Swan Valley Tammi

about me

I live in beautiful western Manitoba, Canada. I'm a wife and stay-at-home mom with 2 daughters, Peanut (who turned 7 at the end of January) and Fidget (who will turn 5 in the middle of June) and a husband whom I call The Bushman, who's motto, lucky for me, is "I'll try anything once!"

I'm a Mennonite by heritage as well as faith. I'm a born again Christian and we belong to a small Evangelical Mennonite country church where The Bushman and I are fairly involved. The church is made up largely of family groups — most are related somehow.

That's actually a Mennonite pastime, finding out how everyone's related to each other. If we're not directly related, we'll find a connection somehow — your third cousin's wife's brother is for SURE my mother's father's sister-in-law's nephew!! See, isn't it amazing how small this world really is?!

For fun, I enjoy photography — my favourite subjects are sunsets, cloud formations, my girls, and nature close-ups — reading, (John Grisham, Frederick Forsythe, Robert Ludlum, and Clive Cussler are my favourite authors), playing piano, and going for nice long walks, either first thing in the morning or towards sunset. I've even learned to enjoy it in the dead of winter, when I have no choice but to walk in semi-darkness. For those of you who've never experienced a Manitoba winter (lucky you!), 'the dead of winter' includes pretty much all of December, January, and February!! And up here, our shortest days of the year have only 7 hours of daylight, so if it's cloudy, well, it feels like no daylight at all! It's my favourite time to plan my day, pray, and daydream about what might happen if I'd ever actually buy a lottery ticket and win!!



I love cooking — baking not so much (mostly because it's not essential to survival and if there's baking in the house, that's all we eat!!) — and reading recipe books is a favourite pastime of mine. I love the Company's Coming series of cookbooks, but my favourite is Taste of Home magazine. Since buying a premium membership here though, I've decided to let my subscription run out. I'll miss it, but I've decided there's really no need for it, since all the best recipes in the world eventually end up here!!

Favorite Foods:

My favourite foods? Well, that's tough. I mostly just love FOOD, period! Anything with lots of flavour. I'm one quarter Mexican and I absolutely love authentic Mexican cuisine, but sadly, it's tough to find some key ingredients in my part of the world. I do the best I can. One thing I've meant to do for years already is have Mexican Mondays (actually, Mexican Monday Night Football), but that's yet to become a routine.

I'm mostly about simple recipes, but I really just love any kind of food, especially the eating part! Please feel free to browse through my cookbooks, which are not necessarily recipes I've posted or even tried, but all that appealed to me. And if you try one that I haven't yet, let me know what you thought!

http://swanvalleytammi.blogspot.com/