ME EITHER– PIE FAIL

I’M IN A FOG

No. Really. I am.

This is the view from my deck. I am glad I don’t have to go anywhere today. I live up a hillside with a spectacular view of the valley. Apparently the valley has disappeared and left a thick fog in its place.

BALSAMIC CHICKEN

I was asked today what was for dinner and all I really knew was that I had thawed some chicken breasts.

FOR A PRINTABLE RECIPE CLICK HERE
I then made things up as I went along using ingredients that I had on hand.

Dinner was wonderful. Full of flavour with a great aroma and visually very appetizing.

This was dinner for 2 but could easily be increased for more.
Here we go:

• 2 boneless chicken breast halves
• 1 tablespoon each of butter and olive oil
• juice from half a lemon
• 1 tablespoon of tarragon
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled
• salt and pepper

Heat butter and olive oil in a heavy pan and brown on both sides until golden in colour.
Lower heat, squeeze in juice from half a lemon and cover pan. Let chicken cook through. Remove lid.
Sprinkle with tarragon and add balsamic vinegar.
Keep a close eye on the pan now and increase heat slightly to get pan bubbling. Spoon the sauce over the chicken repeatedly until the balsamic vinegar has reduced down to a thick syrup.
Don’t take it too far or you will burn it. You can always add more vinegar stirring up the mixture to mix it back in and then bubble it down again to the right consistency.
The chicken should have a wonderful, thick brown glaze on it. Remove to plates and pour any remaining sauce over the chicken. Sprinkle with feta cheese.
Serves 2

How do you cook? Do you follow the recipe to the letter or do you fly by the seat of your pants and hope for the best? I believe cooking should be more method and less recipe unless we are talking about baking.

BAREFOOT IN THE WIND

It may be Fall but we have been having such beautiful weather here in BC. This is typical through September for us but now we are into October and the days are still warm and sunny. It is cooling right down at night though.

When I have been up in the nights (I won’t bore you with my insomnia issues again) lately I have opened the patio doors and gone outside into the dark night and felt the glorious wind blowing across my mountainside.
Surprisingly the deck did not feel very cold under my bare feet.

I stood there in the dark amongst my planters with my face to the wind inhaling deeply, filling my lungs with the cool, crisp air. Eyes closed. Inhale. Exhale. Sheer joy at that feeling of the very strong wind.

Looking up to the sky at the stars which I can see so clearly from our dark area. Overwhelming in their vastness. How can there be so many?

(Photo:Wikimedia)
I start to feel the cold creeping across my bare feet and I want to grab a big quilt and curl up in a patio chair for the rest of the night but I know it will become too cold within minutes.

I want to stay out there and clear my head of everything.

I want to stay out there and breathe the wind.

I want to stay out there and count the stars.

ME EITHER

 
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FALLING INTO FALL–MY FAVORITE SEASON

I love Autumn. It is my favourite season. For the most part in Beautiful British Columbia we have sunny days with cool, clear nights right into October.
It is a time for yummy stews and fragrant breads. Baking, reading, strolling. A wonderful time of year.

I am a little slow to get out the Fall decorations this year but wanted to share my mantle with you. I will probably add a bit more to it as it only has the wreath right now.

The mantle is 5 feet off the ground though hard to tell from the photo, it is a really big fireplace. I cannot even see onto the top of it without a stool. Don’t look at the dust. I couldn’t see it because I held the camera up above my head to take the shot. Honest. Shame on me. Who cares. Never mind. 

This clock was my mother’s. It is fairly old and was made in Germany by a company called Shantz. I need to take it to a watchmaker / jeweller to have it set properly. It won’t stay running right now. It is a 300 day windup clock with a big key.

We moved into our home just over a year ago after living in the same home for 32 years. We love this new place and I said to my BB Guy when we first moved here that we are so lucky. He said it isn’t luck it is our hard work that got us here. I have to agree with him on that one although there is still a little luck that goes along with it. I spotted this little sign at the dollar store last week and had to get it for him.

The entire back of our home is windows and the plants absolutely love it here with all the light and the really high ceilings. When we moved here a year ago in June this Asparagus Fern was 3 tiny little sticks about 6 inches tall. It now trails down with 4 foot long fronds and gets bushier every day. They plant that is on the left side of the mantle is blooming after a few years finally. I have other plants that were in bloom when I got them and also never bloomed again until we moved here. Plant heaven. Now if only I could get my orchid to send out some flower stems. Patience, patience.

I will get my BB Guy to get the rest of my Fall Fever stuff down for me from the cupboards and will post some more photos.
What sorts of Fall things do you put out? Is your house “pumpkin spice everything” this time of year?

YOU’RE GETTING VERY, VERY SLEEPY…OR NOT

There is a song by artist Crystal Gale with the lyrics:
Three o'clock in the morning
And it looks like it's going to be another sleepless night.
Sadly so many of us know these lyrics by heart.

I wrote this post at 2:40 am.
I am often awake in the middle of the night. I have no problem falling asleep but I wake often and can’t get back to sleep.
Many times it is due to my lower back problems with sciatica which make me feel like I have electrical currents running through my legs.
Through the years I have tried many things to try and sleep properly without giving in to a prescription medication. Some have worked for a brief while and others have been of no help at all.
I have even left my job partly because of my inability to get enough sleep. I would have to get up for work by 5:00 a.m. so many days I was running on about four or five hours of sleep. That was not healthy or safe. I am now on early retirement and if I can’t sleep it is not the overwhelming feeling of desperation anymore. If I am too tired to get up in the morning I don’t have to get up.
Some of the things I have tried to aid in a proper nights sleep are listed below. In the middle of the night as we do the zombie walk we will try just about anything. Many of the suggestions people have are to help you fall asleep, which is not my problem. I just wake after about 3 hours and then cannot get back to sleep.

• Melatonin – worked for a couple months but then stopped.
• Mint water/tea recipe – worked great for quite a while and I still use this one off and on. Click here for that recipe.
• Meditations, clearing the mind – didn’t work for me at all
• Yoga – felt good and eased my back discomfort somewhat but not effective for sleep.
• Sleeping upright on the couch – worked a bit as it changed my position for my back but not all that effective.
• Eating protein before bed – this is something I had heard worked great for your kids many years ago and I used it for my boys. Not much help for me
• Aromatherapy – nope

I am sure there are many more tips and advice out there to help but I am not the type to go and buy a bunch of bottles of vitamins or sleep aids even if they are from a health food store.

The health issues that result from lack of sleep are becoming more an more evident. Besides the obvious problem of being tired there can be serious health consequences to being a zombie.
You have decreased performance and alertness. This is pretty serious because you need to drive a car or run machinery. According to webmd.com
reducing your night time sleep by just one and half hours at night reduces your daytime alertness by 32%. That is very significant.

Daytime sleepiness impairs you memory functions.
Stress increases and your quality of life decreases.
The long term consequences are much more serious. Lack of proper sleep patterns are associated with high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, obesity, depression, arthritis, chronic pain, thyroid problems, Alzheimers, Parkinsons etc.
Since retiring at the end of August I have felt much better. I can now sleep in the mornings until I no longer feel tired………. Just imagine that for a moment. I sleep until I am no longer tired…… That is life changing. It seems to me that the sleep I get after going back to bed around 4:00 a.m. is the best. I dream like crazy during that time and when I wake with my cozy quilt around me I just lay there and enjoy the feeling. I have even fallen back to sleep again at that point waking an hour later. It feels like I am getting away with something naughty and I like it.
So what are your sleep patterns? Are they affecting your health? Any tips to avoid the zombie walk?

SUMMER BOUNTY–PASTA SAUCE

FOR A PRINTABLE RECIPE CLICK HERE
Part of my road trip earlier this month took me to the Okanagan region of British Columbia. This area is known for its orchards, grapes and produce. A visit to the roadside stands are always a treat.

One of the things I came home with was a case of Roma tomatoes. Romas are the best for cooking with as they have far fewer seeds and a lot less juice to flesh ratio. They are meaty. Let’s make pasta sauce.
The start to any good sauce is a good base. As usual in my cooking it is a method and not so much a recipe. You don’t need exact amounts. Add more of what you like and less of what you don’t. The method here is to sweat the vegetables well before adding anything else to the pan. This will build up their flavours.

Once you have cooked this combination down somewhat you can add in the herbs and spices and again cook it down further to further meld the flavours.
Lastly add in the chopped tomatoes. Many people choose to blanch them to remove the skins but I think this is a waste of time, flavour and nutrition.

Note this is just a small portion of the tomatoes I added. I filled the roasting pan.
You could always take an immersion blender to the tomatoes once chopped or to run them through a food processor to make them smooth but that would seem boring to me. I don’t want an applesauce consistency. I want a fresh tasting sauce that showcases the lovely tomatoes.
If you have some nice parmesan rinds saved up you can put those in too. They add some lovely flavours to your sauce.
I came up with a great way to process my tomatoes.

I put a big, clean bowl in the left side of my sink for the chopped tomatoes and washed the tomatoes in the right side. Using a cutting board with a cut out handle area I cut up the tomatoes there and just pushed the accumulating seeds and juice through the handle hole into the sink. It doesn’t matter if it drips onto your uncut tomatoes. It is all clean. Just cut up some more and scrape the rest into the sink. When you are done you just run some water around the sink and shake the seeds into the garbage right from the stopper. Quick and easy with no mess on your counters.

The little tomato belly buttons can be saved and used in a vegetable stock. Aren’t they cute?

• 6 carrots chopped
• 2 large onions, one minced, one coarse chopped (this gives you a lot of taste without too many onion pieces in the sauce)
• 8 stalks celery chopped
• 2 full heads of garlic…. hey it is a BIG pot of sauce
• 3 hot peppers
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 3 tablespoons ground black pepper
• 3 tablespoons each of oregano, basil, thyme, fennel seeds
• olive oil to sautéing the vegetables
• rinds from parmesan cheese
  
  Run garlic and hot peppers through a food processor and add with rest of vegetables to a pan with enough olive oil to saute and sweat down.
  
  Add in herbs, spices, salt, black pepper and sugar. You do need the sugar to balance out the acid in the tomatoes. Cook down a little longer until vegetables are tender and then add in the chopped, drained tomatoes and the cheese rinds.
  Simmer in an open pot for a minimum of 4 hours to cook off the excess liquid and concentrate flavours. Stir occasionally. Remove chunks of parmesan before packing up or serving.
  
  I packed mine into plastic vacuum bags and they are all sealed up in my freezer to pull out on a cold fall or winters day to spoon over some of my OMG Meatballs. Click here for the link to that recipe.

Note this is different than my tomato sauce base which is just a start to creating many types of sauces. This recipe is a traditional pasta sauce and can be used as is (click for basic recipe and more photos).