I often think fondly of the food prepared by Mrs. Pugh.  She was the cafeteria cook at Osoyoos Elementary Junior Secondary School.  When I attended, it housed a few hundred kids from grades one to ten.  At lunch time we’d all head down to the cafeteria, some of us clutching 25 cents for lunch.

Not to insult the dead, but Mrs. Pugh was no Julia Child.  And even though her meals were simple and not gourmet, they’re a very positive memory for me.  Actually, a lot of fond memories centre around food, whether it was good or bad.

My pal Liz and I soon figured out that wasting 25 cents on the main meal was for losers.  For 25 cents you got a scoop of mashed potatoes, a vegetable, and some meat.  On Thursdays, for example, it was the potatoes, accompanied by creamed corn and a couple of sausages.

Liz and I preferred carbs and sweets, so wisely ordered the 10 cent meal.  That way you got the potatoes and vegetables, and had 15 cents to squander.  We’d often get a chocolate pudding for five cents and then have a Fudgsicle with the last dime.  Good times.

It was awfully nice to hear this the other week when Luke was here.  He and Michelle walked in and she said, “Oh, how I’ve missed the smells from this house!”  No matter what happens in a lot of these kids’ lives, I know somewhere in the world a kid will be sighing deeply and saying, “I miss Luke’s mom’s food.”

But that’s my problem.  I go on-line and find interesting recipes and make them, and then wonder why I don’t have time to devote to other things.  Just baking and making nice food for a bunch of louts is surely the road to disaster.

Here’s what I absolutely must do.  Cassandra, the nice owner of the Woman’s Place fitness centre is going to let me put my bark into her showcase for the week before Easter.  So by this Friday I have to have all kinds of bark made and adorably bagged.

Then by May 1 for the WAM Wine Festival event I have to have a bunch of promotional materials ready, as well as more bark for samples.  There’s no point in going if I’m not ready to sell like a scalper at a Canucks game.

And there’s the garden, which I won’t even discuss because I’m so far behind.  Remember what Frank Costanza used to say? “Serenity Now!”

March seems to have snuck by me, unnoticed.  I went outside yesterday and realized the sun is already stinking hot.  Winter became spring and I had no idea it was occurring!  It’s kind of horrible to realize that one’s life is going by like that, in a somnambulant daze.

I was thrilled to get an on-line order yesterday from a woman in Summerland.  She ordered both fruitcakes and bark, so I see my evil scheme is working.  Of course when I had just one kind of fruitcake, people bought just the one.  Then when I added the Okanagan Harvest Cake, people said, “Aw heck, I’ll  just have to take one of each.”

So now when you go on my site and you’re ordering a fruitcake or two, why not throw in a few pounds of Belgian chocolate made with local dried fruit?  I’m telling you, one of these days you’ll be saying, “I knew her when.”  I just wish that day would come sooner rather than later.

And why? Because I gave in and bought a spring In-Style Magazine.  Dear God!  I want a pant suit I saw in there very badly.  It’s beige, and made of some type of stretch fabric, and has a very short jacket.  Tres chic.  Then I saw a Guess handbag that nearly made me weep.

Using this new-found motivation I decided I’m going to have to get out there and start marketing again.  To start, I’ve booked the showcase at the woman’s gym for the week before Easter.  I bought some Easter-themed bags from a dollar store, and will display my wares surrounded by adorable fake grass and other kitschy stuff.

I ran into Steve MacNaull, the business reporter for the Daily Courier newspaper.  As a result, I thought oh what the heck, I’d better e mail him and update him on the bark.  You never know when it’s a slow news week.

Here’s the irony of gardening.  I remember it distinctly, the year was 2004.  I had just torn the nail off my left big toe, and was hobbling around.  I was getting Nicky to help me prepare the little mound at the top of the driveway.  I wanted him to help me get rid of all of the grasses in it so I could plant periwinkle.

The periwinkle got planted, but had a hard time in some places.  Year after year I hauled the hose over to the mound to water it.  Each year I planted more periwinkle in any bare places.  Finally, this year the mound is completed covered in lovely periwinkle.

Now I’m going to need Nicky’s help to remove every bit of periwinkle from the mound.  Once it’s all completely dug out, roots and all, I’m going to get a huge pile of bark mulch and dump it onto the mound.  That’s how it looked when we moved here in 1990, and now it’s going back to the way it was.  Why I wanted to do so much gardening, I do not know.

You have no idea how hard it is to type with a large cat sitting really close to your laptop.  If I move my hands too much, he claws at them. and if I try to reach for the mouse and it’s under him, he bites my hand.  I love Wrecks, but he’s just a little too close for my comfort right now.

Recently he decided the cushion on my desk chair is a far nicer place to be than his own chair.  When I go to pick him up to move him, he digs his claws into the cushion so I’m lifting a cat that’s dangling a cushion.  Then when I go to put him down he gouges my arms with his hind claws as I’m lowering him into a perfectly comfortable alternate chair.  All of this, I suppose, is kitty’s way of showing me how much he adores me.

I guess that’s why Luke showed up this past weekend – out of adoration for his mommy.  That’s what mothers like to think, anyway.  It’s some perverted ego thing or other.  Anyway, he immediately reverted to being 15 years old again, not showering or brushing his teeth the entire time.  Binge-eating continued unabated.

I enjoyed a lot of it because I got to make foods like my infamous pot roast dinner.  The Boarder happened to be in Kelowna this weekend as well, so I knew I had to make pot roast or the kid would think I didn’t love him anymore.  So on Saturday I invited Denis over, and made the standard pot roast, mashed potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and gravy.

You know how we get these chi chi ingredients in tossed salads at restaurants now?  I decided to use some ingenuity, and because I have dried cherries in the house for the chocolate bark venture, I decided to add those.  I had the nice mixed baby greens, then added a bit of green onion and cucumber, a few chopped roasted almonds and a handful of the cherries.  Then I topped it off with oil and balsamic vinegar and it was really good.

For dessert I made chocolate mousse which was wolfed down by all.  How I’m supposed to fit into all those small-sized summer clothes I bought last year I do not know.  I was very relieved to be at the gym this morning for the 9:00 AM cardio and weight-training class.  Nothing like a few burpees to remind you that mousse gets very heavy to lift once transported to the hips.

And here’s an interesting dessert idea I bet you never thought of.  This came by way of Ken, one of my nicest and most faithful customers, who happens to live in the US.  He said he’s currently perfecting a batter because he’s deep-fat frying pieces of my fruitcake!  Isn’t that a fabulous idea?  We don’t seem to have that deep-fat frying fetish in Canada so much as they do in the US, and perhaps that’s just as well.

Please check out this adorable site, which was also sent to me by Ken.  It’s an abbey where monks make fruitcake.   You can pay by credit card, and the fruitcakes look very nice.  I know I should never direct customers elsewhere, but in this case I really feel as though I’m doing the Lord’s work.

Plus I don’t see either ‘booze’ or ‘chocolate’ listed as ingredients in their product, so I’m not terribly worried about those old monks.  I’ve got bigger worries than that as I try to figure out a way to shave 10 pounds off this carcass in a terrible hurry.

I was in Osoyoos on Saturday because my brother Freddie and his wife Wendy were there from the Coast.  Luckily, we happened to be sitting at the dining room table when the moon rose, and mom said, “Wow, look at the moon!”  And indeed, it was huge and very bright.  Then on Sunday I heard it was some special lunar event, not to be repeated for another few years.

And speaking of lunacy, the continual gloating over my weight loss has motivated my dear friend Alison to join Weight Watchers.  Now what have I done?  She’s on her way down with her weight, and due to the evil chocolate bark, I’m on my way back up.  Perhaps we’ll meet somewhere in the middle and stay there.

Oh well.  I suppose it’s a good thing to be so inspirational to others.  I’ve been trying to spread the message about xeriscaping to people, and it seems to be making them think.  On Saturday my mom, Wendy and I went to mom’s landscaper’s yard to see his sustainable landscaping.

The main feature is the mulch, which is planted with water-friendly flowers and shrubs.  Each plant has a drip so one isn’t watering an entire area for nothing.  There’s much less lawn, and the walkways are covered in pebbles.  The main thing is to reduce watering and increase the ground’s ability to absorb the paltry amounts of rain we get.

The landscaper’s drawn the plans for mom’s front lawn, and I’m excited to see it unfold.  I’m in the unfortunate position of having to do my own, though I’m going to hire a bit of labour for some of it.  Certainly I’m going to need them to help me with the sprinkler system because I can’t even set the alarm on my clock radio.

However we all have our strengths, and the boys have always been very pleased with whatever food I produce for them.  The other day Nicky’s friend Felix said he felt bad about eating here all the time, and insisted on giving me $50 so that he’d feel okay about accepting my invitations to join us for dinner.

I then made a punch card for him, and he’s got two dinners down, eight more to go.  I figured $5 should cover his gourmet meal, plus dessert.  He’s very appreciative, and no matter what I say about the food, he says, “It’s always good, no matter what you make.”  Who wouldn’t want to cook for someone like that?

Other appreciative eaters are my web designer and the nice man who made my business cards.  I’ve never met either of them as they both live in Victoria.  For the card designer I sent a pound of bark, because he did an edit on the cards for me.  And for my web designer, I sent an assortment of squares, cookies and bark to thank him for all the work he just did on my site with the chocolate bark.

As Nicky pointed out, the barter system only works if both parties feel the product is of equal worth.  As I need technical help, and they are single males who need home-baked goods, it seems to be working so far.

I don’t know what it is about spring, but I always like to get going with some projects.  As you’ll recall I said I’d painted the textured kitchen ceiling last week.  I was so proud of myself because it’d nearly killed me due to the amount of pressure required.  I thought if I wasn’t in shape from the gym it wouldn’t even have been possible.

When I told some of the women at the gym about it, one of them said to the assembled, “Don’t they usually spray those textured ceilings?”  A few of the women nodded, and I scoffed, and said, “Well I did it myself with a roller.”

Then last Wednesday I went to Osoyoos to celebrate Gerry’s 96th birthday.  It’s actually on March 13th, but his son David was there from Virginia, so we held the party early.  You may know of Gerry’s famous son, David Bruck, as he’s an expert on defending people if they’re faced with the death penalty.

That night I noticed my back was feeling funny, but I just assumed I’d slept in a bad position.  It was fine by the time I drove home later on Thursday morning.  However on Thursday night I was awakened dozens of times by horrible pains on one side of my mid-back.

I got up at 5:00 AM on Friday and took 3 Advil and stuck my back against an ice pack.  I noticed I wasn’t able to move.  Breathing was causing horrible spasms of pain, so I knew something more energetic, like standing, would likely kill me.  I considered calling 911, but decided it would hurt too much to get the phone, never mind punch in all those numbers.

After a few hours I was a lot better, and realized I’d had a bad muscle spasm from pressing like a lunatic on that paint roller stick.  Who does that kind of thing anyway?  But then by Sunday I felt so well I decided I’d better paint the interior of my bedroom closet.  This time no pushing was involved, so it was okay.

I’ve had my business cards re-vamped, and had the words Artisan Baker changed to Food Artisan.  I know it’s very pretentious, but baker no longer summed it up now that I’ve added the chocolate bark to my repertoire.  Have I mentioned how hard it is to have a sweet tooth, be on a diet, and have kilograms of Belgian chocolate in the house at all times?

I just weighed myself and am now in a really bad mood.  I gave away all of my fat clothes, except for a couple of pairs of pants.  I now live in those pants.  It all just seems so cruel when I witness what Nicky eats and manages to stay thin.

Last night after consuming a really thick, large pork chop and a giant portion of homemade scalloped potatoes, he ate toast thick with butter, cinnamon and sugar.  Two hours later he ate a large salad bowl of Froot Loops and full-fat milk.  It’s just not fair, it really isn’t.

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 As I sit here looking out onto the Ponderosa pines and reviewing the week, I can honestly say I didn’t do one damn thing for the business!  Nothing sums it up better than that handy phrase which incorporates a bad four-letter word, followed by the word “all.”  That is precisely how much I did.

However, I was busy working like a lumberjack around this house and yard.  I went outside on the weekend and raked mounds of pine needles.  I washed some of the windows, and then I decided to paint the kitchen ceiling.  I figured after 21 years it was probably time.

You can blindfold me and let me loose in Winners or Home Sense and I can find my way around effortlessly.  But being in Rona looking for paint supplies is another world for me.  I wisely went early, so I was able to find a person to  help me.  From what I was saying, and from what they were saying, I could see this was going to be a challenging day.

After two days, the kitchen ceiling was painted.  My neck and shoulders will likely never work properly again, but the job is done.  The ceiling is textured, so you have to push like a maniac on the roller to fill in all the spaces.  Luckily I’m a fitness proponent or would’ve likely died halfway through.

You’ll notice I’m not mentioning Nicky as any kind of assistant here.  God no, he was busy playing ball hockey with his pals out in the yard.  but come on, let’s try to be positive here.  He did say what a lovely job I had done, so that’s something.

His forte is being an excellent host in his lair, the basement.  After each weekend I pick up the dripping bags of beer cans and bottles and attempt to make them acceptable for returning to the licquor store.  It’s beneath the kids to do so, and I really enjoy having the cash because to me it’s free money.

The other day I took in a haggard-looking assortment, and said to the nice clerk, “I’m really sorry about this can, it appears as though someone has bitten into it, doesn’t it?”  The poor clerk just looked at my blankly, and I shrugged saying, “My 21-year-old son and his friends….”

The clerk asked if my son still lived at home, and I said he did as he’s attending school.  He said he had lived at home while going to school, and so we chatted about how he got into the job at the licquor store.  Being interested in finding ways to entice Nicky to get a job and move, I asked how one applies.

I came home and told Nicky about how to apply at the licquor store, and he said he would like that kind of work.  I mean, really, who wouldn’t want to work in a licquor store?  But then he got out the frying pan and a pound of bacon and prepared himself a snack.  Soon after, the boys arrived and they were out shooting a ball into a net, any thoughts of job applications far away.

As I was showering this morning, it dawned on me that I’d forgotten to write my blog.  I know this doesn’t sound like a very significant thing to forget, but when you’ve done the same thing every week for five years it does make you wonder.

You’ll recall I wrapped 300 individual pieces of bark, and apparently they went over well at the Source Office Furniture convention in Burnaby last week.  There was some interest expressed by a woman from the Red Hat Society.

Have you heard of them? They’re women over 50 who run around wearing purple clothes and red hats.  I’m not sure why, but I see on their site it has something to do with sisterhood.  I guess that’s next.  First, forget the daily and weekly routines, next join the Red Hat Society and embrace it.

I’m still working on getting labels made for the Okanagan Chocolate Bark.  It was quite an ordeal settling on the colours.  But now I think the bark’s going to look really nice in the half pound and one pound clear cellophane bags I bought, and then tied with cloth ribbon.  Now with the labels it’ll look very sweet.

I was invited to attend an event at the Spring Wine Fest on May 1 at the Rotary Centre for the Arts.  It’s one of those events wherein people sample food and wine, but don’t actually purchase it.  I actually prefer those to craft fairs where you’re selling because people are scared to sample, thinking they’ll be forced to buy.

The dress at this event is black pants and a white shirt.  My pal Kathy is going to help me, and I e mailed her and said I’m guessing this will be no problem.  She and I are similar in that we like to have several pairs of black pants and quite a good number of white shirts on hand at all times.

But whether or not I’ll fit into any of the many pairs of pants I have is another matter.  You’ll recall I was running aroung gloating and screaming “look at me!” when I lost the 20 pounds.  Now I’ve made the grave error of making chocolate bark, and all hell’s broken loose.

The tough part is the scraps.  When you chop up the chocolate, you get all these delicious little slivers that can’t be sold.  I put them into baggies and the kids do their best at eating them.  However, while I’m standing there chopping I can’t seem to stop myself from shoveling a lot of these pieces into my pie hole.

And that’s the main reason that I continue to slug it out at the gym five times a week.  Last week I said to Kathy, “I like that red car out there.” There was a red BMW parked outside the gym.  She said, “This one?” and I said, “No, that one,” then realized I was looking in the mirror.  Kathy just screamed with laughter and we’re now on the look-out for more signs of creeping dementia.

 It would be far more honest of the university to say ‘we have one week off in February’ instead of giving it the lofty title of Reading Week.  I’ve yet to meet one single individual attending UBC Okanagan who actually read.  One of the women from my gym went to Mexico with her boyfriend, Luke’s girlfriend Michelle went to Calgary to visit him, and Nicky played ball hockey in the yard with his friends.

Not one of these people read, studied, or worked on any assignments whatsoever.  And of course the downside of a week like that for me are the hoardes of locusts that suddenly cluster in my basement.  I’m telling ya, another few months of parenting is probably my limit.

I was very excited to write my February newsletter last week because I was able to announce my new chocolate bark venture.  My web designer Steve’s already put some beautiful photos on my site, and I’m now working on the wording to go with them.

I’m not sure if you remember this, but in the beginning of the fruitcake business I was crazy for the idea of making wedding favours.  Then I got a couple of orders of 200 pieces of fruitcake wrapped in cellophane and a ribbon.  After I’d done a few I decided my sanity came first and stopped advertising this product.

So then what part of my mind had gone on me when I excitedly told Joanne at the gym that I’d happily make 300 individual pieces of bark for her convention?  Around day three of ribbon cutting and tying bows I went, “Oh yeah! That’s why I got out of the wedding favour business.”

Oh well.  This week 300 people in Burnaby will be reading my little sticky tag on the back of the cute little bags of bark.  All I could fit on there is “Homemade in Kelowna using Okanagan Fruit” and then my website of course.  So maybe some will actually go ahead and order.  I have big hopes and dreams for the bark.

Another big dream I have is to be able to apply the many fabulous things I learned at the xeriscape workshop I attended on Saturday.  It was put on by the Okanagan Xeriscape Association, and the guest speaker, Owen Dell, is well-known in sustainable landscaping.

All I could think of while sitting there was how I need to win the lottery so badly now.  The lawns have got to go, because they’re wasting so much water needlessly.  And the photos he showed of converted yards were really inspiring, not all dead and ugly at all.

I’m thinking the odds of winning the lottery are going to be low, so it looks like I’m going to be stuck with whatever grudging labour I can get around here.  But the kid’s learned that Reading Week means Hockey Week, so I’m guessing Gardening Week will mean I’m Busy with Friends Week.  See what I mean about that time limit on parenting?

My life is filled with one hare-brained scheme after another, but this time I think I might really be onto something.  As you know, I’ve been experimenting with the chocolate bark idea.  It was just a couple of weeks ago that I learned how to temper chocolate so that it looks all nice and professional.

I took samples to my gym, and as a result, I sold several pounds of chocolate to members.  I thought that was pretty exciting, but it got even better.  Last week, a super nice woman named Joanne asked if I could make 300 individual pieces for her company’s upcoming convention in Burnaby!

Of course I said yes, and then have been working like a frightened  idiot ever since.  I really love things like that, because I’m a big procrastinator.  With great haste I made a mock-up of a label and went on-line to search for cello bags.  I had to buy more chocolate and candy a whole bunch of almonds.

One of the very worst things about this venture is the proliferation of very bad food in the house at all times.  Just talking about those candied almonds is making me hungry, and oh yeah, there’s pounds of them right in my own house!

I’ve decided I need to buy my own dehydrator.  I know it sounds crazy, but I think I’d like to dry my own fruit.  I want to use really nice ripe Okanagan fruit, and what better source than my mom’s orchard in Osoyoos?  And really, how hard can it be to learn how to dehydrate fruit?

Ain’t life grand?  I can’t imagine not having wild schemes whirling about in my head.  I think it’s because of that that I’ve seriously had second doubts about hunting for the elusive male on-line.  It’s strange, but for weeks now I’ve had the theme song from that old movie, Born Free, running through my head.

Somehow I don’t think a chocolate and fruitcake-making, fruit dehydrating beekeeper with a kajillion spoiled pets sounds appealing to most men.  Though when I see how badly the kitchen ceiling needs painting I think I should stop being silly and not be so averse to having someone cramp my style.

I’m sure someday I’ll get bored with being able to do whatever I like whenever I feel like it.  But for now I adore things like the ‘girls’ get-togethers we often have at my dear pal Kathy’s house.  I’ve described it to you before – gleaming, beautiful, all Jordans all the time.

The downside to the Saturday night event was waking up sick on Sunday, which suffice to say, was a quiet day.  I had all manner of plans for the business, but instead ended up on the couch reading Margaret Trudeau’s latest memoir, Changing My Mind.  I adore reading it, as I remember those times well.

It must be that hare-brained schemers like to read about other hare-brained schemers to make them feel less mad.

I went to Osoyoos last week for a visit with mom and Gerry.  I told mom I was getting a bee hive, and said I’d been advised to get a bee suit.  Mom sighed, and said, “You’ll probably get to be really odd like those other beekeepers.  You know… beekeepers…they’re all really odd.” Then she listed a couple of them, including a former neighbour named Johnny Rist.

I agreed, and said so what?  I said someday all of the land bordering mine will have been turned into a version of suburbia.  I already have one neighbour with a whole hill of pink rocks right beside my indigenous shrubs.  Someday all of the land surrounding me will be filled with houses and concrete, but there will be this one little old farming woman with her damned bees.

Mom reminded me of the danger of swarms.  She said Johnny Rist’s bees would swarm every once in a while and he’d have to come over and coax them back into their hives.  I just don’t know how I’m going to explain that to the pink rock-owning neighbours.

“Umm, excuse me, but that swarm of bees in your driveway appears to be mine.”  Lorraine, the beekeeper from the gym, said it’s “absolutely beautiful” when they swarm, but I’m feeling kind of nervous about that part of it.  However, one must remember that anything worthwhile often requires overcoming challenges.

Such was the case on Friday when a nice Shaw Cable man came. I’d been visited by a travelling salesman who convinced me to switch from Telus to Shaw for my phone services.  Of course, they have to come and do some wiring at your house, so we set a date and time.

When the cable installer arrived, he hopped out of his van and immediately walked to my basement kitchen window, and said, “What’s this cable?  That wouldn’t have been installed by us because we never put it outside like that.”  I replied that I had no idea.  He asked how long I’ve lived here and I said, “Twenty years.”

I then thought back to the many cabling jobs over the years.  There was the cable installation to several upstairs areas, all done by Denis’ friend, Shane, an electrician.  Another time, I recalled Shane doing something with the Shaw cable lines at their source.

Then I recalled admonishments over the years from Luke, such as “We can never call Shaw Cable to our house.”  These images and thoughts all came to me in the moment I was standing on the driveway, looking at the most recently pirated line.  I knew it was the cable for my basement kitchen TV.

Somehow, however, the Gods of Forgiveness seemed to be with me.  The kind cable installer went about doing the phone switchover, and he and I never mentioned any of the other unusual lines again.  You see how a good attitude can trump a bad situation.