Tomato-based Vegetable soup

YOU WILL NEED

3 TBSP olive oil
2 cups chopped onion
1 1/2 cups chopped carrot
1 1/2 cups chopped celery
1 small can tomato paste
2 TBSP minced garlic
1 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 large can diced tomatoes
6 cups veggie broth
2 cups chopped potatoes or turnips
3 cups chopped cabbage, spinach or kale
1 can kidney beans
2 bay leaves
1 TBSP lime or lemon juice

In large pot, cook onions, celery carrot until onions soft and translucent.

Add paste, stir 1 min. Add garlic, and seasonings, stir 1 min.

Add tomatoes and stock and vegetables including cabbage. Set aside spinach or kale til later. Cook 20 mins. Add spinach or kale, beans and lemon or lime juice. Cook for a few more minutes before serving.

• Vegan

• Store leftover soup up to 3 days in the fridge and up to a month in the freezer.

Genealogy roots go deep

Some times I wonder if I’m taking this genealogy family tree too far…..

Isn’t this a bit of a stretch?

Carrot Ginger Salad Dressing

Dressing

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/3 cup rice vinegar
• 2 large carrots, peeled and chopped (to fit in blender cup) (about 1 cup)
• 2 tablespoons peeled and chopped (to fit in blender cup) fresh ginger
• Juice of one lime or 2 TBSP
• 1.5 TBSP honey or maple syrup
• 1 1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
  
  Blend really well until smooth. Add salt or honey as required. Keeps covered in fridge for 1 week.

This picture doesn’t show it well, but look at that bright orange colour!

Squash, Spinach, Pomegranate Salad

1 butternut squash, cut and baked 450 fork 20 minutes
1 cup barley, cooked and cooled
1 small turnip, cooked and sliced thinly
baby spinach or beat tops
2 TBSP roasted pumpkin seeds
5 oz crumbled feta

Line salad plate with spinach. Place barley, squash, turnip, pomegranate seeds on top. Drizzle with creamy balsamic dressing.

Pickled Vinaigrette

2 TBSP rice vinegar

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 TBSP low sodium soy sauce

1 TBSP maple syrup

1 tsp grated ginger

1 TBSP sesame oil

Mix together and pour atop a lovely chopped or julienned salad of carrots, cucumbers, peppers, onions.

Sprinkle with sesame seeds, white or black.

Onion Lime Vinaigrette

INGREDIENTS

1 tsp Dijon mustard

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

2 TBSP vegetable oil

2 tsp white wine vinegar

2 tsp rice wine vinegar

2 Green onions

The juice of one lime

INSTRUCTIONS

Mix together in small blender cup. Adjust to taste. Store in jar in fridge for up to one week.

My new love – Genealogy

Confession:  I have a new obsession.

It has literally taken over my life.  So much of my free time (and money) has gone into the genealogical hunt for ancestors.  Who knew finding long lost family can be so addicting.

I’ve come across some very cool information (some not so cool) and made some very neat connections.  The best part is, I’m not even close to being finished.  I may never be finished!

One regret is I wish I wrote down more of the stories my mom and grandparents told me.  I can only remember snippets of some of them and other stories are lost forever, I’m sure.

I’ll get into some of my neat finds in future posts.

On that note, I can do lookups in the following books for anyone who’d looking for connections to the past in Gull Lake, or the Corning area of Saskatchewan:

 

Highschool yearbooks

• “KIASKUS –  Gull Lake Saskatchewan Highschool year book 1965”
• “KIASKUS –  Gull Lake Saskatchewan Highschool year book 1966”
  n.b.  Kiaskus was derived from a Sious word meaning “gull”.  Just email me the name you’re looking for and I’ll send you a snapshot of the text or pictures found in the book.
• The Aurora – Stoughton School yearbook 1962-63
• The Aurora – Stoughton School yearbook 1963-64
• The Aurora – Stoughton School yearbook 1964-65
• Aurora – Stoughton School yearbook 1982

Community Compilations

• “The Golden West”
  Covers 790 square kilometres in south east Saskatchewan, the area surrounding Corning, Sask.  This book is a treasure trove of stories submitted about the pioneers of this area

 

 

Genealogical humour

You have to love a lady who has this sense of humour…at least I assume she had something to do with the caption on her niche.

My addiction of late has been genealogy – tracking down my distant relatives from the past, anything I can find on them (which isn’t a whole lot).

This partially accounts for the lack of posts to this blog, but really only the last year.  I cannot account for the previous four years lack of posts.

Here’s another interesting caption on a nearby niche.

These are the Materi’s, late of Medicine Hat.

I might even be related to these people, woudln’t that be fun.

Back to hunting ancestors…..

 

It’s just a number

It’s not about the number on the scale

Maybe I need to take that same advice when it comes to my inbox.  Right now I’m at an even 200 messages in my work inbox.  My home inboxes are even worse thanks to the fact that the iPad does not synch up properly with gmail or hotmail when deleting messages from my iPad (my primary home-use device).

  

 I use my inbox generally-speaking, as my “To Do” list.  If something is sitting in my inbox it’s because I haven’t finished dealing with it yet.   I used to be obsessively organized by moving “To Dos” from my inbox to my actual Task List so that I could remove the message from my inbox.  But that kind of hyper-organization takes  a lot of valuable time when you’re getting close to 100 actual messages a day (not including back & forth conversations).

 I was in my happy place if I could keep my inbox at 15 messages or less.  It was a visual feel-good because I could literally see the end of my inbox  denoted by the white space at the end of the list of messages in Outlook.  I had a little breathing room.  

 It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen less than 15 messages in my mailbox. 

 Today it occurred to me that “it’s only a number”.  Do not obsess about it any longer.   My new goal is to try to keep the inbox under 100.  It’s my new “manageable”.  Still a little crazy but it’s a more attainable goal for me.  In some ways it feels like I’m giving up but I’m not, really, I’m worrying about what’s important instead of worrying about a number…

 

 

Syncing Calendaring and Tasks

One of my beefs about calendaring and task software is the lack of integration between the two. I would like to be able to schedule a task for a future date but there isn’t a way to do this in gmail or Outlook or any other task tool I’ve used. The other obvious option would be to schedule the task directly into my calendar but my problem with that is I want the task to stay in my tasks until its actually complete because, I admit, I don’t always finish (or even start) a task during the timeframe I’ve scheduled it..

What I want:

I want to be able to schedule a task into my calendar. Once that date rolls around I want the task to not only be in my calendar but remain as incomplete in the tasks menu until I’ve marked it as complete.

Sounds logical to me? Anyone got any ideas to help me with this organizational impedance?