After Eight dinner mints

In the advent calender that I made for Aloka, I alternate After Eight mints with a hard candy bonbon. Today is the 11th, so she opened the corresponding little envelope. She pulled out the little mint and the activity of the day (Decorate your tree!) and she said "Mama, what are these chocolates called?"

"After Eight's" sweetie, I reply.

She get's that furrowed brow confused look and says "After 10 you mean?"

She's cleverer than I am, it took me a second to realize what she was saying!
Today's the 11th, right!

Happy Thanksgiving, and blissful Autumn!

It's so dang beautiful here in the fall!! It's been warm, sunny, and there's a crisp in the air as they say. The crunchy leaves are beautiful shades of golden, red and orange. I went on a walk during lunch last week, and just right off of Baker Street (the main drag) there was a tantalizing hazelnut tree dropping hazelnuts all over the sidewalk. I crunched through the golden leaves looking at the abundant harvest on the ground.
And speaking of abundant harvest, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving up at Naomi's house with Richard, his daughters and ex-wife Naomi and her boyfriend Ralph. Aloka had so much fun with the girls, I hardly saw her for the first two hours we were there I think.

Here is a video of the feast we contributed. My roomate Andrea is also in this video preparing her own feast that she brought to a potluck as well. We love Andrea, and she is so amazing with Aloka too which is a bonus!


This photo below is of a bunch of Philo Tartlett shells I filled with two different kinds of pudding. Dark chocolate pudding, and a Hazelnut Gianduja pudding. I topped them with vanilla laced fresh whip cream and grated chocolate (respective to the flavour it was on) once we were at Naomi's. They were so addictive!

And speaking of fall harvest.... We have an enormous plum tree in our backyard. The funny thing though, is that while everyone else's plums were in full harvest season a couple weeks ago, these ones were yucky, bitter, sour and astringent. They were falling off the tree like crazy, but just tasted gross!

I had pretty much given up on them, as plum season is now coming to a close, but Andrea had a friend come over and tell us that sometimes plums just need a good chill before they become sweet. We tasted them again, and sure enough they are decadent!!
You can imagine the scene that followed! Andrea and I have now each made 10 jars of plum jam, and that was even before the massive harvest we had today!

Today, Josh came over and we pulled the tarp off of Aloka's sandbox and positioned it just right. Then Josh grabbed a branch and shook it a little and down pelted zillions of plums!
All and all we ended up with close to 50 liters of plums, just over 15 gallons!

Josh also helped me hook up the freezer in my basement and tomorrow I'm going to be pitting a whole lot of plums! I'm going to make another 20 jars of jam, some pies to freeze, some plum syrup, and I will freeze a bunch of chopped up plums for use on porridge and whatever else. Josh is going to dry about 5 litres in his dehydrator for me too.

I sent him home with about 7 litres of his own plums, 3 jars of jam AND and whole bunch of hazelnuts off our hazelnut tree! It makes complete sense to have Thanksgiving during the harvest time of year. I love autumn!

Below are the pictures and videos of our giant plum harvest. Here is the plum tree; Giant, un-pruned and pretty much ignored from an arbourists viewpoint:


















The plums!




























Aloka with a Dahlia Andrea picked on Thanksgiving Day:

Garages Sales and (more) Cupcakes

We had a garage sale last weekend. We had it at Josh's house, out on the lawn, and Aloka, Beth, Emily, their mom Naomi, Josh and I were all there. It was a great shindig and I made a whopping $70 but it was worth it to just get rid of tons of stuff. I couldn't believe how fast a gigantic box full of OLD and expired vitamins and other misc. bathroom junk went as soon as i put it out with "FREE" written on it! It was crazy!
One that gave me a Josh a enormous belly laugh was the fact that someone took the used enema bag from that box. People are so funny!
Here's a video that's almost too much to post, and I can't figure out how to edit the end (literally and figuratively), but it was a funny sight so I'm putting it up anyway. It might come down very shortly, but at least family can see it for now!

After the garage sale Naomi took the rest of our stuff to the thrift store, and believe it or not, we only had 2 small boxes of stuff left, it was great.
Then Beth and Emily came over to my house with Aloka and I, and we hung out for the rest of the day. The girls all played with the "photo booth" software on the computer, and then Beth and I made cupcakes while Emily and Aloka played.
The cupcakes we made were a double chocolate cupcake (chocolate cake with chocolate chips) filled with a raspberry ganache, dipped in chocolate ganache, iced with chocolate buttercream and topped with a fondant decoration. I let Beth at it as far as rolling and making the fondant shapes and icing and decorating, so these are all her work.
This one that I'm holding I did.
Beth and Emily took home about 24 cupcakes, and I was told that they were all gone within a couple days, eek! It makes my teeth hurt just thinking about it. Oh, to be 16 again!
Aloka has such a great time with them, and they all adore each other.
Below are some of the 150 (yes, it crashed my computer!) photos the girls took:

























































And there were also a bunch of silly ones they did with all the different effects the Mac has to offer.

Here's one Aloka took of herself:

More cupcakes...

Brought these to a little cafe in Crescent Valley (20 minutes outside of town) These are a rich chocolate cupcake with a butter pecan truffle filling and a chocolate ganache icing (vegan):

And I'm also starting to do cookies, because believe it or not, i actually make more per cookie than i do per truffle and not much less than a truffle cake. crazy.

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (vegan):

Also, some other good news is that I got a job at a toy and children's gear store in town called Mountain Baby.

I'll be working around 30 hours a week and I start on October 1st. I'll be doing web orders and inventory, receiving, and front desk clerk (working the floor). There are only 3 other employees, and it's a lovely place to work. They are looking for someone with the same passion I have for running a toy store business, and are hoping to do profit sharing and collaborative work down the road, so it's something I feel lucky to have gotten into. Pay is very low, but lots of room to grow! The woman that owns it is an amazing business woman, and also, coincidentally, the La Leche League leader who helped me with weaning a la hamster.

Cupcakes

I've started selling at the outdoor market on Saturday's. I am selling toys (also starting my own online website soon!) and I'm selling cupcakes and chai too. These do really well! I made some cupcakes tonight and decided to take a picture. I have some chocolate hazelnut "gianduja", total decadence. It tastes like a really high quality "Nutella". These aren't my prettiest work, but i'm posting it nevertheless!By the way, there are some more cute videos on Melissa's blog, of Nile and Aloka!