Not exactly a day of rest

I kept quite busy today. I felt inspired in the kitchen. Clara brought me a bucketful of blackberries yesterday so I made some jams this morning. Then I decided that we should have a nice chicken dinner so I sautéed some red peppers, chile peppers and onions in lots of freshly churned butter. I seasoned it with chives and rosemary from the garden. I added the mixture to the chicken in the slow cooker. Then I added some peeled potatoes and carrots and let it all simmer for several hours to absorb all the flavours. I cut our mangos into bite-size pieces and put them in a container in the fridge for easy serving during the week.

After putting around in the kitchen for a few hours, Kevin and I went for a hike on one of our new trails. We thought Martin had chopped it clear, but there were still many branches in the way. Thank goodness Kevin brought the machete. It was his exercise for the day... hard word blazing trails. We'll have to ask Martin to go over it again to make sure it's all clear and easily accessible. We made it to the pasture and then looped around to the trail that goes down to the river. It was a nice hike. It was nice to get out.

When we got back, we did our regular chores... feeding the fish and bringing the Bettys in for the night. We had dinner (it was delicious, if I do say so myself). But wait... I'm not done... I had a hankering for a chocolate treat so I made some chocolate/almond/blackberry tarts. They're just cooling now, so I don't know how they turned out. It's the first time I've made them, so we'll see. No sugar added... no flour either. All I did was melt some semi-sweet chocolate and poured a thin layer at the bottom of a muffin tray. I put it in the fridge, just so the chocolate would harden a bit. Then, I crushed some almonds into crumbs and added a thin layer on top of the cooled chocolate... and on top of that, I added a teaspoon of blackberry jam (there is some sugar in the jam)... then another layer of chocolate sauce... they're in the fridge cooling. We'll see how they turn out.