As you can imagine, making dinner every day for the past 24 years has been challenging.  So this week I decided to throw in a new recipe, and instead of trying to jam another meatloaf down the family’s throat, I made a tourtiere.  It’s a fancy word for a meat pie, in case you don’t know.

This handily disguised meatloaf was immediately wolfed down with cries of joy.  So I’ve decided that putting all the same old stuff into various crusts will probably get me through the fall.  My next venture is going to be chicken in some sort of a cream sauce in puff pastry.  That will hopefully engender the same enthusiasm.

I sent out my second newsletter, and I received an amazing amount of positive feedback.  I’m now starting to suspect that the fruitcake business is a front and that my real passion is my blog and the newsletter.  Won’t Denis be surprised when he hears we installed a commercial kitchen in order for me to write.

On Thursday I attended one of those ghastly networking events put on by the Chamber.  It’s not their fault, don’t get me wrong, but I have to say I’d rather have a colonoscopy than attend one.

Picture this: You walk in and like a shark begin to circle the crowd.  Not just you, but everyone else is looking at name tags, trying to ascertain whether or not to approach this or that person.  A print shop.  Meh!  They’re too small to order fruitcake.  A person from Interior Health Authority, well, hey, there’s a juicy morsel.

Once you’ve zeroed in on your prey, you forcefully eject yourself into their conversation and introduce yourself.  You then speak with insane enthusiasm about your product.  If the person’s eyes glaze over, you slowly back away.  If they make the mistake of looking interested, you press your card into their hand.

After two hours of this I was so relieved to be getting into my car and drive home.  However, if I managed to make one or two good contacts, then it’s worth it.  One must keep a positive attitude.

The other unpleasant aspect of marketing is calling all of my stores to see who is going to be re-ordering.  Unfortunately, when my product is far away, and no-one in the store is offering samples, it doesn’t do well.

If people don’t know that it’s actually edible because they’ve only ever had bad fruitcake, then they’ll never in a million years purchase it.  However, if they could try it, they’d be converted.  If only I could be in dozens of stores at once!

When Mike Roberts of CHBC-TV left the other day he said, “I like your spirit.”  And I guess that’s the secret to any marketing, which is to believe in yourself and your product.  Look how well I did with the family and the meat pie.

I’m happy to report that all went well with the interview last Tuesday by Mike Roberts of CHBC-TV.  He’s very funny and makes it easy to be oneself.  Mainly we just kibitzed around, laughing and joking like old pals.  Hopefully the editing won’t wreck any of that camaraderie.

Of course God only knows how I’ll look, as most of the time I totally forgot to pull in my stomach.  When they left I kind of looked at my legs in dismay, as I wore very respectable knee-length shorts, but noticed I could’ve used a shave.

I’m glad to say that the interview kick-started me into baking.  If I can make myself bake every day, even if it’s just one batch, it will help me psychologically.  I keep going downstairs hoping that elves have come in the night and have done  it for me.  However those lazy and ignorant elves don’t seem to want to come to my house.

And who can blame them, really?  They’d have no place to park, they could easily be bitten by one of the dogs, and they’d have about 25 glasses to wash before they could even begin.  It’s strange, but once a glass has been drunk from, even if it contained water, it is not re-usable until it’s been washed and returned to the cupboard.

As difficult as this is going to be, I have decided to switch up my fitness routine at the Woman’s Place gym.  I loathe and fear change, so you can imagine the anxiety as I plan this.  However, I’ve noticed that after eight years of four to five classes per week, I still can’t do a full sit-up.

When Alison was here she suggested pilates would help, so last Thursday I tried one of the classes.  Not bad.  Then next week I’m throwing in a yoga class, as well as a specific abdominal class.  If it kills me, this carcass is going to sit up.

Margaret feels my social media is improving a bit, as I’m now on Twitter and sending the odd tweet.  Why, I still don’t know, but like a beaten mule I just do her bidding.  You can read these boring little snippets on Twitter @MoniSchiller.  Yawn.

I guess it’s just because I feel I can’t be witty in 120 characters or less.  But Margaret swears this is going to improve my business, so I’m trying to keep an open mind.  And for good measure, a shut mouth.

I’m happy to report that Luke got a job, so now I have three people leaving the house for work every morning.  Sadly, though, this doesn’t appear to mean that we’ll have one less person here anytime soon.  Luke has informed me that he’s not moving out until he moves into a condo of his own!  He’s now 23 so maybe by the age of 30 he’ll be gone.

I told Denis, who went into a tirade that is unprintable.  He keeps threatening to get an apartment in Rutland.  I sympathize with him, but sadly not a soul sympathizes with me when I say that there are simply too many vehicles in our yard.

With Luke’s new job came a work vehicle.  He has his own car, and Nicky has a non-working Civic, on blocks, and a working Integra.  Another vehicle on blocks is my dear old Nissan van, which was disassembled, and then never ran again.  I have a car, and Denis has a pickup and a work vehicle.  That makes eight cars.

A friend visiting from Nelson said, “You know what you need is a few more cars parked on your lot.”  Grrrrr.  My sense of humour is fleeing as quickly as I wish these damned cars would.  And yet here I am, bravely dead-heading, watering and weeding my flowers as though I was living in a normal yard.

I’m not sure what Mike Roberts of CHBC-TV’s going to think when he arrives on Tuesday.  At least three of the vehicles will be gone for the day, so that’s good.  In any case I’m sure he’ll be totally distracted by the three hounds gnashing at his ankles and feet.

I plan to spend the long weekend prepping for the shoot, as I couldn’t do a thing until now due to a flurry of social activity.  Alison and Liz, two people I’ve loved since we were six, arrived on Wednesday.  Alison came from Toronto, and Liz from Penticton. We had a fab lunch at the Wild Apple Restaurant in Manteo Resort.

The next day we drove south and had a great lunch at the Dream Cafe in Penticton.  I love places that cook with as much garlic as I do.  We then continued south to Osoyoos and spent the night at my gramma’s old house in my mom’s orchard.

Gerry had the little house painted pink, so it’s named the Casa Rosa.  It’s situated in the middle of the orchard with a gorgeous view of Osoyoos Lake and the mountains. In the morning we enjoyed our morning coffee outside in the hot Okanagan sun.  Then we wandered around in our PJ’s picking ripe nectarines from the trees behind the house.

Later we went to lunch at the Nk’Mip Winery with Phyllis and Rhonda, also adored since grade one.  All of us turned 55 this year, so we were having a communal celebration.  I drove home after that, completely exhausted.  I now must rally the Muse of Television Interview Preparation.  Step one: hope for car thieves to strike in the night.

My friend Bev, who I met as a fellow teacher of the deaf in Prince George 31 years ago, came for a visit this week.  Besides browsing thrift stores and finding absolutely fabulous stuff, we went to see the movie Julie Julia.  I was completely and totally enchanted by it, as I’ve been a fan of Julia Child’s for a long time.

Though her cooking show, The French Chef, had debuted in the 60’s, I didn’t become aware of her until the 80’s when these episodes were shown again on Public Television.  It was because of her that I boned an entire turkey.  A stuffing was made from ground chicken meat and sour cream.

Actually, I did this on two occasions.  The first time was at Christmas, much to my brother’s dismay.  He likes things ‘the old way’ so was quite skeptical.  The second time was for Bev’s wedding.  Both times the results were magical.

I’m now mad to get her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  I looked for it in every thrift store we entered, but of course found nothing.  One of these days I’ll stumble upon it, and then the family is going to be amazed.

And what’s even more amazing is that the food will be served on the same Johnson Brothers Willow china that Julia had!  I was thrilled when I saw it at the end of the movie when they showed her kitchen in the Smithsonian.  I got my Willow china from my dear friend Alison’s mother Pauline.

Pauline was a high school home economics teacher, and she and I used to talk about recipes together.  So I find it totally cosmic that I should have inherited those plates from her, and that I should have seen them in a movie that’s made me feel hysterical with hope.

I feel as though maybe there could be a small cadre of readers out there who enjoy my blog.  Trying to make people laugh through writing has been my hobby since I was a kid.  I remember one day when I was about ten I was sitting on my dad’s chair at the kitchen table.  I picked up the plastic lid he used as a cover to keep fruit flies out of his beer mug.

It was a transparent lid, and I very carefully printed along the top, “Dad’s a cuter” and around the bottom “not a neuter.”  My dad kept that for the rest of his life.  Okay, so maybe that’s not an example of literary genius, but it is an indication of how early my desire to amuse people through words began.

Similarly, my penchant for making food began early, too, even if it was just Plasticine food made for my Barbies.  So even though Denis and the kids are sure I’ve gone mad, I think the combination of the baking business and weekly blog makes complete sense.

The plastic surgeon said there would be ‘redness’ after lasering off a few unsightly age spots.  However, I now realize that’s one of those sneaky medical terms, and that the real term should be ‘weepy lesions.’  I arrived looking normal, and left looking like the walking dead.

To everyone’s amusement, I had already booked myself into a Twitter workshop put on by the people at www.connectingkelowna.com.  The lasering had happened the day before, so when I arrived at the workshop I was in full weepy lesion mode.  I kind of felt that I should hold my arms stiffly out in front and walk vacant-eyed, searching for human victims.

Instead I said to the people sitting on either side of me, “Sorry about this, I just had some laser treatments.”  They, of course, looked horrified and silently doubted very much that looking like that happened on purpose.  Needless to say, once the workshop ended I beat it out of there.

Besides making an ass out of myself by looking silly, I also pulled off a major e mail faux pas with my inaugural newsletter.  It took weeks of upset e mails back and forth to the web host before I could even send one.  Then, I sent it with all the other people’s e mail addresses visible.  Oopsies!  I had to send a second bulk e mail apologizing.

So, I don’t think there should be any wonder at the amount of baking I’ve had to do in order to keep my nerves under control.  Today I made a beautiful banana bread, and I think I should include this recipe in my next newsletter.  It’s so wonderfully moist that there’s only half left as I write this.

Something wonderful is going to be happening on September 8th, and I am just ga ga with excitement about it.  Mike Roberts of CHBC-TV is going to come here and do a story of me for his show called Roberts on the Road.  Once a week his show profiles local people doing interesting things.

It was so funny when he called yesterday, because of course I was thrilled, but then he said, “How about next Tuesday?”  I was just flummoxed as I was standing there looking like acid’s been thrown onto my face while being offered something so valuable and important for my business.

I said something vague like, “Oh dear God.  Could we postpone it a bit?” And he was kind enough to offer me September 8th.  That at least gives me time to hopefully return to normal, no longer roaming the streets of Kelowna looking for a locked mall that I can keep bumping into as I search for human meat.

When I got up this morning I found a bag of brown sugar on the counter.  I saw that its corner had been chewed open and I suppose some of the contents eaten.  Then I saw the large Dairy Queen bag beside it, and figured that the kids must’ve gone into some trance-like eating fest prior to bed. 

Along with Nicky’s ridiculous whey consumption, they weekly consume four gallons of milk and a half gallon of creamo.  I’ve found that almost no amount of food that I make is too much.  The other day I made pounds of beef chow mein, and while making it I thought that I’d made enough for a small lion pride. 

 However, the three of them tucked into it like wild hyenas, devouring every last noodle.  I’m not sure where it’ll all end for them, but I’ve been avoiding over-eating.  The reason is quite simple: my friend Alison is coming at the beginning of September. 

As well, when she’s here we’re hoping to get together with a number of the women with whom we went to school.  Some of them have been my friends since grade one, such as Alison.  So there’s absolutely no way that I can be seen at such an event fatter than a bloated Texan at a pig barbecue.

 None of this is easy, as I insist on cooking and baking.  For example, I made fabulous chocolate chunk and reverse chocolate chunk cookies for the web designer.  The former were made with large pieces of Callebaut chocolate, which I always have on hand as I use it in my fruitcakes. 

Can you imagine having kilos of chocolate in your house at all times?  It is hell. But whenever I think of grabbing a huge hunk and cramming it down my throat, I think of how annoyed the women will feel if I show up thin.  Surely to God that’s worth more than a few minutes of enjoyment.

And this week I’ve experienced so much frustration that I’ve wanted chocolate more than ever.  I’ve been trying to do this idiotic newsletter since God knows when, and I finally wrote it.  Then I proudly went to send it, and got a message back that it couldn’t be delivered!  I nearly wept. 

Then I signed onto Twitter, not knowing a damn thing about it.  Margaret keeps trying to tell me how to do stuff with it, and I keep asking her things like, “Do I want to follow people, or be followed?”  She is getting to understand that machinery and I do not mix.

At this point I think that all I can do is imitate that kid from the movie, Oliver.  I’ll just have to go to businesses with a fruitcake, and offer it them, saying pathetically, “Please, sir……”  Maybe if people just meet me and eat the product I can get out of this horribly painful, and very frustrating social media stuff.

Except for the terrible expense, it’s kind of nice having two boys.  Right now they’ve gone off to Mission Creek together to a secret swimming hole.  It makes for an idyllic picture, doesn’t it?  However, as Luke told me that he’d seen a mother bear and two cubs there the other day it doesn’t make me that happy. 

Denis’ youngest sister Margaret and her son Brendan were here for the week.  Brendan was along for the bear-sighting the other day.  It was ironic as of course they raced off on their bicycles without bothering with helmets, and Margaret was worried about that.  Little did we know as we sat here with newly pedicured feet that the kids were metres from a completely different danger. 

We’d gotten a taste of a wasp’s ire an hour after she’d arrived from
Victoria on Monday.  I said to her “Let’s go down and look at the vegetable garden,” and she said sure.  We were looking at the Brussels sprouts and Margaret was remarking that she had no idea that was how they grew.  Suddenly a small wasp flew out of the broccoli with ferocious purpose. 

It flew straight at me and stung me at the top inside of my arm.  Not being satisfied with that, it proceeded over to Margaret where it stung her on her wrist, under a bracelet!  We were both saying really bad words about the wasp as we scrambled our way up the hill and back to the house for baking soda. 

I made a paste of that and we soothed our wounds.  For the next three days we each had a huge raised red area that was hot and then itched intermittently.  Any wasp sightings caused huge spasms of paranoia.  I’ve been stung by wasps before, but this poisonous little wasp’s sting was the worst bite I’ve ever had. 

Worse than the sting of that, though, is the pain of having to learn stuff about what Margaret says is called Social Media.  She showed me how to makes links in these blogs, and helped me with my newsletter.  We looked at my web page together and she made suggestions on how to improve that. 

But you know all too well what I’m like.  The moment I start to think about something hard, like my web page, or ugh, ‘social media’, I start to google new recipes.  I then e mail people from whom I haven’t heard in a while.  Right now, for example, I’m making plum jam and thinking I’d better stake some of my dahlias. 

At some point, though, the pain of the procrastination will become too great, and I’ll realize that Margaret is right.  I’ll then have to mound a plate with brownies and promise myself a pair of pumps when done.  Then, and only then, will I slog my way to business success using this new-fangled medium.  Why does all forward movement have to be so damned painful?

In the unbearable Okanagan heat I’ve been keeping myself happily occupied in an air-conditioned house by making tons of jam.  I made some very attractive-looking jam from the yellow and red variety of cherries called Rainier.  Last Wednesday I went to the Farmer’s Market and got some very ripe apricots.  I made deep orange-coloured, tart-tasting jam that is to die for, especially in mid-winter.

Here’s the secret to keeping jam tasting as fresh as the day it was made.  You must store it in the freezer.  Don’t make icky freezer jam, but make regular, old cooked ‘Certo jam’.  Then when cooled, put the jars into the freezer.  When you thaw one you’ll swear it was just made that day.

I also found a wonderful solution to those pesky single servings of food that are leftover from time to time.  For example, I’ll make four chicken breasts and then Nicky decides not to come home for dinner.  In our house, once something has been prepared for a meal and then not eaten, it is poison.  So in the past I would find myself throwing perfectly good food into the garbage.

Now, however, I freeze everything, and then every couple of weeks Luke’s friend Ryan comes and picks it up!  At this rate, Ryan owes me I don’t know how many hours of hard labour in my garden.  He thinks I’m doing him a favour by giving him homemade food, and yet I am benefitting from the guilt-free garbage disposal and free help.  In my defense I’d have to say he’s the one who said he’d work for food.

Speaking of food fetishes, Nicky is into this silly whey thing.  He buys gigantic vats of vile-smelling powder which he mixes into mammoth-sized mugs of milk.  Thanks to this stupid new fixation, we go through at least 16 litres of milk a week.  He’s also at the gym like a lunatic, pumping iron, and I’ve noticed that he is indeed quite muscular.

Sadly, though, he’s muscular and lean, and not fat, which is irksome.  He drinks the whey powder and milk at least three times a day, and then eats platters of food that should turn him into Perez Hilton.  The other night he had two fully loaded hamburgers with a gigantic helping of potato salad and several cobs of corn on the side.

If only I could eat like that!  A nice woman at the gym bummed us out horribly the other day.  She said she’d accompanied her husband to the diabetic clinic where she learned that weight control is 90% diet and 10% exercise.  We all wondered aloud what the hell we were doing busting our glutes at the gym day after day.

But then I can only imagine the nightmare of not going to the gym, plus having no willpower in the dead of winter.  The apricot jam will be calling, and some nice warm buttered toast slathered in jam will just hit the spot perfectly.  Unchecked, Kirsie Alley the Second would emerge, and that’s definitely not good.

Those of us of a certain age will remember the hypnotist known as Reveen.  He used to tour all over Canada, even hitting the little town of Osoyoos in the late 50’s.  I know this because my brother’s best friend, Stu, told us about it at a party at my mom’s on the weekend.

Mom had invited 16 people for dinner as my brother was in town.  The boys and I had driven down separately for the party.  Uncle Freddie is their favourite uncle, and as usual, they weren’t disappointed with the visit.

That’s because whenever my brother and Stu are together, just reminiscing isn’t good enough.  Instead, they decided to try out one of Reveen’s tricks.  My brother, aged 63, put his head on one chair, and his heels on another, body suspended between.  Then Stu commanded, “stiff as a board” and climbed onto Freddie’s stomach and stood there!  There was roaring, screaming, high-fiving and general hilarity.

Two weeks earlier for my birthday at mom’s, Denis had come along as the kids were home to take care of Arnie.  So now Denis had to stay home while the boys and I went to Osoyoos.  I drove off early to help mom with dinner prep, and the boys arrived a couple of hours later.  Their harrowing tale of the drive made me wince.

They said that at one point speeds of up to 160 km per hour were reached.  My sister-in-law just looked at me pityingly because her two girls are in their 30’s.  They also said that before they left their dad was singing at the top of his lungs.  I said, “He’s giddy because he’s all alone in the house.”

Sure enough, he phoned Osoyoos later that afternoon asking mom for “my lovely young wife.”  We all then decided that he had probably started drinking very heavily the moment the kids went down the driveway.

But that’s just the way things are going to have to be with Arnie deaf, blind and requiring two insulin injections a day.  We will have to tag-team events and basically I think Denis is pretty damn good with the idea.

I’d been praying for inspiration, and speaking of good ideas, I finally found one.  I decided than an area in which I might get some good response is in corporate and convention gifts.  Without marketing outside of my website, somehow I’ve been the fortunate recipient of some big corporate orders, such as Nokia.

So imagine if I start actively networking around the business community and marketing to businesses.  I actually started at a Chamber event last Thursday, and it felt really promising.  Impossiblist? Maybe.

I’m really starting to question whether or not Botox is even worth it after the day I had today.  Denis and I were outside, he was uncharacteristically cleaning the gutters, and I was cleaning the windows.  We heard sirens, then saw a fire truck race past us down Hall Road towards the seniors’ home at the end.

As a huge fire had broken out in West Kelowna yesterday, I felt bad that emergency personnel were being taken away from that for what I assumed must be another heart attack at the home.  A few seconds later a second fire truck raced by, followed by two fire department pick-ups.  I said to Denis, “I guess we’d better pack.”

Sure enough, within about ten minutes a plane carrying fire retardant was circling over our house and appeared to be heading for Mission Creek Park.  The bird dog, which is the guide plane, came in and pinpointed the area for the bomber.  He made a few runs, some of them making the entire house vibrate.  In any case, I was vibrating, feeling sick and trying to figure out what to save.

The phone rang, and it was Denis’ employer, telling him among other things that Hall Road was on evacuation alert.  Because he works for the Department of Transport he was being called out to help with the highway closure in West Kelowna.  When he hung up I screamed, “On evacuation alert? Again?”

As you may know, we were evacuated in 2003 for the Okanagan Mountain Park fire.  So when I thought of that happening all over again I just felt defeated.  Nonetheless I dutifully picked up some mementos, photo albums and Christmas decorations and started to photograph every corner of the house.

When the employer calls, Denis jumps, so he had gone off for his silly job.  I was at home, on evacuation alert, with Frick and Frack.  As I was packing the stuff into my car, Luke told me nothing was going to happen.  I pointed out that if the house burned and people asked why I hadn’t packed and I said because my son told me not to, I would be classified as insane.

To help me, Luke and Nicky decided to walk down Hall Road to see what was happening.  Not long afterwards I saw the fire trucks leave, and then the kids returned and said the fire was totally contained.  Later in the day when I acting nervous because of all the smoke, Nicky asked if I was “trippin’ out.”

I find that being near the children during a crisis helps bring everything into perspective.  I compulsively cleaned the windows of the entire house to take my mind off imminent disaster, and they went to the creek to cool off.  When they came home we found that we were all in far better spirits.  I was able to stop frowning, and so mercifully will be able to justify future Botox treatments.