Life's a Stitch

Real life summer adventure

Not the adventures in my painting brain, as described in my last post. We welcomed the summer with a camping trip. Finally allowed out of our health region, we packed our double vaccinated selves into the car and trailer, and off we went over the mountains, to Osoyoos, Canada’s only desert.

 

Consistent with that title, it’s the hottest spot, temperature wise, and has the warmest lake in the country. It’s also the wine capital of BC, reminiscent of the Napa Valley.

 

High winds kicked up the surf on the lake so our waterfront campsite felt like we might be camping in Mexico or Hawaii. Listening to the waves at night, and inland gulls during the day, it was hard to believe we weren’t by the ocean. The sunsets were on par with those more exotic destinations. 

 

 

 

Day were spent reading, painting and exploring the area by bike, allowing ourselves two visits to winery tasting rooms per outing. It felt like a dream after so many months of isolation.

 

To be continued...

Summer Adventure

That was a particularly appealing title for the recent art society challenge. Especially since we were still in lockdown. At that point it was like living on an island, the ocean to the west, not being permitted to leave our health region to the east, and the Canadian/US borders closed to the north and south. 

 

So I threw myself vicariously into my summer adventure painting. It’s located in the Capilano Canyon, in the rain forest, where we lived for nearly 30 years. To turn it into an adventure, I used my artistic licence and plunked in my grandsons on a fishing adventure. When my daughter saw it she responded immediately. “Where are their parents? Where are their life jackets? Why are they so close to the edge?” Good, I thought, she doesn’t want it. Off it’ll go for sale at next show. 😉

A long time ago I took a painting course where the instructor said her most successful paintings were ones where she connected emotionally with the story in the scene. It worked this time. I connected and my summer adventure painting won first prize.

Pandemic Peeve - the rant du jour with ice cream for dessert

Perhaps it's the amount of time I've spent in Zoom classes over the course of covid that adds to my irritation. When did this statement become pervasive?  AKA ubiquitous, repetitive, annoying and blatantly untrue. It seems whenever a presenter answers a question from the audience, it is prefaced by "That's a GREAT question." Really? Is it? How can all questions be great?

What is its purpose? Is it a time filler? A nervous habit? An honest judgment regarding the quality of the question? Whatever it is, it bugs me like nails on a chalkboard. And guess what? I just searched it and it's bothersome to a lot of people. I wonder what its lifespan will be. I hope it goes the way of the virus.

Reminds me of my long ago rant on exclamation points. I coached employees to reread what they had written, exclaiming "Wow!" everywhere they placed an exclamation point . It worked. People saw that there was no need to end a sentence with "Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!." An occasional singular "Wow!" would do. I wonder what we could come up with to encourage presenters to evaluate their use of "That's a GREAT question."

Let's sweeten up this rant. I flip through my photos for ideas. What did I come up with? "That's a GREAT question," I say to myself. Ohh that's really irritating, or as my grandson says, it's buggins. Forget I said that. I came up with... ice cream. 

Recently C has had to be stricter with his sugar intake. The one thing I know he missed was ice cream. The commercial no-sugar-added ones taste strongly of alternative sweeteners, and have additives to keep the product soft. That is part of the role of sugar in ice cream, it keeps it from freezing rock solid. For his birthday C received a fancy shmancy ice cream maker. Forty minutes to creamy happiness, it's a small miracle. 

We have perfected our practice to using a minimal amount of a sugar substitute (check out Allulose, a plant based sugar) and 1/4C of rum. What, you say, rum is made from sugar, how does that work? Unless it's dark rum, to which caramel colouring and a small amount of sugar has been added, rum has no carbs, no residual sugar in the finished product. Of course it has other evils and will eat through your stomach or arteries (I hope hyperbole doesn't irk you), but .4 of a tablespoon per cup, seems like a small about of poison. The amount of cream with probably kill you more quickly.

Back to the pleasures, here is our progression:

1. Basic frozen vanilla custard with 8 egg yolks yielded a delicious rock hard result. We cut it into slices with a large serrated knife. Even the electric knife refused the job.
2. Strawberry cheesecake ice cream - recipe claimed it would stay soft due to the fat content of the cream cheese. The juicy strawberries added enough to the water, requiring us to chip it out of the container.
3. Eggnog ice cream, made with homemade eggnog. This is where we discovered the magic of rum. The rum flavour, although appropriate, doesn't come through at that proportion, just a hint of sweetness. For flavour, the addition of rum extract would work better, but you still need the real stuff to keep it soft.
4. Number 4 was the charm!(Wow!) Fresh ginger ice cream, so good: adding a quarter C of grated ginger and its juice, and the rum, after chilling the ice cream base. If the ginger is heated with the cream it will produce curdly clumps. The next batch will be maple flavoured.