have a very Merry Christmas!

from the both of us, here at the Manor, have a very Merry Christmas...

and a blessed New Year!


be sure to remember the reason for the season!

and try to take out all of your Christmas stress by hugging and enjoying all of your relatives and friends over the holidays.

and be sure to remember how happy we are to have met all of you...over a blog!

there are so many things to be thankful for this Christmas season!

check out this gorgeous sunset -

no staying snow yet tho. it has been absolutely gorgeous this past few days.

here's a yummy salad - tangerines, pomegranate seeds, kiwi and defrosted blueberries that jambaloney picked in august - can you say anti-oxidants? with a very light dressing of oil, apple cider vinegar (with the mother), unpasteurized honey, fresh ginger and tons of fresh garlic...lots of good stuff to keep you healthy!

and of course - our weekly bulgogi. the side dishes change with each bulgogi meal...but we have it once a week. letting the meat sit in it's marinade for 3 days is actually a method of fermentation. and we all know how good fermentation is for us, right?

two kinds of kimchi, bulgogi, rice, turmeric fried cabbage, roasted carrots, fermented beets and daikon radish and fresh apple slices....yum!

check out these skies. yes - this is what we look at instead of tv. crazy huh? ya, but we're crazy kind of people.

wow eh? even when it's overcast and grey here...it's still amazingly beautiful. we take time each day to thank our Creator for this beauty.

yum. pasta with olive oil, butter, parsley, a ton of garlic - like a ton - and parmesan. and that's our last tomatoe of the season. thank you little tomatoes for lasting this long. we enjoyed growing, harvesting and eating every one of you. we should have tomatoes again in june. fingers crossed.

poor Helga hasn't had a trip to the river in weeks - she's getting stir crazy. so we took her down. how beautiful eh? it's hard to not feel thankful all of the time.

here's the little engine that brought Helga to the river. she rode on the back and held on to jambaloney. me? i had to walk down. jeesh! oh and walk back up. double jeesh!

Helga was climbing trees, i was enjoying the sky, and jambaloney was getting our boats all set for winter.

oh my gawd! is there anything better than home-made chopped liver pate, some onion bagel pieces, a hard boiled egg, some cheese, some apple, some home-fermented beets, some olives and some sweet pickled onions? and all on a plate? and ready to share with your baby? for your evening snack? is there anything in the world that is better than this?

i think not.

except another usual sunset. they really are all this fantastic folks. i'd upload pics of the sunsets daily if it didn't recquire so much work.

here's another frosty morning. and lots of happy birds.

they are so beautiful to watch every day. we love the birds here.

speaking of beautiful....how about some proper polish cabbage rolls? my grandmother from my mother's side, her name is Audrey Irena Polutnik. she was born in norway, her mother was polish and her father was ukranian. she served in the canadian forces during ww2. and she made some mean cabbage rolls. she taught my mother and my mother taught me.

you core a head of cabbage and then put the head in boiling water and peel off individual leaves. you cook your hamburger and your rice and then combine them. you put a bit of your hamburger/rice mixture on to each boiled cabbage leaf. you line your pan with cabbage leaves. then you put your crushed tomatoes on the leaves. add sauerkraut. sauerkraut is a must in cabbage rolls. add some tomatoe sauce that is stinkingly full of garlic. add your rolls. more sauce. a ton more sauerkraut. more sauce.

cover the top of your cabbage rolls with more leaves. more sauce. more sauerkraut. you must add sauerkraut. cover and cook for an hour at 350.

then enjoy. you can add a side dish if you like. but cabbage rolls fill all of the food groups - cabbage as your veg, tomatoe as your fruit, rice as your starch, hamburger as your meat....and tons of sauerkraut - which is a food group all on it's own.

it's the season. merry christmas to you all.

yet another trench update

jambaloney here!

okay apparently you weren't bored by the door doctor post... so i'll try to put you all to sleep with this post !!

yes.... MORE trench stuff !! you might remember the last update was after reports of my death due to poor driving were exaggerated ;-)

first up - sky pic for helga:

so, back (waaaay back) in november, i was pretty much finished digging the trench (my god, it's been so long i should be calling  it Mr. trench, i feel like it is an acquaintance  ;-)

as it got deep, there we some cave-ins, i had to dig a few of these out ..

they block the flow of water from the basement, this will be remedied with pipe..

meanwhile, in the basement, i had a good start on the "inside" part of the trench..

and i was finally able to get a test piece of drainpipe under the footing of the foundation - that is an amazing accomplishment!!!

tools of the trade and a pile of gravel that i moved outside for another drainage project... yes, i know, it is hard to hold onto the edge of your seat for that long!!

another drainage project being the basement door - can you see a problem with water accumulating here?? yep...it all flows downhill!!!but this is @ the back of the manor, the trench is at the front..

one thing i need is a "drain box", luckily large garbage pickup was early november and i snagged this lobster  packing crate for free  - it is perfect !!!

drilling holes with the speedbore bits, just like the sump pit liner !

i took the test drain pipe out for a fitting (there was 6 feet of 100 mil/4 inch pipe laying around when we got here)..

here is a close-up..

and here is a test fitting in place in the basement..

some jiggling around and we have a permanent liner for the drain!! awesome!!

lastly... a helga-approved sunset!

there is, of course, more.... but like your favorite teevee show, you will have to wait for the next episode, until then.....

cheers all!

wow...it's been a while! edited!

i am so sorry for my lack of regular posts...but i have been hit with the migraine of migraines!!! i always know to expect doozy migraines at the solstices...but the solstice isn't until december 21. not sure what that means or may portend - yuhikes! maybe the mayans were making sure that i got my doozy before the world ended? thanks mayans!

anyway, when i get the doozy migraines, i am food sensitive, light sensitive, sound sensitive, stomach sensitive and cannot be anywhere near a computer. so if i have missed your latest posts over the past 2 weeks, no worries, i am a speed reader and will catch up on all of them!

jambaloney has been holding down the fort while i am curled up in a ball under the couch with my blankie and pillow...but a man who is winterizing the cottage, digging trenches, and getting rocks and sand from the beach still needs to be fed! i crawl out from under the couch several times a day and try my best to feed him with jackhammers pounding in my head. and although i often vomit any food i eat during a doozy migraine...i still try to get some food in me. it's hard tho. but i MUST feed the man!

here's a nice light salad that makes a great lunch and uses ingredients that are seasonal:



mandarins, pomegranate seeds and romaine. the dressing is a nice, light dressing filled with antibiotics: olive oil, apple cider vinegar with the mother, un-pasteurized local honey, and tons of fresh garlic and ginger - divine!

and here's another. we get some lovely local salmon fillets here and usually cook up two 6-ouncers in a skillet or on the bbq. however, we only ever eat 1 and a half fillets. no trouble - that just means that the next day, we can have a delicious salmon salad. here's one with avacado, romaine and home-made caesar dressing - yummeh!



a hungry working man needs a good supper - how about some delicious bacon, brie, parmesan and mushroom pasta??? very filling indeed. a little parsley and some kimchee on the side.



dear sweetest sis, Helga, please forgive me. these pics uploaded wrong and this beautiful sky pic was supposed to come out first. as my head is still pounding, i am unable to re-right the pics. please forgives? i love you so much!

 

every single day, no matter if it is rainy or cloudy or gray - we still get spectacular skies. i love the sky here on my beautiful island!

here's a nice lunch of baked home-grown russet potatoes with butter, cheese, sour cream and bacon...with some apple and fried mushrooms - that will keep a man in a trench, eh Winston? bahahahah!



 as well as some homemade macaroni and cheese...i like to use old cheddar, medium cheddar and monterey jack in my homemade cheese sauce....and tons of salt and pepper. in fact, i believe that mac and cheese is simply a vehicle for salt and pepper. jambaloney likes red pepper flakes on his.



one of the most important foods in our diet is organ meat...and we can get it really cheap here. after a long hard day of winterizing the cottage or digging more trenches - here is a nice supper of fried liver, onions, bacon, mushrooms, red mashed potatoes with the skins, some fermented beets and fermented carrots and ginger. i made myself eat some of this even tho my head was pounding.

 

another thing to always be sure to use in your food is a variety of spices! here is some chicken curry and edamame with more fermented beets and carrots. make sure to include homemade fermented food in at least one meal a day - your body will love you for it!

i haven't downloaded my pics from my camera but over the past 2 weeks there has been much tom young goong soup, roast and bulgogi. all of which have helped me through my migraine...and helped jambaloney with all of the outdoor work that he has been doing. i am thrilled that he is still in bed - can you believe that it is almost 9am? he is tired and needs the sleep. me - i bin up since about 3:30am, doing absolutely nothing of importance except listening to the pounding of my head.

again, i am sorry that i have been away so long. and i will get to all of your blogs. thank you to everyone who sent emails asking if i was ok - i have read them and will get to answering them in a day or two. thank you for your concern. it is much appreciated here at the Manor.

be good to yourselves for me!

EDITED TO ADD: holy moly! our 2 yr anniversary at the Manor was 2 days ago?!?!?!?!? happy 2 year anniversary Framboise Manor!!!! it feels like we have been here forever...and it feels like we just got here yesterday.

wow.

jambaloney is still sleeping...he really IS tired.

we'll celebrate our anniversary together later. wow.

be good to yourselves, eh?