a larger garden. The goal is to grow to feed us for the year (not this year though); and eventually find a way to grow during the winter as well!

We still have a ways to go before spring! These are our two huskies, Charlie and Marlene.

And my special little guy Jack always keeping me company with his big mouth eating bones...we adopted these rescue dogs in 2015. I feel so blessed to have dogs in my life again. After having to say farewell to my pugs in 2011 and then 2014, it was a long year without any dogs! Half of the yard is where they'll hang out all spring/summer and fall, so there is room for the dogs to play and for my garden to grow!