The Weekend

Summer weekends are so full - there's just so much to do in the summer. This is especially true with a toddler or maybe it just seems that way because we take more pictures.
Festivals, water fun, and just getting outside to enjoy the weather quickly fills up every weekend. After saying that, I should admit that we did consider just staying inside on Sunday as it was sooo hot. We're glad we changed our minds. Here are some pictures from our fun weekend.

First things first: garage sales Saturday morning, here's Henry playing with his favourite find.
Lunch at Kitchener's beer and rib fest.Some adventures at the Splash pad. He's much more adventurous when holding my hand.We found out Henry loves homemade pesto.
A quick dip in our local creek.Swinging on the swings with Uncle Corey.Checking out car-free Sunday in Uptown Waterloo.
After a busy hot weekend, we are very ready to stay inside and watch the thunderstorms that are called for today, we'll probably have the rubber boots out at some point too.

Potatoes

Last year I read the book One Straw Revolution which was all about letting nature take its course as much as possible in farming to make less work for the farmer plus there are all sorts of ecological benefits too. Anyway, this new philosophy lead to quite a messy garden last year. This year I think I'm a bit more balanced but I was happy when these potatoes sprung up themselves this spring. That involved no work from this farmer, was just a result of good soil and nature taking its course.

But these guys weren't growing in the right place and were starting to overcrowd the tomatoes that I had actually planted there. So I let the potatoes grow till they had flowers (a sign that there are some definite potatoes under the ground) and then this week I carefully pulled them up. I had to be very careful as not to disturb the tomato plants so I am sure that again this year there will be some leftover potatoes that will grow next year.

I was surprised that I got a whole 3 L basket of lovely new potatoes. And yesterday I cooked them up in my favourite way for new potatoes: steamed and tossed with light olive oil and some garden chives. We had them with chickpea cutlets and also tried a new veg - swiss chard. Neither of us are swiss chard fans but it was worth a try. And for dessert we had some more homemade ice cream.


This is raspberry ice cream made from our backyard raspberries. It was delicious but our favourite so far has definitely been banana. I am still loving the Vegan Scoop but someone has put it on hold so I have to return it to the library soon.

Here are a couple of pictures of Henry keeping cool in the water all around town. He doesn't do much at the splash pad other than stand and watch the other kids play but he is slowly getting more adventurous and he is definitely more adventurous when we go to the creek.

Bottoms

image from Pomadour 24 on ebay

After making myself so many tops a few weeks ago, it was time to make a few more bottoms. These are both from the pattern 'T' seen above in Happy Homemade Volume 1, a Japanese pattern book that I love. I had actually made a variation of this pattern a few weeks ago and found that the fit was just so perfect - just enough room to be comfy but not look too sloppy. And I am enjoying the comfort of an elasticated waist.

These shorts are made with no variation to the pattern. Except for adding the pockets and making them flat front (elastic only in the back) but the length is from pattern. They are made from a navy blue twill that I bought new because I really wanted some plain shorts.And these pants are the same pattern but lengthened. New fabric is very expensive and I had lots of stuff I wanted to sew so when I found that Ikea had unbleached cotton at $2/metre and it actually felt quite nice I snapped up 10 m thinking I could spend a bit of money on dye and make it different colours for various projects. And this fabric resulted from my trying to dye 3 m grey for a dress I wanted to make. I obviously grossly underestimated the amount of liquid needed to evenly dye 3 m and ended up with this blotchy mess. Well I decided the mess was quite cool actually, but I didn't want to use it for a dress so I made these pants. I think I love them but I haven't worn them yet so we'll see how comfortable I am in them in public. I am loving sewing right now but of course I don't want to sew anything that is the same as what I could just buy in the store... so my clothes are naturally going to get more and more unconventional.And speaking of unconventional, here is Henry's 'screw you' to convention. Holding his spoon in one hand while using his other hand to shovel apple sauce into his mouth, what a sweetie.

Peas and Raspberries

The pea and raspberry season is in full swing in our backyard. We are getting almost a pint a day of each if you include the wild raspberries. I think the wild ones are so pretty, how they're all different colours. You have to wait till they're very very dark to pick them to get maximum sweetness.Henry has gone off raspberries but he still loves peas. He started picking the raspberries to give to me though - so sweet! But since he was no good at only picking the ripe ones I had to tell him to stop.
The garden is getting very wild - I must do some work out there soon but it is so darn hot and humid!
Henry is very into climbing onto chairs and eating with us at the grown up table, it feels nice to all be sitting around the same table even if it means having to keep a close eye on him to make sure he is being safe.
I also used some of the lettuce from the garden for a side salad for dinner tonight. The salad was lettuce and chives from the garden and sprouts from the kitchen counter.

Banana Ice Cream

Yum! I tried my second vegan ice cream recipe today and it was delicious (my first was caramel, also delicious). This was banana ice cream. The recipe is from the book The Vegan Scoop that I currently have out of the library and that is now definitely on my want-to-own list. I want to try some of the crazy flavours in there like yam and sweet curry coconut but I think next should be raspberry since it is raspberry season and we have a steady supply coming from the backyard.

It turned out delicious, especially with a few chocolate chips sprinkled on top. One thing I did differently this time was to make my own 'soy creamer' instead of buying it for $3 a pint which cut down on the cost a lot and means we will almost always have all the ingredients on hand. I followed the directions for making the soy creamer from the book Vegan Bake Sale which I also have out of the library right now. It is mostly a mix of soy milk and oil.
Henry actually refused to try the ice cream but he loved the chocolate chips.

4 year anniversary

Kevin and I celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary yesterday. We had a special evening at home with Henry.
First we made dinner together, enjoyed some spanakopita loaf (from the book Vegan Bake Sale) as an appetizer while we cooked.
We made our favourite cheeseless pizza which we haven't had in years since it is quite a bit of work. We like eggplant, mushrooms, and caramelized mushrooms on top of a sauce of diced tomatoes. We also added some fresh basil from the garden.
We had fun with Henry while we waited for it to cook.
Kevin made us some mojitos using mint from the garden.We had perfect weather for hanging out in the garden enjoying our special meal.Henry liked the pizza, well mostly the crust.We went for an evening stroll.
And when we came back we had my homemade ice cream with homemade caramel. The recipe was from the book The Vegan Scoop which I just got out from the library. This book is full of great vegan ice cream recipes, I want to try more for sure. The caramel was supposed to be mixed into the ice cream but both the ice cream and the caramel ended up too hard for that, it was actually quite difficult to eat them together at all. It is also great to be using our ice cream maker again, a wedding present that has sat unused for too long.

Kombucha

I am back to drinking kombucha. I got the mother of SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) from a nice man who was giving it away back in September after I read about kombucha in the book Wild Fermentation. But I hadn't been getting around to making it for months. And here are some possibly gross pictures of what it looks like left unattended for months, the mothers just got thicker and thicker. I just thought it was so cool I had to take pictures. And now I am back to drinking it, it tastes better than I remember it, a bit vinegar-y but there's also something tasty about it. And it's supposed to be very good for you. I make mine with green tea but I think I will try black tea next time I make it. And here is one definitely not gross picture: Henry doing some car-spotting.

Peas and Raspberries

We had the first of the peas and raspberries from the garden yestereday. Only a handful of each but we can see that there are many more to come.

It was fun walking around the garden and showing Henry the food on the plants and then giving it to him to try. He spat the first 2 peas out but now he loves them. And with the raspberries I gave him one, told him it was food and he popped it into his mouth.