Digital X-Rays

Here is some purple crocus blooming in my garden. Everything is starting to bud in the warm weather.  Those are some lavender plants above them, leftover from last year, I trim them back slightly.

Purple Crocus

Yesterday I went to the dentist for a check-up. I see my cousin. He has trained another cousin as his dental assistant. It's neat, all 3 cousins in the same room. My dental assistant cousin was asked to take digital x-rays this time. They have done away with the conventional machine. This time she plugged some apparatus into a computer and took her images. The computer prompted her by voice when it was ready to take the next image. It's supposed to be a lot less radiation. She made sure to put the protective cape all the way up my neck. I've been reading that this is the correct way to do this. We also had a nice chat (when I could) and caught up with each other. It was a lovely 'summery' spring day.

Spam Light

Jen at Sadie Inspired is having a wonderful giveaway to celebrate her 100th post.  Hop on over and enter before March 22, lovely prizes!

We have been having summery weather the past week. M loves it but I can't help but feel uneasy that this is not natural for the time of year. Anyway, my friend S and I went to a lovely Asian supermarket on the weekend and we bought some cans of Spam Light. I didn't realize there was such a thing. Mind you, it may be 25% less fat, but 1/6 of the can is 20% of your day's fat and 25% of your day's sodium! Ok, I shouldn't have bought it, but I suppose the idea is to use just a bit of it for flavour with say, eggs. I remember having Spam as a child but it's been a long time.

The supermarket was also giving out a lot of free food samples, so we tasted savoury green onion pancakes, ginseng tea and ginseng candy, meusli porridge (tasted like oatmeal), steamed spareribs with squash, curried lamb dumplings, seafood dumplings, and I forget what else. Suffice to say it was so much fun, it felt like we had made a trip to Asia. I'm also happy not to have any serious food allergies so I could freely taste everything.

Cabbage, Green Bean, New Potato boil

I was walking a few days ago and thought that I simply must use up my batch of new potatoes, and that half  cabbage in the fridge.   I remembered I also had some slices of low-sodium Montreal smoked meat (similar to pastrami I guess). So when I returned home, I filled my dutch pot with:

 2 cups of low-sodium chicken stock
 2 cups of water
1/2 cabbage, sliced
10 Montreal smoked meat slices, chopped (can use any smoked meat)
 2 cloves of minced garlic
 1 chopped onion
 1 1/2 tsp of dried basil
 2 cups of frozen green beans

I brought the pot to a boil and simmered everything, partially covered,  for about half an hour. It was delicious!  M said it looked like a flower arrangement!  It's great the next day for a 'leftovers' lunch.

Sunday Sketches - Reflection

For Sunday Sketches, this acrylic ACEO is called 'Reflection'. I was inspired by Charles Pachter's 'Red Barn Reflected', shown below.

Charles Pachter "Red Barn Reflected"

Shamrock

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  We're having record breaking, summery, t-shirt weather, not normal for this time of year.  The plants must be confused.

I saw these shamrock plants at the grocery store earlier this week.  Enjoy!

Irish Blessing
May you always walk in sunshine.
May you never want for more.
May Irish angels rest their wings right beside your door.

Paint Party Friday - Seashore

Welcome to Paint Party Friday! This one is entitled 'Seashore'. I was inspired by a travel photo in the newspaper, but couldn't quite capture the turquoise water. I like this shade as well, though. It still has the calming effect! Please stop by the others and join us!

Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.
Robert Henri

Brown Tomatoes

Brown Tomatoes

I saw these brown tomatoes from Mexico while I was shopping at Costco early this week. I didn't buy them as I thought they likely just taste like tomatoes. Have you ever seen or had these before? My friend bought some and says they taste sweeter than the regular ones, so maybe I'll try them another time.

I was out walking with my friend S  when she ran into an acquaintance biking in the neighbourhood.  Their kids used to play baseball together years ago.  It turns out the gentleman is newly retired and still deciding what to do to keep himself busy.  His daughters are in university and his wife will decide whether she herself will retire later this year.  He said I looked familiar and wondered if I was ever involved in baseball.  I told him there was no chance of that, as I have never been the least interested in the sport.  I doubted whether I really did look familiar to him, and thought he was just saying that in a polite way.

A few minutes after we bid him goodbye, I remembered his daughters used to go to the same dance school as my daughter L for many years.  It was interesting catching up after the fact!  Maybe he remembered who I was later on as well.  His wife used to take the girls to class more often, so I would've had a better memory of her.  When I mentioned the story to L, she said his daughters are really good friends with mutual friends of ours as they are their neighbours!  Small world anyway.