As we (all too quickly) approach Christmas 2021, I find myself looking back upon another year spent living with that most unpleasant of uninvited guests, Covid.  It has been a strange year, fires, floods, pandemic and highways rendered impassable.  We brought Supergirl to a close, and now are working on bringing a new TV series to life.  It has been another year of working from home, which is difficult professionally, but has been very nice personally.

We haven’t been able to spend time with family or friends as we would have liked, but we have used the means at hand to keep in touch and make sure everyone is doing ok.  It isn’t an easy time, but we are doing alright with it, and like everyone else we look forward to a day when we can again feel comfortable spending time.

Due to work constraints, I have found it hard getting to finalizing a few recipes that I am working on so that I can post them up.  I have been doing quite a bit of cooking, but most of it is the day to day stuff that really isn’t that interesting.  I have played with doing processed cheeses, something that has been both fun and productive.  I have also started to do some work with ground beef jerky and pepperoni, which has also been fun and productive.

I didn’t do much meat smoking this summer, the fires contributed more than enough smoke to the atmosphere, I just couldn’t bring myself to add to it.  I am hoping that over this Christmas break to be able to do some smoking, but first I need to tuck into some festive season baking.

Being home has allowed us to frequent some of our favourite restaurants and stores.  Some of these are old favorites, and a few are new.  We really are very fortunate to have such a selection of eateries and stores in Kamloops.  There have been a couple of new eateries open that we haven’t been able to attend yet, but we will as the current situations allow.  On that note, I will work on another post with some details on some of our favorites.

In closing, Kathy and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and a Happy and Healthy 2022.  May we all be together again next Christmas!

From our home to yours, all of our best

Scott and Kathy

Greetings to my intrepid reader!

I hope that this missive finds everyone well and surviving the challenges that 2020 has brought with it.  As I type this, we are just entering into Christmas season for 2020, and the second wave of Covid 19.  It is a tough time for everyone, and it looks like it will be for a bit yet.

In my absence from the site here, I have been doing a lot of cooking, making messes and coming up with some recipes that I am hoping to get up here soon.

I have expanded on my ‘low and slow’ cooking with a few new things.  I have gotten into sous vide cooking, and my Chief Taste Tester treated me to a Primo XL ceramic grill.  This has afforded me the opportunity to start to work with smoking meats and then sous vide cooking them which has taken my meat game to a whole new level.

I continue to work in film and television, and with Covid I have been working the last few months from home.  I am still working on Supergirl, and this year we are working on the final season.  It has been an exceptionally busy and tiring grind, but we should have a break coming up at Christmas where I hope to catch my breath.

Competing for my time with everything else are two new projects,  both living in the garage at the moment.  We are doing a full restoration on a 1990 Chev travel van, and it’s little fiberglass friend a 1977 Triple E Surf-Side travel trailer.  Both need pretty much full functional restorations, so that has been absorbing a fair amount of time.  I will be detailing some of these projects on the site as we go along as well.

But I am going to make a concerted effort to work on this site a bit more regularly (sound like deja vu all over again?)  No major changes planned, just some more recipes and some information on cooking with a Sous Vide immersion cooker.

Stay safe, be well and I hope everyone can enjoy what is promising to be a quiet and very different Christmas 2020.

SCK

Hey all

After a week of battling 50-100 auto bot attempts a day to register for the forums, I was able to spend some time today to install software to (hopefully) remove that little annoyance from my life.

For anyone looking to sign up to the site, it should be the same as it was before, my change to the software should be invisible to a legitimate user.  I have done some testing, and it seems to be functioning as it should, and for the first hour I haven’t seen any spam registrations come thru.  That is a great change from the 5-10 per hour that have been hitting the site the last week.

If you are trying to register for the site and encounter any difficulties, please let me know by email and I will look after your registration and see what can be done to prevent any issues from re-occurring.

Thanks for your patience…  the learning continues…

Cheers!

As we close in on the last day of the year, I have started the process of bringing The Storeroom online.  In The Storeroom I will be listing some of the kitchen items that I use, and that make my time in the kitchen more productive and enjoyable.

I will be listing link to some of the products on Amazon.ca.  My experience with Amazon as a consumer has been very good, and I am pleased to being trying the Associate Program with them which will allow me to link to their products, and receive a small commission on any sales.  I am not looking to make my fortune, but if it helps cover some of the costs of maintaining the site, that would be a bonus.

As with everything else on the site, it is a work in progress, but I hope that you will find the information both useful and interesting.

The Storeroom

Happy New Years all!!

Scott, Kathy & the K-9 Kids Eve and Harley