Canopy Kerfuffle in the rain

My market canopy arrived on Friday, the weights are expected today. I was able to use the canopy for the markets this weekend with no wind but on Sunday one of the clips that hold the roof up broke off inside the leg. The canopy still worked fine and collapsed fine but in a wind.... I don't know how this lack of support on 1 corner will affect it so I put in for a replacement which should arrive in about 10 days. I will then send the old one back. Thank you Amazon.

New market canopy

Sunday morning sunrise

After seeing the red sky in the morning I checked the weather.... nothing, cloudy but warm and dry. This was 5:30am. By 8:30 it was raining and stayed that way until 12:30pm. On the weather channel they have a little advert that says "We don't do surprise showers".... I guess not when you change the forecast every 15 minutes that gives you a lot of flexibility. 

Personally, I don't check the weather every 15 minutes. I'm of the old school opinion that if you say its a lovely day at 5:30am that shouldn't change by 5:45am. Thankfully, I wasn't getting married that day -- but someone was! This weather BS is just that: BS and it is my pet peeve. Is that stupid? Yes. But these people are supposed to be educated, and they are paid to know this stuff and let us know so we can make informed decisions about what to wear, whether to have our wedding indoors.... 

My advise: Watch the deciduous (leafy) trees. If you can see the shimmer of the underside of the leaf -- it's going to rain!  Trees turn their leaves so that the rain runs off making the trees much better at forecasting, they are right 100% of the time. And they give you more than 15 minutes notice.

 

Ready for the market

With the market beginning tomorrow, I had to get a few last minute details sorted. My handwriting is atrocious so Stacey gave me some stickers she had kicking about and I managed to get the display labels on.

Display finished

I didn't have anything to put on the bottom right shelf so I decided to do flowers. Hadn't done any flowers (other than herbs/weeds), so it was a bit of an experiment too. For the most part it worked great but the petals expanded - turns out they are hollow, bet you didn't know that!! The larger petal flowers actually did terrible though. If I had laid them flattened to have the flower facing forward (I didn't put any thought into this) it would have worked great but I just put them down and that's how they came out which doesn't work for my display purpose.

Before

After

If you've been following us for awhile you know that we tend to do some 'interesting' stuff. We tried to do something yesterday but our friends boat had engine trouble so we had to turn back. He has since repaired it and we will try again today, so stay tuned for yet another adventure possibility.

Gorgeous day for a boat ride

Eye strain

I have strained my right eye 2 days in a row so Brad went to the pharmacy and picked me up an eye patch to help keep it closed so it can rest. I realized this morning as I sat down here to do my morning computer ritual that the early morning sun comes in the window right on that eye and I have to EVENTUALLY pull the curtain across. This morning I pulled the curtain before sitting down so we'll see if that helps.

There was a rock pile here when we moved in. We don't know if its a dog's grave or just a pile of rocks but we prettied it up regardless.

Lemon Grass hasn't grown much but its in good shape

In the greenhouse

Extra plants growing in the greenhouse and my pea hangers are developing nicely, I should be able to hang them out any day now.

Stevia, Leeks and Carrots growing on the ground there

4 Popcorn and 17 Corn cracked so far

Today we hope to have that adventure we attempted yesterday.

 

A bit of cooking and Liver Spots

While Brad was finishing up his project (Thank God he's done) I have been busying myself with - well, cooking! I'm not what one would call Julia Childs by any stretch and my poor kids lived at home when I had even less culinary skill but I've been having pretty good success.

The other day I saw a couple of videos on FaceBook and thought I'd give them a try...

Zucchini rollup.

Cover cookie sheet with zucchini, cover with beaten eggs and cook 20min at 350F

Coat with cooked ground beef/veg or anything and cheese, cook 20min at 350F again.

Love it!

Again, same idea really.

Omelette Pizza.

Place bread in pan, cover with beaten eggs, bake at 350F for 20 min.

Add toppings of your choice. Bake at 350F for 20 min.

Liver Spots

I finally got around to preparing some liver for dog treats to sell on the online market. When I make them for Robbie we call them Liver Spots so that is the name I went with. My Mother-in-Law isn't convinced the name will fly but I don't really care, if no one buys them there will be more for Robbie.

Haven't heard anything more from Brother Sewing Machines, they are supposed to be sending me the postage label, I assume in an email and not physically, and I'm still waiting. If no word by Tuesday I will contact them again.

Hoping my seeds will arrive on Monday, the app on my phone (Shop) which tracks all my purchases says they will arrive on Wednesday but they were in Victoria on Friday so I fully expect them tomorrow.

Excited to get my seeds cracking, pardon the pun.

We are expecting a BC version of a Polar Vortex, temperatures are expected to get as low as -4C (25F)

so this will be a quiet week around here but with the beginning of Spring, seeds starting and Brad finished his project - I hope to have more to write about and more often.

Etsy shop up and running

I'm still waiting to hear from the local market... sent an email to inquire for status update.... meanwhile... Nevermind, just heard and we're all set up on the local online market too. Yay.

Without a commercial kitchen we are limited to basic foods although I will be inquiring about this because I'd really like to do EggNog bites but it's technically a dairy and homebased are not allowed to do dairy -- except that people sell eggs all the time and that's dairy, so..... it's not like I'm making the EggNog, it will be Dairyland brand or whatever.... but... also we are considering buying a 2nd machine but we'll wait and see how things go first.

We have our Etsy shop set up, it still needs tweaking with the usual foofoo stuff but until then the basic site is operating with items I have ready for sale. There will be plenty more options added in the coming days and weeks so check back often to see what's in store...

Of course, I have a special promo code for my favourite blog readers.... just click here --->>TRLT20 for 20% off.   **Canada Only at the moment, I'm afraid.

Click image to see more

Prepping for sales

I haven't had a chance to post anything as I've been super busy getting everything sorted for my foray into the local market scene.

The rules say you have to list the items you wish to sell and provide all ingredients. Well, I didn't know what items I wanted to sell so I have spent the last couple of weeks feeding bits of this and that to Betty to see what I would submit... they tell you to include anything you may do eventually so you do not need to apply later.

And here's me creating samples of tomatoes with seasoning on them to determine which seasoning I will be using so I can provide the ingredient list of same....

After getting a bit cheesed off with it all, I rang the woman in charge today and discovered that NO, in fact, I do not need to do all that. Just to say that I will be doing fruits and vegetables, candy and powders, dog treats and providing the FD as a service- should anyone have a favourite Grandma recipe they want to preserve... or, whatever...

So now having sent that paperwork off to the 'authorities', I now await their verdict of whether or not I shall be accepted in to the local market club. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, I have been making batches. I have a good stock now of Unicorn Poop and Rainbow Chunks and now that my list has been finalized (so to speak) I can begin doing the fruits/veg/powders and dog treats.

I had ordered bags which arrived rather small and I then ordered larger bags which arrived rather large so Goldilocks has finally ordered what she hopes will be just right bags and they are expected in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, the small bags are great for 'unicorn poop' and the large ones will be good for 'asparagus' and 'astronaut ice cream', everything else will go into the medium bags. 

Next, I need more labels... hopefully I can get ones that are big enough I can put all the required information on one instead of how the unicorn poop ones turned out and I had to put a second label on the back with the ingredients.

Most of what I will be doing will be just product ie apples with no additional items, but ingredients of pickled beets, seasonings and candies will need to be noted on the packaging.

So this is what I've been doing lately... going rogue but with food.

Candy and a power outage

As I'm going to be doing the market, Brad picked up some candy samples to see what works and what doesn't.

Salt Water Taffy, Caramels, Skittles original, Blue Whales, Skittles berry.

Regular caramels do not work, btw but everything else was great. Apparently I need to get Werther's Chewy Caramels for this purpose but I have decided to go with Milk Duds instead -- I'll pick some up today to try them in Betty first.

We decided to rehydrate some Thai Green Curry Chicken for dinner to have with some naan bread I had made that morning.

Oranges were finished, time to bag them up.

Salt Water Taffy

Because the Salt Water Taffy expands so much, they must be cut into quarters

Filling the trays with Salt Water Taffy

The after result of Salt Water Taffy, each quarter expands to the size of the original piece. Cup for reference as this massive jar is one of two I picked up a few months ago for just this purpose.

Just as I was pushing the button to start the Salt Water Taffy run, the power went out. Literally, just. I thought I'd blown up the machine for a minute until I realized the whole house was out. Whew...  as Brad was not out of bed yet, the power outage soon woke him up... but with no power --- no morning coffee --and neither of us wants that, believe you me.

This is where 2.5 years of RV Living comes in handy.... I put some water on the woodstove to boil and pulled out the handy MyJo from our boondocking days.

Water on the stove to boil

MyJo 

means a Tim Horton's coffee pod injection to his bloodstream is imminent LOL

Note the coffee pod in the middle

3 pieces that go together like this

Fill with water, then you place it on the cup and push the top plunger down.

Priceless in an outage.

The power returned about 5 hours later but we had already decided to make Tandoori Chicken for dinner and it was waiting in the fridge.

As it was packaged on Oct 30/20

Out of the package and in to a dish

Add water and allow it to sit, I put it in the fridge to absorb the water while we await suppertime.

Meanwhile, it was time for lunch

On top of the woodstove with a lid, okay so its 2 bread pans - but it worked.

When it was time for supper, I made some rice -- haven't freeze dried any rice yet. We've only had Betty for about 6 weeks remember....

Warmed up the Tandoori Chicken on the stove.

Delicious.

So I have finalized my list of things I want to sell at the market. I completed the MarketSafe course and I also took the FoodSafe 1 course again to allow flexibility as my previous one expired long ago. Now I am able to do 'high-risk' foods in a commercial kitchen should I want to later.

As I have a corporate mind, it is very difficult for me to 'keep it simple'... when I first decided to sell FD items, I set up a whole website and massive online presence before I remembered that I'm retired and I like it that way... so I cancelled it all. Just a local market presence and an etsy shop.... plenty enough for me right now. Just a little something to do. 

I have chosen 5 fruits, 5 vegetables, 3 candies and 8 powders (for people to make their own smoothies)... Stacey and I spent a whole day trying to find a perfect recipe for smoothies to sell, without any luck --before it dawned on me to just make the individual powders and let people create their own combinations with the fluid base of their choice at home.