Seven Fires

We've been cooking up some of our usual fare in new and exciting ways. Thanks to Dad for Francis Mallmanns book "Seven Fires". It's been a wonderful excuse to burn lots of wood and myself occasionally as well as try out some new recipes over open fire. We've been cooking over our homemade Chapa,which happens to be a piece of cast iron I found in the yard when we moved in. The stove seems to evolve for the better with each firing. The smells that come off the old piece of metal when the herbs, vegetables and meat hit it are pretty amazing. We've been using birch as our cooking fuel which seems to do the trick. Here's a small sample of what we've tried.

Sheep Steaks with rosemary onions on chapa bread

Peached Pork

Salmon a la Vara

Beats getting ready to be burnt on the Chapa

(sorry no pic of that)

Potato Leek soup

Roasted sheep bones so we can get to the delicious marrow

Moving and Chatting

Moving and chatting from Maple on Vimeo.

She has been working on crawling for a few days now and she just pulled herself up to stand in her crib. Yikes!

Blueberry Bust

We trekked up Arctic Valley last weekend in search of blueberries. We didn't find any, apparently there is a moth that ate the bushes so they didn't produce any fruit this year. Bummer, we had a fun time though!

You will be missed

Hazel loves Pat

Hazel Loves Pat from Maple on Vimeo.

Fish Camp + one

We had our annual fish-a-thon for reds last week with the addition of one. She loved it! We loaded the chariot up with all our gear and headed to the fishing hole. The fish counts were crazy, 230,000 fish came through in one day! Amazing! We fished for a few days then the ladies went home and the boys took over dipnetting and brought in over 100 fish for the freezer.

Banana Belt

We broke 90 degrees in our back yard today.