Catching Up

My sister visited from the great frozen land in eastern Canada.  For them this is a winter to remember, or more likely they'd just rather forget it. Ontario has been under an Extreme Cold Warning, for what seems like weeks now.  She felt like she had come to Florida here on the west coast. The first daffodils are blooming, as well as some forsythia. Spring is getting an early start. It rained one day, and was cloudy for a couple,  but we had 3 days of sunshine when she got here, and another three days before she left.  She joined us in our Whole 30 eating plan, and is looking forward to great changes. She left yesterday, having completed 9 days of healthy eating.  I talked to her today, she said she is missing her chef (me), but had a roast in the crock pot and was oven roasting some vegetables.  Supper is taken care of for her, with leftovers for tomorrow.

We didn't do anything really exciting, although we did visit a lot of thrift stores, and I guess for us, that IS exciting! We also took Jake and Luna to a self serve dog wash at the local pet store.  First time I've ever paid money to clean our dogs, but for $10 a dog, it was well worth it.  Just nice to not have to kneel on the bathroom floor and lean over the tub.  Everything was included, waterproof aprons, grooming tools, towels, shampoo and a big dryer.  We passed up on the dryer as I knew it would freak Jake out.  I'll definitely go there again.

One of the 'red sky at morning, sailor take warning' sunrises.

Red sky at night, sailor's delight....

Cathy brought a present for Meredith, a late birthday present.  It was the tea set she had won in the silent auction in a Brockville thrift store, when we were in Ontario last November. The only thing was that she didn't know she had won it until we were back home, so Cathy had to drive half an hour to pick it up, and then pack it carefully in her carry-on luggage when she flew out here.

At the thrift store I found a cute half apron, which some one had embroidered with starbursts to make a border all the way around, and it matched the china perfectly.  It was 99 cents, but linens were half price that day:)

And since it is now marmalade season, I'm doing a lot of this.

It takes about 14 Seville oranges for a batch of marmalade.  The oranges are smaller this year, for some reason.  Since I make 10 batches over the year, that is a whole lot of oranges to juice during the short time that the oranges are in season. 

A few weeks ago I was buying veggies as well as marmalade oranges.  Not far away from my favourite veggie place is the Salvation Army thrift store.  It's not out of the way for me to go there, so I usually stop in.  You just never know what you might find!  

I've seen these citrus juicers before, and wondered why anyone would bother to drag something like that out of the cupboard to juice a few oranges, and then have to clean the darn thing after.  This time I had just bought marmalade oranges, enough for three batches.  The brain kicked in at the right time, and while I was looking at this gadget, brand new in it's box complete with instructions, for a whole $3.99, it occurred to me it might just be the thing for those marmalade oranges, and might save my wrist from some twisting and turning.  Hot damn, the thing is awesome!

28 orange halves done in a couple of minutes!