Saturday, June 24, 2017

fetter (cousins)

Carm and I were out and about yesterday (Friday): getting the temp sensor on the car fixed; breakfast of eggs Benedict; return shoes (yes, again); pickup clipper blades from sharpening; groceries; LCBO; … and  on it goes. Unexpectedly Carm’s phone rang (on the car’s bluetooth system) - it was my Mom - my dad was not feeling well and Bjorn & Ingeborg were on their way from Quebec City, due to arrive in an hour and half - could we call them and have them stay at our house for the night?

Of course!!!

So we dashed to Costco (our last planned stop anyway) and stocked up on some groceries for company and raced home, hoping that our house wasn’t too messy/dirty. Once home I dashed through the house, picking up and tidying, did a quick wipe of the guest bath and we were ready. Thankfully Carm had done a really good vacuum the day before.

The dogs started barking - they are here.

I didn’t realize it at the time but Ingeborg is afraid of dogs. I would have locked them in the bedroom but instead let them rudely mob our guests. Bella quickly wormed her way under Ingeborg’s hand, assuring her that our pack means no harm. Bjorn took a photo of her with the three dogs this morning to send to their kids thinking that they wouldn’t believe their eyes.

We had a lovely afternoon of visiting, sharing a bottle of bubbles, and then a leisurely supper (hello actifry potatoes!), followed by a congenial evening. I should mention that they are from Norway but speak excellent English. Communication was no problem and we managed a few laughs :-)

After supper Bjorn dashed into ‘their’ room and came back carrying a giant box - what the heck? Could that have been in their suitcase? To our delight it was a grill for making lefse - they obviously remember our trials with giant batches of lefse at Christmas. With this we may be inclined to make it more often. We just have to figure out how to make the electricity work.

Our busy day and their time change sent us to bed early.

Carm got up in plenty of time to make sure they had coffee and we sat around having breakfast until it was time for them to leave to see my parents. They’ll be back again in a week (or sooner if we are lucky).

Lets travel back a day to Thursday afternoon: I just spent 15 minutes looking for Grace’s spare food dish ring that I had STASHED somewhere on the camper. I searched all the cupboards and hiding places before I found it with the DVDs between her cage and the TV. Logical right? I read a bit of an article that talked about forgetting and how we aren’t meant to remember everything. Yeah, I get that, but why the heck can’t I remember things like this rather than all the words to ‘Muskrat Love’. Seriously.

I’ve cooked a few more things with the Actifry. Last night supper was a mix of peppers, mushrooms and broccoli that I served with pasta with tomato sauce. Easy, no stirring for me, and totally delicious. Today I tried some tofu which turned out better than the griddler, and played around some more with caramelized onions. It’s getting there but I think I need more water to steam the onion a bit before I add the balsamic vinegar. Still - pretty darn tasty and it raises a hotdog to a ‘whole nother level’. Tonight I roasted some potatoes which turned out better than I could have dreamed,  and tossed that with roasted pepper, onion, and mushroom. So far the experimentation is going well but soon I’ll start cooking some regular food too ;-)

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche

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