finally - a sunny day!

we've had a lot of rainy, grey days so far this spring. so today finally felt like spring!

we canned up 16 jars of straight vegetable broth, another jar is in the fridge and a litre and a half went into the freezer.

i think we are good for stock for the rest of the year - we also have 14 pints of straight beef bone stock, we have 12 pints of chicken stock and 8 of mixed poultry. it is so rewarding to make your own stock. check out the colour of this veg stock.

pure 100% veg stock made with ...you guessed it! vegetables! we buy mostly organic vegetables and then save ends and other parts and put them in the freezer. and of course we save bits and pieces of everything that we grow. this stock was made with pretty much every veg known to man - except for aubergines (eggplant) - we really don't like aubergines. but we love veg. and veg stirfries...sometimes with rice...sometimes without!

i always get my sauce ready ahead of time - soya, fish sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, horseradish, fresh-squeezed garlic and fresh-squeezed ginger. i prepare all of the veg and then line them up in a big container in the order that they go in to the pan. at the last minute i add the sauce and voila!

those gorgeous looking chives are from the lawn. we have chives growing everywhere!

you know what else we love? we also love meat pie!



this one is our infamous patee brisee - to die for! liver and kidney with a ton of veg and a gravy made from our home-canned beef broth. and washed with an egg yolk. here it is out of the oven.



we can never wait long enough for it to sit so that it won't crumble on the plate like this.



crumbly or not - it is deelish! and reheated a day or two later - deevine!

 i tried to capture the sun bouncing off of the water at Strachan's Brook.

it has been a great day and tomorrow promises to be another great day. we are looking forward to jambaloney finishing his contract work today and then climbing in our comfy chairs and watching something on netflix. we are planning to be in bed by about 9 - i know you all think we are party animals but we need long bouts of just being alone on the hill doing our boring stuff that we call living between get-togethers.

no worries kids - they'll be a party coming up soon and we'll be out reveling! and fill you all in. sending love.