"Magic" Spinach Brownies

Here's the recipe for the dish I brought to the BBQ on Monday.

“Magic” Spinach Brownies

(1)
1 tsp salt
1 cup flour
1 lb. grated cheddar or mozzarella cheese
1 tsp baking powder

(2)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/3 cup margarine (melted)
1/2 - 3/4 cup finely chopped onion
1 pkg. frozen spinach thawed & drained (or fresh spinach equivalent to 1 pkg. frozen)

Mix (1) and (2) and put in 9” x 13” pan. Bake at 350˚F for 40-45 minutes.

Notes:
a) “Spinach Brownies” recipe is from Jacquie courtesy of Sheila.
b) My version of spinach brownies turned out as if by “magic,” despite the following two shortcomings: I guesstimated the amount of fresh spinach needed to equal a frozen package; and I had to combine Monterey Jack, cheddar, one slice of Swiss, and pinches of Parmesan to make what I hope was close to 1 lb. of cheese. (I stopped short of incorporating the Kraft Singles grilled cheese slices.)
c) The ingredients should make it obvious, but just in case, please don't mistake these for a "dessert" brownie; no chocolate in this one!

We are family

We were invited to a fantastic barbecue at Dave & Ci’s yesterday evening: good food, great company. We feel very blessed to know the whole gang; in fact, we’ve come to think of them as extended family.

Speaking of relatives, my mom called last night to say that cousin Alicia & husband Rick and three older siblings welcomed a new baby boy, Noah, into their family. Cousin Tannis & husband Jeremy and the princesses welcomed prince Ezra into their lives on Aug 4.

It appears Biblical names are still in vogue for boys. Wonder if there’s any correlation to Wal-Mart’s new venture into Bible action figures? (See below.) I first caught the news via Yahoo!

• Wal-Mart to test Bible action figures in 425 stores
• Biblical icons to fight for sales at Wal-Mart
• One2Believe

(I don’t understand why the first article gives the toys’ measurements in millimetres; I mean why not centimetres or inches? How bizarre.)

Stuck in the middle

Today would have been a perfect beach day, much better than yesterday. I think the high was 27˚C. However, we didn't go. Instead, we picked up Dave & Ci and went to Woodvale for the 10:15am service. Pastor Mark Scarr spoke on "Enjoying Others" (Phil. 1:3-11). To immediately practice what he preached, the four of us went out for lunch at Broadway Bar & Grill. The patio wasn't as busy as it has been at times in the past--must mean a lot of people are out of town for the long weekend.

While James worked like a mad scientist on electronic things in the basement, I spent basically the entire afternoon trying to get the photo below to appear in its rotated glory. I tried a variety of things with no success. Turns out, it existed in the rotated form all along, just not in the folder to which I'd renamed it and saved it. No, somehow behind the scenes the system saved it to a new "modified" folder. Technology is getting too smart for our own good.

Here's the view as we face our house: half a neighbor's home, our townhome, and half of another neighbor's. A quick tour of the outside includes our sidewalk, our (unpaved) driveway, our stretch of sod, a few leaves of the tree on the neighbor's yard poking out, and most of a street lamp.


So that's us, stuck in the middle--fortunately, not between Scylla and Charybdis, or clowns to the left and jokers to the right, for that matter, unless the teams of construction workers count as such. Most weekdays they're on the job beginning at about 7am.

Other than that, ours is a reasonably quiet neighborhood, despite the fair number of children biking, blading, and bumming around up and down the street. Those are probably the 6- to 12-year-olds; the smaller fry are preoccupied with playing tag or tea party in their backyards. There may be teens; if so, they've mastered the art of camouflage and are indiscernible from adults, brickwork, and very skinny trees. It seemed even quieter than usual out there today. I guess everyone's stuck in the middle of the long weekend, and trying to wring every ounce of pleasure out of it. Cheers to that, I say.

Sometimes, Life’s a Beach

I was extremely pumped all yesterday evening because we were going to go to Lac Philippe today. (Do people still use the word “pumped”? What about “psyched”? Probably not.) Sure, I woke up at 8:30am, a half an hour later than I’d hoped to, but, hey, my well-deserved rest left me refreshed; I anticipated an excellent day ahead. We were on the road by about 10am—never mind that 10 was the time I’d suggested we aim to be there to avoid the crush. We arrived at the beach at 11:15am, lugged all our stuff (yes, even the pool noodles I insisted on bringing, much to James’s chagrin) down the sloping path paved through the pines, and spread out our beach blanket (to be accurate, it’s an old sheet). We waited for what seemed an eternity until the clouds passed and the rays descended—for all of a few brief minutes of warmth before the wind shooed them away. This happened two or three more times at intervals spaced farther and farther apart.

Now, I love going to the beach. I love soaking up sunshine, and then, when my skin gets to the point where it feels stretched tight from the heat, heading for the water. I’m not a great swimmer, don’t do much more than dog-paddle about, but I love curling a pool noodle around my back, under my arms, so it forms a U-shape, and then I hook my knees over the ends; I love bobbing around effortlessly like a big white and blue buoy until I’ve cooled off enough to want to go back to the sand. I love snacking on Ripple potato chips and fruit, all the while reading a book as I let the sun dry me off. Lather, rinse, repeat. And I dearly love the close of a perfect beach day: that sun-drenched skin smell, the mellow ride home, showering off the sand and discovering my souvenir tan lines are darker than I thought—total contentment.

Consequently, it was absolutely heart-wrenching to have to admit defeat. We retreated to the Pathfinder, all items, including aforementioned discomfiting pool noodles, in tow. I tried to be a good sport about it; still, the wake of disappointment followed me for the better part of the afternoon and evening. There may be other beach days, but I wanted this one for myself. (Sigh.) Small consolation, but I think my pale flesh was exposed to more direct sunlight while travelling on the highway and while lunching on the second floor patio of the Hard Rock Café overlooking the Byward Market than it has yet this summer. I tried to convince myself that tans are overrated, but then I read in the Citizen that a new study suggests that sunlight decreases the risk of breast cancer (although it still increases the risk of skin cancer). What’s a woman to do? I’m seriously toying with the idea of giving up the beach and purchasing a Mr. Turtle pool (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) for our backyard.

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky

our house, in the middle of our street

Four years ago, the development in which our townhome stands was an empty field. Now, however, there are rows and rows of "little boxes on a hillside." There are single-family detached dwellings, terrace homes (condos), and many, many townhouses (in rows of two, four, five, or six, just to mix it up). Technically, they're not "all the same"; there are different designs to choose from, for example, Manhattan, Park Place, Fifth Avenue, Empire, Ellington, Gershwin, Helmsley, Royalton, Dundas, Hathaway, Piccadilly, and so forth. The concept and popularity of townhouses as they exist in Ottawa are, I sense, foreign to people back home who don't really understand until they experience the region for themselves. We own our own townhome (well, technically the bank owns it: can you say "mortgage"?), and although Minto (the developer/builder) lays sod (hurray for instant grass!), plants initial trees (our neighbors got one, we didn't), and paves driveways (we trust they'll get around to ours eventually) as part of the deal, unlike with condos or terrace homes, the rest will be up to us. That is, we'll be responsible for the usual upkeep and maintenance--mowing the lawn, for instance.

In fact, we purchased a new lawn mower from Canadian Tire last weekend. Some of you may remember that the last time we owned a townhouse in Ottawa, we'd purchased a gas-powered push mower courtesy of Mom & Dad C. and Ukrainian Tire points. Upon our move back to Manitoba, we sold it to Volody, 'cause--let's be realistic--there's only so and so much one can fit into an 890-sq.-ft. apartment when downsizing from an approx. 1900-sq.-ft. townhouse. Volody needed a lawn mower, we needed money: it was a win/win situation. [Blatant aside: Who else thinks lawn mower should be spelled as a compound word? It's not, according to my Cdn Gage & Oxford dictionaries--and Merriam-Webster Online, for what it's worth.] Anyway, this time we decided that since we have a yard about half the size of our last one, we could go with an environmentally friendly model. I took it for a spin yesterday afternoon, and I am truly impressed. Relatively little noise, no pollution (unless you count the grass clippings), and finally there's a mower that can move as quickly as I'd like it to. I calculate it took me all of 12 minutes to finish the front and back yards. I went outside at 3:00pm, came in at 3:14pm, and it probably took me a minute each to move it out of the garage and around back via the neighbors' throughway, and back again.

And for all of you that feel sorry for us for having such a small plot of land to call our own, don't. After all, we've got all that greenspace nearby. Also, Minto has leveled and seeded a soccer-field- or baseball-diamond-shaped parcel of land not even a block away, and erected a sign that boldly proclaims "Minto - Park." It's just down the road from "Minto - School." That would be St. Emily's Catholic Elementary, a "state-of-the-art school with a bold blue, green and taupe colour scheme" (www2.ottawacatholicschools.ca/emi/pdf.php?doc=3197). How do you grow a community? How germane. (with a nod to Robert Kroetsch)

More pics next time...

The Art of Returning: Green and Greener

So to counter the querulousness of yesterday's post, I'll identify some of the things about Ottawa that really impress me. First, there's all the green space. It struck me again this afternoon as I drove down Greenbank how much area is devoted to forest and farmland. I mean, I'm at Strandherd & Greenbank, and there's the Chapman Mills Marketplace (box stores beyond belief), and then a few minutes later I hit Greenbank & Fallowfield, and there's Ag Canada's Animal Research Centre off to the left and the glorious greenbelt stretching right up to West Hunt Club.

Public transit is also topnotch. A quick aside: one of the cleverest billboard ads I've ever seen encapsulated images of two red and white OC Transpo buses along with the caption "take two daily to relieve congestion." Portions of the main routes are designated transitways, meaning no traffic except buses, so that bus drivers can hurtle down them at 80 km/hr only to brake to a screeching halt. I remember my first few rides during morning rush hour, loving the unfamiliarity of the station names, testing them out on my tongue--but silently, in my head: Lincoln Fields, Carlingwood, Holland Cross, Westboro, Tunney's Pasture, Lebreton. The city had just established Fallowfield Station in Barrhaven shortly before we left in 2002. They've now extended the bike paths along Woodroffe, too. If I ever find my bike helmet--and I despair that I actually will, since the number of likely boxes in which I'll find it are slowly shrinking--I'd like to test the new trail.

Although I could go on, we're getting company tomorrow, and I have a lot of cleaning and organizing to do before they arrive, so I'll cut it short. A third thing I appreciate about Ottawa is its population's commitment to going green. Recycling is a big deal here. That trip of mine through the greenbelt today, for example, was to deliver some styrofoam sheeting to the UPS store for reuse as packing material. I'm trying to reform my (borderline) pack rat ways, but I don't like to throw things out if I know someone else can make use of them. Now if only I could find someone who might have use for a few non-blue box recyclables. Styrofoam trays or plastic strawberry cartons, anyone?

The Art of Returning: Milk in Bags and More

So I've been a little preoccupied since my last post--you know, packing, resigning from my position, accompanying the cats on their flight out to their new home, training someone to take over at work, living in a nearly-empty apartment (the carpet cleaning guy asked me if we were minimalists), finally getting here myself a month later, unpacking, job-hunting, and of course, purchasing essential "new home" items such as curtains.

A number of people have asked how I feel about being back in Ottawa. In some respects, it's as though we never left; that is, James works with a group of the same people he worked with previously, we hang out with many of the same folks, we live in the same area as before. Mind you, the development we're in now was a great big empty field when we last lived here. We might be convinced that our four years back in Winnipeg might have been a dream, except that we have our diploma to show for it. (I say "our" because I'm taking partial credit for that degree.)

Admittedly, returning does have its challenges. For instance, one of my biggest pet peeves is that the only place I know of that sells milk in 4L jugs is the local Quickie-mart (the proper name of the chain is Quickie Convenience Stores, but we've always referred to it fondly as our very own Kwik-E-Mart). Now 2L cartons of milk abound in the neighborhood grocery stores--they currently cost $4.09 at Loeb!--but for greater quantities of milk, most stores sell milk in bags. I'm sorry, but this is the equivalent of an unpardonable sin in my estimation. I remember bags of milk growing up: there was a risk of cutting off the corner too small or too large--either one would incur the wrath of Mom--and the chances were great that somewhere in transit from the dairy to the store, the bag(s) had sprung a leak. I think Manitoba introduced cartons and jugs in the mid-1970s; do Ontarioans not realize that milk in bags signifies a serious regression, a devolution, in human development?! I actually felt betrayed when I found out that James had bought a milk pitcher and those detested bags during my absence; needless to say, I do the grocery shopping now...

At least this time I knew better what to expect from an interprovincial move. For example, I knew that one can't transfer Manitoba prescriptions to Ontario, although the inverse poses no problems. I also knew that Ottawans are acquainted with neither farmer sausage nor New Bothwell cheese; fortunately, my parents obligingly bring some of each with them when they visit. Oh, and strike Winnipeg rye bread off the list of foods you can find in Ottawa. Loeb has been known to pass off an inferior imitation labelled "Winnepeg rye bread" (note spelling), but heed my advice: buy the marble or the dark rye, steer clear of the other ryes (unless you can appreciate a chewy-cardboard texture). As for iced tea mix, I can find Nestea, Lipton, and just about every other generic (Equality, Our Compliments) brand here, but not Good Host; my solution was to lug two 2.35 kg containers with me in the move. Those should get me through this summer. By that time maybe someone else from out West will come for a visit and I can put in my order. (You've been forewarned!) To be perfectly fair, I did--once--find Good Host iced tea mix in Ottawa: it was in the summer of 2000, at the Lincoln Fields Wal-Mart. Yet never since then has my quest for it in the Nation's Capital met with success.

However, despite these (some would argue petty) challenges, there are many things to appreciate about my new-old home, not the least of which is that mosquitoes are virtually non-existent here, and the air is rife with the scent of pine trees and other greenspace growth. More on this another time, because it's getting late...