I keep looking for white chocolate chips on the supermarket shelves. I have been reduced to hoarding those I still have left; using them judiciously in meagre amounts. I like to use them when I'm baking cheesecakes, as a bit of a taste-surprise between the crust and the cheesecake filling. I haven't seen them for sale in months. Irving looked for them on Tuesday when we did our shopping and came away with a package of sea-salt chocolate chips, wondering what they'd be like in cookies. So I'll have to bake some chocolate chip cookies with them. Meanwhile, I decided to bake brownies today. I use a recipe I once cut out of a newspaper aeons ago. The paper is now dark and crumbling-crisp with age. Out of curiosity I looked some recipes up on the internet and what I saw gagged me.

 

 

I can't stand recipes that incorporate cookie or cake mixes. Baking cookies and cakes is not difficult and it's not complicated to aspire to and succeed in baking a product that does justice to your effort. People allow themselves to be intimidated by simple processes. They beg off, citing time constraints, discomfort in combining ingredients, insecurities over success. Without making the effort they'll never learn and instead gravitate to industrialized baked goods. Best to control what you put into the end-stage food you eat.

 

 

Threat of rain showers and a humid morning heavily overcast kept us indoors until early afternoon. Once we had completed everything in the house that needed doing, though, Jackie and Jillie took us off for a saunter through the forest. We were fully prepared, because today is a holiday -- Canada Day -- to discover a lot of people moving about on the forest trails. As things turned out, nada. Us and only us but for the random appearance of scant few others out enjoying a fine day with occasional sun and a cooling breeze.

 

Several of our neighbours have put flags out the front of their houses or pasted facsimiles on their windows facing the street. Most people don't bother. Many people have plans to get out to the various community venues celebrating July1 with a presentation of entertainment and fireworks. It occurred to us when we thought about it that it's the introverted people we know in the neighbourhood who tend to fly flags on their property. 

 

The frequent rain events we've had for the past few months has hastened the growth of all kind of vegetation, both in the forest and at home in the garden. Now, on the periphery of the forest, great swaths of thimbleberry shrubs and elderberry trees flank the forest entry. The pink flowers of the thimbleberries vibrant and promising, the compound flowers of the elderberries speaking of a good harvest of a fruit that was once popular in settlement times for elderberry wine-making.

 

And then, back home again, to meander about the garden to see what's new. Jackie and Jillie tend to wander about on their own, to look for opportunities to chase squirrels and rabbits who have the nerve to access their property which we happen to lease from our little dogs. The squirrels exercise their predisposition to mischief by hauling small flowering plants out of the garden beds. Invariably, on a return from our round of the ravine, there will be revealed one or several little plants crying out to be replanted.