father's day weekend

[tielan]

Started on Friday afternoon with me making lotus seed paste for Autumn Festival mooncakes.

Doooood. That took HOURS to get it to paste up! But it finally did and is sitting in a container in the fridge, ready to be made into mooncakes.

Saturday was a little busy: I went to an 'open garden day' at a not-quite-local community garden. It's a garden where I'll be teaching a course about "Spring Veggie Gardens" in a couple of weeks and I wanted to get a look at the space I'll be planting out. The course is just a 'this is where to start for gardening' - initially for early-learning educators, but I think they're throwing it open to the general public because they didn't get much response.

The open garden was great - I spotted a bunch of people I haven't seen for a while, chatted with assorted regulars at the garden, advised a couple of kids and some would-be gardeners, and generally had a great morning.

Saturday afternoon I had a friend help me pick up some shelving for the study and got it in. One side of the wall is going to be entirely storage (as compared to the other side which will only be mostly storage) except for a couch for someone to sit on. I think we've kind of worked it out. Now just have to fit things on there...

Saturday night was a progressive dinner. Not politically progressive, but a dinner-where-you-start-at-one-person's-place-and-end-up-at-a-different-house-for-every-course. In this case it was just the mains and dessert, no entree ("starter"). There were 13 people including me, and we got to chat over dinner and dessert with some good and interesting conversations. But nothing really political.

Father's day we got takeaway from a good local Chinese restaurant and took it over to the parentals', dressed up a little so we could get a pic of us with our mum all dressed up. She'd wanted one at the cousin's wedding the other weekend, but couldn't get one, and - as my sister pointed out - our stepdad is happy when mum is happy. We got him a gift as well - just a gift card, but something that he'd use.

The food was good. We avoided any conversations that might have ended in having to tell him his sources were just plain wrong (I think we're getting better at that) and overall it was a fine afternoon.

Now it's Monday and I'm freaking exhausted. IRON TABLETS. I appear to have run out, however, and need to hunt up another packet from...somewhere. But boy I could do with a dozen extra hours of sleep. Or, y'know, the iron tablets.

Comments

[timespirt]

I could do with lots of sleep myself. Get some rest.

"HUGS"

[tielan]

...I'm going to bed now. Really.

*shifty eyes*

[aome]

Have you read Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee? (Link goes to Amazon.com.au so I know it's available for your side of the world. :D ) It's a cute YA m/m book set in New York; the main character is of Singaporean-Chinese descent. He is a budding cook who wants to enter a mooncake contest in his mom's memory, using a family recipe that was never officially written down. Meanwhile, he's also juggling a burgeoning relationship with a half-Chinese guy from across town, of the Crazy Rich Asians level of wealthy. It's a super-cute story - and your lotus-seed paste efforts made me instantly think of that (because, yes, Dylan also makes it from scratch).

[tjs_whatnot]

Haha, I just reserved that book in my library's digital app. and was instantly reminded to see where I was in the queue after reading this post. ;) Glad to hear it's a delight. ♥

[aome]

Happy reading, once it's your turn! :)

[tielan]

I have not! (Thanks for finding me the AU link: sometimes it's so annoying not being able to read things in my region.)

I hope his lotus paste was more successful than mine! :D

[tjs_whatnot]

Oh man! I would love to do a progressive dinner. The only time I've done anything even remotely similar was at a camping site and they called it a Crawl because it was a mix of food and drinks and it was super fun.

[tielan]

It was lots of fun, and a good night. My church service organised it, in part because we're at the point where there's a few too many people to get to meet them all, and of course people mostly talk to those they know and don't always get around to talking to new people.