Sunday, February 7, 2016

battening down the hatches!

we have started our preparations for getting ready for "blizzard warning february 2016" in our area. apparently some of atlantic canada is being hit tomorrow, more on tuesday and then some on wednesday. we're not expecting the blizzard until tuesday. so we started our preps today and will have all of the hatches battened down for tuesday morning. which sucks because i had my dental consultation for tuesday which we will now have to cancel.

anyway - we have been having a sorta milder winter overall, always good. and it looks like we are in for an early spring. fingers/toes and every other appendage that can are crossed for that.

we've been eating really good. here's some homemade sweet and sour pork with rice, homemade pickled beets and our own mung bean sprouts.


something that i have been meaning to mention since we got off dairy about 2 months ago (except for butter. they will have to pull the delicious butter from my cold dead hands!) - is alternatives to dairy. like soy milk. and almond milk. like this:


our friend W sent us a bazillion of delicious almonds and when we quit dairy - we started making almond milk. almond milk is sooooo easy to make and tastes delicious if you are using W's super almonds!!! we love the stuff!

jambaloney likes his weekly steak and he works so hard - he deserves it. he eats more steak in the spring summer and fall - but when he finds good steak on sale - he buys up a bunch and then we have plenty of it in the deep-freeze waiting for the next sale. here's his steak, potatoe salad made with our own potatoes and carrots, our own sprouts and our own beets.



jambaloney was on-site to work for the day this past friday. he had a really good day and accomplished and delivered much! i wish i could tell all of you the kind of stuff he is doing but it is proprietary work. just trust me when i say that he is guaranteeing work for all of our friends for many years to come!

spent the morning canning beets and don't have any idea for dinner? grab a can of  atlantic sardines (the very best on the planet!), some sprouts, some avocado and some lime. that'll fill you up and keep you working for the rest of the afternoon.


hey! look! it's a basket of beets!


stored in the basement in a box with a towel covering them for months now. we are running out of our last jar of pickled beets so it was time to bring them up and make more (i make 4 jars at a time during fall and winter and spring months. we eat a lot of pickled beets during those seasons. plus we love beets roasted and/or steamed!).

here's jambaloney peeling a bunch of them while i make the pickling brine.


once the pickling brine is ready, we stick it out in the snow to cool down and fill our jars with beets. once the brine is cooled, pour over the beets and yummo! 4 jars of pickled beets to enjoy for the next month and a bit!


this recipe is the simplest recipe known to man but tastes so goooood! we love it! we stored one of these jars in the fridge - we still have a half bottle left from our last pickling - and the other 3 jars went down to the basement, kept in a dark and cool place to be brought up as we need. we love pickled beets and we re-use our beet juice when a jar is emptied - we then re-fill the jar with garlic and/or onions and/or turnip! and we love all of that too!

here's tonight's supper - stirfry with rice, orange and kimchi! the sauce is loaded with ginger and garlic.



now we are settling in, checking over our list of what needs to be where and things that have to be checked before getting ready for "blizzard 2016" on tuesday. the sunset after supper was beautiful:


too beautiful not to share!


the skies here are amazing! by end of day tuesday we are expecting at least a foot of snow, a day full of blizzard and 100km (60miles) winds gusting all day. we'll be ready for it. it won't be pretty and we aren't looking forward to it - but we'll be ready.

if you don't hear from us for a couple of days - week - no worries. we might be getting this storm sooner than expected, we may lose power or it may blow over us. weather here is so unpredictable!

but for the rest of the evening - we're cuddling up in our chairs, doing a marathon of mad men and dealing with the unpredictable when it happens.

we hope you all had a great weekend!

14 comments:

  1. I don't think I've ever had pickled beets, though I love beets. 2nd Man's not the biggest fan but maybe he hasn't had good ones yet, ha. Beets grow so easily down this way, I'm definitely planting some this Spring.

    Stay safe, and warm! (I don't have to worry about 'stay full' cause something tells me that's not a problem with all that great food!).

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  2. Nothing better than a good steak!!!

    So how do you make the almond milk anyway?

    Stay cozy warm and safe and enjoy the snow!!!

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  3. RMan also get a weekly steak - wishes it was more often (like every night), but don't all men... LOL (Someone has to look after him and make sure he stays healthy for a l-o-n-g time!!)

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  4. Sweet Kymber,

    Being prepared is always a good thing. Love, love, love almond milk. It's so much better for you than that store bought milk. How's it going being off of the dairy stuff? Do you feel better?
    YUM beets........one of the best vegetables to eat and can. Good to see Jam loves them too. It's hard to get Bulldog Man to eat them. He loves them roasted with other root vegetables, not pickled :-(
    Girlie, we sold the estate house and property to a fine military Veteran and his family. Soon we will be closing on the house and handing his family all the keys. Were so excited and happy for this family. The estate was a Veteran's and it's going to a military family.
    Stay warm, and safe......batten down the hatches, LOL...... Were having 50+mph winds today, with temperatures in the low 40's.
    Sending hugs and love to you both.
    Your Friend,
    Sandy

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  5. As always, your blog is a feast that never ends.

    It has been a milder winter for us too this year. We seem to be right on the division line for when they are having an El Nino event and we can have years like this or ones with tons of snow and cold weather. I'm glad we ended up on this side this year.

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  6. food picture = yum
    sunset pictures = amazing.

    being battered by the latest storm here. I am positive that if we were still in the last house we would be flooded now. Being battered by the wind on the top of a hill beats, wind and flooding any day.

    You keep safe and warm. Ps can you do a post on your sprouts. I will put up some pictures of ours. so you can give me some pointers. also, do you sometimes cook your sprouts? we cook mung bean ones stir fry and add as side dish for chinese food. And I add them to soup like croutons. never done them before but I have sunflower seeds sprouting right now

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  7. My goodness! If I was to be snowed in, I would hope to be at your house. Such great food and so much of it yours. Wonderful!

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  8. As usual, you made me hungry! Hope the storm is less than predicted.

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  9. Your food looks yummy. I read a couple of weeks ago that food prices in Canada are going out of sight. $8.19 for eggs, $15.00 for cereal, etc.
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-13/canadians-panic-food-prices-soar-collapsing-currency

    How are you faring with the rise in prices? It's only a matter of time here.

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  10. We did have a good weekend and I made some new recipes...one I liked and Ralph loathed! One we both liked. As usual your food pics made me hungry! Keep safe you two!

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  11. Food pictures - always so good. Almond milk has never tickled my fancy so much. It tastes thin to me.

    Beets for borscht are the bomb.

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  12. Your meals always look so yummy. I was wondering, I might try to dry some sliced beets. They could come in mighty handy in certain circumstances.
    Also love your pictures.
    Our best to you both.

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  13. Looks like you are getting through all the cold and snow pretty well. I know you are eating better up there than I am down here. I was just bragging on your kimchi a few minutes ago. I don't know anybody else that cooks such a variety, Kymber. Or pays as much attention to doing nice things for your mate.

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  14. tried to reply to jam at pp's site but wouldn't go through.

    someone told me his mom controlled squirrels by putting out lemonade. don't know if she used the powdered because i didn't have the sense to ask.

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