Month: May 2022

Pizza wars are over with the egg being the clear winner, even Rosalie concedes defeat. So, the Big green egg won the pizza war and the Instant Pot won the rib war. I’m sure there will be more fights in the future. The upshot is that we will be eating some great food and having some fun and friendly fights.

Actually, Rosalie is leaving me alone a lot these days as she’s gotten heavily into baking bread and cakes and stuff. Not only do I have a little more freedom I get to eat some great creations. A few are not so great but they are rare.

We went to the local garden centre in Bowser and I managed to snag eight jalapeño plants before they sold out. We also picked up a few other plants to start our belated gardening season. So, it’s mostly planted now.

I took down all of the sunroom except for the roof. It looks a lot better now. After all the dust had settled I had a lot of crap to get rid of. I was going to take it to the dump myself but decided to call a long-time friend, John, to haul it away for me. He and his wife Lesley came to the trailer as well as Peter (yes, that Peter) and Suzie. I cooked some hamburgers on the egg and we all had a nice lunch.

After lunch Bob and Marleen, our neighbours showed up. Rosalie went over to invite them for dessert. Bob’s a dessert fiend so they couldn’t refuse. Rosalie had made an awesome Chocolate and Strawberry cake. But unbeknown to me she decided to celebrate my birthday a little early with a round of happy birthday. I was very touched even if the singing was a tad off key. Well, a tad might be an understatement but it was great anyway.

Now that I have my computer back I can inundate you all with useless blogs; well, it keeps me amused. Also thank you all for the very useful suggestions as to what I should do to prevent further mishaps with wine. The best so far came from Lesley who suggested a sippy cup. I may have to look into that.

With this cooler weather, we use about a 30 lb tank of propane a week. We’ve been going to Comox as it’s cheaper there at Costco. We were paying about $25 a tank. Jim came by one day and said he gets his from Bowser for under $30. I worked out that it cost us $15 to drive to Comox and back so now we get it locally without all the hassle of driving so far.

You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged for a while. Last year, just before we came back from Mexico, I spilled a glass of wine on my laptop and totally destroyed it. When we got home I bought another one and have been very careful not to repeat. But obviously not careful enough as I somehow managed to do it again. Of course it’s Rosalie’s fault as if she hadn’t asked me a question I wouldn’t have had to wave my arms about to answer. 

Then again it could be the Italian in me (according to my DNA). It seems that I dodged a bullet as they managed to repair it so I don’t have to buy another one. 

It’s hard to think that we are in the middle of May, when we got up the other day the temperature was 2C. We had tulips flowering when we got home five weeks ago and they still are. Very odd.

I planned to get the garden planted early this year but the weather has held that up too.

I have a lot of small chores to do around the place but need to wait for the weather to get better. I’ve made some modifications to the sun room. I took all the walls down and just left the roof. It opens up the place and now we can’t store junk in there. (Anyone got room for junk?) Also, we got a quote for a permanent roof for the trailer. 

Pizza Wars!

They say that pizza cooked on the big green egg is the best. However, I have a wife with an Instant Pot and now with an Air Fryer lid, who disagrees. So the battle is on! 

The ones that she has been cooking are okay but I know mine are better. As with all our cooking battles, we help each other out with an eye to sabotage. 

The first attempt on the BGE was great but Rosalie insisted on using parchment paper between the egg and the plate. Just as I took the pizza out there was a “whoosh” as the parchment paper ignited and I got away with just a few hairs on my arm burned off. 

The pizza was great but very burnt black on the bottom. I think the flavour came from the burnt parchment paper. 

I insisted that we needed a pizza stone and ordered one as well as a peel with Rosalie in the background saying what a woosy I was as she didn’t need one with the air fryer. 

She insists on actually making the pizza which is fine by me as if anything goes wrong I have someone to blame. She made it on the pizza peel and when the egg was hot enough I went to slide it on, but it wouldn’t move. Rosalie had no idea how much cornmeal to use to make the pizza transfer easily, so it wouldn’t slide off the peel. She hadn’t used enough so I folded it over and added more meal and eventually it slid onto the pizza stone. 

The recipe I was using said 500 deg for 10 minutes, but we needed closed to 20 minutes. After taking it off the egg and trying it we both agreed that although it was delicious the crust could have done with even more time, but it wasn’t burnt, a major victory. 

It’s hard to believe that this will be our eighth summer in Spider Lake Springs Resort.

Rosalie was looking back at some old photos the other day and was surprised by how many changes we’ve made.

After looking around we settled for the lot we’re in now, E02. The only thing on it was a storage shed, a fire pit and an old picnic table. We had just sold our other trailer so had to buy another much bigger one. A guy delivered it for us as our little car refused to tow it.

Just after the trailer was moved in

The first thing I had to do was to build a deck: you gotta have a deck. Then I built a new picnic table and a free-standing fence in the front yard. At about this time our friends and neighbours here said there should be a permanent roof on the trailer because if rain gets in, it can go undetected and cause severe damage. So I did that too.

I built a sunroom; not such a good idea at the time but now we live here half the year it’s that needed extra room. The Big Green Egg had to have a table so I built that too, and finally put up a metal roof gazebo.

The first few years we were invaded by Blue Jays but soon after, Alan the squirrel, showed up and the Blue Jays took a back seat. We were also guardians of a crop of baby robins for a while.

I put together a collection of photos which can be viewed here on YouTube.

Eventually ,it was decided to sell the condo and live here full time in the summer and Mexico in the winter. It was then that we bought a new modern, Park Model. It will need a protective aluminum roof, but this time, I’m not doing it. We’re getting quotes from the local roofing guy.

The picnic table top had to be replaced last year because it was starting to sag. I even planted a garden. I’ve had mixed success but have hopes that it will get better as the soil builds up.

What’s next? Who knows. We don’t let the daisies grow under our feet for long, so it could be anything. We’re just living an awesome life.

We were getting used to roosters crowing, dogs barking, cows mooing and bugles blowing that we find it very quiet here. I was waiting for the BBQ to warm up, so I stood listening, and for a long time could hear nothing, not even a breath of wind in the trees. It takes some getting used to, even the birds had quit for the day.

I can’t believe that we have been back for over three weeks already. The first few days were a bit cold but we snuggled up and got over it. Jim modified our chiminea and it burns a lot better now, so, we sit outside often and enjoy the fire. It’s great until that cold breeze starts up and then we head in and watch Netflix or read our books.

We went through 3 – 30 lb tanks of propane in those first three weeks so know it’s been a little chilly. The trailer has a great heating system so there is no discomfort. The furnace is turned off at night and back on again when I get up at about 5:30 in the morning. I think I might change the thermostat to one that will do this automatically. Then I creep back to bed and snuggle up to Rosalie for another hour.

I want to get outside and start to do the veggie garden and several other minor jobs that need to be done, but again, that cold breeze keeps me inside.

One job we do want to get done this year is to put a roof on the trailer. We have a contact that I have to phone for prices. I told Rosalie that I would do it myself but she pointed out that I’m nearly 77 years old and she’s not going to let me scramble around on roofs anymore. I sadly agreed with her but said that maybe I could go up on the roof and supervise: She said NO! I stand defeated and totally whipped.

It’s so nice to have someone as crazy as I am to share the kind of life we have. The money is available to rent a condo but we prefer living in our trailer for the summer months and then going to Mexico for the winter. When the time comes we have enough equity to live either permanently in Canada or Mexico quite comfortably. I think it will be Canada but who knows?

The biggest problem we have here is that the internet is crappy. Telus is our carrier and it’s been very spotty. There is a new antenna coming soon, so hopefully that will take care of the problem.

It didn’t, the cable was damaged when it arrived. As it turns out I have another antenna coming. They sent the first one by Canada Post so I emailed the vendor and told them that Canada Post doesn’t deliver here so they sent one to our mail box in Nanaimo. As it turned out Canada Post left a pick-up notice in the RV Resort’s mail box so we collected it.

Rosalie has been growing some sourdough starter, and it’s scaring me a little. She says that it’s bubbling and she has to keep feeding it. Why? Is it alive? She has it growing in her Instant Pot and I’m afraid to look in case it attacks me. I’m going to make sure the bedroom door is closed tightly tonight. I’ve seen the movie “The Blob” if she names it ,I’m gone!