Laundry Day

Food Friday : Burritos!

This week's food post is meant to achieve three things : (1) to give you the idea of making some easy-to-do burritos at home (2) to demonstrate how to make them (3) and to show you the recent fillings we used, which included vegetarian chili *, potatoes, avocados, tomatoes, spicy pickled peppers, and skim-milk Mozarella cheese. This combo was absolutely delicious!

We get our whole-wheat soft tortillas at a Mexican Market, but they are available at the grocery store too. The idea is to fold the tortilla around your selected fillings, and then to lightly cook the bundles. Like with pizza, almost anything goes as long as there is some cheese in there. Oh ok, even cheese is optional, except in my burrito please!

If using potatoes they should be cooked ahead and then sliced. Cut all your stuffing ingredients into bite size pieces. This is especially important if you plan to eat your burritos with your hands (rather than knife and fork, as we do). Hands are perfectly fine utensils for this dish, however you want the stuffing pieces to be small enough to make eating them this way dignified and not a big sloppy mess!

Recent Card Making : Paper and Stickers

c="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/diy-greeting-card-02.jpg" alt="diy card" title="diy-greeting-card-02" width="640" height="427" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-9969">I had some cards to make recently for three very important ladies in my life. The first was for my aunt Joan, who was retiring from a job she had held for many years. The other two were birthday cards for my mom and friend Stella. Those birthdays were coming up quickly so I had to do something quick and easy, so I turned to my collection of cute stickers.Supplies : Each card takes a sticker, a pre-made patterned card and envelope (or make your own as described in this post), some coloured card-stock paper, and a piece of plain cream coloured sketching paper (to give your card a nicer finish on the inside). One of the birthday cards also included a die-cut that said "Happy Birthday" on it (I had this from a card making kit, but you could also re-purpose an old birthday card for that). I also used double-sided tape squares, a pencil, ruler, straight scissors and 'fancy-edge scissors'.How to Make One : Cut your coloured paper based on the size of the sticker you are planning to use. One piece is cut slightly larger than the other, to form a mat underneath. Note, something to consider when measuring is that when using the fancy scissors, it's easier to cut the line straight first and then go around the edge with the fancy scissors. Do your fancy-cut piece first and then use it as a guide for cutting your mat piece.Using two-sided tape, stick these two pieces together. Apply your sticker and then using more two-sided tape, stick this decoration to the front of the card.Card One:

Wordless Wednesday : Stormy Weather

I rarely do a wordless post but after beginning the script to go along with these photographs and stopping and restarting my first paragraph a few times, I realized that this might be a time to just let the pictures can do the talking.

All I will say is that we managed to make it home this day with only the lightest of sprinkles falling upon us, which were very refreshing because it was stiflingly hot outside. And moments after we were safely home, the rain did fall. Oh yes it did. Complete with a magnificent light and sound show.

Having Lunch with Spirits of the Past

The other day Nick and I went for lunch at a place that we haven't been to together since last summer. It's called Sneaky Dee's and though we hadn't been there in a while, we both slipped into the booth like it was a very familiar and comfortable old chair. That's because we have both spent many hours in this place, most being well before we ever met. In fact, we discovered that there were very likely some times in our teens and early twenties that we were both there at the same time, though we didn't know each other. I so wish I had a memory to cherish of seeing him joking around with his friends in the back room or passing him on the stairs to use the restrooms. But alas, no.

Both having histories here always means lots of stories to tell whenever we go now. This lunch was spent discussing one of Nick's best friends back in those days, who died two Decembers ago. I had only met him a few times so didn't know him well, but his and Nick's roots were very intertwined. And together they had spent much time in the same spot in which we were now sitting. I could see the ghosts cross in front of Nick's eyes as we ate out sandwiches.