Haying

The days seem to be slipping past us in a blur these days!
The fields are growing like crazy so we have started to cut some of them with our ancient Massey Ferguson tractor.

It's definitely not state of the art and in fact there isn't anything about it that is even from this century! *grin*. I picked up the sickle mower a couple of years ago when one of the old time farmers here was selling off some parts and with a little tlc we got it back up to snuff.

Essentially it's like a giant bar of scissors. Each of the teeth has as a smaller triangular section that slides on the bar from side to side through the larger triangle and as the grass gets caught up in it they slice it off clean. It moves at lightning speed once it is engaged and they have been known to take off fingers in the blink of an eye so to be quite honest it scares me just a little when I'm nearby as it's running.

It does a fine job cutting and takes down nice big swatches of grass at a time.

I wouldn't let anyone get real close to the field while the mower was working so my spectators had to watch from afar as I backed them up as it got closer to us :)

I just love the smell that fills the air after the fields are cut. It's not the same as when you cut your lawn it has this amazingly sweet scent that I just don't know how to describe. If only I had smell-o-vision so I could share it with you *grin*.

All done for the day and taking her back to the shed. You've got to love the old girl.... over 50 years old and still takes a licking and keeps on ticking :)

~ Rosina

Market Day

I hope you all are enjoying your weekend as much as we are!
Today was market day so we loaded up into the car and headed down island for the day :) First stop was at an old favorite. This farm used to be a nursery and produce stand but it closed quite a few years ago and has just recently been revived again. I always love driving down long winding driveways to hidden farmyards and it just happened that we got a HUGE head of organic leaf lettuce for only $2 for taking the time to check out what was happening at the end of this dirt lane *grin*.

A couple of hours after leaving home we finally arrived at the Comox Valley Farmer's Market and I just love it there. It's bursting with the most fantastic vendors selling breads, jams, plants, vegetables, herbs, honey, meats and much more, plus there is live entertainment always. You can literally spend the entire morning there! I purchased tomatoes, red peppers, kolrabi, cucumbers and a really big pumpkin plant to put in our garden :)

Next we headed into the town of Comox and wandered down and about the streets. I felt a bit like a tourist today as I snapped photos of different scenery *grin*. One of our favorite places to stop when we are there is at Benino Gelato.

They have the most amazing flavors of gelato which if you haven't had it before is an Italian version of ice cream that is sooo good :) Passion fruit was my flavor of the day and as M licked away at his bubblegum flavored cone we headed towards the marina.

Such a beautiful and warm day to enjoy our cones and the views of the ocean and mountains :) We really didn't have any particular destination in mind as we wandered and eventually ended up at the park that is right down at the marina.

Play jeeps, monkey bars, swings and slides... what more could a little boy ask for *grin*.

After all that monkeying around we decided to treat ourselves to a really nice lunch in the dining room at the Crown Isle resort. It's actually really reasonably priced for being able to enjoy the view from under the glass domed rooftop and eat at tables covered with linens. Pretty swank I must say *grin*.

My little man enjoyed his fancy cone of fries as I munched away on a walnut sourdough panini filled with an incredible cranberry chutney, brie, pancetta & chicken breast. Mmmm, it was definitely a lip smacking day. Good thing we did a whole lot of walking around town today *grin*.

How about you, what are your weekend plans?

~ Rosina

Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada Day!!!

We headed down to the village this morning just before lunch to take in the sights and sounds of the Canada Day parade :)

The kids love to see all of the fire engines, police cars and ambulances that are all decorated up and blaring their horns *grin*.

They even tossed candy this year which got all of the children around into a frenzy of collecting :) I ran into an old friend which was nice and we got to catch up on what was happening in each others lives and we even enjoyed a hotdog which is a real treat as I very rarely buy them and wouldn't you know it only one of my three actually ate one LOL.

After the parade was over we headed home for lunch as I had made a special Canada Day cake (up in the first photo) which was so yummy and strawberry spritzer drinks to go along with it. Isn't the little strawberry garnish so cute :) Seems like every day is a party around here these days *grin*.

Hope you all had a wonderful day celebrating and to my American friends I wish you all a happy Fourth of July this weekend!!

~ Rosina

Making Homemade Pasta ~ Recipe

It's been a while since I've made some delicious homemade pasta noodles but lately a few of my bloggy friends have been making them and well you know the old saying... monkey see, monkey do! *grin*.



Plus I don't want one bit of the broccoli we picked from the garden yesterday to go to waste. So I thought I'd be adventurous and make some gloriously green fettucine noodles using our fresh broccoli as the colorant :)



I started by steaming just under 3/4 of a pound of broccoli. I weighed it on my kitchen scale and it was 11 ounces before it went into the steamer. As soon as it was just tender I removed it from the heat and let it cool completely before moving on to the next step of pureeing it along with 1 egg and 1 tablespoon of dried basil in my blender until it was nice and smooth.

To finish your pasta dough you will need:

2 eggs
3 cups of flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon lukewarm water

Place your flour and salt in a large bowl or directly on your counter and make a nice big well in the center. In the well add your eggs, oil, water and broccoli puree.

With a fork slowly start to beat your eggs, mixing them into your broccoli puree and then start to gradually pull the surrounding flour into your wet ingredients until it has taken on a dough like consistency and you can start to work it with your hands.



This is probably the only part of making homemade noodles that really requires any elbow grease *grin*. Keep working your dough kneading in a little bit of flour at a time until you have a smooth and silky feeling dough. It took me about 10 minutes and around a 1/4 cup of extra flour to get my dough to a gorgeous soft green stage. Once you've finished kneading cover your dough with a greased bowl and let it rest for 20 minutes.

While your dough is resting you can bring out your pasta machine and clamp it to your counter so you are ready to start rolling :) Don't worry if you don't have a pasta machine. You can roll the dough by hand with your rolling pin and use your pizza cutter to make strips to!



This is my favorite part. I just love to see the dough work through the rollers into long sheets :) It helps to have a second set of hands but definitely not mandatory.

Cut off a chunk of dough a little bigger than a golf ball but not as big as a tennis ball. Does that work for mental imagery? *grin*. Dust your chunk of dough with flour so that it won't stick to the rollers and with your machine set to the widest width start cranking your dough through. Repeat this step 2 or 3 times at that width dusting with flour as necessary and then reduce the roller width one setting. Carry on rolling and dusting as necessary until you have a nice thin sheet of dough roughly 3 mm thick.



Next switch your handle to the noodle cutting rollers and feed your sheet of dough through the fettucine roller from start to finish. That's it! You now have a handful of fresh fettucine noodles to dry!



I don't have a fancy place to hang my fresh noodles so I use the railing of our stairs covered with tea towels that have been dusted with flour so the noodles won't stick as they dry. Let them dry completely if you want to store them or if you plan to eat them for dinner right away let them hang there about 15 minutes before cooking them. They cook up really quickly! I usually boil them 5-6 minutes but if you like yours a little more al dente I'd cut the cooking time by a couple of minutes :)

Everyone just raved over our noodles so I can't wait to make them again! If you have fussy eaters this is a fabulous way to get them to eat their broccoli without even knowing it as the noodle doesn't actually taste like broccoli at all. It just gives it the lovely green color and the basil that I added gave the noodles a deliciously sweet basil taste. Mmmm so good *grin*.

It makes roughly 1 pound of pasta and it was the perfect amount for all 6 of us with our garlic toast :)

Bon appetit!

~ Rosina

Garden Update

We are finally seeing some rewards from all of the gardening we have been doing :)

Our broccoli has just exploded this last week with the few days of hot weather we finally got and of course the whole lot of them just happens to be ready at the same time *grin*.

So we've cut all of the larger crowns off and left the side shoots on so that they can grow and provide us with many more harvests throughout the summer.

My peas are not doing to bad but still no flowers. I hope that they will perk up!

It's actually not un-seasonally cool here this June but my beans are definitely not liking all of the wind and rain :) Can you believe that most days we are still running around in our heavy winter coats?!

I'm very excited about my leeks! They are doing really well after being transplanted and I can't wait till they grow big enough to try a few :)

My tomatoes are doing fantastic in their hanging planter bags!! This one is my 'Window Box Roma' and it is covered in lots of little baby romas.

Here's another one of my hanging tomatoes, this one is 'Rocket' and it to is just loaded with little tomatoes :) So far my cabbage isn't forming any heads yet and I'm really not sure what happened to my beets and carrots but it looks like I'm going to have to do some replaning :( The birds have been particularly bad this year eating all the seeds and green shoots so most have been lost. Oh well, I must look on the bright side and be very happy with what is coming *grin*.

How does your garden grow? I'd love to know *grin*.

~ Rosina

Victoria Bliss

Look what came in the mail today!! My new copy of Victoria :)
I just love this magazine. My mother started buying it when it first became available in 1987 and I remember pouring over the beautiful photos of ladies and children dressed so perfectly, garden scenery, poetry, a step back in time so to speak... a portal to another world.

When it was discontinued in 2003 it was terribly missed by many people, especially my mom so when I heard that they were bringing it back in 2007 I purchased her a secret subscription for Christmas and one for myself to *grin*. Now when it comes every couple of months we can loose ourselves in its pages once again and I thought that I would share some images with you from my new one :)

Wishing you all a day filled with much beauty :)

~ Rosina

Canada Day Pins

Only a couple more days until Canada Day so I thought it would be fun to do some Canada Day crafts and make some beaded flag pins :)

We got everything we needed at the dollar store for $2.00! Yipee for cheap craft supplies *grin*. All you need is some 1 & 2 inch safety pins and some seed beads to get started.

We filled individual safety pins with sequences of beads...

to be hung vertically from one main safety pin to create the Canadian flag :)

Don't forget the beaver! I just love how cute this little guy is :) If your little one has good hand eye coordination and you feel they can manage to place beads on a safety pin without pricking their fingers then this is a great activity for learning colors and counting together :) My four year old LOVED it. He actually made this beaver all by himself. All I did was tell him what colors and how many of each to put on the pins and he stuck them together. It's so much fun to see how excited and proud of his work he was when he finished *grin*.

You can find the patterns for the BEAVER and the CANADIAN FLAG by clicking on the their names. Have fun!!

~ Rosina

Picnic By The Pond

Today was a perfect day for a picnic down by the pond. The breeze was blowing and the fields of hay were rustling around us as we enjoyed lunch :)

A couple of days ago we got rained out just before we were ready to head outside but today despite the cloud cover the rain held off and we had a great afternoon. With the tables and chairs on the back of the pick up truck and the picnic baskets loaded we headed down to set up.

Preparations started early as we peeled peaches and pears to slice along with strawberries for a deliciously fruity pie tucked inside my whole wheat oat pastry and topped with a streusel crumble :) We mashed eggs for egg sandwiches, tossed salads and packed our picnic basket!

Have I told you how much I love my picnic basket *grin*. My mom and I found them a couple of years ago and they came with real plates, glassware and silverware. You've got to love that it's not packed with plastic and the bottom of it has a zippered cooler pouch for keeping everything from overheating :)

My daughter is crazy about using all the fancy dishes when we have little parties so we brought out the best treasures from the china cabinet to dress the table with :) No sense keeping them hidden away most of the year, we really should enjoy them more!

Boys!! Our tea party etiquette mustn't have rubbed off on my oldest. We're definitely going to have to work on this *grin*.

The kids' favorite salad. A combination of napa cabbage, carrot & noodle tossed in rice vinegar, mirin and sesame oil. I think it's just the sweetness of the dressing that they really like the most but if they're eating all that cabbage and carrot along with it I'm all for it :)

While the kids played badminton, watched water skeeters and tried to catch some of the fish in the pond the rest of us read the weekend paper, sipped on our coffee and savored the fresh pie :) Now if only we could do this every day!

How is your weekend shaping up? I'd love to hear about what is keeping you busy or ultra relaxed :)

~ Rosina

Sweet Temptation

Hmmm, what did I do with my day today you ask?
I think I spent most of it growing wider! *grin*

I seriously need to stop reading all blogs that post recipes. Of course I'm drawn to all the wonderfully healthy fruit & veggie type recipes out there but nothing screams MAKE ME like something loaded with calories. Yeah... I'm a total sucker for the sweets!

My new blog friend Annie from Sensible Living has some totally kick butt recipes and for breakfast we tried her baked french toast recipe that is topped with a praline crumble. Oh my word, delicious!!

As if one sweet treat wasn't enough I also made her raspberry chocolate torte and mmm was it good :) Being austrian we make a lot of tortes and I must say this is a darn good torte *grin*. The only thing I wish I would have had was fresh raspberries *sob* I had to use frozen ones from last summer because this years crop isn't quite ready yet. Oh well, that just means I've got to try it at least one more time! LOL.

Hey now it wasn't all sugar today, I had a salad to!!
We had more of that delicious french lettuce and it really is more tender than the regular butterhead variety. The woman that gave it to us also gave my mom some seeds so we can grow some of our own now to :)

So normally I might ask if you have baked something sweet lately but I'm going to stop right now and save myself from more temptation *grin*.

~ Rosina