Inventive Day

This morning when I looked at the chicken breast that I took out of the freezer last night I did not relish the thought of another ho-hum fried dinner so I put on my inventor’s hat and went to work.
Looking in the fridge I found: jalapeno jelly, homemade blackberry juice that turned more into jelly than juice and raspberry juice. Into a bowl went a little bit of it all, together with Dijon mustard, garlic powder, onion powder, dried ginger, salt and pepper, cumin and curry powder. I marinated the chicken breast in this mixture for about half an hour. Because I was pressed for time I decided to fry it on top of the stove instead of using the oven. It did not take long to brown and before it burned in the pan I decided to dump some red wine in the pan, closed the lid and let it cook in there. I had to check quite often to make sure it did not burn. Each time I added more wine, enough to stop it from burning ☺. In the end I added a tiny bit of Brandy. It was some good!!! Now if I could only remember exactly how much of the ingredients I used I would be all set for another great meal. I guess I can always invent something equally as good ☺ at least I think so. Not all my inventions are keepers though.
With the meat we had a green salad with homemade dressing, our own squash with bought carrots and our own potatoes topped by the wine gravy. HmmmHmmm good ☺
Update on the fridge: Still running great! I am so happy about that. I like my egg trays and none of the new fridges have them any longer. I wonder why that is?? Yellow fridge, white stove.. but I don’t care.
In my spare time I am still knitting slippers. I want to use up all the wool I got for Christmas from Nicki, then I will move on to something else, probably more socks ☺☺ If nothing else, I am very consistent! (or you could call it: dull)
The weather has been very nice for the last few days although it was only –4 C when we got up this morning. It is now plus 6 C and sunny.
I better wander up to the mail boxes and see what other tax slips arrived. I’ll wait until the beginning of April before doing our taxes. Sometimes the slips arrive quite late and I hate to forget any on our tax returns. Too much trouble later on.
That’s it for another oh so very important Blog ☺☺☺
Good bye everybody ☺

Busy Hands are Happy Hands

I have spent a lot of my time lately knitting slippers for Cliff. Nicki sent us the wool at Christmas as a Christmas gift for her Dad but I had to knit them. She made the last pair for him which he is still wearing and she knows I love knitting. It was a type that I never made before and I did nearly as much “frogging” as I did knitting but in the end they were finally finished. They looked like they would fit an elephant.

before felting, about 17 inches long

Since I have a front loader washing machine felting does not come easy. I tried that last time and it did not work out too well. This time I felted by hand. First cold water in the kitchen sink, then dropping them into a large pot with very hot water. With rubber gloves I work them over in the hot water and back into the ice cold water.
This is done several times but they still looked very large and not much felted.
Plan 2: I took 3 tennis balls and a pair of wet old jeans and threw the whole lot into the dryer with the “Hot” setting. Every 10 minutes I checked until they were small enough and felted.

after felting and the right size


I don’t know why the sole is rippled but I am sure with wear they will flatten out. They look kind of funny in the picture but they stretch when worn.
I am glad they are finished and I think it will be a month of Sundays before I make another pair. ☺
Now they are drying on a rack in front of the fireplace. It takes days to dry them out completely since they are very thick.

Yesterday I broke down and bought a cell phone. When I told Nicki the first words she said was: “Hell must be frozen over” because that is what I used to say about buying a cell phone. I only want it for emergencies and am using Koodo but… I have weeknights from 7 PM to 8 AM  and weekends free calling.
Now I have to learn how to use it. I already added some contacts and made a few calls from our land phone and it seems to work alright. Next we have to buy a case for it. I also want to find out if there is a cord that can connect the phone to the computer so I can download the pictures I take. I don’t know if that exists. Where will it end???

We had a very nice day today, nice and sunny but still cool. It was a good change after a few days of rain.
Back to playing with the new toy.

Good night everybody ☺