All my ideas seems soooo glorious before the follow through

It all began during one of the many trips to the store to buy the weekly allotment of food for the family. I was tasked with a list that was by no means long but was difficult to execute, such as kids cereal (the kind they want or the kind I want them to want), and yogurt (again, so many damn options, and flavours, and delivery methods of yogurt I was doomed to get the wrong kind), I believe I bought the wee little kids cups when I was supposed to get the tubes!

Anyways, before I actually got bogged down in all those damn choices I came across a large box near the end of fruit and veggies. It was full of 4 to 5 foot lengths of brown-ugly-bamboo-looking things. I almost walked right by with a smirk that everyone would have read as "Ha! no one wants to buy a 4 foot piece of creepy bamboo. Am I right?", but my eye caught the label as I passed by.

"Raw Sugar Cane - $1.98"

Well holy crap I stopped in my tracks and pulled the nicest piece of raw sugar cane I had ever seen (it was also the first piece I had ever seen) out of that box and strutted away with an amazing coolness and unconcerned look of "Oh this, I buy raw sugar cane all the time, I feed my 27 year old box turtle* Gorki and then transform the rest of the stalk into a crude flute that I use to express my worldly angst with."

* I really don't think you should ever feed sugar cane to a turtle, it just seems like something someone else would do.

Though I am sure that in those 30 seconds I went from smug smirk to excited as hell and then to cool calm I looked like an idiot that buys something without knowing what he is going to do with it.

..........sigh

See, I have not idea what to do with this thing.The drive home I envisioned the family being excited to see thing new 'food' and rally around plans to consume it in what ever ways we saw fit. Instead all I got was my oldest boy grabbing it shouting "COOL!" and taking a swing at the cupboards with it, resulting in a loud crack. Boy did he look sheepish until we saw that no damage was done to the cupboard door.

Mom asked, "So what do we do with it?". To which I replied "Eat it!"

Well that was the end of that conversation and she wandered off.

I heard her shortly after share a laugh with our daughter when she said "Dad is going to eat a branch for supper."

After a few quick minutes on the Google and I had a whole list of ideas to utilize my length of sugar cane for.

• Soup
• Chew it
• Cook with it
• Kebob skewers
• Tea sweetener
• Boil down in to a natural sweetener
• Coffee stir stick and sweetener (seems like the coolest idea ev-er!)
• Fruit kabobs

...and the list goes on.

I then got out the cutting board, my biggest knife, and a wee paring knife. The directions I found said to cut the cane as close to the knuckles or joints and then peel the hard exterior to get the sweet juicy sugar cane.

Well it was like cutting a piece of 2x2! I had to slam the palm of my hand on the back of the butchers knife over and over and over to get the damn thing to cut. 

So I chopped and swore, and peeled and chopped, and worked so damn hard to turn this stick into nice pieces of soft sugar cane. 

The pictures online made it look so much easier!So with my tiny pile of yummy sugar cane I approached the family for a taste. The one site said to chew the sugar cane and suck all the sweet juice out and then spit the pulp out afterwards. So I thought the kids would be excited to chew some natural sugar.

......sigh

I only convinced the middle guy to give it a try. And after he spit out the pulp he said "This is the best thing I have ever had before in my whole life Dad!". So I offered him as many as he wanted because it would be just him and I, he said "No thanks." and walked away. 

I ended up trying a few different recipes with the sugar cane and not a one of them really worked out. Oh well, at least I have a two foot piece of sugar cane in the pantry and a deep tissue bruise on my palm to remind me of what it could have been. I can still recollect a faint image of the family sitting around, tlaking and laughing while chewing on the fresh raw sugar cane and drinking some home made iced tea lightly sweetened by nature.

I don't think I will ever learn my lesson, because  on Monday I bought a giant can of Gulab Jamun. I plan on cracking it open tonight, when Mom is at her university class, and subjecting the kids to this yummy hot sweet dessert. Deep fried dough balls soaked in sweet syrup, they should just give up and get used to me forcing new strange foods on them, because I don't plan on stopping.

Best way to finish off a fantastic Indian buffet!

Eating what we 'catch'

   A wee breaking of our fast on the front porch in Sooke.

  Morning walk on Wiffin Spit in Sooke. Wiffin Spit from our pilotless drone that came with our new Nikon D3200. We are that dark spot beside that light area. 

Our first pothole we splashed in, nice and shallow here.

A little dip in the second pothole we visited. Being submerged in the icy water was quite the shock to the human body!

Our youngest did not want to part with his egg that he picked.

After dropping and cracking his precious egg he was more than happy to eat it!

Our middle child prepared with the lid in case the crab escaped the transfer.

Our first morning in the cabin in Sooke was pretty decent, except for the early birds wanting their worms. But it seems that when in a cabin or camping early mornings are a guaranteed occurrence.

We started off with pancakes, waffles and toast and some strong (new coffee makers are always fun to learn) and finished off on the front porch planning our day.

We first headed off to the natural peninsula in the Sooke Inlet called Wiffin Spit, cue the wild crazy laughter from our oldest boy. It is a full kilometer long and almost stretches across the whole opening of the inlet. We were advised that is was a good spot to see sea otters, sea lions, and seals.

After a good hike out on Wiffin Spit, and disturbing many early morning walkers peaceful stroll, we headed back with nothing to be seen.

Until we spied two sea otters diving and swimming near the shore! The kids were excited and watched them for a good 53 seconds and were then off to the Boardwalk down the coast a bit.

The board walk was a cool little walk down a bunch of stairs and then along the coast for a couple hundred yards. It was a great view of the inlet and is supposed to be a great place to watch whales that happen by the area, no sea animals for us though.  We dis meet a nice boxer named Lola though.  She was rescued by the "Without Borders Boxer Rescue" and taken in by this super nice family when she was only a pup.

Once we made it back to the van we were off to the destination that everyone was excited to see...the Meadery!!!

I think it is called a meadery?

There is a little farm outside of Sooke that is a honey farm and a meadery (they make their own mead!) called the Tugwell Creek Farm and Meadery. After our trek down the coastline we found out that meaderies are closed on Tuesdays. Crap.

So we went back to the cabin to drown our sorrows in lunch, and a nap for the wee one.

After the rest we were off to what the locals called the Potholes, well I gues the government calls them the potholes too because it is called the Sooke Potholes Regional Park. But this is a place along the Sooke river where over many years the water has worn away the rock to form these little pools along the bank that are great for swimming.

So we vanned it up to the park and hiked down to two of the different pools. They we great!

The water was cold, clean, and clear. It was a popular place for people to hop in a tube and float around, swim the little pools (the first one was about 100 feet wide and in the middle we couldn't see the bottom), or to bask on the pebbly beaches.

It was a great afternoon in the sun. And we are amazed at how many different places to swim we have found that have been absolutely different than each other.

It was supper time by the time we left the potholes (which by the way look absolutly nothing like a pothole.) and so we were going ot stop for some fresh prawns at one place and some lettuce at another.

At the first stop we bought some prawns but Dad, in his wisdom, also bought a live 2 lbs Dungeness Crab to boil and eat.

At the second stop we bought some mixed fresh greens and jam and in talking to the owners Ellen and Dick ended up spending an hour and a half touring their farm. It turns out Ellen is from Saskatchewan and has been turning her little plot into her little prairie oasis.

She has a great garden (which she plants wheat and oats!), a few sheep, some goats (which they milk and make cheese out of), a few geese and ducks, a dwindling flock of chickens (a pesky racoon has been taking the hens), and a great little orchard of fruit and nut trees!

This was an absolute fantastic evening! The kids got to pick eggs from the coop, eat mulberries and thimble berries, feed the goats, see all the trees (they spun around the mulberry bush, and picked artichokes from their garden.

Ellen and Dick, or Grandpa Dick and Grandma Ellen as they introduced themselves to the kids, were amazing, and sweet to the kids. Ellen showed everything to the kids and did not just talk to the adults and even picked up our youngest and excitedly walked him to the almond tree they had.

If you are even in Sooke keep your eyes open for a little sign that mentions fresh veggies and baking, Ellen and Dick are busy people (their veggie and baking stand in the yard is a self serve and pay deal with a slotted tin to put your money in) so hopefully you get the opportunity to meet them!

We wantd the kids to eat the eggs they had gathered so we planned on making some scrambled eggs with supper, except our little guy had different ideas. He did not want to part with his egg. He carried it back to the cabin and would not hand it over. But he ended up cracking it pretty good when he was playing with it and toy car he had. Then he was ready for the circle of life to take place, once he realized that the egg that he had gathered from the hen house was nothing but...an egg.

Supper was a buffet of sandwiches, salad, scrambled eggs, veggies, crab legs (receipe below), prawns, hot dogs, and yogurt tubes. We ended the evening with a marshmallow roast over a little fire and plopped the kids to bed before 9:00 pm.

We did end up finding some of the local mead at a pub in town, so Dad enjoyed a glass of honey mead and Mom a cup of tea.

Tomorrow we are back to Nanaimo for two nights then homeward bound.

Dad's Not Famous Crab recipe

ingredients

1 -2 lbs dungeness crab - as live as possible

1 big pot

lots of water

1 stove

First you put lots of water in the big pot. Then you put them both on the stove and boil.

Once the lots of water is boiling, place the as live as possible crab in the water, bottom down, and slam lid on pot as fast as possible so you don't have to see the angry crab boil.

After 20 minutes remove cooked crab and consume!

Paint, paint, paint...

This weekend, even though we started on Thursday, we primed and painted the basement. 

That is it! No wacky fun fueled adventures as a family, just a weekend. And really it was good.

Between painting and laundry, and lawn and....other stuff, the kids went to visit Great G & G. When they returned I asked how it went and the response from our oldest was,

"Grandma helped me fix my crocheting! And then I did another row! And then we had a snack."

And the middle guys' response was,

"I got $10 for graduating...that it."

And he skipped away happy as could be and dropped the $10 in our giant vacation piggy bank in the living room. By the way that pig is heavy as hell! it must be made with concrete and plaster. But it will be fun to smash it to bits once it is full.

And on Saturday, just when we were worrying that the kids were geting bored our oldest walks into the kitchen with her friend and says, "We want ot make cookies and deliver them to our friends."

Well that started a process of cookie making, cookie cooking, cookie cooling and cookie bagging, followed by running down the street with arms flaying wildly and smooshing those fresh cookies to crispy cookie dough and melted chocolate.

The friends loved the cookies and the girls spend 2 hours creating their plan, reading a recipe and making cookies, waiting (for what seemed like forever!!!!) for the cookies to cool, and walking a couple blocks to go and make some friends happy.

A pretty good idea that is for sure!

Well Sunday night we finished the painting, till we have to touch it up after carpet installation. The laundry was done and we were looking forward to a tea and a couch.....

Then we heard a thump and our big girl came downstairs complaining about a sore tummy. Sigh! That is the way it goes I guess. 

Our Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

(Nestle Toll House Cookies ~ with some changes)

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (this batch was from the mixed whole wheat and white flour bin...no one noticed)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3/4 cup cooking splenda
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar splenda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs (egg substitute) 
• 1 1/4 cups chocolate chips

Directions

Turn on oven to 375° F.

Mix flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one glug at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Add chocolate chips to batter and be prepared to give same amount of chips to kids helping as reward. Cook them. 

Cook for 9 to 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Don't let cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes, instead just consume scalding hot melty soft cookies; place any left overs in a bag to be shaken vigerously for 2 minutes. 

All done

May Long Weekend, why are you so long?

Now don't get me wrong I love a good old long weekend. But this one was different for us, we were busy!

1. We rebuilt a deck in our backyard (with some necessary assistance from a neighbour),

***pictures coming***

2. Helped build the neighbours deck (he helped us what was I supposed to do!),

***pictures coming, maybe. His deck is nicer than mine***

3. Went out to grandpa's farm and planted a massive garden (the kids planted their pumpkins),

Mom enjoying an old fashioned garden planting!We have been working to ensure or kids know where food comes from. We are by no means as ethical a maybe we should be when it comes to what we consume, but we try to show our kids the importance of food, the environment, and taking care of our planet.

We have been helping with the large garden at the farm for a few years, and last year we stepped up our gardening game.

We built a garden box and grew some carrots, chives, cucumbers, and onions. And we also spent more time at the farm. We planted,weeded (occasionally), watered, and then harvested.

Digging for potatoes in 2011This year we are going to try and get the kids even more involved and engaged (we will see how that goes!). 

Posing by his pumpkin plant

4. Spent a morning in Moose Jaw (see post below),  

5. Had a great walk at Wascana park and fed geese and ducks at Water Fowl Park,

and then

6. Ended the long weekend with a wiener roast in the backyard. 

the blank looking at fire stare......fire......

It was a great way to end the weekend. Grandma and Grandpa came over and sat around the fire with us. An we all got to relax out doors and reflect on the past 4 days. The kids were happy to be eating macaroni and hotdogs outside!

It did get a bit hairy once the hose came out and the kids plastic slide was covered in grass and water and the little guy was sitting on top of the slide screaming "Cock-a-doodle Do!!!!!" over and over again, but overall it was a good evening.

Wait!

I forgot the s'mores. We ate s'mores. Lots of s'mores. It looked like our middle one got into a fight with a s'more and the s'more won! Followed by mores s'mores!

Not your ordinary s'mores. These beauties though began like all other s'mores. 3-5 marshmallows burnt to hell then the one perfectly toasted brown one. But the s'more upgrade comes when you smash your roasted mallow between two chocolate coated biscuit cookies.

It is amazing!

No fumbling with chocolate bars and scalding marshmallow between graham crackers. This is the whole package just waiting for your expertly cooked marshmallow. mmmm!

And while we are talking about food making this weekend great. I would like to pass on a drink recipe that we heard about from our awesomest friends ever (I have likened it to our family dating our friend'sfamily, we are together so much. It is the best!).

I will make up a name for the drink right now and call it....Summer Orange Juice or Daddy's Orange Drink For Hot Days, or even a Summer Screwdriver. 

If you look close you can see an empty glass that once had the yummy cocktail

RECIPE

1 ounce Pinnacle Whipped Vodka - it tastes like Cool Whip!!!

1/2 orange - all the juice squeezed into glass with ice - make sure to get some pulpy bits, they make the drink work.

top your glass with Ginger Ale - we used diet Ginger Ale. 

ENJOY - next weekend we want to try this blended....

So that was our looong weekend. Deck built, clean laundry piled in our bedroom waiting to be put away, kids exhausted, and we are both tired, slightly sunburnt (just Dad), and happy. Except Ang - she started getting sick yesterday. 

Update on 2012-05-24 03:31 by Steve Torgerson

Pictures of the 'new' deck

So I finally got around to taking a picture of the deck this morning. It is nice to have a deck with out 1/2 gaps between boards that includes spoons, toys, garbage, a shoe, etc.

Last Thursday night once we had taken the railing off, with help from our friendly neighbourhood neighbour-man, our middle son who is not really afraid of things, he seems more to be challenged to try dangerous things, runs full tilt to the edge of the deck and launches himself off the side to the lawn below. 

The drop is only 3 feet, and he made it unscathed, but this is the kids who broken a bone near his elbow and had to get it pinned after falling 1 short foot 2 summers ago.

poor guy waking up after having 3 pins put in his elbow.

So I am ordering the railing today!