Knitting

I love knitting and in 2016 I decided to knit few pieces every month. I did not get to knit during the month of August. I tend to my foot and spend few hours in our yard. However, during summer I was able to knit few pieces when I was in England and then it stopped. I am always winning new ideas to knit this month. 

I love knitting cowls and hats especially the winter up north could be a hash. Getting out of the house to the car, from car to work, and around school could be tricky. If I don't have the right gear, I am not a happy camper. Besides its fun to knit, I know that repetition does so much to the brain according to various researchers. 

I love knitting; this also gives me an opportunity to make those lovely handmade items as gifts for close friends and families. I don't come from a knitting family no one in my family knits. I hope this holiday I can hone my skills to another level by making few unique pieces. 

Eating my vegetables

I occasionally I enjoy cooking when I am not stressed about dinner. Mainly weekends have been lately busy with classes and catching up with friends and finishing up projects. This weekend I had a great time cooking and prepping food for the upcoming school week. 

This year I have started to prep food for a week and froze them mainly meat including fish. It is almost like the blue apron but not much cutting on weeknights. I like coming home when dinner is ready to go and to tackle classes. 

This is a super easy vegetable dish we all love. The recipe includes cauliflower, carrots, and potatoes. Our little miss helped me to cut vegetables, and she was so proud that she gets to help me to cook. Not only that she was so happy to finish all her food.  

This year Nicolette is taking, swimming, karate, and music. I am super excited for her, and she is too. I am looking forward to seeing her creating music. 

Summer 2016 Gardening

I always planned this somewhere in January. Yes, I think that is where the itch of planning the garden starts. I know by March I am looking for potted plants. I guess it is a gardening thing you can say. I was unsuccessful this spring planting beans. Out of all plants green beans, that is how I embarked into 2016 gardening. I planted about three to four packages of green and wax beans and still have not harvested nor cooked a single green bean from our garden. 

This year I dug out few plants from my compost and as usual, they were wines. At first with no clue what they are going to be I nursed them with love and care and off I went to hurt myself to another country. 

Later found out of three wines I have planted, they have been producing butternut squash. We have harvested total of five squashes and shared them with neighbors, co-workers, and there is still more to harvest.  

Kale seems to be doing great this year, our first crop of broccoli was delicious with stir-fried pork. The children and the husband loved it! I have been gathering kale, beet tops, Swiss chard, and New-Zealand spinach often this summer. We also pulled a couple of beets, picked few cucumbers. 

Our Garlic harvest was tiny, but individual bulbs were fleshy. We also add another raised bed to our small backyard, and I planted eight eggplants. Out of eight four are Italian while other an Asian variety. So we have been blessed with eggplants. As of chillies, I planted four plants of green peppers and this summer I have not bought green chillies to cook! There is also this unlimited supply of herbs such as; sage, thyme, flat parsley, basil, fennel, cilantro, and mint. 

The tomatoes have been the queen of the crop this season; I think mainly to the lack of rain and the heat they have been just producing pounds and pounds of tomatoes. I want to say I have harvested more than fifty and made sauces out of it. Chickens are laying but not on a regular basis, but we have had eight eggs few days this summer, and we are not complaining. 

This Summer has been a Summer that I won't forget for many reasons. Tearing my Achilles Tendon while many miles away from home has been a life experience. Study abroad has given me an opportunity to become a planner and thus understand those tedious plans never work the way it supposed to be. Yes, It was a hard lesson to learn! I travelled to Manchester, United Kingdom this summer alone mainly to study but came home on an air-boot with crutches! 

Learned to heal, and that is not easy for someone who always wants to be on the go. I didn't mean that in a bad way. I like to be independent and to do things by myself. I couldn't take a shower; I had to rethink every little thing. I did to the point, how to get into a vehicle with crutches. Then the bad ugly happened I re-ruptured my ankle during the process of healing. It was hard to stay cool wearing a boot in the mid-August. I don't know how I did it, but I did it!

I am in a bit of a happy place; I am on my way to recovery. To be exactly the third stage. I took the inserts out, and I am walking without crutches, and that is a huge success! I am getting some of my school work done, I have got two incompletes this Summer and that is my first. I am glad that each night I get to work a bit on my papers and past due homework. 

On the other hand, I still reap some benefits of over planning such as planned meals. Prepared meals have become a life saver when it comes to dinner!