I have unexpectedly found myself in Edmonton for an undetermined amount of time...I'll post again when I return to Bruno!

I bet you'll never see this at your local supermarket.

Both of my parents are from California and because of this, while growing up, mexican dishes were always in regular rotation. For me quesadillas/burritos are a dinner staple as much as pasta. I'll whip one up for lunch quicker than I would a sandwich. Where am I going with this?

Living in a small rural town has taken a lot of adjustment. One of the biggest adjustments (for me) revolves around grocery shopping. I've never been much of a cook, but in Vancouver it didn't matter since Amy's Kitchen was always there to save me. We used to live blocks from a large health food store. Organic fruits and vegetables were always plentiful and when I felt lazy there was always Annie's Mac and Cheese! No more! Imagine my horror when I discovered that I couldn't even buy refried beans locally. Tyler works in Saskatoon where one can easily find a large grocery store but after a ten hour shift with over an hour commute each way the last thing he's doing is grocery shopping. We make do with what's available in Bruno. I knew my days of snacking on Barbara's Jalapeno Cheese Puffs were over, but refried beans I could not live without. When the owner of one of the local grocery stores asked if I needed help finding anything I said I needed refried beans. After asking me what on earth I would use them for he went ahead and ordered some! I purchased my first can the other day.

I have a lot to learn here. The local grocery stores don't have a lot of produce to choose from. At first glance this might seem backwards to the casual observer but the reason behind it and the lack of a farmer's market in a farming community is that everyone in town has their own garden. From what I've heard people here usually have more vegetables than they know what to do with. After canning and/or freezing everyone's set for the winter. Tyler and I have our very own yard for the first time and this summer we'll be able to plant our first garden. Learning the art of canning might be next. I see a deep freeze in our future...

Refried beans - a prairie obscurity. Who knew?

The other morning we woke up to the sound of the motor that runs the fan on our furnace seizing...and then not working at all.


This is the second time that this has happened to us this winter. The first time it happened Tyler and I came home to the smell of burning plastic. We eventually realized the smell was caused by vinyl floor burning around a vent that was piping hot since the heat around it wasn't actually being circulated. We turned off the heat and called the local electrician. He installed a used motor which he thought was in good enough condition to last us the winter but said if anything goes wrong he would install a new one and not charge us any labour fee (we had requested he install a new motor). Well, it's -30 outside and we've once again had to turn off our heat and guess what? The Bruno electrician is on vacation in Hawaii. We made several frantic calls and found a place in Humboldt that had the right motor in stock. We assumed we would also have to get someone to drive in from there to install it. The first guy we talked to was snowed in, another wasn't able to come till next week. Finally we found out that there was a second electrician living in Bruno! He agreed to come over immediately and we were able to turn our heat back on by 3pm. Phew! At least the whole furnace didn't go (it is from 1959 after all).