Playgroup Fun!

For quite some time I’ve been hearing a lot about the Ontario Early Years Centres. One of my neigbours who is also a care provider for quite a few very your kids goes a few times a week and has wanted me to join her for months! Unfortunately my girls are late sleepers and we are not good at getting out the door early in the morning. The playgroup that she attends is at 9am and you need to be there at least 15 mins before to register otherwise it fills up and you cannot attend. That fact alone makes the whole thing seem even more daunting. I hate the thought of rushing the kids to get up, get dressed (or rather dress them) eat and get in the car. So I have not yet made the playgroup in the am. Last week my friend Amy and I were talking about playgroups and she informed me that they also have an afternoon group from 1-3 and that it is usually never full since most kids (ha! I wish!) nap then.

We showed up around 1:30 and to me, there were a lot of kids but apparently there is normally 5 or 6 times the number that were there (I would guess a dozen?) Lea immediately went off to play with K. and Amy and I brought the babies into the baby section. From that point on each adult kept watch over the kids in a different area of the room. It is really a great place with so much to do for kids. There are some riding/climbing toys, lots of different stations for the kids to play at (sand, snow, dress up, glue, paint), lots of new toys and books, and tons of great info for parents and care providers.

Leas glue art!

Halfway through the session, one of the ladies who was running the group called all the kids onto a mat for circle time and they talked about colours and sang some songs and just had some circle fun! After that it was snack time and then some more free play and then time to clean up and go home.

What I liked about the playgroup was that it had some structure but not so much that the kids can’t run around and do their own thing. I was really surprised that Lea seems to be becoming a little more independent. Whenever we have play dates with K. she normally follows her around and copies everything she does, but at the centre Lea was venturing off on her own to explore new things and I think she spent some time at every station. There was one incident with her taking blocks away from another little girl but I sat with her and explained that the other girl had them first and that they could play together and whatnot. It seemed to be ok until Lea knocked over the tower she had built with the blocks. Oops! Baby steps right! It was great to see her starting to do her own thing! She is growing up so fast! There wasn’t that much for Anna to do but I think she liked being out of the house and playing with J. and some new toys.

The centre is also conscious of germs and that’s something else that is important to me. I really don’t want the girls to get sick every time I take them out (is it inevitable?) They ask that you put any toys the kids put in their mouths into a bin for disinfecting and also clean all the surfaces down during clean up time. I know it may not seem like much but it’s more than I have seen any other playgroup do. However, there were a few kids there that made me uncomfortable, that were obviously sickly and I tried to keep the girls away from them as much as I could. I just don’t understand why the caregivers would bring those kids to playgroup, being sick like that. I guess they need the outing but that is my main concern with outside playgroups. I can honestly say that I prefer playgroups in a smaller setting where I can see the girls at all times and there are less kids but they had fun and I am sure that we will go back, especially with the cold weather coming.

Sticky Chicken Recipe

I am really shocked at the number of new recipes that I find myself trying. I've actually never kept a log and very few recipes have earned a spot in my recipe box. I always thought that I wanted to be one of those people who had 10 recipes or so that they knew and loved and alternated every week. I grew up eating the same meals over and over again and just assumed that that was normal. But, now I find myself deviating from that. I have decided to embrace my inner chef and to stop feeling guilty about trying new recipes. I enjoy it, find it fun and once in a while I do find that gem that gets written onto a little 3.5 x 5 card. I think part of it is that I have a picky toddler and I am forever trying to find healthy, home cooked meals that she will like and eat with gusto (ok, well the gusto part is me dreaming in technicolor!) If this is what prompts me to cook, and try new things then so be it! Just don't be surprised if I serve you something new for dinner!

Chicken is one of those must-haves. I almost always have boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the freezer. I am always trying new and different chicken recipes since we eat it so often. I have been getting really tired of all the tomato based recipes that I have been trying so I decided to give this Sticky Chicken Recipe a try.

Sticky Chicken

Ingredients:

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup low sodium soy sauce

1/2 cup sugar

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger root

1/8 tsp. pepper

3-4 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Preparation:

Combine all ingredients except the chicken in a shallow baking dish and stir until sugar dissolves. Add the chicken and turn to coat well. Cover the dish and chill in refrigerator for 24 hours.

When ready to eat, transfer the chicken and marinade to a large heavy nonstick skillet. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat to low, cover the skillet and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring each piece occasionally. Check the chicken for doneness (180 degrees F on an instant read thermometer) and remove to a shallow pan as they test done. Cover the cooked chicken and place in warm oven to keep warm.

Increase heat to medium and cook the marinade remaining in skillet until syrupy, stirring constantly, about 8-10 minutes. Return chicken to the skillet, coat it with the sauce, and serve immediately - with lots of hot cooked rice! Serves 8

The marinade was very quick and easy to prepare (I did however used ground ginger) and created a delicious sauce. The chicken was tender and moist (most likely from being cooked in liquids?) with a nice subtle flavor. The sauce reminds me of the dark, sweet sauce you get with garlic spareribs. I think I am going to see what goes into the spare rib sauce and try to incorporate that into this recipe. The whole family enjoyed it and I will definitely make it again!

Snow, snow and more snow

Winter has certainly come in like a lion (hopefully it will go out like a lamb)! Overnight we received a staggering 25 cm of snow (that’s approximately 10 inches for my American friends!) and another 25 cm over the course of the day. It’s so odd how one day the grass is green, I can see my toys in the backyard, the driveway is clear and the next morning everything is covered in snow and bright white. It was so bad that they cancelled all the school buses and the roads were an awful mess. I was very thankful to not have to go to work. My Friend Amy came over and we took the kids out to play in the snow. It was loads of fun dressing 4 little kids (ha ha!) but we eventually made it out into the fluffy white stuff. It’s the first year that Lea is old enough to actually play in the snow and I am not sure she understands the concept yet. For most of our time outside she didn’t want to touch, walk in or have anything to do with the stuff. Once she saw her friend K. playing in it she realized that it was probably not so bad (K. was smiling, laughing and just generally having a good time!) I convinced her to try sitting in it and once she did, she learned how much fun it really can be! She also learned not to rub your face with mittens covered in snow! Hopefully we will have many more opportunities to go play outside and maybe Anna will actually stay out for longer than 2 mins next time!

Book Review: Garbo Laughs - Elizabeth Hay

This is a novel about movie love. Set in Ottawa in the 1990s, it is the quixotic tale of tall, thin Harriet Browning, inflamed by the movies she was deprived of as a child. Bent on seeing everything she has missed, she rapidly becomes so saturated with old movies, seen repeatedly and swallowed whole, that she no longer fits into this world. Equally addicted are her three companions-of-the-screen: a boy who loves Frank Sinatra, a girl with Bette Davis eyes, and an earthy sidekick named after Dinah Shore. Breaking in upon this quiet backwater, in time with the devastating ice storm of 1998, come two refugees from Hollywood, the jaded widow of a famous screenwriter and her movie-expert stepson. They are Harsh Reality. With them come blackouts, arguments, accidents, illness, and sudden death. But what chance does real life stand when we can watch movies instead? What hope does real love have when movie love, in all its brief intensity, is an easy option? In this brilliant and poignant comedy of secondhand desire, movies and movie lovers come first.


About the Author
Elizabeth Hay is the author of two highly acclaimed, bestselling novels. Her first novel, A Student of Weather (2000), won the CAA MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction and the TORGI Award, and was a finalist for The Giller Prize, the Ottawa Book Award, and the Pearson Canada Reader’s Choice Award at The Word on the Street. Her most recent novel, Garbo Laughs (2003), won the Ottawa Book Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. She is also the author of Crossing the Snow Line (stories, 1989); The Only Snow in Havana (non-fiction, 1992); Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York (non-fiction, 1993), and Small Change (stories, 1997), which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Award, and the Rogers Communications Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her stories have been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories, The Journey Prize Anthology, and The Oxford Book of Stories by Canadian Women, edited by Rosemary Sullivan. She has won a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Fiction and a Western Magazine Award for Fiction. In 2002, she received the prestigious Marian Engel Award.Elizabeth Hay lives in Ottawa.


This was chosen as my book club selection for the month of February. It is an author that is getting a lot of publicity right now since she was a finalist for the Giller Prize. Can I just say; book club is freaking awesome! It’s a great bunch of ladies that all have very strong personalities and loads of experience in all kinds of things. We are a new club but I can tell it is going to be great! Ahem. At our last meeting, we decided to pick our books for the following 2 months so that those less fortunate (like me! J/K!!) could get the books from the library. Both books had a very long queue but for some reason this one came through quickly. I have once again put aside Claire and Jamie to read this new novel.

I am really enjoying this book right now. I am only halfway through but want to remember what I am thinking and feeling. It is the first time in a long time (possibly ever) that a book has actually touched me. It is scary in the sense that I know these characters (or rather people just like them) and I can so relate totally, on a level that is just… wow. A few other things that I found really interesting is that it was set here in Ottawa, so the landmarks visited by the characters in the book are very familiar to me, at one point part of my daily life. I am sure that is one of the main reasons that I can relate so well to the story.

It also talks a lot about the Ice Storm of 1988, which is something that I remember all too well. It was my 19^th birthday and I had gone out to dinner with friends in the west end. That place with the car that is halfway in the wall.. anyways, I was taking the bus home, the 95 to my Ottawa friends! And it was the middle of this ice storm. I had to walk a few blocks home and the world was covered in shiny, clear ice. It was actually really beautiful. It was very late, 11:30pm ish (I know right! Those were the days!) and the sky was that dark blue that it gets when it snows, and the streetlights bathed everything in a golden shiny glow. I was looking at the trees above me and the ice had become so heavy that they had bent and leaned over the road. At one point I heard a very large crack and from that point I became terrified whenever I came near an ice encrusted tree. I was so afraid that a branch was going to snap off, due to the sheer weight of all that ice. It is something that I don’t think I will ever forget and this book has brought it all back to the surface. It’s nice to know that those memories are still in there!

The story itself is a little slow and I really don’t get all the actor references (which really, is a large part of the book) but it is very well written and definitely evokes emotion. We’ll see how I feel once I finish it!

Now that I am done this book, I must say that I am a little dissapointed with the ending. I hate when authors just seem to wrap everything up very quickly and end the story. I was a little surprised at some of the events but I won't mention what they are, for those of you that haven't read the book. All in all it was an ok read. I would try this author again but am not in any hurry to get another one of her books.

Hello from my email client! oh, and Beef Stew

It occurred to me as I was thinking about the Holidailies that I thought I had seen a setting on Blogger to be able to send to draft on blogger site using an email address. That is genius!!! It will be so much easier to type away and send off a post like an email. And a lot of times things will just occur to me and I really really want to jot them down but just don’t have the chance, now I can do that! Quickly, easily and efficiently.

So, this is my first test of that setting!

We had an amazing day yesterday. It was cold and we had gotten a lot of snow but mid afternoon it was decided that we had been inside long enough and that we all needed fresh air. So, we bundled up and walked to the little mall across the street. We used our sled and it was so much easier than the stroller. Lea actually enjoyed sitting in it (she does NOT like the stroller, most of the time) and we got so many smiles from passersby that we must have been awfully cute! I would have pictures but we committed one of those sins and forgot to charge the batteries in the camera oops! Here's a pic from last year to make up for it!

We did some shopping and then came back home for naps. I took advantage of the downtime to begin dinner. I made a beef stew* from scratch and it was so delicious! It will be granted a spot in my recipe box for sure! I also opened one of my new bottles of wine (because the stew recipe called for it! ;) ) put Galaxy Christmas on and addressed all my Christmas cards. Now I’m just wondering when is too soon to send them. The first one I get will mean it’s safe to drop them in the mailbox. Then there was family playtime, a bath for me then bedtime stories, bottle and bed. It was a wonderful, suburban cold winter day. The only thing missing was the Christmas tree. SIGH.

* I had picked up some stewing beef on sale (usually Loeb Tracy!) and decided that it was a perfect day for stew and I had all the veggies on hand AND I still had 1/3 of a baguette left that needed to be eaten, oh and the wine ;) So, I searched online and found a recipe that I could work with and the result was delicious! So, for your culinary pleasure, my beef stew recipe:

Beef Stew

· 2 pounds stewing beef
· 1/4 cup butter
· 2 medium onions (chopped)
· 1/4 cup wine (optional - awww really?)
· 1/4 teaspoon thyme
· 1 clove garlic
· salt
· pepper
· 2 carrots (chopped)
· 1 cup peas
· 1 cup celery (chopped)
· 1/4 cup flour

Cube the stewing beef and brown in butter. Add onions and cook until onions are transparent. Add 3 cups water, wine, thyme, garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for about 30 minutes. Add carrots, peas, and celery. Simmer for another 20 minutes. Thicken gravy with flour and 1 cup of water. Add more seasonings if desired. Simmer for 5 more minutes.This beef stew recipe will serve 4 to 6.

I made a half batch since I only had 1 lb of stewing beef. I used margarine instead of butter , frozen peas and I added 2 peeled, cubed potatoes. Oh, I also used beef broth in place of the water and added a little more broth when there wasn't enough liquid (totally my fault, I made it early so that it could sit and simmer so the liquid evaporated).

Adventures in Winemaking

For the last couple of years I have taken an interest in red wine. It makes me feel much more sophisticated than my sex-on-the-beach, Mikes Hard, Kokanee days! Mind you, the purpose of those drinks was to get drunk! I like a glass of wine to enjoy and savour. I can have one glass and feel the warmth throughout my body. Yummy! My tastes run mainly to the Australian Shiraz but I have been branching out and trying different kinds. I have realized that I don't like wines that are too dry and that have a lot of tannins. I like a thick, full bodied wine. I would really love to take a wine course, just for fun.

During the summer, my neighbours and I were all hanging around outside enjoying a glass of wine (white for most of them, red for me) (By the way, don't you just love the suburbs!) When one of my neighbours mentioned that they had previously had wine made and bottled it themselves and that it worked out to being a very good price. They wondered if I was interested. Of course it took no thought on my part! So we planned it for this winter and that was that.

A few weeks ago my neighbour called to say "it's ready!" We made an appt to go and sample the batch and bottle it. We met in my neighbours driveway at 8:30am yesterday morning on the coldest day of the year yet (-26 with the windchill, that's -15 degrees fahrenheit for my american friends!) with coffees in hand and headed off to the wine store. I had the opportunity to meet another neighbour that I had not previously met so it was a nice drive getting to know one another.

We got to the winery, (this one to be exact: http://www.vinbella.com/ )and unloaded our empty bottles from the trunk. The wine is even cheaper if you bring your own bottles (woo hoo!) so we'd all been saving them for the last few months (I must admit that my contribution was slightly smaller than the rest, of course they don't have 2 small kids to look after!) Once inside, the owner brought our buckets of wine (60 Litres I do believe) to the work area and showed us what to do!




The first step was to clean the bottles with a chemical solution and then to rinse the same bottle in water and place on a "tree" to dry. The next step involved placing the clean bottles into a machine that would fill the bottles with wine, then came the corking (which the owner did), putting the bottles back in the case, paying and we were done! We have ordered a Merlot and becuase it was only 8 weeks old (still a baby!) the ownder recommended that we let it sit for another month or so. I'm not sure how long I will be able to wait but it will only get better with age! So, I made it home with 25 bottles of red wine at less than $2 a bottle! What a score! On average I would spend $12-$15 on a bottle of wine, so this is going to be a huge money saver! And with the holidays coming it will be nice to have wine to bring to parties and whatnot.

This is what the wine bottling machine looked like.

It was a really fun experience with great people. They were laughing at how interested I was in the process but then remembered that I am a stay at home mom and don't get out much!

Next summer I would like to take a drive to Niagra or some other wine region and visit a real winery. I have visited a rum bottling factory in Cuba and that was a really interesting place so I can only imagine what a Vineyard muse be like. I will have to do some research and plan a trip for us!

I can't wait to try my wine and to actually be able to cook with it! Usually when a recipe calls for wine, I choose to omit since I want to keep my wine for drinking but now I have lots to spare! In fact, I am going to scour the net for a beef stew recipe that hopefully calls for red wine (so that I have a reason so open a bottle of course!)

We are already talking about our white wine order for this summer :)

Holidailies 2007

Every year I am amazed at all my fellow bloggers who participate in the wonderful challenge known as Holidailies. The idea is that you blog every day, from Dec 1 - Jan 1. This seems like a daunting task but I am up for it! I can't guarantee that the content will always be interesting or innovative but there will be something there!

So, it is Dec 1. Wow. I can honestly say that it's the first year that I have ever been so organized for Christmas (it's true, I swear!). I have purchased the majority of my gifts and have already started my holiday baking. I have my cards already and am planning to get them written out and sent asap! It feels so good to be making progress and to hopefully not get caught in the last minute mad dash for gifts etc.

I am so excited for Christmas this year! I think having kids has really changed the whole concept of Christmas. It was so cool to watch Lea open the first door to her advent calender this morning. Of course she just wanted to keep opening! We will be turning our lights on tonight and I am seriously debating putting up the tree. My only concern is that Anna is into everything, and i'm sure the tree will seem like just another new toy to her! Maybe I will wait a little longer :)

How are your Christmas tasks coming along?