The best laid plans…

… have a tendency to get scrapped when sun and alcohol are involved.

I had great hopes for this weekend – namely, being able to finally paint the garage door and stain the deck, given that we’re in the middle of a whole week *cue collective gasp* with no rain. The plan on Saturday was to go to ultimate playoffs in the morning, hang out with my team at a BBQ, and then stain the deck. Well, I definitely got home early enough to get the deck done – except that instead I took a nap. Courtesy of a gorgeously sunny day with temperatures nearing 30, and Marianne being very generous with her Strongbow at the BBQ. No regrets, though, because how often do I get to take a nap in the shade in our back yard?

The playoffs have been very disappointing this year – none of my teams won free beer. And given that in any group of 4 teams, the top team gets free beer… *sigh* That’s just rotten luck. Each team won our first game and lost the second one in the playoffs. But I still had a great time – thanks everyone for another fantastic season!

Today was much more productive – I turned down an all-you-can-eat sushi outing for dinner (yes, I know, superhuman willpower right there) and actually got home in time to paint the garage door. I think it will need another coat, but already I’m loving the look much more. Original colour with work-in-progress on the left, new colour on the right. The edges were a bit of a pain – I actually had to paint the edges while the door was up and open, since when closed they are covered by the rubber weatherstripping. I’m sure the worker’s safety board would not approve of the gymnastics I had to perform on the ladder to paint the top of the door, but they got the job done.

You know how our little girl kitty is a strange one when it comes to dietary preferences? Well, I have two more items to add to that list – watermelon, and crepes. That’s right. This crazy kitty thinks she’s a dog.

And finally, what I’m sure you’ve been waiting breathlessly for all weekend – the dehydrator update. Oh. My. God. Anna, you’ll have to pry this toy from my cold, determined hands when my trial period is over! Dehydrators are amazing. I can’t believe I’ve never tried this before. I’m pretty sure I’m getting one for christmas. I have to be careful, though – in the tupperware shown below are two mangos and three apples. Have to pay attention when snacking…

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User error

I have a confession to make, to all of you who think we’re great at all of our renovation projects. Well, we’re not. In particular, the ensuite reno project has been full of lessons recent.

Lesson the first: you already own a respirator – why not use it when using wood stain inside a small box of a bathroom? The first coat I did with the door open – well, actually, the door was open in the sense that there was no door. Dan put that in just as I finished the first coat. The second coat, however, was a doozie – I was definitely feeling the side effects of the woozy and nauseous variety afterwards.

Lesson the second: apparently shaking the can of said stain is not enough. No – you need to dig to the bottom and dredge up the actual paint so it can mix with the… rest of the liquid. I don’t know if that stain had just been sitting on the shelf at Home Depot for a while or what, but that stuff was pretty well settled. The epiphany came when, unsatisfied with the cabinet still looking more like cedar than walnut after two coats of walnut stain, I decided to put on a third one and was getting to the bottom of the can. And somewhere along the way, on the next brush stroke I ended up with black goo on my shelf instead of the nice, easy-to-apply liquid I’d had before. Well, now it makes sense! Some panic-filled (imagining having to tell Dan that after all his hard work, he needs to completely redo the cabinet because I screwed up the colour) brushing and rag-rubbing filled the next 20 minutes, but I’m actually very happy with how it turned out. A coat or two of clear-coat, and I may be ready to finally show off our ensuite in all its glory!

Hopefully, my next experiment will not be nearly as complicated as wood stain. Anna has loaned me her food dehydrator to use in preparation for our canoe trip, and (despite the first batch not even being ready yet) I have to say I may be hooked. For now, I’m starting with fruit leather (you know, the real fruit roll-ups) and dried apples and mango. Don’t they look delicious?

What’s that, dear mango? You want me to eat you right now?? Oh, how I wish… but I must resist your charms! You will taste so much better on the 3rd day of our canoe trip than now, when I’ve already eaten at least another cup of your brethren, who were not uniform enough to be put in the dehydrator.

I’ll update you on the progress tomorrow!

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Sweetest husband

I have to say I have the sweetest husband.

This is what greeted me yesterday when I climbed in bed, tucked into my nightshirt – after the boys left for their manly-man canoe trip.

To all the guys who will now have to suffer through a bout of “you-never-do-that-for-me”-itis from their significant others… I sincerely apologize. I love it when Dan finds little ways to surprise me like that. Love you, husband!

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What I’ve been up to

Life has been busy, although nothing stands out as being worthy of dropping everything and running to blog about it. Although, getting a day off work on Tuesday to go golfing with co-workers comes pretty close. We had our annual golf tournament on Tuesday, and our foursome turned in our best performance ever on the course. I even managed to get a trophy (on the ladies’ side) for hitting my ball the closest to the pin on the designated hole on our course. Thanks, guys, I had a fantastic day!

Photo of the golf team, courtesy of Dan

My zucchini plants have finally started producing in earnest, and I found a fantastic recipe to use up all that zucchini. Try it, you’ll melt into a little puddle of satisfaction. Do it!

I took some time on the weekend to catch up on some correspondence. Yes, that’s right, I still write letters (in cursive!) as opposed to emails. Not for everything, but for the more relaxed, casual letter exchanges that can wait a few weeks for the other person to learn about what you’ve been up to. And yes, I also pretty much exclusively write my letters in coffee shops. It’s a great excuse to get away.

A latte and a croissant... I can at least pretend I'm in Europe!

Oh, and that ham and gruyere croissant at Bridgehead – go try that right now, too!

Dan is off on the manly-man canoe trip with Jason and Chris, which has me extra-excited for our own canoe trip in a week’s time. Anna is letting me borrow her dehydrator, so I plan on having some fun miniaturizing some fruits and vegetables. This will be the most gourmet-food-focused canoe trip we’ve ever had!

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The summer is ending

The veggie garden harvest is coming in, the nights are colder, it gets darker earlier… but it also means that haystacks (hay-rolls?) make for some lovely scenery on my way back from ultimate. It got dark very quickly in the 8 minutes that I was stopped, but I think this shot was so worth it.

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The harvest rolls on

Yesterday, my gardening inspection yielded a nice surprise. In spite of my tentative diagnosis of the cause of my rotting zucchini as blossom end rot, I was surprised with two nice and large specimen that I had somehow completely overlooked. Hopefully, it was the overabundance of water from all the rain, after all, that was causing the rot!

As you can see, the tomatoes and cucumbers are carrying on nicely, although I’m a little bit disappointed with the “regular-size” tomato harvest. The small red grape tomatoes and especially the yellow pear mini-tomatoes (so delicious and sweet!) are very prolific, but the large beefy tomatoes seem to be underproducing. What a pity! – I had even found a few recipes for tomato sauce, etc. I may have to go buy some at the farmer’s market just so I can test out the recipe.

The plum harvest this year will be dismal, unfortunately – this is supposed to be the good year, but we suspect that the Mother’s Day frosts killed off a good percentage of the blossoms. *sigh* But I loved that plum jam!

The fall planting of mesculin mix is well on its way, and the spinach is not far behind – soon our salads will once again be made wholly with organic, homegrown produce!

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Hiking pictures!

I keep forgetting to mention this, but I’ve finally edited and uploaded the pictures from our White Mountains hiking trip.

Go take a look!

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Harvest update

This is my harvest from Thursday. Isn’t everything gorgeous? I think I’m pretty set for garlic for the fall and winter. Although I definitely plan on hitting up the Carp Garlic Fair again this year to try a few more varieties of garlic.

We got just a couple of teeny tiny tomatoes this time around, but lots more are on the way.

Aren’t they gorgeous? I was stunned when I found out that Dan didn’t know that real cucumbers came with little spikey things on them. But… that’s how you know it’s a real, fresh cucumber!

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White Mountains – Touristy Day 3

On Monday morning, I let us sleep in just a tiny bit before waking up Dan so we had time to explore the area just a bit more as non-hikers.

Our morning started at Moonbeam Cafe with a delicious egg and gourmet-bread filled breakfast. We bought a loaf of bread to take home with us, and Dan claimed those were among the best sandwiches I’ve ever made. Hmm… I’m all for good sandwiches, but that’s a bit far to go for bread! They also had the cutest (not so) little flowerpot in the window.

We ambled over to the train museum – unfortunately it was closed, but fortunately most of their exhibits were sitting on the tracks outside.

This little vignette almost sold me on the place – I mean, c’mon, a library with a reading area on the porch?! How awesome is that?

We drove to North Conway with the intention of sightseeing a bit and maybe hitting up the Outlet mall I had been told about. We stopped at Moat, one of the local breweries, and decided to linger for a while.

I’m glad I skipped the shopping, since it left us time for adventures such as these.

Driving back, we had possibly the shortest border crossing ever – with no car in front of us and a bored border guard who listened to my yammering on about the bread and beer we were bringing back for all of 30 seconds before passing back the passports and waving us through. Of course, this was balanced out by being stuck in Montreal traffic for over an hour. Never again, Montreal – you are dead to us as a road-trip pass-through point.

For a getaway weekend planned about two weeks previously, I’m very happy with how this turned out. New Hampshire is absolutely gorgeous, and I would love to come back in the fall. The peaks in the White Mountains are nothing to scoff at, and there are still plenty of them left for us to explore. Even the food was above and beyond any of our expectations! Now, if only all this wasn’t a 7-hour drive away…

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White Mountains – Hiking Day 2

Sunday morning, we got up early, and following my little warm-up excursion, took the ridge trail back up to the hut. Ideally, we would have continued on with our route after hitting Mt. Adams, but because you’re not allowed to camp in the alpine, and the rest of the trail is ALL alpine until Mt. Washington, we had to descend to spend the night.

Burdened with all our gear, Sunday’s hike was much slower, but we still made decent progress. I’ll admit that I don’t want to always hike around with 40 lbs on my back, but I’m glad to have done it once, just to know that I can do it. Also, it really reinforced why I never want to gain that much weight – hiking around, even on a flat, with an extra 40 lbs on you is HARD, especially on the knees.

The Gulfside trail took us pretty much directly over the remaining summits on our route, including Jefferson, Mt. Clay, and finally Mt. Washington, possibly the most tackily touristy mountain in the vicinity, with a $29 bus tour and a $70 railroad leading right to the top. Now the tourists become the attraction?

The hike down had a fairly unpleasant section, which made us question just how this could be on arguably the most popular trail in the park. We saw plenty of day hikers, including people with dogs and kids, while the unpleasant section rivalled some of the stuff I’ve seen on our truly back-country scrambles. My conspiracy theory is that this section is intentionally kept in such a poor state so that after trying it once, people decide to pony up for the bus tour next time.

Even with extra un-budgeted-for time spent navigating the Tuckerman’s Ravine Trail down (really, avoid it), we had time to enjoy the hot tub and pool at our hotel before heading out for dinner. Here, we were pleasantly surprised to find a somewhat boho pub in the middle of our sleepy host town of about 1700. Perfectly grilled crabcakes, golden samosas, perfectly spiced lamb burgers on flatbread buns (of which I of course forgot to take a picture because I was too busy gobbling it all down) – and a selection of local craft beers made for a wonderful evening. If you ever find yourself in Gorham, NH, definitely stop by Saalt Pub and try Chef Kenny’s food and the welcoming hospitality of everyone else in this lovely joint.

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