Invasion

Wintertime up here is deliciously quiet and serene. Birds will eat from our hands, snowshoe hares appear out of nowhere, and one catches fleeting glimpses of deer passing through the woods. A flying squirrel visits the "treat tree" that the kids and I decorate on the deck, using peanut-butter coated pine cones and popcorn balls.
So when spring comes, and all the little critters creep out of hibernation, it's always uplifting. Especially the chipmunks. Their timorous wee faces peer around the corners, tiny crabbed paws reaching up the doorframe as they see their reflections in the glass. This spring I saw one chipmunk bounding into the same spot over and over; investigation revealed a perfect hobbit-hole disappearing under the wild roses. I knew she would have a family in there, and decided that this would be the summer to tame the chipmunks.

I began the project some days ago. My first strategy was to simply wait until I saw the creatures on the deck, then slip out and place some peanuts in an open spot, so they'd see that I was The Provider of Nuts. I was never sure if the message was getting across, since the cat usually raced out the door as well, with intentions quite the opposite of mine.
Yesterday I watched, peanuts in pocket, as one bold chipmunk scrabbled around the patio door. He was a quick one - and probably one of the new youth of the season. He seemed to be everywhere at once! It was then revealed that there were in fact several young chipmunks scampering about the deck... it was a perfect opportunity! And Mike said "Tristan, go get the trap. We've gotta do something about these chipmunks! Stop feeding them!"
But I couldn't resist. Tristan geared up the live trap, and I sat down in the sun and broke up some peanuts into my hand. One little rodent in particular was very brave, and hungry, and as soon as I was still he started to creep forward. Before long he boldly snatched a peanut bit and shot away to nibble it in safety. He was soon back, and within half and hour he was confident enough to climb onto my lap and sit in my hand, shoving the morsels into his cheeks.

This was fine progress. I envisioned a passel of devoted chipmunks greeting me at the door, sitting on my shoulders as I weeded the flowerbeds, following me around like tiny clever dogs. I went about my day, hanging laundry, potting plants, digging holes...
Then Tristan caught one. In the live trap. This is the thing with humane traps - sure, you don't kill the prey, but what are ya gonna do with it? Two options - let it go, or kill it yourself. Preferrably without getting the live trap bloody. There was the little guy, racing wildly around inside the wire box, terrified. I instructed Tristan to take it to daddy. Daddy instructed Tristan to put it in a different cage, and he'd "relocate" it after work. So the kids dug our old birdcage out of storage, and proceeded to make Chippy comfy.
Chippy decided he was not comfy, and deftly leaped to the top of the cage, squeezed through an impossibly tiny hole, and escaped. Into our house. The cat was delighted.

Thus began the Chipmunk Rodeo. It came to involve 1 horrified chipmunk, 1 retarded cat, two children, two grown men, and one bemused spectator. Also several pieces of furniture, a butterfly net, and various magazines.
Round One: Chippy camps out under the couch. Cat guards couch. Chippy makes a break for the safety of the piano. Cat guards piano. Repeat ad naseum.
Round Two: Kids attempt poking Chippy to chase him out the open door. Cat impedes progress by racing about, getting poked and meowing loudly. Everyone argues about where Chippy actually is.
Round Three: Hubby solves the mystery of Chippy's whereabouts by pulling out the couch. Chippy dashes behind desk. Hubby pulls out desk. Chippy hides behind curtains. Hubby ties up curtains. We skip intermission and proceed directly to Round Four
in which Chippy leads the entire family in a wild parade throughout the house. Avoiding both open doors, of course. Parade runs as follows:
Chippy. Sometimes emitting a series of angry chirps.
Cat. Who could've caught Chippy multiple times, but prefers to trot with her nose a few inches above her prey. Succeeding merely in getting stepped on.
Hubby. Wielding green plastic butterfly net.
Two kids. Giggling like mad.
Tim. Our current building project employee - also family friend, fishing and hunting and mechanic pal for Hubby. Also giggling like mad.
Me.
And every time we get Chippy cornered, Tim is all ready to shoo him out the door with a magazine, until he makes a break for it and rushes over Tim's foot, which provokes a high-pitched squeal and an interesting little dance. The period of time spent in Tristan's bedroom was a highlight - Chippy found many good hiding places and tunnels amongst the Lego ships, sleeping bags, books and clothing strewn about. Cat was highly motivated by this time - to get a closer look. Everyone was shouting and laughing and I was aware, once again, that people acheive an interesting state of eccentricity when trapped on a mountain with limited influence from civilization.

In the end, Chippy made it out the door and gasped with relief that he was still alive and not in Chipmunk Hell as he'd suspected. We all fell about, laughing and reliving the episode. The live trap is put away, and I'm doubting I'll ever tame that particular chipmunk.

It goes to show you, though, how quickly our fickle emotions can turn. One minute a chipmunk is cute, then an annoyance, then funny... when I see a little critter sitting up, nibbling dandylion seeds it's adorable - when it's digging up my nasturtium seeds I'm ready to get out the .22.
Speaking of which, I think I'll go put netting over the strawberries!

Gild the Lily

Cream. It's all about the cream, I tell ya.
Think about it - you've got your cream pies, cream puffs, cream cheese, Boston cream donuts... imagine pumpkin pie without whipped cream on top? Not even worth eating. If something looks unappetizing I hear a little voice in my head: "Meh, poot leetle bit whip cream - now, ees goot." (for some reason, all the good cooking advice in my head is in a Greek accent.) No matter what kind of gunk I'm serving, if I top it with a dollop I'm guaranteed at least one "mmmm". Why is this? Beats me.

Oh, so much has happened in such a short while - including the consumption of several litres of whipping cream. The assistant cook has come and gone, the new cooler has finally been finished, the second crew has been fired...

As it happened, I did share my good coffee with the Chef. And she did load my dishwasher wrongly, but I didn't care. She saw that things were not entirely FoodSafe, and she didn't care. It was fabulous having someone to "talk food" with, even if she did talk down to me a bit, like assuming I didn't know what "minionette" was. (It's actually spelled "mignonette" and it's like a vinegar sauce for oysters. I googled it when she wasn't looking.) She didn't cook better than me, just different. Sort of "new-school" vs. "old-school". Probably not enough whipping cream invoved in her meals; the guys did revolt and demand more meat.

In any case, sharing a kitchen never works well, and I'm not entirely disappointed that her position was no longer needed once the second work crew hit the chopping block. Now I have sole possesion of the kitchen, dining hall, cooler and pantry, and I know if my can of chickpeas is still there on Monday morning. All is as it should be.

The second crew? Well, it was astounding to observe the work ethic of that bunch. Or lack thereof. One guy actually said "I didn't expect to have to work to keep my job." ?! That just leaves one speechless. Is it just me, or is that the most amazing oxymoronic statement ever? Heavy on the "moronic". It became a running joke amongst the first crew that Monday mornings were devoted to fixing whatever the second crew had messed up over the weekend. Sometimes all of Monday. We started calling them "the A Team" and "the F Team". And then one bright Monday morning the Foreman was doing his rounds and discovered that, despite repeated instruction, the fellow doing the cooler floor had completely bungled the tile job. Not out of ignorance, but out of stupidity, or spite, or stubborness. The entire floor had to be ripped up and redone. (Happily, he'd FUBARed it so badly that the ripping up part was pretty easy!) And the Foreman said "ENOUGH!", made a flying trip to the manager's office (which, in this case, was the front seat of said manager's pickup, as the toddler was sleeping in the back - we're an easy-going bunch around here) and that was the end of the WonderDummies.
Granted, a couple of them made the cut and will join Team Allstar for the Monday - Thursday shift. This includes the guy who smoked pot after work on his first day up here (we don't allow liquor - never mind the alternatives! But no solid evidence and no repetition, so...); and the dyslexic medic who, according to his First Aid records, prescribed Advil for Bill's "menstrual" pain.
(Foreman: What's this??
Medic: Oh, um... it was the other day... for pain...
Foreman: Bill?! Menstrual?!
Medic: Oh, it's supposed to say "muscular". I'm dyslexic.)
(Now that he's dyslexic we can't make fun of him. Phooey.) So, we've got PotHead and MyslexicDedic here; they were the cream of the crop of Team F!! Wow. You see my point.

But, all it means to me is that I throw another pie in the oven, another jug of cream in the KitchenAid mixer. Life goes on.

An Ode to My Tank

One of the things about living on the side of a mountain is the fact that our "driveway" is twenty-some kilometers of forest service roads. Otherwise known as backroads or... trails, even. Now, most of our road is fairly well maintained, but this year weather conditions have perfected the glossywindinglugetrack that we drive far too often. I drove it today, in fact, and we can add "winter driving" to my list of "I can do that", under the classification of "Unsatisfactory".

Cooking for hoards of hungry helpers means stocking up with serious supplies. Our nearest grocery superstore is 1.5 hours away, so we order large-quantity groceries from a company called Sysco. My good pal, the Sysco Guy, gives us a call on his cell (not while he's driving! that's illegal now!) and I caroom down the driveway to meet him on the highway and receive my shipment. Normally, that's how it goes down.

But there's this one corner, just a lovely curvy corner of ice with deeeeeeep steeeep ditches. And those ditches just looked so appealing to my Suburban today that she dove right in, even though I read her thoughts and let out a gut-wrenching "NNNNOOOOOO!!!!". We had left a little early, so the kids and I proceeded to break piles of pine boughs and shove them under the tires, but we only succeeded in carving a series of tunnels through the knee-deep snow. I abandoned my inadequate shoes and pulled on Hubby's big rubber boots, and with a dollar-store army knife worked at whittling off a fallen tree that was threatening to crease a huge dent in the newly-repaired side panels of the truck. The kids hauled more branches and I just kept praying...

Apparently God had other plans for us today, because on our final escape attempt there was a sudden stop accompanied by a resounding "clunk" and I knew we were going no farther. Somewhere in that morass of branches, spun-up gravel and ice crystals there was a rock, and it had decided to hold fast to the tender underbelly of our beloved 'Burban. We locked up and decided to take the Heel Toe Express back up to camp.

Well, the story doesn't have a sad ending - not far along we flagged down my new best friend The Granite Guy, who'd been at camp measuring for our new countertops. He drove us back home and I braced myself for a good ribbing. Our brandnewshiny tractor pulled the 'Burban out with ease. The little grocery/convenience store/gas station in our community accepted delivery of my Sysco order, and the Sysco Guy is reported to have said "When she called and said she was in the ditch, my first thought was: thank goodness she drives a tank!"

This is only the second time in four years that my 'Burban has turned on me and left me looking foolish off the side of our road; not bad really, considering how many trips down that road we make. And she still cradled that big food order all the way home, not even breaking an egg. What can I say? I love my truck.

The Cream Pie Curse

How many times have I seen something... at a store, a craft sale, on tv... and thought -"yeah, I can do that."? Too many. It's that mentality that has me currently swimming in deep waters. Or drowning. And blogging about it.

It's nearly 9am, I have half an hour before Coffee Time. At the moment I'm cooking for a construction crew of 10 - one of which is my husband. They'll want coffee and cookies soon, which I'll take over to the worksite so I can spy on their progress. From my "office" window I can see the whole place - a forest education camp on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. A pile of construction sand protected from the snow with a giant orange tarp. Hubby cruising on his new tractor. Half-demolished cabins and buildings-in-progress. Exciting times around here.

So, a list of the things I thought "I Can Do That" about, and am presently attempting:

• cooking professionally
• cake decorating
• designing crochet patterns
• painting murals
• homeschooling
• carving a totem pole
• greenhouse gardening
• landscape designing
• interior decorating
• running a Kids' Club
• writing music
• blogging

I'm sure this list will grow with time. I must add that not everything is coming along successfully... I'm on my third totem pole attempt, my greenhouse is full of dead plants, and right now one child is diligently working on school while the other is dozing blissfully. Or maybe reading in bed. I haven't actually checked. So add "parenting" to the list, under the category of "may or may not be doing adequately".

As far as the cooking goes - that all started 4 years ago when we first moved up here. My husband was hired as the Caretaker and I tagged along and looked for stuff I could do. The camp cook at that time was looking for a couple of days off, so I said "I can do that!" and jumped right in, feeding up to 80 camp kids at a time. Since then, I've cooked for various groups; the University of Calgary geology class; Boy Scouts; a teen addictions councelling group; even a sustainable-living activist group who wanted the 100-mile diet. And I'll tell ya, 100 miles from here gets you... nowhere. I may have stretched the boundaries on that menu, a bit.

So now our camp has a bigfatjuicy government grant to rebuild and remodel, so I'm cooking part time for the construction crew. It's been an all-new experience, an eye-opening shocker, at times. Like watching 10 men devour 10 quarts of chili and 4 dozen fresh-baked buns. Then cream pies for afters. Ah yes, the cream pies.

Did I mention that my family suffers from a cream pie curse? Wait - I have to put coffee on...

Ok, coffee's perking merrily.

I have a vivid mental picture from childhood - when my mom was cooking for a harvesting crew one hot summer. We had a pickup with a camper on the back, which we filled with hearty fare and drove out to the field to feed the masses. One day mama made beatiful banana cream pies heaping with heavy whipped cream and we just knew the men would be thrilled to see them. We rocked gently over the furrows in the field, and as we arrived the grain trucks and combines pulled up close like eager puppies to a bowl of gravy. Flinging open the camper door with a flourish we were horrified to see a pale puddle of melted cream flowing across the counter. A lesson in the importance of refridgeration in the maintenance of healthy cream pies.

So this week I tried my hand at cream pies - one coconut, one banana - my first ever. Homemade crust, crisp and flaky in the pans. Carefully stirred and thickened vanilla custard - no powdered junk in my kitchen. The coconut pie was topped with meringue and and doused liberally with toasted coconut... the banana pie was piped in a swirling mass of whipped cream. And it was good. Remembering the Melted Pie Fiasco, I transferred the banana pie to the fridge. Well, tried to. You see, part of our camp facelift has involved complete deconstruction of our walk-in cooler in the commercial kitchen. So I've been doing all this cooking out of my 800 square foot cabin, with my tiny tiny kitchen. And I've got stacks of cans, boxes of produce, and carts of baking supplies lined up and piled up in every spare inch of my house. Including a week's worth of meat defrosting in my over-crowded fridge. So as I shifted the pork to make room for the pie, the crazy pan leaped out of my hand and threw itself, kamikaze-style, against the bottom rack of the fridge. Half the pie clung to the pan, half lay face-down on the bottom shelf. I sat right down on the floor, pork-in-lap, to have a good cry. But my kids are troopers - at my Gasp!and-waaaaail they rushed over and took charge. One got a wet cloth, one patted my shoulder and said "you could scrape it back into the pan - no-one would ever know!" Out of the mouth of babes. With some artful patching, and a little extra leftover whipped cream for good measure, the pie was resurrected and dessert was saved!

But I'm through with cream pies!!