Good Friday

   Still wintry out there - when I went out this morning with the garbage I was crunching through a considerable layer of ice. The car is in the garage again, melting off a layer of ice that almost prevented me from opening the door. I had to drive it in there blind as I couldn't even open the window. There were a few blinks of sun this afternoon but not enough to melt the ice, and the temperature stayed around zero all day.

     Since it's Good Friday and I don't attend church, I am going with the saying "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" so a few more cleaning chores. This is the cleanest the house has been since before Christmas. My usual routine is to keep things tidy but a good cleaning doesn't happen very often. I have too many other things to do!

   On Wednesday I vacuumed up and down and today I wiped down the kitchen cupboards, swept the wood floors up and down including the stairs and cleaned one bathroom. The rest I will do on Sunday while the leg of lamb is roasting. I also made a big batch of soup for Sunday and baked a soda bread. The lamb leg is currently defrosting and I will marinate it tomorrow.

   Liver with onions and mushrooms for dinner tonight and I tried a slice of the soda bread. It's rather dry so I may have to pick up an alternative for Sunday. Luckily there's still one more shopping day!

  

  

Ice Storm

    Last night, having checked the weather and having sober second thoughts I did put the car in the garage. This morning everything was coated with ice but I had an easy start to my drive. Before leaving I salted the path and a bit of the driveway - can't have the mailman falling on my property! At least it wasn't as bad as the great ice storm of 2014 when the power was out for some people for days.
  
   The main roads (and my street) had been well salted so driving was OK but only 30 people showed up for the Probus meeting (we usually have over 100). The speaker was from Habitat For Humanity and very interesting. I never knew they had stores, The Restore, where people can donate building materials and used appliances. I got quite a big load of books from the book sale since there were so few there - all my reading materials for the next month.

  Straight from there to Bridge - only two tables showed up but all our group were there. Sheila was my partner but we had very poor hands and only made a couple of contracts. Pinkie and Mary-Lee were in their element, in fact they had a couple of small slams. We were very jealous! I will play with them again next week.

   I added some chopped cucumber and red pepper to last night's pasta salad  and it was nice and crunchy. With the leftover fish I had a tasty meal but will need a snack, probably fruit, later in the evening.  

Using My Imagination

     Fire on again tonight as it is cold and damp. The forecast snow has not yet materialized but it is doing something out there - could be freezing rain or just plain rain. We won't know until we wake up tomorrow morning. I have decided to take a chance and leave my car out in the driveway. I may be scraping it before I can go anywhere tomorrow!

    I made an interesting dinner tonight with a basa fillet. I dusted it with seasoned flour (I used a mix of Herbe de Provence and Za'attar) then fried it in a little butter. After I flipped it I topped it with my homemade Mediterranean chutney and let it cook covered for another couple of minutes. I had it with some Greek pasta  that was reduced in price (by nearly half!) at the drugstore, so had a Mediterranean theme going. It was delicious although the pasta was rather high in sodium. But I only ate half of it and will have the rest tomorrow. 

Seize the Day!

     Currently 4C which is as high as it's got all day. At least the forecast snow didn't materialize. I haven't been using the gas fire much recently but I had it on tonight to take off the chill. It looks like March not only came in like a lion but will also be departing like a lion instead of a lamb!

    Off to tennis at Hendrina's by 9:30 a.m. and we had a couple of good hours on the court (well, actually 1 1/2 hours as we took frequent breaks). Carol suggested we add another morning next Fall and we have tentatively agreed to set aside Thursday mornings for a second session. This works for me as I have decided to drop Thursday morning yoga in preference to Zumba Gold which is an afternoon class.

   Straight from Bayview and Steeles to Warden and Ellesmere via the highway to get to the community centre by 12:30 for RTO Bridge. It was fun, especially as there is free coffee and cookies. I made a couple of fairly serious errors and got gently scolded but no one is too serious even though there is money on the line. Needless to say I didn't score well enough to win anything but then neither did any of my partners! 

    I have a morning at home tomorrow as fitness class is over until April so I will get some house cleaning done prior to my Easter visitors on Sunday.

   Butter chicken leftovers for dinner tonight along with rice and green beans. The rest will go in the freezer as two days of one meal is enough for a while.