Vita Mix

This was drafted on 13 June 2011 and it's  Amelia's 11th birthday.

I was at Costco and attended the demo conducted by a young man making ice cream.  He made the ice cream with strawberries, carrots, cabbage, juice, and ice cubes.  Amazingly, within minutes, the ice cream was ready.  I tasted it and it was delicious.  Almost right away, I bought the Vita Mix blender.

When I got home, I told my husband about the blender and asked him to see the demo.  He did the next day and bought the container which grinds dry ingredients.

The kids have slushy almost everyday.  This time around, the slushy has more healthy ingredients and no sugar added and artificial colouring.  Sometimes grinded flax seeds are added to add more fiber to the drink.  The girls don't complain as they don't even notice the difference.

The other wonderful thing that we do with the Vita Mix is to blend onions, garlic, chillies, ginger to a paste.  I plan to blend turmeric and cook a Malaysian yellow rice.  Turmeric has curcumin which is a very good anti-inflammatory agent.  I learned years later from someone that you can add a pinch ground black pepper to boost the effects of the curcumin.

Soy Ice Cream

I finally tried making soy ice cream with xylitol using the ice cream maker, which I bought last July.  The soy was organic but the soy cream is not.  The ice cream was not successful as I didn't have either correct recipe or the mixture wasn't cold enough when I started using the ice cream maker.

I poured the mixture into the ice cream molds instead and freeze them for tomorrow when the girls come home from school to enjoy as their snacks.  I will try making the non dairy ice cream again soon as the weather is warming up to like summer.

My dad and his family used to make ice cream for a living.  I remembered seeing the equipment.  Regrettably, none of us learned the technique.  The ice cream was made manually and there was no machine to help out.

Peter had decided to move away from the city to a smaller town one morning when we were vacationing near Ottawa.  We started looking for a house where we were and found a custom built bungalow with walkout basement.  It has a great location where boat can be launched from the backyard.  The owner was a retired railway engineer who had put in great materials to build this house.  Unfortunately, the wifi was too slow for Peter to work at home.

When we returned from our vacation, I started looking and found a wonderful builder in Simcoe.  He said the materials we choose for the house are not considered upgrades.  It also has a walkout basement.  But Amelia was very upset for the move right from the beginning.  The reason she didn't want to move to Simcoe was because there was no Starbucks.

The day when we were supposed to sign the contract, the builder hds a family emergency and the meeting was cancelled.  Within a week, Peter's company told him that he might be laid off so we had to cancel the sale.

At the same time, Amelia found out that one of her friends came to Nancy Campbell Academy.  She told us that she would like to attend this school which she had heard of  few years ago when she attended a music camp in London.

Strangely, Peter found out that his company would keep him since the new project didn't work out..  So we started looking again and found a gorgeous house. 

Here we are after a year had passed, both our girls could attend the same school, life had really changed I guess for the better for all of us.

Stratford is such a beautiful town and it has amazing theatres.  The friends and neighbours are very welcoming and hospitable  For a city gal, all my worries about living in a small town had disappeared.

God has been kind to guide us to the right place at the right time.  Praise be to God!