New Year Tradition

This Christmas, I realized how much I like creating my own traditions. Jeff and I have created a few traditions that neither of us grew up with and that feel really happy for us. Since getting married three years ago, I have made this appetizer (or dessert, depending on how sweet you like your appetizer) each New Year and thought it was time to share the recipe.


Fruit Salsa:
1 apple, finely chopped (Fujis work very well)
1 1/2 cups of finely chopped fresh fruit- melons, peaches, kiwis or berries all work really well
1 Tablespoon of fruit preserves, any flavour. (I usually add citrus marmalade)

Chop the fruit into a fine salsa and mix well with preserves. Cover and refrigerate at least 15 minutes before serving.

Cinnamon Chips :
  ~8 large sized (10 inch) white or whole wheat flour tortillas
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix cinnamon and sugar together in a small bowl. Cut tortillas into 12 triangle wedges and place in a single layer on baking sheets. Spray each triangle with cooking spray and sprinkle generously with cinnamon sugar. Spray again with cooking spray and bake for 8-10 minutes until golden brown. Repeat with remaining tortilla triangles and allow to cool. Serve with chilled fruit salsa and enjoy!

First signs of spring... before ringing in the New Year

It's an interesting phenomenon, winter on Vancouver Island. The six weeks of wet, heavy, slippery snow we experienced last year was "unusual" (or so everyone told me). My two inaugural winters here were both snowy and I was starting to wonder if Jeff's pre-engagement promise of a nearly snow-free life was a strategy to lure me westward.

This year, we seem to be experiencing a "normal" Vancouver Island winter. It's all right, because it seems that "normal" means that my spring bulbs are popping up before the New Year is rung in. Who knew that was possible within a Canadian winter?!

Christmas Greetings

We wish you a wonderful Christmas and an abundance of happiness, health, peace and joy in the year ahead. Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2009

Anniversary

This week, Jeff and I celebrated our second anniversary. Two years... already! We still look at each other sometimes with expressions of complete puzzlement and ask, "Hey- did you know that we are MARRIED?!?!"

To celebrate, we had dinner at our favourite Thai restaurant and chatted about work, Christmas, Doctor Who, where we'll be in 48 years and all that has happened over the past two. We were digging into our coconut green curry when Jeff let out a peal of spontaneous laughter. Of course, I asked about what had tickled his funny bone and he reminded me of some of the many obscure and absurd suggestions we received while planning our wedding. He is still wonderfully entertained by the octopus wedding dress,

mechanical wedding cake,













and high-heeled flippers.





Thanks to all of you who made those suggestions- you know who you are!



My relocation for marriage was by far, the most difficult thing I have done in life. I can't really sugar coat that one. In the same breath, I can honestly say that marriage really has contained much laughter in the midst of experiences at both ends of the emotional spectrum. Looking back, I really wouldn't have it any other way.

I am so very thankful to find myself even happier and hopeful today

















than I was on this very fine day.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Over the past few weeks, I have been steadily decorating for Christmas. The main tree in the living room has been up for a while and last night, I finally decorated the apartment-sized tree in the basement (to the strains of Jeff watching Superman 2). It must be a hereditary thing because like my mom, I love having the tree(s) up.

A few weeks ago, I went to Jeff's parent's house to give their fir and cedar trees a trim. A bucket of boughs went from this











to a wonderfully-smelling this.

















On Monday night, it briefly looked as Christmassy outside as it does inside. It's surprising what even two centimeters of snow can do to create some Christmas spirit. It was mostly gone by the next day, but here was that particularly festive view out our front door.

Christmas Alert

December 1st arrived quietly, silently transitioning from a rainy November into a quiet, sunny but unusually cold December. I realized one morning that Christmas was sneaking up, not from the calendar but from my cactus. How exactly does it remember every year?!

Same old, same old

There has not been much to post over the past 4 weeks as life has continued in its busy routine. Jeff has been very busy with work and my highlights have been tackling the much needed "clean out the basement" project and completing a community cooking day with the women in our small group that left me with a freezer full of ready made meals (a very good thing). I chopped vegetables for about 6 hours but it is SO worth it.

Jeff's dad had a birthday that required another creative cake.....










Jeff continued building a linen/shoe/mudroom closet.....


and we did this all fueled by caffeine.














And, I read a book that has had such a profound impact on me that I find myself recommending it to everyone I know. One of my favourite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, chronicles her family's year-long commitment to growing their own food and limiting almost all of their food purchases to locally grown items.

Like me, you probably won't rush out to join a crop share association or completley swear off CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) meats but you will be effected by what you learn. I certainly was.

My plan for 2010? Integrate vegetables into my flower garden (if you've seen my flower garden, you will know this is no small task) and hit the local farmers market each week. Small things, maybe, but increasingly important things to me. I guess I am a farm girl at heart, after all.

Olympic invasion

As we all know, the Olympics are just around the corner, just across the water. I used to be an excited Winter Olympic viewer, tuning in for every event. The first two (and only two!) hockey games I ever sat through was when Canadian teams made it to the gold medal match.

Over the past decade, reports of scandal, corruption, high-tech cheating and a lack of ethics has dampened my excitement. As a taxpayer set to foot the bill for the upcoming over-budget games, my excitement has taken a further dive. I have been so disinterested in these games that I tried to convince Jeff to take a vacation that would put us out of the country (and out of viewing reach) during most of the whole thing. Jeff and I were busy the night the great flame came through town although, truth be told, I'm not sure we would have gone to see it.

The Olympic torch moved through Nanaimo on Oct 31-Nov 1 and created a surprising amount of community excitement and pride. Our cousin-nephew Spencer got out of bed at the crack of dawn and was able to touch this little bit of history as it ran by. Just the look on his face gave me a change of heart. Now I'm planning an Opening Ceremonies watching party- want to come and join us?