Busy week

The company is missing employees these past few weeks.  One has left for good, one is on vacation and another one is on a building site.  We don't even consider hiring people.  We have placed an add and some of the candidates were already demanding (a car for work, and high pays) . So for now, we are doing multiple tasks.

I had to climb on the van yesterday to put some woods on the top of the roof of the van, and shamefully I had to get off without being able to stay up there more than 2 minutes.  I was dizzy.  So The Husband had to climb and managed to attached all the wood strips after 15 minutes.  We also went to the gym afterwards, so the next morning our muscles ached.  I realized how hard the job is for the rest of the employees who have to mount solar panels of roofs and lifting the heavy materials everyday.

I also managed to cook a little this afternoon. Pumpkin cake.  The hardest part was to grate the raw pumpkin.  

I used "potimarron", which is a pumpkin with a light chestnut taste.  It is small, maybe 2 kg, so I used half of it.

Use your carrot cake recipe.

Here's mine:

125g of yogourt

3 eggs

 250 of sugar (brown or white)

 375 g of flour

65 g of vegetable oil

1 table spoon of baking powder

half pumpkin finely grated

You can add cinnamon, and other spices if you like, but I find they overpower the taste of the pumpkin, so I don't add any.

Combine eggs, sugar and yogourt together, and add the flour and the baking powder.  Then add the oil to the mixture.  Add the grated pumpkin at the end.

Bake at 200°C/400°F for 40 minutes.  

Use a baking paper, it can be sticky.

I find this it's a great way to eat pumpkin.

Warm Weekend but no fun

I've been wasting my weekend on an agricultural fair.  I was there pretty much for moral support.  The husband had to do the nasty work.  It was a waste because people who were visiting the fair was there for 2 things: beer and fries.  Since we are so close to the Belgian border, the region of North of France is mainly influenced by its Flemish neighbour, genetically they share the same origins in French Flanders and Belgian Flanders. 

The weather was nice last weekend, warm and sunny.  Too bad we didn't get to enjoy it. As for the fair, people are there to buy some junk food, but no solar panels. 

Anyways, I sat there and ate fries the whole weekend­.   Totally shameful! 

On another subject, I've watched a show about Tokyo.  They live in such tiny spaces.  This makes me feel so privileged to have so much space on the Farm.  On a segment, they show some Japanese women on the coffee shop / petting cats shop.  They sit there for an hour, and they can sip their drink while petting some fury cats. Can't believe people would pay for petting animals, but can't blame them for not having enough space in their apartment to own a cat.

Check this out:

clip 1 :http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,104576135001_2000212,00.html



clip 2:

Photo de chats

It's back to rain today.  We had a few nice days, not too hot.  But let's face it, Fall is knocking at the door.
Here's a photo of some of the cats on the farm.  They want pâté now!

Bagel Bagel

I really had cravings for bagels for a while. And living in the country, without a Picard nearby is not really convenient.  Those bagels that we find in this frozen food store are not really good though.  In Paris, you can easily find tasty bagels in Le Marais District, hand made ones.  But Paris is too far for me.  So I've decided to make some today. Good thing I bought philly cream cheese.

I basically followed this recipe (sorry it's in French): Recette de bagel maison

 I added onions, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds.  

This is not difficult to do, except you need to boil them first before cooking them in the oven.  Hope you will try this at home, totally worth the effort.

On a complete unrelated subject, I am in the process of renewing my Canadian passport.  They made things easier for expats.  They have a simpler form that enables you to renew quickly without having to ask a reference person, such as a lawyer or a doctor to sign your form and no need for a birth certificate.

The hard part was to get ID photos that are at specific size.  I had to go in Lille to a photographer.  I really need to find another one, because the one I went to was not too keen to take the photo because of the odd size. At first, the employee said that they don't do this ID photo size, and I said but I did take a photo 5 years ago at your shop.  So he managed to let his colleague do the picture for him.  If you know a good photographer that is nice enough to do ID photos for Canadians in the North region of France, let me know.

Another money pinching tip and a green action

If you have a laser printer, you can have tons and tons of old toners you don't know what to do with them.  Some office supply stores can take your toners in exchange of discount voucher, like Office dépôt in France, they take your toner for 1 euro, you get a discount of 1 euro if you buy something there.  But if you want cold hard cash, I have found a great website : "toner vide dot fr" They are located in Pas de Calais, France. You can use this service if you live in France.

 I never thought that trash can worth that much.  They gave me 2,50 euros per empty toner, but it has to be a brand.  You register online, you put the empty toners in a box, and you weight it.  They will send you a prepaid sticker for La Poste and you don't even have to pay for transport.  I was skeptical at first, but I received the "enveloppe T - colis postal".

On the negative side, they would send you a cheque minus some toners that they have rejected, they even sent me pictures of the so called broken ones.  Anyways, I got 57 euros for 34 empty toners! yeah!  It is better than discard them in a trash bin or at the déchetterie.

Can't believe that I got cash for those toners that were sitting in a box for a year.