the stories that I'm telling.

Tag: canadian

  • Canadian Thanksgiving traditions in Grimsby

    Canadian Thanksgiving traditions in Grimsby

    It’s American Thanksgiving, so it’s as good a time as any to write about our adventures during the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.

    A couple of years ago, I went to Ottawa and spent Thanksgiving weekend with Kevin. While there, I ate the most delicious Thanksgiving dinner that I’d ever had. Since we’re back in Grimsby, room-mating it up with my parents, we cried “dibs” pretty immediately on preparing Thanksgiving dinner. My mom was away for a wedding that weekend, so we had free reign over the kitchen. Of course, there were some other antics afoot before we got the oven running.

    We were making our Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday, so on Friday I set out to buy a turkey. I’d attempted to purchase a turkey on Thursday, to no avail. Apparently everyone buys their turkey at least 2 weeks early, and I had missed the memo. On Friday morning, Kevin told me “go to Lococo’s, they’ll have a 10kg Butterball for sure”. With Thursday’s empty turkey freezers in mind, I drove my parents to the airport on Friday, and proceeded to spend 3 hours driving all around Mississauga and Oakville in search of a 10kg+ Butterball turkey. I could barely find a 7kg turkey, let alone a butterball, so I began to panic. I bought the first 10kg turkey I could find, Butterball be damned.

    Then, to stock up on veggies and stuffing and all that other Thanksgiving goodness, I went to Lococo’s. As Kevin had promised, they had multiple Butterballs over 10kg. So what did I do? I bought one. As of today, we still have an extra turkey just waiting it out in our basement freezer.

    Double turkey purchases aside, Thanksgiving weekend in Grimsby involves just one tradition: Attending the Balls Falls Craft Show. So before we got to cooking, Kevin agreed to indulge me and attend the craft show. Balls Falls is a conservation area in Vineland, ON, that also happens to be the home of several old/historic buildings. It’s a wedding hotspot these days, which makes sense because it’s quite lovely.

    Fortunately, the craft show is not just about crafts. There are several historical displays that showcase 20th century technologies. There was also a “raptor” display, where we saw some really cool birds, most importantly, a Bald Eagle!!!! The next best thing to a Bald Eagle was seeing a genuine Military Band Organ from 1911. Still in full working order, this was a pretty cool site to see. It was restored and maintained by a gentleman named Captain John Leonard, who toured it all around the great lakes regions, in the United States and Canada. Though Captain John has since passed away, his wife and and his friend continue this great tradition, bringing a taste of early 20th century musical technology to the masses.

    Here’s a quick video of what the inner workings of the machine, as seen through the back, looks like:

    Surprisingly, we got quite into the whole craft scene, and went through to see every vendor there. While I’d planned to check out the festival for 30 minutes, once we saw the food tent, we got sucked in, and ended up spending more than 2 hours crafting about. I’ve been to this festival in some terrible weather, so the bright sunny day was a real treat.

    The next day, guided by some tips from Gordon Ramsay, we embarked on our Thanksgiving cooking extravaganza. With Kevin leading, me sous-chefing, and my brothers assisting, it was a pretty big production. I can honestly say that we could not have pulled this off without the help of Tyler and Kristopher, who helped with all the preparation, and made dessert. Tyler also ran point on serving the wine, which is essential for family holidays. We kicked off dinner by toasting with a glass of sparkling wine for everyone at the table, then proceeded to dig in.

    The menu included:

    • A 10 kg turkey, perfectly prepared
    • Garlic mashed potatoes
    • Green beans with bacon
    • 3 types of gravy
    • Stovetop Stuffing (yes, from the box – don’t mess with a classic!)
    • Gwyneth’s roasted cauliflower and chickpeas
    • Pumpkin pie
    • Homemade Gingerbread Cookies
    • Homemade Lemon Meringue Pie (courtesy of Nana Ev)
    • Wine, wine, and more wine (all from Niagara’s 20 Valley Region, of course)

    And that’s it. The secret to a great Thanksgiving weekend? Wine and teamwork. Hopefully Christmas will be similar entertaining! Check out the various photos of our Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, below:

    A steam engine display at the craft show!
    checking out the natural landscape – that’s “Balls Falls” behind me.
    Standing in front the Military Band Organ
    classic!
    One of the many great vendors we met at the festival
    In front of the big barn at Balls Falls
    The dessert table. Cookies made by Tyler & Kristopher.
    Turkey on the table, “resting”, as per Gordon Ramsay’s instructions
    Obviously, we were watching the Jays
    dinner is served!
  • Roadtrip Day 1: A Moorish Castle and Palace of Pena

    Roadtrip Day 1: A Moorish Castle and Palace of Pena

    We typically take our sweet, sweet time when doing anything, but because we were on a road trip, we had certain goals for where to be and when to be there by. We were also exploring unfamiliar territory, and perhaps underestimated how much time we’d want to spend in certain places.

    That said, everything that we saw on the first day of our Road trip was within the magical area known as Sintra, where castles and natural beauty abound. There are tons and tons of incredible sites to see in Sintra, but we oriented our trip to the advice of our friend Soledad, and selected those she described as ‘must-see’ items.

    We visited 2 different castles on that day, and they couldn’t have been more different: The Moorish Castle, and Palace of Pena.

    Let’s start with the Moorish Castle.

    The Moorish Castle was the decidedly more ruin-y of the two. It is a military fort built around the 10th century by the Muslim populations that occupied the Iberian peninsula. It acted as a control tower for the Atlantic coast and land to the north, serving as an outpost for the city of Lisbon.

    For a building that’s more than 1000 years old, it was in pretty decent shape. All of the exterior castle walls remain, and we were able to walk up, down, all around, and catch amazing views throughout. From the top of the castle walls, you can see all that’s built up in the Park in the centuries since: a town, castles, mansions, etc. And yet, you can imagine how it felt 1000 years ago to look out and see no evidence of other people. Placed atop a large hill, this place is definitely an impressive and well planned military location.

    And not *just* military either. After the large castle walls had been built, people began to settle just outside of them. A “second circle of walls” was later built to protect these settlements.

    If you’re interested in the nitty gritty history timeline for the Castle of the Moors, check out Wikipedia.

    After the Castle of the Moors, we headed to the Palace of Pena.

    While it was cool, the Palace of Pena (Palacio da Pena) is one road trip stop we could’ve done without. We crammed a lot of sites into this road trip. That’s not usually our style, but we went a bit overboard with expectations for what we wanted to see. In its defense, it’s part of a large garden complex, but we only saw the castle itself, because it was raining and we were rushing to see another place afterwards (more on that later this week!). By rushing to see the Palacio, we cost ourself some appreciation of its history. The routinely under-informational museum pamphlet also didn’t give us the full story of site.

    Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

    The palace’s history started in the Middle Ages when a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Pena was built on the top of the hill above Sintra. According to tradition, construction occurred after an apparition of the Virgin Mary.

    In 1493, King John II, accompanied by his wife Queen Leonor, made a pilgrimage to the site to fulfill a vow. His successor, King Manuel I, was also very fond of this sanctuary, and ordered the construction of a monastery on this site which was donated to the Order of Saint Jerome. For centuries Pena was a small, quiet place for meditation, housing a maximum of eighteen monks.

    In the 18th century the monastery was severely damaged by lightning. However, it was the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, occurring shortly afterwards, that took the heaviest toll on the monastery, reducing it to ruins. Nonetheless, the chapel escaped without significant damage.

    For many decades the ruins remained untouched, but they still astonished young prince Ferdinand. In 1838, as King consort Ferdinand II, he decided to acquire the old monastery, all of the surrounding lands, the nearby Castle of the Moors and a few other estates in the area. King Ferdinand then set out to transform the remains of the monastery into a palace that would serve as a summer residence for the Portuguese royal family. The commission for the Romantic style rebuilding was given to Lieutenant-General and mining engineer Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege. Eschwege, a German amateur architect, was much traveled and likely had knowledge of several castles along the Rhine river. The construction took place between 1842–1854, although it was almost completed in 1847: King Ferdinand and Queen Maria II intervened decisively on matters of decoration and symbolism. Among others, the King suggested vaul tarches, Medieval and Islamic elements be included, and he also designed an ornate window for the main façade (inspired by the chapter house window of the Convent of the Order of Christ in Tomar).

    Having done my Wikipedia research, it’s clear that this place’s history actually fits well with many of the other sites that we saw in Sintra and in Tomar. That information was definitely not in the pamphlet we received upon entering, but either way we had a fun time. It’s by far the most colourful castle I’ve ever seen, which gives it an almost-comical appearance.

    All this site-seeing constituted just part of our day. Enjoy the photos below, there’s more to come from our final (and favourite!) stop coming soon.

     

    The Moorish Castle is super old and sits atop a hill
    As you can see, the view is amazing.
    So is the wind!
    The stairs are also quite something!
    we found a cat, of course.
    view of Sintra from the Moorish Castle!
    From the Moorish Castle, we could see Palacio da Pena
    Then we drove there, and Kevin sniped this wicked parking spot directly in front of the entrance
    not a bad welcoming start, right?
    you can’t tell from the photos, but this place was pretty packed with tourists. We complained about them constantly because we’re a bunch of spoiled snobs who don’t like others getting in the way of our jokes at historical sites.
    oh hey there!
    checking out the view!
    and here’s that view I was checking out!
    now I’m the one getting checked out!
    the great thing about travelling with Kevin is that he always takes your photo, and they’re never blurry.
    the tiling in the room was pretty next level
    and just look at that plant holder! everything in this place was intensely detailed!
    great view, right?
    some type of old-school phone
    art!
    more art! #selfiegamestrong
    couldn’t resist a photo of these hip cats!
    who doesn’t want a violin + matching vase. Tons of these on kijiji for sure!
    I made Tyler take a photo of this because I really want this wall paper in my house one day. Obviously it’s perfect.
    the detail of the design here is pretty bonkers – this is just a simple handrail on a staircase!
    I thought it was cool that they had a proper running water situation happening up here. If memory serves, it was one of the first of its kind.
    inside the castle there’s a museum-type route that takes you through various rooms
    a lovely chair that somehow warranted a photo
    birds in house!!!
    siblings in the house!!!
    moose in the house!!!

  • A Trip to the Algarve – A Culinary Experience

    So…hey there. I’m Tyler, one of Heather’s (decidedly larger) little brothers. Last year when Heather was on her Asian tour I stopped by for a visit in Cambodia. And here’s the thing, if you ever get the chance to vacation with Heather and Kevin, take it! A trip with these two is truly a vacation experience. They find all the most interesting people, order the best food, plan the best day trips, and before you know it you’re staging ridiculous photo-ops in front of Ancient World Wonders.

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    Angkor Watt with these two (and KP), a world away – nice hat Kevin

    So when I got the offer to come visit in Alte, I took it! And in April, I met Heather and Kevin in Lisbon, kicking off a two week adventure of history, roadtrips, and wine.

    And what a trip. These two know road-trips. In Cambodia it involved a motorcycle ride through the dusty backroads to Angkor Watt. For Portugal it was slightly more tame but just as scenic; stops in Sintra (possibly my favourite place on Earth), Piodao (an incredible mountain town lost in time) and Marvao (where I rolled my ankle, but still got to see a medieval style castle), driving over mountains and through clouds, with Kanye West on repeat for 2 days, before finally arriving in Alte.

    While the road-trip was great (and Heather can discuss more), spending a week in the Algarve with Kevin was the most uniquely relaxing time I’ve ever had. We explored the area (which I’ll talk more about later) learning a good deal about Alte, the Algarve, Kevin’s family, and in true European fashion, we ate some great food along the way!

    2015-04-15 17.14.18

    You may recall previous concerns about picky eating, and they’re fairly justified. I’ve never really been described as “vegetable friendly” or “likes to try new food”, nope, just pizza and peanut butter please and thank you! However, travelling with Heather and Kevin involves visiting some pretty great restaurants, as they take their reviewing pretty seriously, so we worked on expanding our horizons…or waistlines. Here are some the things I picked up along the way:

    1. Portuguese take their french fries seriously

    Spending the week in the Algarve we visited a few local, family owned restaurants. All the food is freshly caught or hunted and cooked, the wines are usually local, service is friendly (helps that Kevin knows everyone). One thing stood out – the fries are delicious. These aren’t you’re frozen then deepfried run-of-the-mill fries; no, every cook here has their own recipe and technique. At one meal we even ended up in a 30 minute discussion on the finer points of potato choice, oil temperature, and crispness. Lines were drawn. Sides were chosen. Accusations were flung. We all had some more wine. Very serious indeed.

    2. Always order the special

    We travelled out to the coast one morning (afternoon) to see Henry the Navigator’s navigation school, and stopped for lunch at a nearby restaurant. The restaurant, being right across from the ocean, was of course a seafood restaurant and the special was whatever they caught that morning. I believe we had originally wanted goose barnacles (percebes), but the water had been choppy that morning so none were caught. So we made due with what was available.

    While people around us enjoyed chicken fingers and spaghetti (tourists!) we were treated to clams (in garlic & butter – awesome!), prawn stew, fresh fish (Dourada aka Sea Bream), and some wine. Everything was fantastic. The clams disappeared quickly, Kevin de-boned the fish for us, and even the prawns (despite looking gross) were delicious. We even ended up ordering dessert!

    We must have made a scene enjoying everything, enough so that eventually the owner took notice and paid us a visit. Evidently he was glad to see someone enjoying his food so much, and, when he found Kevin was from Alte, even had drink with us (his own medronho – Portuguese moonshine – cleared Heather’s migraine real quick), and let us know we were the “table of the day”! It was a pretty cool meal, and a great introduction to seafood.

    3. Crab is delicious…

    …but a lot of work. On one of our last Algarve meals we made a two-hour trek to yet another seafood place, right on the coast. It’s fairly popular among locals, so we were lucky to get in without a reservation, and it turned out to be another meal worth the adventure! We enjoyed clams again (I’m a lifetime fan now), and some shrimp (had to actually tear them apart ourselves – gross!) to start.

    For our main course, we actually got to pick which crab we wanted to eat (sort of morbid) and they served it fresh! [side note: up to this point Kevin had been telling me at every meal to use a fork & knife, not fingers, lest I embarrass him] I’d never had crab before, but got a quick run down: crack open the legs, pull out the meat, eat it quick before Kevin takes all the good parts! I was surprised at first because every other meal involved taking a lot more care, but eating crab was a messy, delicious, affair. At different points crab leg bits ended hitting Kevin in the face (he retaliated, and I got hit too), the table, the floor, a different table, and a window. Worth it.

    If fries weren’t available, chips were
    My hosts/tour guides/translators/co-conspirators
    Clams – an excuse to eat butter!
    Prawns – not just in District 9 anymore
    Freshly caught fish
    Visiting Henry the Navigator’s school after lunch
    Seagull flying over the sea
    Just the tip of Europe
    Sunset before dinner
    Picking out who we’ll eat..
    ..and served
    ready to eat. Note: this is pre-carnage, so we aren’t covered in crab bits.
  • Welcome to Portugal, where you can’t do things quickly, even if you try.

    Welcome to Portugal, where you can’t do things quickly, even if you try.

    At the beginning of 2015, I had 2 goals for this blog:

    1. Continue to write regularly

    2. Write more about my feelings and experiences, as opposed to a steady stream of I-went-here stories (though I do plan to continue those as well!)

    June is around the corner and I’ve published so few posts that I have an actual backlog list of 20 blog posts waiting to be written. They’re coming, I promise!

    Today I bring you a brief post about my personal state of mind and a rather funny realization that Kevin and I had today.

    You may have heard people joke about the slow pace of Europe, particularly southern Europe. Let me be the first to tell you, that shit is no joke.

    When you wake up to sunshine and birds singing and fresh orange juice from the backyard, work just doesn’t seem all that important. While I was in Cambodia, I worked non-stop. Don’t get me wrong, I took plenty of time for fun, but I didn’t have social ties or distractions, and so it was easy for me to throw myself head first into nonstop work. Without that, this blog probably wouldn’t even exist.

    In Portugal, there are many distractions. Both literal and mental. With a car and with Kevin’s familiarity with the Algarve, it’s all too easy to find things to do. And it’s hard to explain, but this place just feels relaxed. Life in the Algarve is just so damn pleasant, you never feel guilty for not “getting shit done”.

    On top of that, with Kevin’s dental disaster continuing on an open-ended schedule, we quickly learned to stop asking questions or talking about “what’s next”. It’s hard to plan the next adventure when you don’t even know when it can begin.

    This week has marked the first time since January that we’ve felt comfortable discussing that elusive “next”, possibly even laying down a timeline. We’re still in southern Europe, but these thoughts and possibilities kickstarted something in both of us.

    We’ve both spent the past 2 days working feverishly. It feels natural to fall back into a work-hard groove, getting lots of things done, and quickly.

    Which brings us to today. We had big plans: get up early-ish (11am, since we stay up till 4am while I work – more on that later!), go to the grocery store at the Algarve Shopping mall, come home, then head back to the mall to see a mid-afternoon screening of Mad Max. After all, it’s Tuesday. Indulging in Tuesday movie deals was a well-followed tradition for us in Toronto.

    So that was our plan. A bit more rushed than our typical schedule, but that’s no problem, right?

    Ha!

    Instead of a quick trip to the grocery store with Kevin’s grandmother, the three of us ended up checking out several shops throughout the mall, then having lunch, and then realizing,”shit, it’s 3pm, we’ll have to rush, but we can definitely make that film at 4:30 if we hustle”.

    Ha!

    We did the fastest grocery shopping we’ve ever done in Portugal. We thought that by rushing our shopping, we’d get in and out quickly, and home in time to go to the movies. Of course, we couldn’t have planned for this:

    – the grocery store was under construction and every single section had been moved somewhere new

    – at this grocery store, you have to weigh your produce at a special station before the checkout. Not only did we forget to weigh our watermelon, so did the two families in line ahead of us. And obviously it took them twice as long as us to resolve that issue.

    – for almost 10 minutes on our drive home, we were stuck behind a rather slow-moving tractor

    Ha!

    On the drive home, the realization hit me: we’re back in North American mode, but we’re still in Southern Europe.

    Even if we’re in the mood to really ‘get shit done’, we’ll drive ourselves mad if we don’t keep in mind that the Algarve is too relaxed to be compatible with our North American, do-things-fast mentality.

    Fingers crossed that this new surge of energy for working will keep me posting more regularly!

    And just for all that reading, here’s a series of photos us relaxing around Alte and of me making orange juice in true, laid-back, Algarvian fashion:

    oranges from one grandmother, grapefruits from another
    making orange juice in my PJs!
    the lemon tree before its trim
    orange trees in the backyard.
    picking oranges from the tree
    collecting oranges for juice!
    the formerly crazy lemon tree in the back yard
    oranges!
    view from our favourite cafe!
    snack time!
    reading by the fire, keeping warm in January.
    reading!
    pick-em-up-truck spotted in Alte!
    our juicer!
  • Hockey Night in Cambodia

    Hockey Night in Cambodia

    HNIC-Logo-Final-72DPI-300x3001

    Those of you who know my middle brother, Tyler, know that he’s a diehard hockey fanatic. Like, the whole nine yards – he plays (usually year round), he coaches, he watches, he consumes, and he knows an INSANE amount of information about this sport. Like, if I knew as much about politics as he does about hockey, I’d be in the House of Commons by now.

    So, when he was planning his trip to Cambodia, he googled “hockey in Cambodia” to see if he’d get any results back. And he did! As it turns out, for the last 10 years a rotating group of ex-pats and Khmer locals have been meeting weekly on a tennis court in the BKK neighbourhood to play ball hockey.

    They bill this as Hockey Night in Cambodia, and they meet up every Thursday at 7pm on the tennis court beside BKK Secondary School (across the street from City Villa hotel on Street 71).

    Their website gives the wrong address, so at first we weren’t sure if we’d be able to find the proper location, but google saved us again, and we made it to the game!

    Kevin and Tyler played while KP and I cheered from the sidelines. Check out the photos and video footage below:

    Be sure to also check out the Hockey Night in Cambodia website and Facebook page!