Local Goodness

One of the great things, and there are many, about being at the farmhouse all summer is the fact that I can eat an entire meal that has come from a person or place I know.  This place makes eating local easy.  I read the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver a few years ago and marveled at her family's discipline while living an entire year eating only food they grew or that was grown or raised within 100 miles.  ( a rough synopsis, sorry Mrs. Kingsolver).  It was such a great book that my husband and several of my children also read it. We all related to our wonderful summers here in rural Nova Scotia and the fresh foods we are lucky enough to eat while we are here.  It's a great book, I highly recommend  it!

I'll be one of the first people to admit that my diet could use a little tweeking.  I enjoy my share of sugar, fat,  processed foods and wine.   Up here I'm able to change to a healthier one, in spite of my attraction to Cheetos and cookies.  I try most of the time to eat a balanced diet, but am by no means fanatical about it, I'm not fanatical about much....except maybe sunsets.

All natural, locally produced, gluten free, dairy free... sunset!

My sister (the one I share a brain with) and I took a little road trip last weekend and somewhere between the farmer's market, the brewery, the winery and the oyster farm it hit me that we are able to eat locally for much of the summer.   The bacon and eggs we ate for breakfast were bought from someone down the road and the lobster is from the guy up the road who has his own lobster boat and caught them that day.  The lettuce in the salad was harvested in the backyard along with the carrots, beets, potatoes, zucchini, onions, beans, peas, and all the herbs we enjoy most of the summer.  Cooking dinner involves finding some protein, which I'll admit, much of it has been bought at the store, and going into the garden to see what needs to be picked.  Although, there are some occasions that the protein has been bought from the farmer up the road or a local fisherman or oyster farmer nearby.  It just has to be healthier, right?

The road between oysters and wine.

On our little field trip we went to the farmer's market where my sister bought some vegetables and  I bought farm fresh eggs.  We tasted maple cream, a delicious fudge-like substance that is pure goodness!  I refrained from buying any though, just what I don't need...pure, temptingly delicious sugar to snack on all day.  We bought some pottery from a local woman.  I also bought a meringue baked by another local person... I'm not a saint.  This market is something I wish we had where I live.  Yes, we have a farmer's market, but the produce is no where near the caliber of the produce grown up here in heaven!

This just makes me want to cook....and eat!

This is where the oysters grew up.....

Speaking of oysters.....one of our, now traditional,  evenings involves oysters and croquet.  We have found a new place, very nearby, to buy oysters.  You know they are fresh when you call in the morning, place your order, and the lady on the phone says, "Thanks, I'll go out in the boat and get them!".  We had our oysters with freshly processed horseradish from a neighbor's garden.  Super delicious!  We played croquet, ate oysters, drank beer from a nearby brewery and wine from the winery near the oyster farm.  Can't get any more local than that!

Playing croquet in the yard!  A new family tradition.

This is where we ate the delicious oysters!

One cute couple in the croquet photo booth!

The local brewery where we bought our beer!
Pure Tatamagoodness!

The grapes at Jost Winery where we bought
several bottles of wine!

We also enjoyed a couple glasses of Sangria.....
because it was hot and there was live music...and
the sun was shining!

One more example of a totally local meal.  Last night, we were having lobster for dinner with the same sister and her boys.  She picked the lobster up at the dock, right out of the fisherman's boat!  They were a bargain too, if you ask me.  We served the lobster with the best butter in the world, made in Nova Scotia.  The side dishes were carrots and beans from the local farmer's market.  Can't get any more local than that!  Delicious....you bet!

Dinner...before

Dinner.....after.
He can't wait to jump into that Tatamagouche butter bath!

Breakfast, lunch and dinner.....the best butter ever!
Cholesterol?  What cholesterol?

Since there are very few options, as far as dining out around here, I am very thankful for the bounty mother nature has provided for us in the summers up here.  Grocery shopping is very different when you virtually pass the produce department.  It feels very strange to pass up so many of my weekly purchases.  I still buy a few items though, because try as we may, we can't grow avocados and bananas up here!

Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler!

St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans

We spent the weekend in New Orleans, the Big Easy, NOLA, the Crescent City, or Paris of the South to name a few of it's nicknames.  It has been over 10 years since I had been to New Orleans.  Growing up in Baton Rouge meant that I visited the city many times a year all through high school, college and early marriage.  I never really appreciated it back then, it was just New Orleans, a place for Mardi Gras and a good time and good food.  Having visited a few other cities since those days I now appreciate NOLA for the awesome city it is.  Post Katrina it seems to be doing well and we really enjoyed our visit.

Our friends Bob and Donna met us there and they had never been before.  How fun it is to share a city with friends.  We were greeted with amazingly perfect weather for the first two days. 



Note the cloudless sky and brilliant sunshine!  Nice architecture too.





We were not greeted by beautiful accomodations.  I was a bit skeptical of our time share exchange from the start.  For 2 couples, we could only manage a one bedroom, one bath suite so one of us would be sleeping on a sofa bed, well... we are all good friends right?  When our bell dude, Nate, showed us our suite, and I use that word loosly, there was no mistaking my disappointment.  Nate picked right up on the shock and horror that I was sending his way and told me discreetly that he had another unit to show me if I was interested.  I practically ran out of the room and flew down the 6 floors to option B.  Option B was only 4 times larger then option A.  Hmmmm, let me think, how fast can you bring our bags down here Nate?  Bigger does not mean awesome, still only one bedroom and one bath but the sofa bed was a queen not a double and the bathroom had a swimming pool size round sunken tub and private dressing area so we dealt with the lack of privacy.  We thanked Nate with a handsome tip and were his good friends for the rest of the weekend.  Welcome to the Crescent City!



TJ and Donna preparing our happy, because we are not staying in Option A, hour treats!



Our weekend adventures included a lovely dinner at Herbsaint on Friday night, which happened to be walking distance from our hotel.  Heck, almost everything was walking distance from the hotel, a bonus.  We all left with happy faces and went back to our room and watched LSU beat Texas A & M in the Cotton Bowl.  Not a bad night if you are from Louisiana!



We began our Saturday with a perfect breakfast!  Here!

Cafe du Monde in the French Market



Beignets and Cafe au Lait, breakfast of champions!  Nom!



The rest of our day was spent soaking in the "flavor" of the Big Easy.  We walked the French Quarter and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the city.  There were many street performers that day, one of our favorites was a group that reminded us all of O Brother Where Art Thou.  The Saints were playing football that afternoon in a playoff game and the city was full of anticipation.  Check out this balcony.

Ready for the game!

We had the pleasure of watching the first half of the game in a local brew pub and it was standing room only.  The place erupted when the Saints did anything good.  We were there watching a football game when what to my surprise should walk by outside than a group of bagpipers and an Irish dancer!  I had to leave the game and run out to listen!  I am a sucker for bagpipes!

Gotta love a man in a kilt!

Everyone cheered when they came into the bar and played When The Saints Go Marching In.  My day would have been complete if the Saints had won the game but they lost.  Oh, well....

Our evening was an adventure.  We took the streetcar down St. Charles street almost to the end of the line.  When we got onto the streetcar it was packed full of all different types of people.  Donna says she sat next to Sammy Davis Jr.  There were other groups of visitors going out for dinner just like us.  There were students, families, loners, bums, and our driver was a real character...imagine that!  We found a wine bar where a friend's son works and were treated to several plates of delicious food and had some great wine.  On our ride back to town we ran into two groups of people who rode down with us...everyone wanted to know how dinner was!  People are so friendly in NOLA!  It was a great night!  Several people thanked us for coming to New Orleans too, they are just so happy to have tourists again.

Sunday was a different story.  It stormed all day....so we stayed in and played cards.  That is what friends are for.  We did venture out to dinner and I finally had the quintessential Louisiana dinner.  I can't believe I ate the whole thing and that is what I repeated all night long while my stomach rebelled.  To add to the joy, we had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. for our 6:30 a.m. flight.  Guess who made those travel arrangements?  Not me!

Not wanting to end this post on a sour note I have a little tour of New Orleans to end this post. Enjoy it...we sure did!

Peeking through a wrought iron gate at a fountain

One way to keep the riff raff out of your yard

The river boat Natchez on the Mississippi River

Royal Street

Just making a living.  He gets the creative use of instruments award for the day.

So, as they say in New Orleans....
Laissez les bon temps rouler! 
We sure did!







Drinking and Shopping

TJ and I went out to a lovely French restaurant tonight.  We had a fantastic dinner with a bottle of wine.  We went out early because we are nerds.  Really, we were just hungry and had been busy all day and....we are nerds.  After our delicious dinner and our bottle of wine, we headed out of the parking lot when I suddenly remembered I was out of tea! 

My morning motivation



Being out of tea in the morning for me is like not being able to breathe, I went into an immediate panic.  We have got to go to the grocery store NOW.  Forget the lovely dinner and the bottle of wine we just had and go directly to the grocery store.  Isn't that the perfect end to a night out? I went straight from dinner to breakfast, maybe that explains the weight issue. Back to the emergency at hand though.... we have nothing for breakfast!  TJ suggested we could just eat the leftover cranberry sauce with toast in the morning, it is kind of like jelly!  There is always the option of leftover chicken and pasta with pesto, another yummy choice.  No!  I guess we have to do it, we have to go to the grocery store for the grand finale to our romantic night out. 

We both laughed all the way to the store, probably because of that bottle of wine we just drank.  We laughed at how ridiculous we would look in our nice "going out for a romantic dinner" clothes in the grocery store.  We laughed all the way through the first aisle of the store until a lady wearing an evening gown walked in and we were toast (with cranberry sauce jelly)!  You can only imagine the items that ended up in our drunken cart.  They tell you not to shop when you are hungry, there is no warning about shopping after drinking.  If we had to survive on what was in our cart we might just starve, but we would have tea! 

Yes, I think a great laugh is the best way to end a romantic night out with your husband. Tea anyone?

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Budapest and Italy, Part 2.
This turned out to be very long, I recommend getting a great glass of Italian wine before you read this!

After 4 days in Budapest it was time for us to have a little vacation. Budapest was great, but for TJ, it was work. A nice venue for work but still work. Time for a little recreational wine tasting and sightseeing with friends.

We got out of Budapest a day before the sludge arrived. We were heading to Desenzano del Garda, Italy. There is no easy way to get there from Budapest. First, take a plane to Frankfurt, our 2nd time at the Frankfurt airport on this trip, then take a plane to Venice where we rent a car and drive for 2 hours to Desenzano. Just picture TJ and I driving along the autostrad with no Euro and wondering how we will be able to pay the toll at the end of the road. We decide to risk it and carry on.....FYI, they take credit cards! We thought they might, but you can't be too sure.



Italy! Sunshine! Finally! We even had a view of the water.....see? It's there, keep looking! Ok, it's not the Danube and Buda Castle but the sun is shining!

Lake Garda was beautiful. The water was beautiful blue with the mountains in the background. The small towns all along the lake were quaint and picturesque without being too touristy. I can only imagine how it would be in the summer though, full of tourists! Glad we were there for the off season.


Lake Garda as seen from Sirmione.


Sirmione

Then the fun began! The fun is in Verona....think Romeo and Juliet meet the soup Nazi meets the Amazing Race.


This is not Juliet's balcony, just a lovely building in Verona.

First, Romeo and Juliet. We did the typical Verona tourist thing and went to Juliet's balcony, but no one rubbed the statue of Juliet, we also made a stop by Romeo's door.

Juliet in all her bronze glory.

On to the soup Nazi....dinner was one of a kind. A true, authentic, no English spoken or written, Italian restaurant, Il Ropeton. Our waiter, Ropeton himself, recited the entire menu in rapid fire Italian and then looked at us with that "what would you like?" look. We deferred to the Italian speakers at our table and managed to order an amazing meal, plenty of wine,a little grappa for everyone and limoncello for the perfect end. By the end of the night we had befriended Ropeton and had him posing for pictures with our table! That's him at the end of the table!




Time for the Amazing Race! We had responsibly taken the train to Verona and planned to catch the 11:45 train back to Desenzano. We had to make tracks! The four of us walked the 2 miles to the train station as fast as we could. We got close to the station and TJ told Rick, who is ahead of all of us, to go ahead inside and buy the tickets. As Patty and I caught up to Rick who was trying to buy tickets at the machine, we see the next train to Desenzano leaves at 5a.m.!!!! at which point Patty bursts out laughing! We all burst out laughing in the deserted train station, it must have been the grappa, or the limoncello, or the wine, pick one. Turns out the last train left at 10:45, oops. We all walked out of the train station, laughing and carrying on, and looking for a way to Desenzano. Turns out the only way to get home at midnight was taxi....90 EU worth of taxi. We laughed the entire way home, all 30 minutes of it, poor taxi driver! We just could not believe our expert planning backfired. That's what we get for being so responsible!

The rest of Italy will have to wait for another post, it was just too much fun for one post. I will leave you with a few more pictures of Verona and Sirmione.


Soccer practice carpool


View across the river in Verona


Winery near Sirmione, beautiful place!


More of Sirmione