Monday, January 23rd - Belated Happy Birthday Lloyd

It should be a great day today. At 5:10 am it's -10' with clear skies, heading for a high of -4' and sunny. But it's going to be a strange week. Tuesday is meant to be +7' and rainy and then 10 cm of snow on Saturday. What a roller coaster of weather we're getting this year. Last night I checked back to see what date we went skiing for the first time at Dalvay and it was January 17th. There were the odd bare patches but it was at least still possible. Not so this year - at least not yet.

I have to say a belated Happy 60th Birthday to Lloyd. His big day was on Sunday. He spent Saturday working on food for a party they were throwing at the hangar. Then last night he was going out with the Wilson;s and tonight he will be guest of honour at the Dennisons. It's been quite the celebration! Sorry I wasn't there to share it with you.

But it was  another pretty quiet weekend here on the island. Friday night, just a bit of TV. Then Saturday morning I stopped in at the Van Gaals on my way to work and had coffee and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I must get Brenda's recipe - they were really good, especially warmed up a little.

On my way to work, I drove by the Jack Frost site. They had a pile of snow they made with the machine on Friday and had taken it and packed it into wooden frames to make one of the walls at the entrance of what will be a winter village. The snow we got on Friday night will help as well. Hopefully the rain won't do too much damage on Tuesday. It appears they have it under control and will get it finished is spite of what Mother Nature throws at them.

Then off to work, grocery shopping on my way home then stacking wood after I got here. Nothing too exciting but all things that needed doing. I was invited to partake in supper with the Van Gaal family as it was Will's last night at home. After a delicious meal we watched some TV while Will went to town to go out with some friends.

Sunday morning I decided I wanted to make some Pea Soup. I had a ham bone in the freezer that I had taken out the night before. I knew I had yellow split peas somewhere and it took a while to find them. So while the soup was simmering I undertook to finally empty out and reorganize those cabinets. It was quite a job and it took all morning but I'm mighty glad to have that task completed. It was on my list of things to do and yesterday turned out to be just the day.

Wills flight was leaving at 12:30, so around 1:30 we went out to the trails for our Sunday afternoon hike in the woods. Bernie was going to go but decided he'd rather stay home. So just the three of us headed out - Me, Brenda and Cooper.  It was colder than last weekend but in the woods you don't get the wind so it wasn't bad. I don't know how far we actually walked but we figure it was close to 7 km. A good workout for sure. When we got back we warmed up some soup and made tea and sat by the fire. It was a good day.

After she left I worked on laundry and watched a bit of TV and that was my weekend. BUT.....

.......the really fun part was on Saturday morning when I was at work. I've had this idea rattling around in my head for a few weeks now and I finally got it in motion on Saturday. I want to do a blog but with just recipes. So my plan is to take photos each step along the way of the recipes I make and then post the whole lot on the blog. It's called "At our island table" and will feature little vignettes of where the recipe was used and what was going on when we enjoyed it. It's pretty rudimentary right now but it will grow. Check it out - in fact here you can find our Pea Soup we enjoyed yesterday! Once there are lots of recipes in there you can use the search feature at the top of the page on the right hand side.