So I just got back to the house.
I headed out with Ghost this morning - she to catch her bus to work, and me to drop off a resume at The Red Apron. It's a cute little shop. The fanciest of fancy grocery stores, but there you have it. It smells good when you walk in. :-)
Here's hoping that someone gets their dream job offered to them with a July start-date, and that they decide to hire me to take over the position.

I had a look up and down Bank Street, and there was definitely a derth of Help Wanted signs. However, I gather that a lot of places will throw their want-ads up on facebook or the company website rather than putting a sign in the window, so I have a couple of places where I'm going to hunt them up online and see what can be seen, if anything.

My temp agencies have been aprised of my availability, so there's that. Here's hoping I can pick up some work, either way. I would not sneeze at modeling gigs and/or freelance writing work either, just putting that out there, Universe. :-)

I had heard through the grapevine (AKA: Facebook) that the Glebe Metro had "Traditionally Raised" (read: no hormones, no antibiotics) pork on for, like, $3.99/lb (it's usually closer to $6 or $7 per pound, so: Yes, please!) but, alas, it was all gone by the time I arrived this morning to check it out. Not surprising, but still too bad.

I picked up a package of mushrooms and dozen free-run, nest-laid eggs ($4.19 per dozen, which is the best price I've found yet for at-least-slightly-ethical eggs), and then schlepped back up Bank street (still no want ads in the windows) and went to the Hartmann's, hoping that they would have a similar deal on "Free From" pork (same general idea).
They didn't.
They *did* have flavoured tuna on for $0.99/tin - which is not to be sneezed at (I got five) - and they've got a few different Campbell's tinned soups on for $0.75/tin. I didn't get any of those, because we're doing fine for soup, but seriously. I don't usually see it on for that cheap, so I would recommend dropping by and stocking up if you've got the space and the money to do so. Seriously. If I had the space and the spare $20, I would get a case each of Tomato and Cream of Mushroom, just to have on hand for later. Non-perishables, y'all. They're a good idea.

Anyway. Between the two grocery stores, I bought about $38 worth of groceries, which - halleluja! - cost me all of eight dollars because (YAY!) I had $30 worth of PC points that I was able to put towards the food.
YAY!

I picked up some fairly frivolous things, as a result:
2lb mozzarella cheese ($5.99 rather than 9.99, so I'll take it)
1 pkg of six turkey sausages (~$4.50)
1 small boneless pork rib roast ($6.07)
1 pkg Earl Grey tea ($5.99)
3 tins of lemon-pepper tuna ($2.97)
2 tins of lemon-dill tuna ($1.98)
1 pkg of 40 medium-sized zip-up freezer bags (3.99)
+
1 pkg eggs ($4.19)
1 pkg sliced mushrooms ($2.49)

On my way home, I stopped to chat with D - the gal who has a gone-to-seed rhubarb plant in her front yard (I kind of want to give it a shake and see if I can't seed the neighbourhood with Free Rhubarb For All, but that's just me) - and she gave me a big handful of Vietnamese Garlic - which is the same stuff that I bought to make my asparagus relish and have a tonne of in the fridge - so I think that, while some of it will go into dinner tonight, a lot of it is going to go into the above-mentioned freezer bags as PESTO[1].


Speaking of dinner tonight: I've got a baggy full of bread dough in the fridge, left over from making bread yesterday - there was enough to make a small third loaf, but I decided to try something different instead.
So, in theory at least, tonight we will be making pizza at home.
Thense the mozzarella cheese. And the sausages, but mostly the mozzarella. I'm hoping I can either find my cheese grater - or (even better) use the grating attachment on our food processor - to grate the whole thing all at once, and then I'll just chuck half of it into a baggy and freeze it for later use[2].

So. Pizza dinner will include:
Home-made crust (wish me luck on that one - I think I need to add a lot more flour to the dough)
Home-made tomato sauce (which is technically pasta sauce, but we'll manage) made with Dalkeith-grown tomatoes fro Karen and Liz
Chopped up micro-bioreeeeeeeeeeegional Garlic Chives (AKA: Vietnamese Garlic)
Turkey sausages (ideally only two, chopped very thinly once they've been par-boiled)
Grocery store mozerella cheese
Grocery store product-of-Ontario pre-sliced button mushrooms
Steamed, shredded/chopped neighbourhood grape leaves
Dried Ancho chilies (possibly reconstituted) OR sweet-pickled bell peppers, if I have any hiding in the back of the fridge
Labneh (optional)
Asparagus relish (optional)
Cooking onion, thinly sliced into rounds or half-rounds (optional, and I'm not sure I really want to go with it as the Garlic Chives will be pretty oniony already)


If this goes well, I may consider making "Pizza Night" a regular thing chez nous. It'll change the kinds of things that I reguarly keep on hand (and will give me an excuse to try making mozzarella cheese at home!) - meaning that there will be more reason to have things like dried tomatoes, tinned anchovies/anchovy paste/sardenes, and jars of preserved peppers, around the house, and one more reason to make BIG batches of tomato sauce in August/September. It'll also be a way of using up left-over roast fill-in-the-blank (chicken, rabbit, pork) that doesn't involve frying it up with pasta or rice. Three cheers for an aditional option! :-D


Right now, sitting on the stove (not on an element, don't worry) I have two formerly-empty wine bottles that I have filled three quarters of the way full with 1 part Ribena[3] and about 4 parts Rasberry Thriller herbal tea. The idea is to add a little bit of whey from my yoghurt to one bottle (and leave the lid loose!) and see if I can't lacto-ferment it into some kind of faintly cloudy carbonated beverage. Here's hoping! The other is just going to be a sweet berry iced tea, which should be lovely and tasty and fine. :-) I may add a hint of peppermint to that one, as I know it's a good combination. :-) (This is totally me making Temperate Climate alternatives to lemonade, folks. ;-)


Anyway. So that's been my morning. I also had a wine sample at the Wine Rack store at Hartmann's. I tried both the white and red from their new "Saints and Sinners" line. The white is nice. Nothing overwhelming, but pleasant and refreshing. The red - my gods, the red - it smells like vanilla in the sample glass! The gal at the counter said that was because of the oaking, but it's also got "black currant notes" and I know that black currants have hints-o-vanilla to them, as well, so I'm putting it down to a combination of the two (but mostly the oak). I'm going to buy a bottle of each. Some time next week. Even if it's silly and frivolous and not necessarily something I should be dropping money on right now. They taste good, and they'll be nice to have on hand for Dinner Wine, and they are currently $11 rather than $13. Maybe that's stupid of me, but I'm kind of gritting my teeth and saying "Screw It, I want to buy this wine!" in spite of that.


This afternoon will include:
Writing at least 1000 words for The Novel (I may already have most of the next scene or three written, so I will have a look and see if I can't get a little bit ahead of myself on this front)
Grating cheese (ideally using the food processor)
Dishes
Making pesto (probably)
Changing the sheets (probably)


Up, up, and away! :-)


TTFN,
Amazon.


[1] Think: 3 cups of roughly-chopped garlic chives + 1/4 C crumbled walnuts (or chestnut meal) + 1/4 C grape seed oil + 1 tbsp white wine vinegar + 2 tbsp nutritional yeast + 1 tbsp dried basil + 1 tbsp water + pinch each salt & black pepper --> Chuck it all in a food processor (possibly before grating mozzarella cheese) and blend until well purreed. Freeze by the cup OR half-cup for use on pasta and pizza.

[2] Okay, yes, freezing cheese kind of screws with the texture. However since this stuff was bought to be melted anyway? I'm fine with chucking it in the freezer.

[3] Black currant syrup from the grocery store. It's, like, $10 for a litre of the stuff, and I use it to make black currant curd - it's delish.
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