Fallen Fruit Rescue Society

I read with great interest in the Calgary Herald about Adrian Buckley who started the Fallen Fruit Rescue Society after he noticed all the fallen fruit left unused in yards this time of year. He came up with a great idea of contacting the homeowners who obviously didn’t want the fruit and asked permission to come harvest the fruit. The Calgary Urban Harvest Project now has 700 homes registered in Calgary and volunteers go and harvest the fruit. One third goes to the home owner (if they want it), one third to the Food Bank and one third to the volunteers. What a great idea and this can be done anywhere.

Mr. Buckley says “I am dedicating my life to a society where things don’t get wasted” and I certainly recognize this desire as I have been trying very hard to cut down on our waste. Reading the book “American Wasteland” by Jonathan Bloom pointed out how terribly wasteful our society is and how we need to think about what we throw out.

So if you don’t have a garden find someone who does and offer to help in exchange for fresh produce. I found several apples trees and I have been making apple sauce every day last week and is now definitely going to have to buy a small freezer to store all the fresh fruit I now have.

I have perfected apple sauce during the last two weeks. I quickly rinse and de-stem the fruit and throw about 8 pounds in a large pot with 3 cups of water and 2 cinnamon sticks. Let it simmer for an hour, stirring frequently and enjoy the wonderful smell of apples and cinnamon which will fill your house. Add 5 table spoons of sugar and mash it through a sieve, pack 3 cups in a freezer bag and store flattened in your freezer.

I use apple sauce in porridge, warmed up on pancakes and serve it with pork dishes. Apple sauce is also a great snack with a couple of table spoons of vanilla yogurt.

If you have any comments or questions, contact me at ullameredith@gmail.com

Happy New (school) Year!

September means back to school and back to a routine again which I look forward to and I think the kids do too. It was a great summer for the kids with two weeks of camp, sleeping in, watching movies all day, attending family BBQ’s and eating supper outside almost every evening.

Now is the perfect time to do another 30-60-90 day plan as that means that if I stick to the plan I will have several projects finished before Christmas.

Depending on how much sleep you need, there is about 7 hours a day that is not taken up by work or commuting which means the time must be used carefully. In our house a homemade meal has high priority so extracurricular activities for kids must be planned carefully. Activities often happen around supper time but that is where the slow cooker comes in handy. Knowing what is important and always keeping that at the top of the list means everything else must fit in around it and usually it works out. Grandparents or car pooling with other parents also helps, it is often just a matter of asking for help.

My neighbor gave her two sons (aged 7 and 10) each an alarm clock and last week they practiced having the kids get up, get dressed and how to make toast. Suzie would then join the boys after a quick shower and she made the smoothies for them and they sat down for 10 minutes before everyone went to brush teeth etc. Suzie loves the new routine but she said the secret was to get the kids to bed early the night before. The kids shower at night instead of in the morning which also helps.

Fall is also the start of many new classes and courses and a perfect time to renew resolutions of exercising more, learning something new or just getting out to meet new people. How about taking a cooking class or learn about investing?

I signed up for yoga twice a week at 7 p.m. and am contemplating a photography course on Saturday mornings.

You can contact me at ullameredith@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

I love Creston!

This week-end I was busy Making Memories with a friend as we drove to Creston, BC. We both needed to get away and since it is blueberry season it made sense to go to Creston. I have loved Creston since the first time I went there to visit. Fresh fruit and vegetables are for sale everywhere in this small town and with its wonderful climate anything will grow here.

We left early on Saturday and drove to Cranbrook where we stopped for our picnic lunch and for dessert we had ice cream at "Two Scoop Steve’s". We had no idea of where we were going to stay that evening - the only plans we had were for lunch on Sunday at the Skimmerhorn Winery. We drove ‘up the lake’ to Crawford Bay and found a great place to stay, had dinner and toasted each other with lemoncello after a walk on the beach.

Sunday morning it was off to the Farm to pick blueberries which was not as much fun as I though it was going to be. We picked a few and then decided to buy the rest. At the Blueberry Patch all berries are hand picked which is something I will appreciate every time I use them. I bought 25 pounds of blueberries, completely ignoring the fact that I don’t have a deep freezer.

Then off to Skimmerhorn Winery for lunch and wine tasting which was an amazing experience. The weather was perfect, our table was shaded by a huge maple tree overlooking the vineyard and the service by Rachel was delightful. The food was equally amazing, I had the bistro strip-loin with potato cakes and vegetables with a glass of the Marechal Foch which I like so much. For dessert we had the Black Forest Pot de Crème which was also perfect.

We purchased wine to take home and I am thrilled to be able to get wine that is made this close to home.

One last stop at a local farm to buy huge Lapin cherries – I am not really a cherry person but the Lapins should have their own category of fruit – big, juicy and sweet. I didn’t have to worry about freezer space for these burgundy rounds of perfection as I ate most of them on the way home and I had just enough berries left to fill two Mason jars. I tucked a vanilla bean in each jar and then poured brandy over them. Now I get to wait 4 weeks to see if these drunken cherries are as awesome as I expect.

Just heard that the peaches are ready in two weeks – who wants to go?

Road Trip

“Not every day is good, but there is something good in every day”.

My ‘work’ has been challenging lately and after prolonged periods of problems it can be difficult to see the good stuff in life but it is there, it always is!

How you bounce back from what life throws you is what is important. A positive attitude is a good start but a good support network is essential too.

This is what I have to remind myself of every day:

DON’T COMPLAIN! Complaining can become a habit and once you start to focus on the negative, suddenly that is all you see.

None of my loved ones are sick, I am surrounded by people who love me, I have good friends, it is summer, it is blueberry season!

I am going on a road trip with a friend to Creston, BC to bring home a couple of cases of blueberries to freeze which is now a tradition. Frozen food is often as good or better than fresh as the product is usually processed immediately after being harvested. 'Fresh' fruit and produce often have a long journey to get to us which can deplete the nutrients in the food.

I am preparing a picnic lunch consisting of homemade bread with egg salad, a bottle of red wine, a big bag of ginger cookies and a bottle of Lemoncello packed on ice.

We are having dinner at the winery which is located right in Creston and we will sample some of their wines and hopefully bring some home. Red wine from Creston is probably the closest I can get to local.

A perfect dinner

Yesterday I spent most of the day in the kitchen which might seem strange as it was 28 degrees outside but it’s what I felt like doing and I had several recipes I wanted to try.

I started out by baking 4 loaves of rye bread which I do twice a month now, so healthy and delicious and the kids don’t complain about it being too ‘grainy’. Bread does not take a long time to make but it does require you be home for a period of time which makes it perfect for a Saturday when you can do other things in between. By reading through the recipe, I know that from start to eat is 6 hours which includes time for the bread to cool.

At noon I found out that all the kids would be home for dinner so I decided to try the recipe for bacon jam that I had seen on Dinner with Julie awhile ago. Bacon jam is maybe not the best word for it but the ‘jam’ refers to the consistency and it was delicious and a perfect topping for hamburgers.

While reading Julie’s blog I came across a beautiful movie made by Todd and Diane of www.whiteonricecouple.com which is a tribute to Jennifer Perillo who lost her husband last week and reading the story reminded me again of how it really is later than we think – Monday Jennifer was canning peaches and that same afternoon she was widowed at age 40. She later wrote on her blog that it was her wish that her readers would make her husband’s favorite pie and share it with their loved ones. When I told my daughter we were having a peanut butter pie for dessert she asked “is it the one for Mikey?”, I then realized how far reaching the food blogging community is.

So for dinner we had hamburgers topped with avocado slices and bacon jam together with a tomato basil quinoa salad and for dessert a peanut butter pie – all super easy to make which makes it perfect for company.

Quick dinner

It has been a crazy couple of weeks in the real estate business and except for a wonderful family party this week-end I haven’t cooked much. Last night was another example of how expensive convenience is as we ended up ordering pizza. $42 later we had dinner and I was very disappointed in myself because I could have make an awesome dinner had I thought of this family favorite.

Dinner will be ready in half an hour – cost $12

Chicken enchiladas and Spanish rice

1 chicken breast
1 cup of salsa
1 cup sour cream
1 cup monteray jack cheese (or mozzarella)
Large flour tortillas

Package of Spanish rice which cooks in 10 minutes

Cook the chicken and chop and mix with salsa, sour cream and shredded cheese. Place on tortilla and roll carefully and place seam side down in dish. Microwave for two minutes and then spread more salsa and cheese on top and cook for another 2 minutes.

If you use medium salsa it will be spicier and you can use mozzarella cheese instead of Monterey Jack.

Why I love real estate

I have been a real estate investor for 8 years now and have been through the good times and the bad times and I have learned a lot.

Being a landlord is hard work, it is a job and if you already have a job it’s even more complicated because issues usually come up at the most inconvenient time. I have had my share of problems lately but I must say that with the financial meltdown occurring throughout the world, I am falling in love with real estate all over again. A house is something tangible, if you can’t sell it, you can rent it.

Many of us have watched our investments and retirement savings almost being cut in half over the last few years and as soon as things looked like they might improve we are hit with another world wide crisis that we have no control over.

During the good times, buying real estate was very easy as the value often kept going up and you could then re-finance the property, take the equity out and use that as the down payment on the next house and so on. That is not as easy now as banks are now more careful and have tightened their lending rules but if you have good credit it is still possible.

The single most important thing is to recognize when opportunity knocks, there are lots of houses being sold below value for various reasons (divorce, job transfer or estate sale) and it is often said in real estate that you make your money the day you buy.

The second thing to keep in mind that it is a business and must be treated as one. Document everything, keep track of expenses which are tax deductable and respond to tenant’s issues immediately. If you are flipping a house, have a budget from the start and stick to it.

You can still keep building your real estate empire once you have reached your credit limit by getting a partner or by getting a private mortgage from the seller. This is a business with endless possibilities and a business that anyone can enter if the desire and commitment is there.

Our goal was to buy a house every year for 10 years and then upon retirement, selling one every year for ten years but that didn’t quite work out unless we count one 8-plex as eight purchases, then we are ahead of our own schedule.

I could write a book about what to do and what not to do but as there are many on the subject already, I may yet do this myself. One of the best in my opinion is “The Guide to Real Estate in Canada” by Don R. Campbell.

If you want to talk about real estate, please contact me at ullameredith@gmail.com