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Our dog is finding golf balls in the park

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My husband does most of the dog walking in this household. Our Lab gets a walk each morning and evening with my husband. If I’m feeling up to it (remember I have Crohn’s so I feel awful quit often) I give her an additional walk in the afternoon.

We try to vary where our dog is walked. It’s never the same route, however, my husband has been taking our Lab to the park just down the street a little more often than he usually does in the dead of winter. Why? Well … since we’ve had an extremely rare lack of snow here in Toronto this winter the park is a great place to go with the dog. Usually the park gets all the excess snow dumped in it in the winter, but that hasn’t really been happening this year. So as long as we don’t mind a slightly muddy dog it’s a great place to take her.

Some of our neighbors must have been taking advantage of the mild winter we’ve been having because our dog has become a great source for used golf balls LOL. Yep, she’ll come up to us with two or three golf balls in her mouth. Someones been getting in a little putting practice it seems.

When you walk your dog does he or she find interesting or unusual items to bring home?





Slow Cooker Beef Stew

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I’m making stew for dinner tonight. I haven’t made stew in oh … a decade or more! LOL

My mother used to make stew for dinner regularly and everyone loved it except for me. I always hated stew. Oh it was always a little better the next day, but I still didn’t like it very much. For some reason though, my mom could get me to eat canned stew (Puritan Irish stew). I thought it was great.

I think my taste buds have evolved in the last while – or at least I’m hoping that they have because it seems like I’ll eat dishes and foods that I wouldn’t touch when I was a kid or young adult.

Anyway … I’ve been using our slow cooker quite a bit this year. I’ve made at least three slow cooled roasts and I even made barbecued back ribs once. Now I’m trying a tasty sounding stew recipe that I found on the Canadian living website.

I’m throwing in lots of root vegetables – a small store near us has veggies that are always fresh in fact they’re way fresher than the ones we get in the grocery store!

Here’s the recipe that I’m trying out this evening:

Slow-Cooker Hearty Beef Stew

  • 1-1/2 lb (750 g) stew beef
  • 1 tbsp (15 mL) vegetable oil
  • 1 can (28 oz/796 mL) tomatoes
  • 2 onions, cut in wedges
  • 2 cups (500 mL) chopped peeled sweet_potatoes
  • 2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
  • 2 stalks celery, chopped
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1-1/2 tsp (7 mL) italian herb seasoning
  • 2-1/2 cups (625 mL) beef stock
  • 1 cup (250 mL) frozen peas
  • 1/4 tsp (1 mL) each salt and pepper
  • 1/2 cup (125 mL) all-purpose flour

Trim and cut beef into 1-inch (2.5 cm) cubes. In large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat; brown beef in batches. Transfer to plate.

In 18- to 24-cup (4.5 to 6 L) slow-cooker, crush tomatoes with potato masher. Add onions, sweet potatoes, potatoes, celery, bay leaves, herb seasoning and beef; pour in 2 cups (500 mL) of the stock. Cover and cook on Low for 10 to 12 hours or until beef and vegetables are tender.

Add peas, salt and pepper. Whisk flour with remaining stock, stir into stew. Cook, covered, for 15 minutes or until thickened. Discard bay leaves.

** I also added about a cup of red wine, four carrots and 6 garlic cloves and I’m cooking this recipe on high in the slow cooker instead of low. **

Hopefully this stew tastes fantastic. I was drawn to this recipe because it had sweet potatoes in it. I don’t think I’ve ever had a stew with sweet potatoes in it and I love them … so it should be good.

I’m making white rice as well. We’ll probably serve the stew on top of the rice.

Do you ever make beef stew and or use a slow cooker to prepare meals for your family? If you do use a slow cooker what are your favorite recipes?

Time to start some seedlings for the garden

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I know it’s still winter, but this weekend I’ll be starting to get ready for gardening season. I only have about six weeks to wait before my garden starts to come alive! Crocus’ are usually the first flowers to come up in my garden … er lawn … and I should see some by the last week of March.

This weekend I’m going to start some seedlings indoors. Some plants like Asters, Impatiens and a few other flowers that need to be started in February so they’ll be big enough to plant out in the garden in May or so. Then in March I’ll start some other plants like Tomatoes and maybe cucumbers.

This will be the first time in a few years that I’ll have started seedlings indoors. I got lazy the last few years and just bought young plants from a local nursery, but man, that gets expensive! It’s much cheaper and much more satisfying if you start your own plants from seed.

I’ve also been looking into getting a compost tumbler. We have a compost bin in the back yard and we fill it up pretty good with kitchen scraps, leaves and other things that are great to compost, but I think we could make compost faster for the garden if we had a tumbler. Compost is great for the garden beds.

Do you garden? If you do, have you ever started your own plants at home? What kind of flowers or veggies do you grow from seed?

Does your dog act differently when you’re sick?

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I don’t think my dog knows what to make of me now that I have a cold. She keeps coming up to me with her bone wanting to play, but of course I’m feeling so bad I just can’t!

She’s also fascinated by all the tissues I’m using. She watches me bring tissue up to my face and has a puzzled look on her face when I bring it away from my face again … I don’t know what she’s thinking … maybe she thinks the tissues are something I should be eating? Naturally she also tries to grab the tissues as I put them in a bag (yes I’m blowing my nose so much that I have my own personal garbage nearby).

Does your dog act different or seem confused when you’re sick with a cold or the flu?

I sure hope that I feel a bit better by tomorrow. my nose is raw and my lips are chapped from mouth breathing … like I said earlier I wouldn’t want to be getting an insurance quote looking and feeling like this!

Spaghetti and meat sauce – yum!

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Tonight I’m making my home made tomato meat sauce and spaghetti for dinner. Yummy!

Ok it’s not totally home made … what I do is combine a canned of stewed tomatoes and a jar of tasty tomato sauce, a pinch or two of Italian seasoning, plus some extra Thyme and Basil, some ground pepper, and my “secret ingredient” two tbsp of brown sugar.

Then I fry up about a pound of lean or extra lean hamburger and once it’s cooked I add it to the sauce mixture and let it simmer for an hour or more on low heat. I almost never use regular ground beef as it’s too greasy … plus if I did I’d have to use something like Fastin to keep the weight off! LOL

Once the sauce is almost done I measure out enough spaghetti for my husband and I (with a small helping for our dog!) and cook that for the required amount of time – usually between 8 and 11 minutes depend upon what brand of spaghetti I’m using or what kind (ie whole wheat versus regular).

Once the Spaghetti is done I toss it in a tiny bit of olive oil, serve it in bowls or on plates and then top it with some of the delicious sauce. I think most people mix the sauce and spaghetti or toss them together, but I just like the sauce on top and I mix it as I eat my meal.

Since there’s only two of us, the meat sauce mixture makes enough for about 8 meals … so I often freeze half of the sauce to use a week or so later and then we eat Spaghetti for two days or so with the sauce I didn’t freeze.

I like making big batches of food – It’s not easy cooking for two, and since I don’t feel all that well quite a bit of the time it’s nice to have food that’s already cooked that we can just thaw or heat up easily … or rather that my husband can heat up if I’m really feeling bad. LOL

Do you ever make your own meat sauce for spaghetti? Do you make extra food (whatever kind) to freeze for later use?

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