You know how I like to try out new things and now sour dough bread-making has just landed in my lap.  I was visiting my friend Alice the other day and she said her neighbour had brought over sour dough starter and then showed her how to bake bread.  She asked if I’d like to take some starter home and I reluctantly said I’d try it.

Alice had the good fortune of watching a pro make bread and she took notes as it was happening.  She then printed these for me, but guess what?  They’re pretty damned hard to understand because I wasn’t there.  So now I have to go to You Tube and get taught myself, then tomorrow Nicky’s partner and I are going to try and bake bread.

Our friend Jim brought his new boyfriend, who’s from Argentina, to Osoyoos.  They came to mom’s last week and I stayed for two nights of fun.  As you can imagine, mom can’t make food for herself, let alone guests, so I’m always invited to come to do the cooking, which I enjoy doing.

I was all proud of myself as I’d made lasagna and panna ricotta for dessert.  They arrived at mom’s in time for dinner, at which point Jim said “Federico attended cooking school in Manhattan.”  As this is a family blog, I cannot print the next few words I said to Jim, but the gist of the message to him was could you have told me in advance so that I would’ve really killed myself making something gourmet?

The next night Federico cooked, and he made beef with chimichurri sauce which was delicious.  Just now my friend Beverly was here from White Rock so I said to her I’m going to make steak with chimichurri and it was absolutely delicious.  I have a lot of herbs out on my deck so this is the ideal time to be doing it.

After our usual stint at thrift, Bev and I went over to Luke’s condo to try out his pool.  Jan and Luke have never set foot in it, but I wanted to try it given Luke had said it was a heated pool.

We rang Luke’s and he took us down and unlocked the gates to the pool.  There was just one young couple there lying in the sun and reading.  At one point the strata president, Dennis came by to talk to Luke because Luke does handyman duties for the place.

Bev and I were just slowly easing ourselves into the pool due to its temperature, so I said to Dennis “are you sure this pool is heated??”  He said it was and that it was very comfortable or something like that.  Both Bev and I have swam in my brother’s pool in Maple Ridge which he keeps at 30 degrees C so that’s what we call a heated pool.

Besides watering the vegetables and flowers, I’m now doing the odd stint of door-to-door canvassing for the Liberals.  It’s not a lot of fun, but I look at it as an excellent way to get some good exercise.

We spend two hours walking up, down, up, down streets knocking on doors, and if not kicked right off the stoop, we sometimes have a nice exchange with whoever answers.  It’s really not for the faint-hearted but again, a lovely challenge for a retired individual.