a peek inside the fishbowl

Good Eats is a quick roundup of recipes from fellow bloggers that caught my eye.

Check out this white chill. Or is it a stew? Regardless of your definition, Don gets bonus points for presentation:

Source: foodieprints.com via Jayda S on Pinterest

Next up: beef stew. This is my kind of meal, especially on a four-day weekend. It practically makes itself in the slow cooker. Also, it’s easy to freeze, which is great for busy families like mine.

Source: lifeinpleasantville.com via Jayda S on Pinterest.

This is the one I shared. I had to repost it here because IT’S SO GOOD I can’t believe it.

Source: quietfish.com via Jayda S on Pinterest

I also liked the look of Jayda’s chocolatey treats on her blog, and I think you will too. I’ve made the avocado/chocolate mousse before. It’s the only way my kids will eat avocado. I totally recommend you try it!

Friends of ours invited my youngest and I to a really cool evening of jewellery-making and I wanted to share it with you here.

Have you ever heard of glass fusion? Basically, you take pieces of cut glass, lay it on other glass, and put it in a kiln to bake it. The super hot temperatures melt it all together, creating a puddle of colour. The results are fantastic.

I’m thrilled with how these turned out!

Here’s a group shot. Sarah’s are on the right. She’s very happy with her results too.

Glass crafting is a rather advanced hobby, but this is the super beginner version. I think it’d be good for kids over the age of 8 or 9, mostly for safety reasons. We donned gloves and dug through bins of coloured glass shards to find the pieces we liked. We also cut glass (this is done using a special safety blade) and snipped it using special scissors.

It made for a very fun evening. We were essentially a bunch of moms and daughters, all working away on our individual pieces for a couple hours. I think this would make a great party for older girls, don’t you?

Are you keen to try it out yourself?  We took our workshop at Stained Glass Stuff, and it was one of their private party nights that we attended. You can read more about those right here.

If you think THAT’S cool, you may be interested in glass-blowing too. We tried that out while ago and it was VERY fun. You can read about that experience right here.

We decided that we wanted to explore different cross-country ski trails around Ottawa (with special emphasis on the family-friendly ones) so that’s what we’re doing…. slowly but surely.

Our most recent discovery? P6 along the NCC network of trails (click here for a map) in the Stony Swamp area. By the way, P6 is the number of the parking lot. I have no idea what this trail is actually called, and there’s possibly a bit of extra confusion around the fact that it’s labelled Trail #25 in some places, and Trail #24 in others. ANYWAY, once you drive out to P6 (which is on Richmond Rd approaching Stonehaven in Kanata) and park your car there is really is only one way to go.

I wish the NCC could make all this stuff a little clearer on their website, don’t you? Sigh.

This trail doesn’t look like much as you’re pulling up in the parking lot. In fact, you may have even driven past it a thousand times and not even noticed the park entrance here, but if you’re looking for an easy trail to try, this should be the one. And it’s never as full as some of the others in the area either.

The trail is about 3.5 km long and it’s quite horizontal for the most part, with a few small rises and dips. It starts and ends on a raised boardwalk and weaves through lovely hardwood and evergreen forest. I didn’t expect it to be this pretty actually:

The proximity to trees in some places may be the only challenging aspect to beginner skiiers.

There was evidence lots of snowshoers and hikers when we were there and most of them had remembered to stay off the ski trails too. :)

Funny thing, although we brought seed with us to feed the chickadees, the birds weren’t nearly as plentiful as they are along other trails like Jack Pine, or the trail at P11 (don’t know what that one is called either, but that’s where all the birds are). Check out this little beauty who landed on my hand and paused just long enough for my camera to focus.

Anyway, yes! We had yet another great day out on the trails. I’m hoping for good weather this weekend so we can try out another new one. Question is, where to go next? Hmm.