the Youngest Snowbird:

Slow Cooker Pot Roast

My Fella organized and repacked the outside RV bins this morning so I thought I better do something useful too. Hello, slow cooker pot roast.

Ingredients:

• 4 pound roast
• 4 big potatoes, cut in chunks
•  8   6 thick carrots, cut in chunks
• 3 garlic cloves
• small white onion, chopped
• one can condensed mushroom soup
• beef boullion cube
• 2 cups of water
• steak spice
• ground pepper
• garlic salt
• couple shakes of paprika

Combine steak spice, garlic salt, pepper and paprika onto one big dinner plate. Roll thawed roast around in the spices til it's completely covered.  After the roast is coated, I like to get nekkid and roll around in what's left of the spices. But that's another blog post.

Cube the potatoes into one inch pieces.  Layer two inches of potatoes at the bottom of your slow cooker.

After plopping the roast on top of the potatoes, surround it with carrot chunks also cut about an inch thick. I keep the carrots and potatoes big so they don't get too mushy during the loooong cooking process.  

Initially, I planned on using 8 carrots, but I munched thru two of them while chopping.  Cooking makes me hungry.

Cube your final potato and chop the white onion, or as it's known around these parts, My Arch Nemesis.  Can't stand chopping onions - they make me cry faster than seeing the TSX drop 400 points.

Here's a sexy shot I like to call Onion Eyeballs and Really Huge Pores.

After chopping the Evil Onion, layer it around the roast and add the final cubed potato and the garlic cloves.  

Nuke the beef cube in 2 cups of water and pour that in the slow cooker along with a can of condensed mushroom soup. Here's what the whole goopy mess should look like.

Cook for 9 ish hours on low.

When it's done DON'T TURN OFF THE CROCK POT.  After scooping out the roast and veggies, you should have enough liquid at the bottom to make a little gravy.  Just add some flour to the warm pot, stir it up with the juice and crank the slow cooker up to high for half an hour or however long it takes to thicken the gravy.

Then mix the whole mess together and get it in yer belly.

Note to Santa:  Only joking about wanting onion goggles for Christmas... I just really wanted to use the phrase 'onion goggles' on the blog, but I don't actually want any for myself.  I repeat DO NOT GET ME ONION GOGGLES FOR CHRISTMAS!"

Slow Cooker Spag & Balls

Been on a bit of tear with the slow cooker lately.

Ever since Mexico Brenda goaded me into making my own homemade refried beans I've been re-inspired to experiment with our slow cooker.  Thanks for that Brenda - your beans are in the mail  :)

I made another batch of black refried beans yesterday and today I'm trying out spaghetti and meatballs in the slow cooker.  

I found a few different recipes online and there's really nothing to it.

Ingredients

• a few handfuls of whole wheat spaghetti broken in thirds
• 26 ounce jar of your fave spaghetti sauce
• 24 frozen cooked meatballs
• a pinch of dried oregano and a clove of fresh garlic so you don't feel like a loser for not making your own spag sauce 
• 1 and a quarter cups of water (I substituted the water for a can of organic tomato sauce that I had to use up)

Combine the meatballs, sauce and water in your slow cooker and cook on low for about 6 hours. Mix in the handfuls of dry spaghetti and cook for another 45 minutes.  If you like really soft noodles, put the spaghetti in about halfway thru the process instead of at the end.

This is my first attempt at spag & balls in the slow cooker so we'll see how it goes.

Cleaning Out the Cupboards

That's at the top of my 'to do' list today.

My plan is to go thru every one of our interior storage areas in the RV and get rid of anything we haven't used in the past year. We also need to use up the remaining food in the cupboards and start fresh again after crossing the USA border next month.

The motivation for this big clean-up hit me at 5am, when I woke up and decided to toss out a bunch of unhealthy snacks.

It's both horrifying and embarrassing to see the amount of crappy pre-packaged food we have in our cupboards.

My fave salty snack is low fat Pringles but they're so expensive here in Canada that I've replaced them with low fat pretzels.  Problem is I'm also guilty of buying regular fat Pringles when they go on sale.

My Fella picks up peanuts/raisons/smarties from the bulk food section and makes his own trail mix, a fairly healthy snack.  But he also has different work treats like pudding and granola bars. Add in the numerous bags of chips we've been getting for free (from our pal, The Chip Guy) and you've got a million empty calories taking over our very limited RV shelf space.  

A healthy, balanced lifestyle is important to us since we both plan on living to 117. At least.  Yeah, we'll be really wrinkly... But healthy. 

We eat salad every day and, as a couple, we consume more veggies than anyone I know.  We only eat whole grain bread and pasta at home and although My Fella isn't eating fish yet, he has cut down on red meat.  I drink 4 litres of wine water every single day and unless the weather is crappy, I get at least an hour of exercise. That's on top of taking the mutts for 4 or 5 daily walks.  

But as someone who is constantly preaching about personal responsibility, I need to give myself a kick in the butt and lose these ten flabby pounds I packed on over the summer thru snacking.  Our salty snack party has come to an end.  Hear that sneaky salty snacks? Yer DONE!

Hence the big cupboard clean out and reorganization.

My Fella is on board with this project and took all of our unopened snacks into work this morning, making his co-workers very happy.  

And now we can start fresh.

Totally off topic, but only 24 more sleeps til we head south.  Watch your back Tillamook pepper jack, I'm coming to get you  :)

Oh, and before I forget - special note to the person who got to this blog yesterday by googling 'how to care for marijuana seedlings that have sprouted':  I have absolutely no idea how you got here by searching for that, since I know less about drugs than your average 9 year old.  Put down the weed and plant a tree or a pumpkin patch instead. 

Christmas is Only Three Months Away

And our little RV family is heading south in 25 more sleeps.

Holy Moly it's coming up fast.

We haven't decided on an exact route yet, or even where we wanna end up - although the Gulf Coast is calling out to us this year.  No solid plans for the winter except we have to be at the Tiffin factory in Red Bay, Alabama at the end of January.  JohnnyDisco needs some roof work that can only be done at the Mother Ship.

Still have a list of things to do before we leave Canada:

• My Fella wraps up his golf course gig by mid October
• we need to figure out what RV lot we're parking on next year so we can finally move our deck over and make sure we have internet access
• we need to take down/store our gazebo
• wanna finish mulching the newly planted trees
• I need to burlap the cedars we planted on RV lots #1 and #2 to keep them safe from deer - I refused to plant any cedars on our current golf course lot (#3) or I'd be spending half of every October bundling cedars in burlap 
• Passport Canada better get off their duff and send me my passport (the renewal fee has been charged to my credit card since mid August, but my new passport is nowhere in sight)
• we still have to get our medical travel insurance ($500 for both of us for 6 months)

And Norman needs one final grooming session before we cross the border; he's starting to look like Animal from the muppets.

Perhaps the most important thing on my list:  gotta start the countdown to my first Tillamook cheese experience of the season.  

As soon as we cross the border My Fella gets his Jack in the Box burger and I get a baby loaf of the best cheese on the planet.  Oh yeah, we know how to keep each other happy  :) 

"watch out pepperjack, you don't stand a chance"

Special message to Martha and Terry at Gypsy Life Journal:  I have tried to leave comments a number of times on your site and for some reason they won't publish - not a clue what I'm doing wrong.  But I did want to let you know how gorgeous your photography is.  Your posts always make me feel like I'm right there with you, drinking all your wine  :)

Home, Home on the (Driving) Range...Where the Deer an the Antelope Snack

Our golf course neighbours think of me as The Wacky Tree Lady.  

This is a result of all the potted trees still hanging around the yard while I find them a permanent home in the ground. Those same neighbours also secretly refer to me as The Crazy Woman Who Keeps Moving Her Woodpile.  That one is self explanatory.  

But I swear this is the last move...

On a similar note, my blog buddy Mexi-Croft has nicknamed his wife, The Crazy Deer Lady;  as you can see from these blog posts (one, two, three) their local Vancouver Island deer have decided brunch is in her flower garden.

In a recent comment I mentioned that her deer fence must be working 'cause all the island deer have recently hopped on the ferry and migrated to the Okanagan.  

And now they hang out in our lot at the golf course:

Free entertainment at it's finest...

The Wacky Tree Woman

Our neighbours are probably gonna start calling me that.

There may be a Wacky Tree Woman in your 'hood too; she's the gal that has 10 or 20 massive potted trees she keeps hauling around to different spots in the yard, trying to find the perfect space for them before planting. I need to live with the trees for a few days to feel where they would fit best.  

Over the past month, My Fella and I have decided this is the best RV lot ever, and we love being here.  There are many amazing things about this site and I'll get to those in a future post.  

On the downside:

• the back yard is hit with scorching south sun all day long which makes JohnnyDisco pretty unbearable by about 4pm
• we get our fair share of golf balls flying into the yard

To solve both problems we purchased a whack of fast growing trees from the local garden center. It's that time of the season when deciduous trees are 50% off and we got some wicked deals.

The only trees in the ground so far are these four Swedish columnar aspen planted along the southeast fenceline.  They're tall, thin, leafy trees that make good privacy screens and can hopefully thwart wayward golf balls.  

The aspen leaves make a cool whispering sound in even the slightest breeze... AND wooden stakes made from aspen trees are one of the only weapons in the world that can kill werewolves and vampires. In case you were wondering...

As you can see, the lot is still one big undeveloped space but we're slowly settling in and figuring out where things should go.  

I've wasted almost an entire notebook of graph paper with rough drawings of our lot layout, planning things like:  where to park JohnnyDisco, place the gazebo, build the firepit area, the woodpile, etc.  

We moved both the RV and the gazebo last week to get the best use of this space. And this is somewhat embarrassing but I've relocated the woodpile twice.   Yup, the whole thing.  So now the neighbours are also calling me The Crazy Lady Who Keeps Moving Her Woodpile.

More RV lot pictures to come as we get more done.

Plant Tags and Slugs

We may have another big landscaping project in the works.

Not to sound all creepy mysterious but nothing is finalized yet so I can't say much - BUT ... My Fella and I might be moving to another RV lot here at the golf course next season; a lot we can fully landscape.

for those keeping score at home, another lot change would mean 4 RV sites in two years

If the deal works out I wanna be ready.  Over the past few weeks the internet has been my best friend, doling out free advice on:

• sun and shade perennials
• native trees to BC
• low maintenance ornamental grasses
• landscape layouts
• building your own veggie planters
• alternative ground cover, something besides grass
• why people mulch

If you're not into gardening/landscaping, you'll probably find this post boring, but I did learn some interesting things.  You know those little plastic tags tucked into the plants you buy from the garden center - the ones that describe the plant and its ideal growing conditions?  I've always wondered exactly what full sun or part shade meant in terms of daily hours:

• full sun means at least 6 hours of direct sunlight every day
• part sun plants need 3 to 6 hours of direct sun per day, morning or afternoon sun
• part shade plants also want 3 to 6 hours of direct sun per day, but preferably morning sun before everything gets too toasty in the midday heat
• plants in full shade or deep shade require less than 3 hours of direct sun every day or filtered sunlight throughout the day

It's a rough guideline, but it clears up some of the mystery of where to put what plant. 

Another cool tidbit if you have a slug problem in your garden;  slugs love beer.  I should have remembered this particular fact learned during the niteclub phase of my 20's   :) 

From ehow.com:

"Slugs and snails are attracted to the smell of beer.  Dig a shallow hole in the ground near an infested area of your garden and sink an aluminum pie pan in the hole so the lip is level with the surface of the soil.  Fill the pie pan with beer.  The mollusks will crawl in and drown.  Remove the dead pests regularly and refill the beer trap every several days."

The thought of wasting good beer is kinda painful, but I might give it a try. Wonder what else I'll catch beside slugs.  Maybe one of our neighbours...

Edited later to add:  Hope yer having an awesome long weekend.  The In-laws are all here for a family reunion/camping/golfing weekend and tonight is Burnt Marshmallow Night.  Sadly, no photo evidence of the weekend exists since the official photographer (Uncle Coast Guard) left his lens cap on during the entire first night of pictures. Between that and Pa-In-Law trying to explain an adverb, it's been an interesting couple of days.  Thanks for all the laughs, Out-Laws  :)