My parents are coming from Ontario to visit so we’ve been busy this week cleaning up the yard, trimming back the encroaching forest and sowing the last crop from the garden so when they arrive they’ll have a place to lounge in the sun and something to snack on. I intend to do quite a bit of grilling for them, but not every meal. Here and there I’ve packed away freezer bags full of pre-made nibblets for the nights when we’ve had a bit too much adventure.
One of these instant meals includes a heaping helping of our local Spot Prawns, which I’ve still got frozen in water-filled bags from back in June. I mentioned that spot prawn makes a fine stuffing for dumplings of all shapes ‘n sizes and that goes for stuffed pastas as well!
I haven’t posted as regularly as I usually do this summer and for that I deeply apologize to the handful of crazed kitchen folk and family members that subscribe to EDB. *laughs* We are still here, banging out recipes and philosophizing on life the universe and everything… It’s just been a rough couple ‘o months. 
I’m a bad gardener. I know this about myself and have accepted it. But once a year, amidst mountains of bolted, fibrous rejects destined for the compost I get something really right; one vegetable or another fights through my tortuously under-watered and over-acidic wasteland of topsoil and emerges to prove that yes, I can successfully grow something. These precious few successes are what keep me coming back to break the soil every year. 
Taking center stage at this year’s Yule festivities was a very Germanic looking