Cooking, Hooking and Cranes

There has been a complaint that there are far too many bird pictures on the blog these days. I totally agree, my world has shrunk and bird watching has become far more enticing than it ever was when I could travel, visit, attend rug hooking events etc etc. So in an attempt to provide something other than birds; here's some cooking.

Rick doesn't like to cook so we decided to cook together and freeze the meals to pull out as needed. Our first "batch cooking" last month was chicken curry and eggplant lasagna. This time both dishes were vegetarian.

My choice was Vegetarian Moussaka. After "sweating" the eggplant it was brushed with olive oil and roasted, with the potato.

The filling was supposed to have black lentils in it but I forgot that when I shopped and bought black beans. They worked OK. I was intimidated by the Bechemal Sauce but it wasn't that tough to make.

Layered and then baked it looked delicious. We had some that night and it was, but the consistency would have been better with lentils. In addition we each got 3 meals to freeze.

Full recipe can be found at www.themediterraneandish.com/vegetarian-moussaka-recipe

Rick's choice was Meatless Meat Stew. He was sous chef and cut everything up for his dish, while I was cooking mine.

How could you go wrong with all that veg and then a thickened gravy of stock and red wine. The recipe called for Marmite but we didn't have any (and Rick had never heard of it) so substituted soy sauce. I still had Rosemary, green, in the garden so chopped that fine to go in too. 3 meals each from this too.

Recipe can be found at; www. connoisseurusveg.com/portobello-vegan-beef-stew

A good afternoons work.

On a whim, trying to find things to do to keep this winter interesting, I signed up for an online rug hooking class.

Geometrics with Susan Clarke. There were 8 of us in the class, most from Canada but 2 from the U.S. too. We spent 2 and a half hours getting introduced to each other, discussing each others patterns and learning about colour planning.

We could have purchased a pattern from Susan but I didn't want the added expense and I prefer to hook my own designs

So this is what I will be hooking on. The next class is in 3 weeks to allow participants to purchase and get their wool shipped. I will be working from my stash so will start hooking it before then.

Guest Photographers

When we went back for Rick to take pictures of the cranes with his good camera, he walked in to the field, trying to get closer, but the cranes just kept walking away and

eventually flying off.

When Rick's friend, Steve, went down

they were in the marshes.

And now for something completely different.....

Last night, on my way to bed, I noticed that the motion light had gone on outside. Rooting around, below the bird feeders, was a Possum. As they are nocturnal I have only ever seen them dead beside the road before.