#WOYP “Sea” food edition

We did the “sea” food and eat it tour of Prince Edward Island. Not a bad choice on thoe menus.

#SundayStills Wheeling Away

The Sunday’s still theme this week of vacation or staycation so was an easy one for me to peddle on with. We are on a bike vacation on the province island of Prince Edward Island.

There is something so exhilarating about traveling to sites previously unseen. The adventures that awaits. The interesting things to be seen and friendly folks to chat with. Add in local beer and, in this case, fresh seafood and what more could one ask for!

On a staycation we just do projects and forget to go do fun local things. So here’s to our bike trip. The first in so so so many years that I think both the Czech Republic and Portugal were before I started blogging. I’ve done power point presentations about them but they’ve never had a staring role like PEI is about to have.

#Sundaystills S’More Summer

I’m going to go for the trifecta of challenges here. The stars aligned up or the maybe it was a shooting star that bolstered productivity?

First up it’s summer. I am totally in denial that it’s only vaguely twilight at 4 am. Dusk doesn’t allow as much task or walk time as I wish but I am pretending it’s only because we eat supper so late. Which lead me to the first and second challenges. What’s on your plate in the summer?

What’s on Friday’s plate?

Covid played havoc with our family Friday night pizza time.  Then once the worst of Covid was over my other half started golfing on Friday afternoons.  The grandchildren, who’ve been spending every Friday night with us, eat early and he gets home late so pizza hasn’t been on the menu much. But we do still eat on Friday nights…

Thoughtful Thursday meets #What’s on your plate

My earliest memory, the winter I was 3, involves a cold winters night. I was bundled up and went to the barn to “help” dad milk cows. In reality I was probably driving my mother crazy and so she sent me outside which was standard practise. Single ligjt bulb from the middle of the barn. My dad hunched against a cow and the sound of the milk hitting the pail. The steam rising from fresh cow poop. And a cow calving. My response to dad was “I wondered how dat was going to get out of dere”.

Fast forward a few decades and many many farm visits with our children. They were lucky enough to see a few new calves being born. Three more decades later and we are repeating the process again.

The calf in front of Annabelle (lying down) was about an hour old.

The opening paragraphs and accompanying photo might seem like a weird sequel into a what’s on your plate blog challenge and a thoughtful Thursday post but hang in there and keep reading.

Because I want to talk about the correlation between eating and food. As a farm kid you know that most animals become supper in the fall. We spent time ensuring that our children knew where the food came from and now the grandchildren. Besides the animals each generation has/have been vegetable gardeners and so every child grows up knowing that carrots taste the best straight from the garden.

Raspberry picker in training. At this stage she eats more than hit the container but that’s ok

But back to the what’s on the plate, which this time is just rhetorical rather than physical. Which is how it meets thoughtful Thursday. I just want to encourage readers to think about eating local. I totally recognize that this can, up front, cost more than grocery shopping at Walmart. But, and it’s a huge but, the cost to the climate is smaller. Local fruit, veggies and meat in season taste better, support local agriculture and have a smaller environmental impact. Challenge yourself to look at your food footprint.

A really great book on this subject is by a local Saskatoon food writer. It’s called Prairie Feast: A Writer’s Journey Home for Dinner by Amy Jo Ehman. For an entire year they ate local like her grandparents would have. Kind of like how I decided to make “Cacciatore” because only 2 generations ago food was scarce, the dirty thirties were having a huge impact and most food did not come from a store.

A totally “outside the box” #whatsonyourplateblogchallenge. I often climb on a soap box and I’ve done it once again. I definitely have strong opinions about eating local and as anyone who has read this blog for a while or who knows me in person knows that I actually walk this talk.

What’s your favourite local food? Hands down for me it’s saskatoons. Fingers crossed that there is no frost and no crazy wind to blow off the blossoms like last year.

A certain little someone also loves them!

Bernie

An Apple a day…

I ate an apple today. It was cold, crisp and slightly sweet. Not at all like the apples of my childhood lunch box where they were warm and soft. The number of times I carried the same apple to and from school is probably fairly high. A work conversation from two school lunch packing dad’s let me know that this sort of thing is still going on. But back to my apple.

Seemed like a good idea

Always game to try new things and think outside the box. It seemed like a good idea… which is usually a sign it’s not!

#Sundaystills meets the 12 Festive BonBon’s

For several years I posted daily in December. My friend and I do an Kindness Advent Calendar and the posts tied into the activities. It was, I felt at the time, a chance to connect with readers and encourage them to see the season in a Kindness frame. It was fairly taxing pulling together a post every day along with the activities so this year I am switching things up. I am still committed to the Kindness Advent Calendar but I am attempting a multi blog challenge here with this one post that will cover “all bases”.

#WOYP Birch & Jowls anyone?

Sometimes we have to step outside of our comfort zone.  Assess and manage the risks and then go for it. That’s what we did yesterday.

Who Knew?

It won accolades from the young lass. It had, after all, been her idea and strangely enough not something I would ever have thought of. So it’s not surprising that she uttered the following sentence.