catching up (with lots of pics, events and food!)

 

wow! it's been a busy week! what the heck am i saying?!?!?!? it's been a really busy month! this time of year always is; as it is harvest time! we harvested a whole pile of stuff over the past few weeks - of course i only have a pic of our carrot harvest - have a gander:



i don't exactly know the weight of our carrot harvest but it is the best carrot harvest since moving here! the top left are white satin - they are lovely! the bottom left are purple haze - we had never planted them before but they are so sweet - we'll plant a ton more next year! and the white side of the board is a mix of napoli and chantennay reds - deelish!

here's some delicious lasagna - i made a giant dish of it and we ate it for 3 days - yummeh!



we haven't harvested our potatoes yet - we just dig up a few as we need them. that's the great thing about growing potatoes in tires - you don't have to harvest them all at once. and, because they are in tires, they can handle a couple of frosty nights with no worries. we usually harvest our potatoes in early december as we don't get solid frosts until mid-december.

however, we did harvest our seed potatoes. we planted 18 tires of 3 varieties this year and then still had a bunch of baby seed potatoes left over. so jambaloney planted a potatoe in every single spare space of our gardens. here is what we harvested for seed:



that's a freakin' lot of brown russets and red chieftains to be used as seed for next year!!! we harvested our irish cobblers a few days earlier and of course i forgot to take a picture!!! but we got a ton of them to be used for seed for next year!!! the seed potatoes keep well in a box in our basement with a old towel put over them, as our basement is basically a cold store!

anyway - HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US - woohoo! i turned 43 on saturday, the 9th, and jambaloney turned 48 on saturday, the 16th. we don't really celebrate our birthdays but usually make special meals for the day of our birthday. i, of course, wanted fish cakes made the plain cape breton way - fresh haddock mixed with creamy smashed potatoes and salt and pepper - MAN - those were delicious!



jambaloney wanted chicken thighs for his birthday!



from left to right - 2 chicken thighs with blow-your-head-off kimchi paste that i make, with additonal kimchi paste for dipping! the next 3 wings on that plate were made using my home-made super hot sauce - he loved both of them! the plate on the right are baked teriyaki chicken thighs with additional teriyaki dipping sauce. it was delicious and we needed baths after we ate them - we were covered in a variety of sauces - bahahahahah!

last week, we had to take a trip into the city - ick! i hate going to the city! but as i have said many times before, thank goodness there is only one city on the island and the population is only 36,000. it was such a beautiful day and we hated wasting it by spending the whole day in the city. here we are in the parking lot of our ONE mall - bahahahahah!



see what i mean about it being such a beautiful day?!??!? and now here's the kicker - this is our busiest street in the city - bahahahahah!

 

here's a beautiful sunset from the other evening - i find at this time of the year that the sunsets are just gorgeous!



and here's some delicously, herbed lebanese hamburger rice - i love it!





anyway, this past wednesday evening was our monthly volunteer fire department meeting. it was held in fourchu so of course we stopped in at our friend C & B's before the meeting. they are really good friends to us! and then we had our first aid/cpr/aed level III course on friday evening from 6:30 to 10 and then on saturday from 9-3. our volunteer fire department takes training very seriously as the ambulances can take anywhere from an hour to 2 hours (if they got lost - which they frequently do!) to get here. that means, we as volunteers need to take our training seriously. we all really enjoyed our training and there was lots of practice on a variety of scenarios.

anyway, our instructor is the same instructor that our communities have used for years - she is wonderful! on friday she brought a bunch of different cookies for us and on saturday, she brought a beautiful chicken-pot pie for us, even though we all brought our own lunches. we had a card thanking her being passed around the hall during our training and we all signed it. we also got her a pretty red thermos cup for her coffee for when she is traveling around doing training.

she thanked us and was very touched, and thanked us for giving up our friday night/satuday in order to be re-certified and stay on top of our training. that's when our matriarch, V, said - "well jambaloney didn't just give up his saturday - he came in on his BIRTHDAY!!!"! then everyone sang happy birthday to jambaloney while he turned beet red and tried to climb underneath the floorboards - it was soooo funny! even the men sang to him - he was sooo embarrassed!!! we all were killing ourselves laughing!!! what was even funnier was that while we were singing, our friend R went into the kitchen, procured a dinner roll, put some jam on top and six lit candles - bahahahahaah! of course we had to sing happy birthday again! then R went over to our instructor, took the gift bag from her and gave it to jambaloney and said "it's not much, but it's from the heart!!!!"! bahahahahahah! oh - we killed a solid 45 minutes just laughing - it was sooo awesome! we have the bestest, funniest people in our community!!!

continuing on, after training we went to our friend C & B's again. we thought we would just stay for a cup of tea and a chat and head home - we were all pretty tired. but nope, once we all realized that we had been there for 3 hours, my friend C busted out a beer for jambaloney and some wine for me (she ALWAYS has my favourite wine at her house!) and a bit of a party ensued! we had such a good time laughing and chatting and telling stories and laughing some more - it was awesome! our friend B cooked up some home-made fries and deep-fried scallop balls - we stuffed our faces and laughed some more. it was a really good time.

i'll leave off here with another sunset.






i love this time of year! i love sitting with my man in our rocking chairs, watching the sunsets and drinking fresh-picked mint tea - it's so lovely!

i hope you all have a wonderful week and i hope that this coming week will be wonderful as well! off to check out your blogs now!