Friday, July 10, 2015

Fifteen flavours of hummus

Lately I've been making a valiant effort to eat generous amounts of fruits and vegetables every day, sometimes with the aid of roasted red pepper dip or tzaziki.  But every time I go hunting for those things I'm greeted by fifteen flavours of hummus.  It makes me suspicious when you have to try that hard, you know?  And even more so when all the other dip type options are sold out from the supermarket's display case, like today.

Eh, I just fueled the cottage packing with a salad instead.


This was a very clever combo - strawberries and mangoes and orange peppers and arugula.  Talk about covering the food and colour spectrum!

I'm aiming for the same kind of thoroughness with the packing, but my heart wasn't in the planning this year and I'm pretty sure I will have forgotten something critical by the time we get to the middle of nowhere that is our summer retreat.  For example, I have sunglasses for swimming (the glare off the lake is unbelievable) but forgot to buy skin lotion.  I have stuff to soothe bug bites, but no bug repellent.  I have crammed a long sleeved chambray shirt and a hoodie into my duffel bag but I seem to have neglected washing any Tshirts this week sooo... not sure what's gonna happen there.

Thankfully, I can remedy most of this on the way north.  We're stopping at the cemetery to put flowers at our respective parents' graves, and at the amazing bakery to take bread and chocolate chip cookies off the bakers' hands, and at the last grocery store before our destination for eggs and butter and milk.  We're bound to pass a drugstore that sells novelty Ts.

Unpacking the cottage for the summer should be a simple task, but it always takes a couple of days.  That seems wrong, doesn't it.  Setting up a campsite has to take time, but a closed and locked building you come back to every year?  Sadly: mice and damp and temperature shifts.  You can't leave stuff out where you need it; you have to stow it away behind doors or in plastic tubs, or lean it up against a wall to let the air move around it.

It's kind of like fifteen flavours of hummus.

This year, I decided to treat myself.  When I'm done, I get to wear one of these spiffy retro tunics to the dock:


I'd use them as bathing suit covers but I cover up pretty much neck to ankle in the lake already, clad in UV-repelling swim gear.  Lands' End even sells a pair of swim leggings with a skirt attached!  Yeah, we laugh at those early swimmers in their long dresses and hair coverings, but I bet they didn't get sunburn.

(and yes, I do look like an idiot in all that gear and sunglasses and giant sun hat and life jacket.  on the upside, I can avoid the mess and annoyance of sunscreen when it's my turn for our open top kayak.  isn't it lucky the cottage is in the middle of nowhere?)

Okay, I'm off to sweep up the last of the packing and fall into bed - early start tomorrow.  Have a wonderful relaxing weekend and I'll see you Monday!


3 comments:

Mimi said...

So understand about opening the cabin for the summer. We've often said it would be better to have a relative with a lake cabin instead of owning the cabin ourselves! Somewhere to visit occasionally but not be the ones who have to fix the broken pipe. Or haul out the dead mice. Or....well, you know.

Mimi said...

For the record, I went to the Lands End link and placed an order. Swimwear is on sale!

Mary Keenan said...

Even visiting the somebody else's cabin though Mimi... I woke up with a swollen eyelid the first morning from I guess a spider bite! SO not a woodsy girl :^( (love the lake though, it's a tough one) Thanks for the Lands End tip! Need another suit now that we have access to a pool too...