Relaxation??

Last weekend was a relatively new experience for me.  I was at home.  I had no plans for Saturday and Sunday and I did this thing called relaxation.  Weird!  To my surprise, Mike told me over the weekend, that other people do this "relaxing" thing all the time.  Now, I'm not saying that it was a bad thing.  I thoroughly enjoyed every Hallmark and Lifetime Original movie that I watched, but I sure felt weird doing it.  After stating to Mike for the 3rd time that I felt like a schlub, he assured me that this was perfectly acceptable in the real world and that I would have to accept it.  So, Sunday I embraced the relaxation and enjoyed it.  First thing this morning I flung off that weird stage and headed back into my world.  We just got back from cycling  : )

Although I have abandoned the relaxation thing, I did do some really  fantastic cooking over the weekend.  I made some more bread, I got some zucchini from the Farmer's Market and made a delicious recipe titled "Zesty Zucchini" that we had made previously at Cooking Divas.  I, of course, spiced it up a bit and changed around a few of the ingredients and it was delicious!!  

Between the rain showers, I made it outside on Sunday to pick wild blackberries.  It made me think of my grandma, because my mom says she used to do the same thing every summer.

I live in her house and I imagine that I was picking from the exact same bushes she did.  I ended up with a lot more than I thought I would and I'm excited to use them a couple of different ways.  Last night I began by making a blackberry compote with peaches and orange flavored rum that I put over pan fried venison steaks.  We both thought it was amazing!

 

The remaining compote I am thinking about turning into a dessert pizza tonight with cinnamon & sugar.  Then I even have about a cup of berries left to make something else still.  I'm going to carefully consider their use.  My arms, hands and legs paid a scratchy price for picking and I want to savor my berries!  While I was enjoying climbing through the brush picking berries I also began to wonder why I don't use the many, many, many elderberries I have about and I have another tree with berries that I think are edible??  I'm going to have to look into that one.

Not in chronological order, but Friday we did have a few things going on and it was a really fun day. Walker and I went on a geocaching adventure that saw us, swimming, visiting half the countryside and finding a home for some dumped cats.  Joey joined us later and we did just a few more caches.  Then that evening we had Liz & Christine over for dinner.  Chis brought a Mediterranean feast of hummus, tabbouleh, baba ganoush, grape leaves and falafel.  It was delicious!  I made an arugula walnut pesto pasta to compliment and we stuffed ourselves.  Not too much mind you, because we all still had the energy to head out for a little geocaching.  We witnessed Liz & Chris get their first cache and they joined us in finding one that had before eluded us.  To finish off the night we stopped in the Maple Rapids bar and kicked back a few cold ones.  What an enjoyable day! 

So, in conclusion... relaxation was great for trying new recipes, but I think that I would be as big as a blimp if I did it all the time, because I cooked so many amazing recipes!  Good thing we started training for the DALMAC today!