22 Years Later the Tea Biscuits Win

This blog post is dedicated to my family. Whom I love. But have no faith in me.

It all started approximately 22 years ago. I was a happy 11 year old girl and one of the things my mom was starting to teach me was how to cook. My ultimate favourite meal was Tuna Casserole with tea biscuits.

You have to understand something here people, my mom, actually, really, for sure, makes THE ABSOLUTE best tea biscuits in the entire whole universe. Light. Fluffy. Layers. Melting in your mouth. Amazing. And I was very excited to learn how to make these.

My first batch didn't turn out very well. Heavy, dense, doughy, tough. It was disappointing, but my mom, ever the encourager, told me that they take time to learn how to do perfectly, and in time I would learn how to make good tea biscuits just like her. And so, I kept trying. Again, and again, and again. And always the same thing. Heavy, doughy, flat, passable (sometimes), garbage (usually). My sucky tea biscuits became the family joke.

I bring you exhibit A (from our family cookbook that mom made us all for Christmas one year)

Exhibit B
I don't recall the circumstances, but at some point some of my tea biscuits made it over to my Uncle Bill's house. I think mom and I had made him a casserole and biscuits for some reason. He called to thank me and while on the phone with him the tea biscuits came up.  I asked him if they were ok and he said, "I fed them to the dogs." I was indignant and couldn't believe it. Then he said, "Yeah but they wouldn't eat them, so I had to throw them out."

It's funny. I laugh.

And I ALWAYS try to make them whenever I make a tuna casserole. Because you just can't have one without the other.

And they always sucked. For 21 years.

Last year however, I MASTERED the art of the tea biscuit. My family was indignant and I had to send photo proof:

They still find it hard to believe that I can make a good tea biscuit. Even though I sent them this photo evidence today:

That's right.
That my friends, is a second place ribbon on tea biscuits that I made and submitted to the Williams Lake Harvest Fair. Tea biscuits that got second place IN THE ENTIRE CITY.

That was the highlight of my day. Until this:

My Chocolate Chip Muffins won first place! Only it is even better than first place because I got this ribbon with it:

It says "Family Favourite"
My muffins were the family favourite. Of all the muffins. In the city. Yay me.

This win was even sweeter because I was *this* close to not entering them because I forgot them at home. My hero of a husband though, very carefully placed the muffins in a plastic shopping bag, put the bag around his neck, and motorcycled the muffins down to me with just 10 minutes to spare before the deadline.  Harvest Fair prizes run between $1 and $2.50. These muffins netted me $27.50. $2.50 for winning and $25 because I had proof that I used Robin Hood Flour to make them.

I also won in 2 other categories:

All in all, I was pretty successful! This was my first year entering the Harvest Fair and now that I scoped out the different categories and competition I know what to do for next year in order to clean up in a few other areas.

Super stoked.

Awesome Things Happen.

Every once in a while awesome things happen. Awesome things like marrying a super great guy whose extended family regularly rents houseboats for a family vacation.

SIGH.

I don't think any amount of words can do justice to the awesomeness that is living on a houseboat on Shuswap Lake for a week. Close your eyes (actually that won't work because you need to be able to read this description to imagine it...), imagine gracefully floating down the warm, clear, calm waters as the sun beats down on your body from a gorgeous bright blue sky punctuated only by an occasional eagle or pure white cloud. Imagine that sun makes you too hot, so you simply stop your floating house (complete with tv, fire place, bbq, dishwasher, double fridge, two bathrooms, 2 state rooms, 2 bunk rooms, and stereo system), and jump off the side. Or slide down the slide that is attached to the second floor of your floating house. After cooling off in the warm, calm waters of the lake, perhaps you take a spin on the speed boat that has been graciously brought by Uncle Richard, go for a tube ride, or try your hand at water skiing or knee boarding. If you are like my husband, perhaps the size and speed of the speed boat is not fast enough, so you rent a seado and rip around the lake. Its realistic to suggest that after all of this time in the water you may be feeling hungry, so you enjoy some snacks, some beer, a bbq dinner, and some fresh corn on the cob. As the sun sets, and your hair slowly dries in a stringy mess, and your bathing suit becomes damp, the air cools down and you become chilled. You climb one of the two staircases to the second floor and joyfully lower yourself into the hot tub that has been warming on the roof. You watch the stars come out, the bats swoop around, and you look down across the lake to the twinkling lights of others just like you enjoying their houseboat vacation.

Can you imagine it?
Perhaps some pictures would help.

second story hot tub. 

Selfie! (Arron want's a selfie stick for Christmas)

One of the many, many, many, gorgeous views as we travelled. It looked like this (or similar landscapes) no matter where we went or which direction we travelled.

Nicer than my own kitchen...... 

MMMM. BBQ. So much BBQing happened. 

Relaxing with my awesome birthday present.

There were great places for adventuring. Hiking, cliff jumping, kayaking, exploring. 

A little bit of cliff jumping.
"By taking a video of this, I am in no way supporting your decision. I'm just taking evidence so search and rescue knows where to start looking!" 

Arron teaching Grandma how to drive the sea-do. 

CONSTANT lovely views. All the time. 

My favourite photo from the trip. It perfectly sums up our week. Boats, water, mountains, beach, relaxing.

Left to my own devices every day. And totally loving it.

Summer vacation is great! Seriously. I'm loving it like I have never loved it before. There are many reasons for this.

Reason one: I have a perma-friend who is LEGALLY attached to me and promised last July to be my partner. So that means that Arron has to do things with me whenever I need a partner. Well, not all the time, he has no interest in manicures and pedicures, but he is very good to travel with and help me with my crafts when I need power tools or big muscles.
Reason two: I get paid through the summer for the FIRST TIME EVER. Seriously. Being a teacher rocks. I love it. And I extra love that the school I am at now does a 12 month pay scale instead of a 10 month pay scale.
Reason three: As much as we want kids, we don't have any yet. Which means MAJOR freedom for both of us (especially me since I am not working full time). I can take off and work in Barkerville for a few weeks this summer, go visit my family in Kamloops for a few days, volunteer at camp etc.

Because Arron still works full time, I am left to my own devices every day.
Bwahahahaahahahahahaha.
 He has been fantastic at coming home and calmly taking in what I have kept myself busy with. I painted and redecorated our bathroom one day. I painted and redecorated our bedroom another day. I moved all the furniture in the house and steam cleaned the carpets. I sold my car. I turned an old antique door into a headboard. I made a set of really cool stools for my classroom out of old spools he brought home one day. Tomorrow I'm cooking 16 freezer meals. He's really great at humouring me when I start a crazy project and has learned that my crazy craft ideas almost always turn out great. As long as I feed him and make sure he has clean underwear he is happy. (The week of the headboard craft I did forget to do laundry and as we were both going our separate ways for the weekend, he to Bella Coola and me off to volunteer at camp, he was dismayed to find that he only had one pair of gross tighty-whitey panties that I put in his drawer as a joke. He was sad. I felt bad, but also laughed really hard when he found the underwear.)

Some days I plan activities to do such as visiting stores downtown that I haven't been to, or trying out a new ethnic food at the farmers market (does Bannock count as ethnic food because it's not my ethnicity?) One day I decided that I would bike the entire River Valley Trail in Williams Lake.  This is a 12 km trail that goes from the Lake of Williams Lake (called Williams Lake), to the Fraser River.

I've explored a bit of the River Valley Trail on a few walks with visitors, but the idea of biking the 12 km intrigued me, especially since I bought a bike this spring at a garage sale. I figured 12 km, 24km round trip would not be  a problem. I used to bike 16 km a day when I lived in Wells/Barkerville full time, and that was an 8km uphill bike ride to work (and a lovely 8km coast back home at the end of the day.) In retrospect, I should have remembered a few things before embarking on my journey.

1. I *USED* to bike 16km a day. That was 3 summers ago. I haven't biked since then. At all. Like not even at the gym on a fake bike.

2. It's stinking hot in July in Williams Lake. Although mornings are cooler, starting at 30 degrees instead of its normal 35 degrees, it's still hot.

3. Water that flows FROM Williams Lake going TO the Fraser River, will be flowing downhill.

4. "Valley" That means that the very nice, relaxing, effortless, bike ride down into the valley, will be a very frustrating, sweaty, hot, angry ride back up to the main land.

5. Thinking you know where the trail back up to your car is, is not the same as actually knowing where that trail is.

6. Not knowing where that trail is will result in carrying your bike up a bluff, over rail road track and through a hole in a chain link fence only to realize you over shot your car by a good 2 km.

7. There is no cell service in a deep valley, so even though I was going to call Cariboo Search and Rescue to come get me, I couldn't.

Anyways. I did it. Going there was cool, coming back was miserable.
Would I do it again? Maybe. There is place you can drive down to at the 5km mark, so I could maybe be tempted to do a 10km round trip, but probably not the full 24km ever again.

For the rest of the summer I'll stick with my arts and crafts and the houseboating adventure we have planned for next week.

At this point, when I got to the river I was thinking, "Wow, that was an exceptionally nice bike ride. It is going to TOTALLY suck going back"

Made it to the river. See how calm and cool I look? 

It's a really nice trail. Very well maintained, signs, markers, maps, information. Its a great trail. 

This is to show the difference between the river valley and the main land that I would eventually have to get back up to. 

This was at my most miserable moment. Or so I thought when I took the photo.

Yeah Right Pinterest (part two)

One of the many tasks on my list for this summer was to prepare a bunch of "freezer meals." These are fully (or nearly fully) made meals that you pre make and store in the freezer until you are too lazy to cook a meal, or have company and want a nice meal, or just don't feel like doing groceries. Last year I did this during my last week off before work and although I griped and complained at the time about how much work it was (about 5 hours), I was SUPER thankful throughout the year to have 19 meals in my freezer ready to go. It seriously is so handy.

I decided yesterday, that today was going to be my freezer meal cooking day and set aside the bulk of today to make some meals. Yesterday I went through my recipes from last year and kept the ones we really liked (chicken florentine, broccoli & cheese soup, balsamic and brown sugar pork chops) and turfed the recipes that garnered a rating between 'meh' (tropical chicken) and 'that legitimately fully tastes like barf' (beef stroganoff). I picked some new recipes that looked good, made sure the dishes were done and the house was clean, and made sure that I had zero plans for today.

It's currently 11:45am and I am done.
14 freezer meals in two hours.
I should pretty much have my own Pinterest website.

WOW! After anticipating a long, hot, sweaty, exhausting day, I prepared 14 meals (and did the dishes and cleaned up) in one hour and 58 minutes.  I liked freezer meals before, I LOVE them today! And as I enjoyed half a cup of broccoli and cheese soup as my reward for working so hard, I saw in myself actual learning on this project. I learned how to make things go quicker, and  how to get things done more efficiently. Here's what I did differently to save myself 3 hours of work today.

1. I did all my shopping yesterday.
2. Any meats that needed pre-cooking, I cooked in the crock pot last night so they were ready for me this morning.
3. I did a tally from my recipes of how many cups I would need of each vegetable and then cut up enough for ALL of my recipes at once.
4. I didn't pre-cook all my meats like I did last year. That was unnecessary work.
5. I worked on two recipes at a time. One that required sauteing, or cooking, or simmering, and one that didn't. That way between stirring and frying, I could mix spices and things together for the other recipe.
6. I pre-labeled all my bags last night and put all my ingredients on the counter so I didn't have to search for them today.

The only down side is that Arron and I made a deal that because I would be cooking ALL DAY, he would make dinner for us when he got home from work and now I feel like if I make him cook I'm kinda cheating on our deal.

If you are interested in recipes, send me an e-mail and I'll get them to you.

365 Days

It's been 365 days (plus a few) since Arron Delay decided I would make a good life partner. And boy am I ever glad he did.

He  makes me smile.
He makes me laugh.
He buys me flowers all.the.time
He consistently leaves his dirty laundry BESIDE the hamper and his cut nails on the coffee table.
He gives me all the cuddles I want, whenever I want them.
He loves all my food.
He does almost all our dishes.
He walks beside me in our happy moments, and in our dark moments. 

To Arron,
Thank you. For all of everything that we did, and happened, and was, during our first year. Here are some of my favourite memories from our first 365 days. 

When you kissed me the first time as your wife. Sharing that day (even taking all the pictures that drove you bonkers), was so special to me. Thank you for letting me plan my dream day and for participating in it happily. 

Our Honeymoon to the Dominican Republic. The swimming, the zip-lining, the shows, the relaxing. It was great to get away somewhere special. Thank you for travelling with me. Seeing the world and experiencing life in different places is so important to me and I am so thankful to have a partner who will go with me. 

Thank you for loving Barkerville. And loving me enough to get dressed up with me once a year to take a photo. I love this place, this photo studio, and you.  

Thank you for trying new things with me. For playing. For being silly. For trying my new recipes. For laughing with me.  

Thank you for Christmas and for taking me out on my first tree-hunting expedition. Thank you for buying me flowers all the time, and presents for no reason, and for my Sinterklaas surprise present on that terrible grumpy day. That was a wonderful love-filled surprise. 

Thank you for helping me knock one off my bucket list. Our trip to the Grand Canyon was a life highlight and I will always remember biking around the rim with you, 

Thank you for being wonderful all through my pregnancy, and especially during the miscarriage. Thank you for going out at night to get me Kraft Dinner, and for letting me nap and not cook. Thank you for being with me at that terribly heartbreaking ultrasound and for holding me those dark, dark days. Thank you for doing all the phone calls, for being with me at the hospital, for taking time off work, for watching Footloose with me, for buying me popsicles. Thank you for your love and support and kindness and gentleness during those hard weeks, and continuing now as I still hurt some days. 

Thank you for sharing a hobby with me. For buying us kayaks and for taking me out once in a while. Thank you for being stronger than me and for doing all the heavy lifting when we do go kayaking. Thank you for humoring me with selfies so that we can remember all the things we do together 

 Happy Anniversary Arron,
365 days done, we got this.

xoxoxo and cuddles forever.
Nikki

Happy Anniversary Trip #1

A year ago this happened:

The year really did fly by and to celebrate 379 days of being together, Arron encouraged me to plan a trip for the two of us anywhere I wanted that we could easily go to, and return from, in 4 days or less.

Stop One: Double date in Quesnel with my Barkerville Bestie Hayley, and her significant other Chris where we enjoyed one of our favourite Cariboo-Redneck events. The Quesnel Crash-to-Pass. The rules are simple. If you want to pas another car, you have to hit it first. Last car still alive wins. It was a great time. Especially when 'my' car - Blue Horny as Hayley and I called him - went crazily off the track and into a stand of cottonwood trees, which he knocked down ontop of himself. With is giant moose horns on the top of his car he was stuck. For about five minutes. Then he made his way back onto the track carrying no less than 5 25 foot cottonwood trees on his roof, slowly littering them around the track as he continued to dominate the event. He got second place over all. But first place for perseverance .

 Stop Two: A shifty hotel in Vanderhoof with a surprisingly beautiful room, and an equally surprising train two feet away that loved honking his horn constantly.

Stop Three: Gas, groceries, Tim Hortons, nothing picture worthy.

Stop Four: Sawechea Provincial Park on the shores of the beautiful Stuart Lake in Fort St. James. It was gorgeous.

Camping isn't camping unless you eat brown beans straight from the can. 

I was super proud that "my" chicken won the chicken race. I even won a button. 

 Stop Five: Fort St. James National Historic Site.
I kid you not, I have been wanting to go here for almost ten years! I love historical villages and I read about this one when I taught about the Fur Trade when I first moved to BC. It was a pretty good historic site as far as they go. Original buildings, excellent and knowledgeable interpreters, sunshine, chicken races, you know... all the good things a historical site should have.  We even learned something new! Fun fact: There were no moose in BC until the early 1900's. In fact the first moose sighting in the Cariboo region wasn't until 1914. This seemed incredibly strange to us, especially considering how popular moose is in our area. We learned that prior to the Canadian Pacific Railway being built, moose were simply too large to get through the dense forest and underbrush of the Rocky Mountains. When the railroad was built it opened a path from Alberta for moose and large animals like white tailed deer and elk. And following their prey, came the cougars.

After visiting the Fort, we got some ice cream, and then sat by the lake and relaxed. We did some kayaking, swimming, walking along the beach, reading, eating, napping, talking, and a lot of silence just enjoying the quietness and the view.

An End of the Year Miracle.

It's that time of year.
I was doing *so* good.
Not anxious for the end of the year at all.
Things had been going well. We were all happy.
Until two weeks ago.

Chaos. Shambles. Anarchy. Pandemonium.

Classroom life became unbearable for myself and my EA (Excellent Awesome Education Assistant). We were both ready to change careers.

90% of our day was taken up with reminding students how to behave properly, how to follow rules they had been following all year, stopping incidents before they started, deal with behaviours etc. It was no way to have a functioning classroom.

And then I remembered a suggestion from the previous years teacher.

No Talking Day.

And it was amazing.

Students committed fully to the challenge and we accomplished more in one day than we had during the entire week. Students participated properly, entered classroom discussions via mini-whiteboard, asked for help from the teacher instead of a friend and then getting distracted for 10 minutes. They worked quietly on their assignments, put extra effort into their art. No one was distracted and one got caught wrestling in the coat room. It was marvelous.

Two days later our classroom is calmer, more focused, on task, and working hard.

It was an end-of-the-year miracle.