Training to Live

i had an extra long labour day weekend because of my work schedule and since we’d planned to have a bunch of friends up to the cottage that weekend anyway (the cottage is about a 3 hour drive away from here), we figured we’d make an entire week of it. as luck would have it, the weather didn’t really cooperate. it was cold and rainy all weekend long. after our friends left and we enjoyed the one sunny/warm day there was going to be, jon and i hightailed it to his parents’ farm, about 30 minutes away from their cottage, for the rest of the week. although the farm isn’t home for me, it sure feels like it.

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we didn’t have the relaxing week we originally planned (thanks, weather), it was wonderful to be at the farm anyway, as always. we ate loads of good super fresh, local food, worked hard at putting veggies away in the freezer for the winter [a great big pot of ultra veggified pasta sauce (which i'm calling my 500 metre sauce, since everything we put in it came from within 500 metres of the kitchen we cooked it in!, 2 gallons of crushed/stewed tomatoes for making chili with this week (and oh what chili we made this week!!! at least 17 quarts put away in the freezer), and a bushel of red peppers chopped up and frozen]. we went to a small town country fair, played with kittens, watched movies (and napped) and it was good.

i think this photo (taken on my iphone with the super fun ShakeIt app) really captures the beauty of the country (big open blue sky), fall, and the colourful energy of the fair. shortly after i took this, i proceeded to eat a big bag of cotton candy. ohhhhh was my tummy ever not happy about that! (it was certainly enjoyable to eat, however). i’d never been happier to see vegetables again.

we came back to regular-old-at-home life for a week, but come monday, the craziness begins again. i am flying off to the great city of winnipeg for a work conference and then immediately after i come back, i have a half marathon to run! my training over the last few weeks has been pretty abysmal (i blame the weather again.) i’m sure i’ll make it through, even if not super quickly! i’ve been to winnipeg once before, but only very briefly (i flew into their airport and had lunch at a quizno’s before driving out northwest to a wedding. not so exciting) so i’m hoping to have a bit of exploration time.

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in other, more creative news, i have been working on a lot of projects, art and otherwise. sadly nothing concrete to share yet though! in august i got an email about a super fun sounding workshop that one of my favourite bloggers (elise) was running on how to make minibooks (like a scrapbook but on a smaller physical scale {hence the “mini”} and with a much more casual concentrated or super stretched out approach). my dining table is covered in all kinds of fun new supplies so i can start making and doing. the workshop was 2 weeks long and i learned tons of neat tricks and ideas.

also, another favourite blogger (kal) is running a different kind of workshop right now, which i am also signed up for. it is called “nurture your creativity and be bulletproof”. i’ve been through a bunch of stuff at work over the past year and a half that i really could have been a bit more bulletproof for (who couldn’t!) so i figured the class would be more than useful just for that. the nurturing my creativity bit is a bonus and pairs perfectly with elise’s class that just wrapped up. i am really looking forward to the next 4 weeks!

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last month i finally joined the twenty-first century and ditched my ultra crappy super old pay as you go plan cellphone, which had a battery that only lasted a day (without use) and no other redeeming features (which meant that it was usually left at home, battery uncharged, with no paid time on it! not so useful). i bit the bullet and got an iphone4 (expensive but SO LOVELY), which i guess i was lucky enough to score right when they were released to canada – everyone is out of stock now. having the internet in my pocket has made things so fun and easy! i plan to do a lot more on the fly adventure blogging, once i find a good app for this. any recommendations? i’m signed up for posterous, so i might go that route, but it would have to be separate from Training to Live here. the wordpress app has left me unimpressed (photos only at the end of the text? no thanks!).

other favourite apps so far:

teuxdeux (amazing amazing. i went through a whole bunch of to do type apps before i settled on this one. i love that you can have multiple accounts. and that it automatically pushes everything you didn’t do today onto tomorrow. i also love that you can go back and see what you did on any given day. and that you can assign tasks into any day in the future). also it automatically syncs with the web version, so you can enter everything on your computer at home and have it with you on the go.

doodle jump – super fun and a great game to play when you’re staying put for a bit. i just downloaded tetris for an alternative for my upcoming trips.

shakeIt – just like your old favourite polaroids

mobile banking

mindbody (so i know what yoga classes are being offered where, RIGHT NOW). i’ve been missing from yoga since june and i’ve made a pledge to myself to try and get to class at least once or twice a week.

starbucks (mostly to seek out free wifi. when i was in chicago last month and didn’t have roaming data, i discovered that just being in the vicinity of a starbucks would give me the internet. it was awesome. plus, you never know when you’ll need a pumpkin spice fix! this is good for being in new cities). also, for newbs to the ‘bucks, you can create your own drinks!

alarm clock pro – my alarm clock that i’ve used for the last 5 years recently stopped working (sort of) and i have since been trying to find a good replacement that wouldn’t set me back a ton of money. i came up short. until the day i decided to try out alarm clock pro, for the low low price of 0.99$, it is everything i’ve ever wanted in an alarm clock without a) having to spend a ton of money and b) adding more crap to my night stand. perfect.

and of course, tweetdeck. i still heart twitter!

what apps do you go to?

yesterday we attended the funeral of a 24 year old young woman. heart heavy sadness. as with funerals (and weddings), it brought a lot of family together, and i did have the chance to meet many wonderful people from jon’s side. if only the circumstances were lighter… it was a nice service, anyway, and though i never had the chance to meet melanie during her all-too-short life, it seemed to do her spirit right. many happy memories were shared.

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jon’s parents sent us home with a trunkload of farm goods: a big bag of yellow and green beans, a sack of new potatoes, beets, zukes, a jar of blueberries and a big basket of red tomatoes. my own little garden patch is bountiful (even a little out of control) with tomatoes, peppers and varied herbs (basil, mostly). i decided that a big pot of pasta sauce would be a delicious way to use up many of the tomatoes and some other vegetables and be a great excuse to try out my newest toy: (whilst at the same time, crossing one thing off of my mighty life list, which i know, i haven’t quite posted my own yet. it’s coming)

the pasta express! it has 12 different attachments for all kinds of different shapes to extrude. it even does pretzels, bagels, and extrusion cookies!

jon’s sister was cleaning up her house last weekend and getting rid of unnecessary clutter. for some reason, this lovely pasta maker fell into that category for her. i happily took it off her hands, since i’ve been wanting to make pasta myself for ages now AND it’s an easy item on the list to cross off! hooray for fun, new (free!) appliances.

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making pasta sauce from scratch is fun, but it can get pretty messy! i basically used this recipe.

first you have to score the tomatoes, so they are easier to peel. i used a mix of romas from my garden, littlish rounds (also from my garden) and the big rounds from the farm. although my plants originally came from the farm, the tomatoes that stayed seem to have grown much bigger!

blanch for a few seconds and dunk in ice water before peeling

squeeze the seeds and goop out into the compost and squish the flesh

onions are required. i don’t like them much, but they cooked long enough to not be noticable.

basil from the yard along with a few cloves of garlique.

cook down and add tomato

add a bit of alcohol. wine is good, but i didn’t have any, so i went with a splash of fortified and then i simmered my sauce.

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we took a break to visit a nearby farmer’s market for some fruit.

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then it was pasta time!

i sadly don’t seem to have any pictures of the plated meal. i guess we ate everything up too quickly! the pasta was delicious. it’s hard for me to say whether or not it is better than bought, since i am obviously biased, but jon seemed to really enjoy it a lot! there will be much more experimenting with this in the future. much more.

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this is part of our veggie patch (before we finished weeding!!!) taken back in may. tomorrow i will try to get a picture of it now so you can see just how crazy the situation is. i literally have tomatoes coming out of my ears, and those pepper and basil plants in the foreground have been engulfed. my vegetables are a great source of happiness in my life right now.

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bike race tomorrow and a 60th anniversary party!

i feel so far behind on blogging! i’m going to start with this weekend and work my way backwards over the next couple weeks to get back into the swing of things. that way when i go to the HLS #2, i will feel like a real blogger.

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so yesterday, we drove about 2 hours west to the quaint little town of Port Colborne for a bike race jon had signed up for. Port Colborne is right on Lake Erie and the Welland Canal (and the welland river, i think), and this weekend was “Canal Days”, which is a festival of tall ships. This meant that all the lift bridges were raised (i no longer can love lift bridges anymore! now i just find them annoying), and getting around town was a bit (ok, a lot) of a challenge. nevertheless, it was a pretty fun day.

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while jon prerode the racecourse, i walked around town. i came across a lot of antique type cars.

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i’m a bit of a bridge nerd (another post on that to follow, soon!) so i had to capture these.

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port colborne is a pretty cute place.

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on my walk, i saw a non-tall-ship-ship

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i didn’t take a whole lot of pictures at the actual race. on the left is right before the starting line. jon is in the university of waterloo jersey. he came in 1st in the single speed men’s category on the right (in the middled, with the ridiculously large medal)

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then we went to check the festival out and see more of the town.

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the festival itself was a little disappointing. all of the tall ships (there were only 3!) were docked and none of them had their actual sails up. the rest of it was mostly just your average small town fair fare. there were also a whole lot of people. we did see one interesting thing while at dairy queen after the fair (it was WICKED HOT and i needed ice cream, stat)

check out this teeny tiny house! it has it’s own little sort-of driveway, and a deck (which is probably the size of the rest of the house). also note the air conditioning. it has it’s own electrical hookup and a house number completely separate from the white house on the right, which led us to believe that it actually is completely it’s own house, but we were unsure.