a peek inside the fishbowl

It’s the best I have found thus far. It’s an easy meatloaf recipe, and it’s a winner!

– it’s economical because it will feed our family more than twice
– one out of two kids ate it
– husband had seconds
– it’s easy

This meatloaf recipe is pork-based, which is great, because many of us are trying to cut down on the amount of beef we’re eating.

This recipe is from the February 2005 issue of Canadian Living.

2 eggs
2 cups bread crumbs
2 cups grated carrots (I grated a couple extra carrots and made carrot salad)
4 cloves garlic, minced (oops, forgot the garlic. It was good without it but I will definitely add it next time.)
1 tsp each, ground ginger, salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 cup thinly sliced green onions (5 or 6)
2 lb lean ground pork
1/4 hoisin sauce

– In large bowl, whisk eggs. Mix in bread crumbs, carrots, garlic, ginger, salt, pepper, and 3/4 cup of the green onions. Mix in pork.
– pack into a 8 x 4 loaf pan, mounding top. Spread hoisin sauce over top; roast in 400F oven until meat thermometer registers 160F … about one hour. Sprinkle with remaining green onions before serving.

–

It was delicious. I served it with the grated carrot salad (carrots, a bit of extra green onion, slivered almonds, a sprinkle of sugar and rice vinegar), blanched broccoli, and roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes. This is the best meatloaf I’ve come across. Do let me know if you’ve tried it!

Mark and I bought new sheets. I’ve been thinking about new sheets ever since our holiday to the Maritimes and our celebratory 10th anniversary stay at a luxe hotel in old Montreal.

I have come to this conclusion: good sheets are a MUST HAVE. Not a maybe, or perhaps tomorrow, but if you’re going to spend ANY MONEY in your household it should be on v.v.v.good bed linens. Otherwise you might as well be sleeping in a barn, on flour sacks, stuffed with hay, and then you’d die and discover, while lying on cozy clouds up in heaven that your life here on earth with polyblends was a little empty and sad.

The sheets we bought are I-dunno-but-totally-high-thread-count-cotton-supima. They are a light shade of sage green with gold sheen that made my heart hurt with wanting when I saw them. There is a subtle check woven into them and they have a certain density and skinfeel that we haven’t ever had before this. They are delicious. 

We bought the sheet set, some extra pillowcases, and a creamy coloured duvet cover. Sleeping in our bed now is like sleeping in the beautiful home of imaginary wealthy relatives, relatives who have good taste in sheets.

These sheets are rich and CRISP and god I just want to cry I love them so much. Is it wrong to love bed sheets this much? Sliding into them is like sliding into your dreams AND YOU’RE NOT EVEN ASLEEP YET.

Anyway, I’ve washed the sheets twice now and twice I have been stuck, STUCK ironing them, sweating my face off, and the ironing board collapsed once under the pressure and narrowly missed squashing my toes. I’ve never ironed my sheets before. I know. It’s terrible. But our old ones never wrinkled as much as these ones do. I spent 45 minutes ironing everything yesterday because I could not WOULD NOT put such a wrinkled mass of fine linens on our bed. It would be SACRELIGIOUS.

The trick to getting those perfectly ironed bed sheets has somehow eluded me.

So far, this has been my technique.

1) Wash.
2) Shake out.
3) Dry until damp to the touch.
4) Shake AGAIN.
5) Iron with hot iron PRESSING down to maximize my time.

Pillowcases are easy, but what about the sheets? Ours are queen size. I dryed the fitted sheet (who here uses dryer balls, are they worth it?) and SPRINTED upstairs with it, rushing to put it on the bed while it was still hot. The flat sheet has been impossible to iron without re-wrinkling the part I just ironed, so I’ve taken to only ironing the outermost edges about, um, one ironing board deep.

It was still damp to the touch when I spread it out on the bed last night. It dried in place, not bad, but not great. What do I need to do to make it great? Have them dry cleaned? ;)

[With a bit of googling I learned I need to fold them in half. WHERE HAVE I BEEN. Are you supposed to do both sides too?]

What about you? Have you discovered the joy of good bed linens? And do you have any ironing tricks that would make my life easier?

Once upon a time I said that I’d never run ads on the blog. I didn’t want to insult your intelligence, subject you to blinky annoying things, sell my soul to an affiliate that forced me to advertise for WalMart and McDonalds, encourage you to buy something you didn’t need, or clutter up my look. (LOTS of reasons, maybe more, but those are just a few off the top of my head.)

If you know me you can probably imagine how much I’ve been wrestling with this issue. In fact, I’m sitting here writing this with a healthy degree of uncertainty.

I do know this: I need this blog to be revenue-neutral for awhile. I need to cover some of the increasing costs associated with the hosting this website but I must do it in a way that suits me (and you!) best.

*deep breath*

So that’s why I am making this proposal.

I’m looking for a patron or two.* Ideally, they would be small, Ottawa-based entities. Maybe a fellow blogger, a store, an artist, a non-profit, a relevant service … ? And maybe I’m in living in bloggy la la land but it should be something I feel good about. After all, their logo will be posted on my front door.  

They would need to understand that I will always follow my own editorial policies because my readers are important to me. They would supply me with web-ready graphics and I’ll loan them a square up in the upper right-hand corner. Say, this big:

If they don’t have a graphic I can make one.

For what it’s worth, my numbers, for a local lass, ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at. Last week I had 4,725 visitors. That’s a lot of folks gathering around ye ol’ virtual water cooler. And my numbers keep going up. (I think that’s pretty good!)

I don’t know if this will even go anywhere, but tell me, what do you think? Friends, readers, lurkers, will you turn around and never come back? Or do you care? If you’re a blogger who sells her/his own space I would love to hear your experience too.

* Is this you? Are you interested? I am still tweaking and researching, but send me an email or leave a comment and let’s figure out if we can make this work.