Whirlwind Week

I really look forward to Monday... most people don't, but heck it's been one busy week and I can usually take a breather on Mondays. On Tuesday the kids and I zipped over to Kamloops and spent the night in a hotel. On the drive over I asked the kids what they wanted for supper? "We want to go to the hotel and have pizza delivered!" was their answer. I tried to convince them we could hit any restaurant they wanted but no way, they wanted delivery. I remember the first time Sydney ever experienced home delivery. We were in Nanaimo and when the pizza delivery man came to the door I thought Sydney was going to faint, she had never seen anyone deliver dinner to our door before :) Although I remember driving into Vancouver, on the way to Nanaimo, and when she saw an apartment building she turned to me and said "Mama these are the biggest houses I've ever seen." Ahhh the joys of living in the country.


The day I left for Kamloops Jaycee had dropped off two boxes of the largest apricots I've ever seen. Usually, in Lillooet, we have much smaller apricots and was shocked to learn that these had been grown over at the farm next door. I made three bottles of apricot brandy which will be ready in November, and about 8 pints of apricot jam, and still have a few left. I might make up more jam because I'm using it a lot in a recipe I've got from "The Big Cook" cookbook.


This weekend we had to move the pigs from the chicken run to a new pen, Hubby was outside early in the morning and the heat was quickly becoming unbearable. After an hour he was starting to sweat like Ham-let and Pork Chop but he got it done. Then you should have seen the antics of us trying to get Ham-let and Pork Chop into the pen. After all of us running after them in the yard they headed back into the chicken run, but then Hubby and I got them cornered and he was able to grab them, one at a time, and carry them over. This was after they had doused themselves past their eyeballs in mud... and the squealing, my gawd you'd think that he was carrying them to the butcher block! One big disappointment is I've had to give up my cucumber patch because Hubby cornered off a portion of my garden and unfortunately the cucumbers were on the pig's side.


The kids and I drove into Lytton on Friday because my port replicator (a thingy I hook up to my server for non-tech people) up and quit. I've had it for 31 days, one day past the store warranty. I called the company who makes it and was not impressed so I called the online store where I bought it. Without hesitation they agreed to take it back and issued me an RMA number. Good people and great customer service.


While we were in Lytton we walked over to a small park and I took some pics of the kids.







In this picture you can see where the Thompson River and the Fraser River meet. The Thompson has always been much cleaner than the Fraser.




So you would think it would start to slow down on Sunday, right? No way... I ended up preparing a bunch of lunches for Hubby to take to work for all next week. I decide to deep fry chicken nuggets and I'm standing at the kitchen stove, sweat pouring from my brow, when suddenly I feel a huge breeze hit me. I think Hubby felt sorry for me because he hooked up a large industrial fan blowing it into the kitchen to cool me off, sweet guy :)


The recipe I used for the batter is quite good. It comes from my Aunt's page at her website and I'll copy it here.

Deep Fried pork for sweet and sour (or chicken, or zucchini, or ?)

Mix 2 cups flour with 1 cup of cornstarch, 3 eggs, and 2 tablespoons salt. Add enough water to make it the consistency of pancake batter. 1 medium roast pork cut into pieces. Dip pieces into batter and deep fry.

You only need to thinly coat whatever it is you are deep frying because this stuff really puffs up. The only modification I did was add a bit of Mrs. Dash's spice and some Lawry's seasoning salt to give the batter a bit of a spicy taste. She has it on her webpage for pork but you could use it for anything, and after I finished making the chicken nuggets I cut up a zucchini from my garden and deep fried small rounds... it was delish.