Loooooooong Weekend.

Well, exams are done and over with. Friday after the last exam my classmates and I went out to the madison and got out drink on for a little while. I discovered I love magners hard cider. Then my best friend from class came back to my place for tequila rose and good music. Introduced her to the likes of Andy McKee and Iron and Wine. Much to my surprise, she was already familiar with I&W. Cheers to good friends with good taste. My parents were at ikea here in the city, so they gave me a lift home rather than having to take the bus to Orangeville. Kudos to them. Zack met us in Orangeville.

Saturday morning Zack and I went to the market, then came home and helped mom plant her vegetable garden. We now have a 12x20 plot with 4 varieties of tomatoes, 3 varieties of peas, bush beans, zucchini, pumpkins, pickling cucumbers, carrots, radishes, 2 types of onions, butter crunch lettuce, basil, bell peppers and sunflowers. We spent the afternoon running errands, went for a walk with my grandparents in the early evening, and had steak for dinner. Overall a pretty good day.

On Sunday the same friend who shared my tequila rose on friday came to mom's place with her fiancee. They brought burgers for lunch, and we put on a local meal for dinner. Venison shot at a nearby farm and processed by a local butcher into sausages, roasted baby red potatoes and asparagus from the market, and home made iced tea. We spent the day lounging about and chatting, and just unwinding from our stressful week. In the evening we got a fire going with whatever wood we could find laying about. We tried to lie on blankets spread out on the grass, but the ground is still too soggy in the back yard, the blankets got soaked in minutes, so instead we dragged around the patio furniture. It worked. We told creepy stories and roasted marshmallows... I brought out the fiddle, but it wasn't very well received. Guess I should practice some more before another public appearance. They didn't leave till after midnight... about the time we ran out of wood.

Monday and Tuesday were lazy days. Now I'm back in the city.

Today is the day that I find out if I passed all my exams or not... Wish me luck?

Old Joe Clark

this is what I'm working on today...

Lazy Day

Today's exams were over with by 10, and I came home and made myself eggs and leftover garlic toast, drank orange juice and coffee and ate a grapefruit (the only way to eat a grapefruit properly of course is to cut it in half widthwise, sprinkle with sugar and eat the wedges with a spoon). I finished a book that I've been working on reading for over a month now. Then I came outside with the cats to pull some weeds from the garden and play my fiddle. Amazing grace and twinkle twinkle were getting a little old, but I thought surely there must be an intermediary step between that and "real" fiddle tunes right? Not so much. Or at least I can't find it. I did however find a youtube tutorial of a fellow breaking "Old Joe Clark" down into its constituent parts for me, and its coming along nicely. I wouldn't get up on stage tomorrow with it, but at least the neighbors have stopped cringing when I bring the case out.

Apple Rhubarb Crisp

Here's the recipe as near as I can tell it from the rhubarb crisp I made on the weekend. I didn't follow a recipe, I kinda made it up on the fly, and I'm notorious for not measuring these things. We did have a really deep dish pie plate, so if it's looking like far too much fruit to you, that could be why. It will cook down in volume though, so being full is ok, just have a cookie sheet under it.

The fruit:

approx. 6 medium stalks rhubarb, sliced like celery

7 apples (we used a mix of granny smith and red delicious. Just what we had on hand.) peeled, cored, sliced

sweeten to taste if your rhubarb is bitter and your apples tart. We found we didn't need to add any sugar at all.

crisps are very forgiving and most fruits do well together. This time, we also had about 3/4 of a cup of blueberries in the freezer we wanted to eat up. We tossed them in too.

The crisp:

2 cups of quick oats

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup butter/margarine

sprinkle the crumbly mixture over the fruits in a pie plate, bake at 350 for an hour or until golden brown and bubbling

p.s. Happy Birthday Zack!!

A Weekend In the Life

Only 13 exams left now... and 5 of them are tomorrow. We'll get through this, and then I'll post more. Promise.

Went to the farmer's market in Orangeville on Saturday with my mom. I need to teach her how to shop the market properly. She stands in the middle of the whole affair, spies out the things she needs, bee-lines to the assorted booths in the most efficient trajectory, and skedaddles out of there. That simply won't do. The market is all about the tastes, textures and smells. It's about hearing where frost still lingers, and what a hard time your meat providers had lambing out this spring. Its about making the meaningful connections, and hearing exactly how your dinner ended up on the table, from planting/conception, to harvest, whether it be honey extractors or butcher knives. It's not just about assuming that the food is local because, well, it came from the market, but knowing and truly appreciating the people who make your belly full. It's thanksgiving every Saturday. And I savour it. As a first market experience for the season, I have to say I'm very disappointed with being dragged through it military style. I did however manage to get a few words in edgewise to a sweet lass who's new this year and selling yogurt, cheese and ice cream, all made with sheep's milk. Dairy products in general have been sorely lacking at our market, she was certainly a fresh face in the crowd. I bought a sharp cheese called egweda ecru that is reminiscent of a really old cheddar from her. I also snatched up a bottle of raw honey, and managed to slow mom down enough so she could hear the explanation of raw versus liquid honey, and I could tell her why I prefer the raw.

When we got home I realized that we had apples going wrinkly in the fruit bowl, past their prime bananas a-plenty in the fridge, and fresh rhubarb growing up tall and crisp in the garden. What's a poor girl to do, study? With all that going on around me? Heck no. I made an apple rhubarb crisp, and since mom and I were butting heads over who made the better banana muffins, and we had a plethora of nice brown mushy ones, we decided to each bake a batch of our favorites and see what the family thought was best. Mine won, hands down. Wasn't a fair fight. Mine have chocolate chips and walnuts.

All this foodie adventuring was finished by noon however, and I spent the afternoon studying. Didn't feel too guilty about it. After all, some mornings last week I hardly woke up before noon.

Sunday we took the Pathfinders on a hike. We followed the bruce trail from Hockley road at 2nd line, then took the Glen Cross, and Tom East side trails on the way back, for a total of 11.5 km. The trail was breathtaking, and awe inspiring. There were giant moss covered rocks, and piles of fieldstone tossed aside by farmers. Open meadows and dense forests. Tiny sandy banked streams, and raging rocky rivers with wooden bridges. Coniferous forest, deciduous forest, and everything in between. An ascent so steep it was aided by a cable, and stiles for crossing fence lines. It never ceases to amaze me what a wonderful, diverse landscape we have in Dufferin county. (is that part of the trail in Dufferin? I think so.) We stopped at about half way and ate a lunch of pancakes with chocolate chips and bananas and turkey bacon. The girls kept exclaiming at how fresh the air smelled, how beautiful the view was, and how nice it was that we weren't overheating as we hiked along. I think the weather might have hit a high of 10 degrees all day, and drizzled almost the whole time, but we were properly dressed for it, and it actually felt refreshing. We are definitely planning on doing more hiking in the future. Pictures to come I promise. I found a digital camera I haven't touched in about a year and took the pics with that. Now I just have to find the uploader cord.

Going Insane

And school is both the cause and the cure. I can't wait for next week to be over and DONE with. I can almost play amazing grace on the fiddle though, and MSK is the only subject left that I haven't looked at at all. Need to spend some more time with patho, anatomy, neuro and cardio, but at least I've looked at them all once.

Starting to plan for the summer. Working out how much I have to save for a decent down payment on a house in two year's time, cruising the classifieds for a job. Looking up car insurance rates. Trying to fight my way out of the life of a student and into adulthood. Wish me luck, I feel like peter pan is cackling over my shoulder and chanting "Never, Never, Never"

Hey Diddle Diddle take 2

I'd like to introduce you to my newest favourite distraction. Ain't she a beauty? It's a Yamaha fiddle, and it's mine for a month. I rented it from Long and McQuade's, and for only 16 bones a month, I get her, the case, the bow, and roisin. Hoping that maybe I can get good enough by July that I can convince somebody to buy me one for my birthday.

I picked her up yesterday afternoon, and stopped in Garrison Creek park halfway home to try her out. Couldn't wait till I got home. I screeched and scratched my way across the strings, but it was music to my ears.

I went home and studied for a while, and the next time I was ready for a break I took her out to the front porch to fumble my way through a youtube lesson. One of the neighbor's boys was drawn out to see what I was doing. He was enthused to have another "musician" on the street. I told him I was hardly that... yet at least. He just smiled and told me that if I was passionate about it, I was a musician. I liked this kid already. Then he told me that it sounded a little out of tune. I don't have the ear to be able to tune these things myself, but he went and got his guitar, and by plucking that, then plucking my fiddle, he helped me get it back in tune. Then he sat on the front porch steps and played the guitar for a while. He plays 5 instruments and is learning 2 more. I was impressed. The kid is 14. I wished I had a batch of iced tea or something mad up to offer him. Anyways, I've lived here since January, and that was one of the longest conversations I've had with a neighbor. Music really does build communities. So does screeching apparently. He headed back home when his little brother got home from school and I studied Joint mobilizations.

Later on, when it was time for another break, I let all 4 cats out into the backyard and followed them out with freshly made iced tea and the fiddle. I played for about 15 minutes, and then sat studying Neuro in the glorious sunshine. Wearing a tank top. I am so burnt. It felt really good to soak up the vitamin d though.

And now it's morning, and I'm blogging/studying until I'm pretty sure I won't wake anyone up with the fiddle. I think this pattern of study, take a break to fiddle, study some more is gonna work out really well this week.