I know it might sound insane to most, but the difference of a half degree is the difference between my frozen toes and Joe’s sweaty ass from sitting on the couch. It makes our marriage last longer. It really does. Our old thermostat was from the cold era (I swear!) and we couldn’t ever trust that when we set it for 27 degrees it was accurate since the A/C seem to kick on and off at odd times when we didn’t feel any temperature change. I’m sure we spent a lot of money we didn’t need to in the first few months we’ve lived in our new home. I’m positive we’ll see a noticable difference on our bi-monthly bill like we feel on our skin.

Aside from saving our marriage, our energy money, and our sanity, this program also sports the ability for us to remotely control our settings from anywhere in the world as long as we have an internet connection. Should we, say, rush out the door in the AM and forget to turn our A/C up a few degrees while we’re not there enjoying it, we can do it when we get to work. Or while we’re at work and we feel a heat wave, our local hydro company can also remote into out thermostat and kick our A/C up a few degrees for the peak hours their power grid is overloaded and then remote back in and drop it back down when the power grid load eases up again. We don’t have to do anything - they’ll do it all for us when they need to, or when we are using more than our fair share even if we’re willing to pay for our demanding ways. They’re saving us from ourselves, and the planet from us. It’s a great program. Seriously consider getting into this program if you can!

Addendum:

Screen capture of our first time logging into our thermostat to turn on our AC unit from the work one full hour before we get home. The house should be nicely chilled in time for our arrival. I love saving money and energy. I’m also a geek.

We planted a few things, and then later a few more things, but of the stuff we planted, so far we’ve been able to enjoy lots of flat leaf parsley, broccoli, cauliflower, and a baby eggplant. There are more fruits appearing this week. This is our latest crop of veg we’ve been waiting patiently for: tomatoes. So cool. Can’t wait to pick them.

Besides the baby tomatoes, I also noticed I might be getting two more baby eggplants. I love eggplants!

Besides the eggplant, I planted some green peppers, but I have long since give up hope when I realised the leaves were being attacked from a fungi. So, imagine my utter delight to realise I might be growing some after all. I’m hoping this blossom gets pollinated very soon instead of just opening and closing each day till it dies a slow death. That would be too much emotional drama for me to take.

I made tons. More than we could have humanly consumed in one sitting so we tossed around some ideas of what to use it for later in the day. One idea made Joe’s eyes bug out: pulled pork enchiladas. Dinner idea done!

Super easy to throw together (five minutes) and only need 30 minutes in the oven to heat through, these enchiladas were basically a no-brainer.

Each tortilla had about 1/4 cup of the pulled pork in pasta sauce placed on the bottom 1/3 portion, and then (if you like or have it) a small handful of marble cheese, and them rolled up and placed seam side down in a lightly sprayed metal pan to bake. Over top, I added the last half of the basil tomato sauce and topped it with enough marble cheese to leave a nice cheese layer.

I baked these enchiladas covered with foil at 375 degrees for the first 25 minutes, and uncovered under the broiler for the last 5 minutes till the cheese bubbled and browned a bit. After they came out of the oven, I topped the enchiladas with cut up some bunching onions and flat leaf parsley from my garden, and served them with very healthy dollops of sour cream on the side. Heaven.

Try this today and you’ll agree with me, this is the easiest and tastiest enchiladas you’ll ever make at home. Recipe for the Pulled Pork and the basic Enchiladas came from Every Day Food.

Knishes made with wild Canadian mushrooms
Greek Potatoes
Yogurt Pops
Raisin Cinnamon Bread
Pistachio Pasta in Cream Sauce

Which do I think I should make first and publish the recipe to?

Motivation is a fickle woman, isn’t she? Yeah… so… here is what we’ve got so far.

This is our dining room / living room L shaped space. These are the walls on outside of our tiny kitchen (please ignore the mess in the kitchen wherer we stuffed the table, end tables, microwave and toaster oven stand, books, ect.).

The base colour on the wall is some creamy taupe the previous owners painted the house when they staged it, and it works well in our analogous colour scheme, so we matched it with Coronado Dunes from the Behr line. It creates a lovely harmonious colour palette throughout the space as you move around.

We chose to paint all of the small and half walls facing west and east and leave the longer north and south walls untouched. We have one more wall to paint in that space and a few touchups to do before we continue it down the hall into the foyer, but we’re kinda digging the final product so far.

Oh, and note how the tv floats off of the wall. Without any cables showing. I will post about that soon. It’s quite interesting and Joe is very proud of his ingenuity and master network and cabling skillz.

The perfect fit for our needs found us at the local Home Depot. And it was on sale. It was easy to bring home, assemble and then weather proof. We can always drill a huge hole in the middle to insert a pole should we decide we’d like an umbrella later on, too.

This is me applying the first of two coats of the weather proofing sealer. It turned out nicely when it was all done. So far the only thing that’s sat on the table has been our garden plants, but now that they’re in the ground, we’ll have to start eating outdoors from now on.

Using the Every Day Food recipe for Flounder With Onion-Tomato Ragout as my template, I made lovely and flavourful white fish dish.

I swapped out the vinegar for freshly squeezed lemon juice all over the fish while it was cooking in the pan, and a bit more on top of it all after it was plated to ensure maximum brightness.

This is a keeper. Simple, fast and tasty. You can’t ask for more on a busy weeknight when you’re pressed for time and your belly is rumbling.

Final thought: chunk this up as is and throw it into warmed up tortillas for instant fish tacos.

We bought this to hang in our foyer stairway. It’s hard to imagine that it’s a bit small for the space, but we love the look of this clock so much, we left it there. Eventually we won’t notice its scale after we get everything in that area all squared away.

Ricotta-Spinach Stuffed Chicken, from the Every Day Food recipe collection, served with roasted carrots, onions and baby potatoes, and with a side Caesar topped with fresh dressing and shaved Parmesan cheese.