April Recap

This is going to be a long one. Go get your drink before you start reading. At least this post will help you pass some time.
April was great! (except for Simon's troubles - see below) For starters, I had a birthday! Jim made me dinner which was a real treat, because he very rarely cooks. BBQ-ing doesn't count, because I do all the prep and he just watches things brown on the grill. So, rather than going out to a restaurant, I wanted him to put some effort into this. He can cook, he just choses not to. He planned the menu, did the shopping and while he was in the kitchen, I just relaxed and stayed out of his way.
I love any kind of baked pasta with a tomato sauce, so he did this big pan -

Mozzarella is the best when it's all melted and chewy & just lightly browned. Underneath all this....
Spinach & Ricotta ravioli - one of my favorites. Jim used fresh pasta and it really does make all the difference. This was really tasty.

He also made a Caesar salad

and toasted garlic bread, very garlicy and crispy on the outside, but soft inside. Mmmmm!

For our wine, we had this delicious Barolo which paired wonderfully with everything. Even though Jim can cook, he's not a baker, so he didn't even attempt to make any dessert. He opted for store bought, but what a great choice he made.

This cheesecake was so freakin' good! In all the years that it's been available, I've never had it. This has no crust & no topping and it doesn't need any. It's just pure richness. Since it was a special occasion, we cracked out one of our bottles of icewine. Even though Canadian wineries are producing a lot of world class, award winning table wines, they are best known for their delicious icewines. After harvest, select varieties are left on the vines, covered with nets so the birds don't eat the fruit. The nets also help to catch any bunches of grapes that may fall off the vine when the temperatures get to below freezing. The grapes are left outside to freeze solid. Once temps are consistently below -8C, and ideally -10 to -13, harvesting begins. Picking is done at night to ensure the grapes stay completely frozen. Pressing is most often done outside as well since to minimize any chance of the grapes thawing. Because the juice that is squeezed from frozen grapes is so concentrated, it's very, very sweet. But, it also means that very little juice can be squeezed out, so icewine is very expensive. If you have never tried Canadian icewine, do yourself a favour and taste some. It is a treat that you must experience!

The most common variety of grape used in icewine production is Vidal. It's a hybrid grape, and it works well for icewine because it has a thick skin that is less likely to split as the fruit freezes. Riesling is also used quite a lot. It's a bit more difficult to work with, but I much prefer the flavour of Riesling icewines. The high acidity in the Riesling grape gives the icewine a clean, sweet taste. A real treat is Cabernet Franc icewine. These are even more expensive, but worth it! The strawberry & honey aromas that come out of the glass are amazing and the flavour of strawberries & red berries and just a titch of spice made this a perfect compliment to the plain cheesecake. Who needs topping?!

Easter also happened a couple of days later, so that meant pub crawl! Janesse that I work with has a birthday at the end of March, so we used this pub crawl as an excuse to celebrate our birthdays. Hey, we're both Aries, so that means it's all about us. ;o) Janesse's mom was gracious enough to allow us to all meet up at her place, so we started with a BBQ and some drinks.

Birthday shots are a must.

Come on Janesse! Don't be scared. You can do it!

I took some cupcakes

I made a variety to appeal to everyone and let's face it...it's more fun!

There was carrot with cream cheese frosting

Rainbow Chip cake with Rainbow Chip icing. These are from a mix and a can. They are Janesse's favorites (go figure) so I had to include some of them, but I didn't make them with eggs like it said to do on the box - I used tofu.

Chocolate with Rainbow Chip and chocolate sprinkles.

Chocolate with chocolate buttercream

Peanut Butter with peanut butter icing. This is a recipe from my childhood and is a favorite of mine.

Then I did some Rainbow Chip cakes with chocolate buttercream

And some Devil's Food with chocolate ganache (and a lopsided peace sign)

I used Isa's ganache recipe. Look how shiny these turned out. And such a deep, dark chocolate. Yum! All of these cupcakes, with the exception of rainbow bit are vegan! No one even knew. The leftovers were taken to work and everyone gobbled them up and raved about how moist & delicious they were. I didn't tell them they were eating TOFU!

The best part of the whole weekend was that my friend Michelle was in town and came out pub crawling with us! She's been living in Calgary since February and it was great to see her.

On Easter Monday, the two of us hung out for a while and did one activity that we really enjoy....cruising around IKEA. This particular day happened to be my lucky day. We stopped at the "As Is" section to see if there were any deals to be had. I immediately zeroed in on a cabinet I've been wanting for quite some time.


Hmmm....says damaged. We looked it over and found a scrape on the bottom drawer that if you didn't know it was there, would probably not even notice. There was also a nail that hadn't been driven in correctly and was sticking up, but a pair of pliers would take care of that nicely. For a savings of $92 AND it was already put together, I HAD to have it. Problem was...it had to be paid for and taken home the same day. Jim had the truck already loaded for work the next day, so I decided to leave it and come back in the morning and see if it was still there. If it was, I'd buy it, and Jim could pick it up in the evening. Michelle and I walked around, checking out the weird new stuff but mostly chatting and catching up. When we were leaving, I had to go look at the cabinet again. OMG!! There was some woman looking at it. She was touching it. She can't have it! It's MIIIINNE!! I couldn't leave this in fate's hands. I had to get it NOW! Michelle thought it might fit in the boxy-SUV type rental vehicle she had, so we measured the cabinet, went out, measured the vehicle...hmmmm....I don't know. It would be a really tight squeeze. Screw it! I bought it. It didn't fit. Luckily, IKEA has vans that can be rented for 2 hours. So we did that. $20 and us two superwomen managed to get it to my place.

You like? I used Christmas money that we had gotten to buy this. I knew this was what I wanted and I finally got it. And no assembly required! The plan was to use it as a liquor cabinet and it works perfectly

Thanks to Michelle and all her help otherwise, this wouldn't be gracing my living room right now.

Even Simon approves!

We did a very casual Easter dinner at Mama Rita's. Michelle was in town until the evening, so she joined us.

Fergus totally partied down with his cat grass and a bottle of wine.

A few days after Easter, Jim & I went into Hamilton to see the Broadway Touring production of Hairspray. I've never seen either movie, nor did I even know what the storyline was. Jim was a good sport and came with me, even though I warned him that I thought it was probably going to be "girly".

This show was FANTASTIC!! It was upbeat, bright, busy, the actors were great, the music & singing were amazing! We both really, really enjoyed this. If it comes to your town, go see it. You will not be disappointed.
A couple of days later, we were back in Hamilton, this time to Copps to see Celtic Thunder.

The show was very good, but Jim & I were kind of disappointed they didn't sing more of the traditional Celtic songs. The guys did provide an enormous amount of eye candy though. ;o)

Here's a video of Celtic Thunder singing one of my very favorite Celtic songs, Caledonia. There is an official channel on YouTube, with a clip of this song from the show, but embedding has been disabled, and this is the best I can find otherwise. If you click THIS, you will be re-directed to watch that video if you like.

Earth Day is now 3 weeks gone, but let me show you what I received that morning

I was on the bus to work and when it stopped at the downtown terminal for transfers, a girl got on and handed out a granola bar, a key chain & a thank-you card to everyone. The card said I've reduced by carbon footprint by choosing to ride low emission, low sulphur fuel buses and that one bus takes 40 cars off the road. Too bad they couldn't get their act together when it comes to being on schedule and arriving on time so I don't miss my connection.

The planet earth keychain is kinda cute though.

I think this is the longest post I've written. Some days it's hard to squeeze in the time, so this one will make up for all the days I started, but didn't get finished. I've been creeping your blogs, but don't leave messages often these days. I'm hoping that will change. I hope you all have a great week! Up next....I'll show you what I bought when we went shopping in the States.

Simon Update

Some of you know that my little guy went through some big trouble recently. This explains part of my absence from blogging. First, I was busy with a few events happening, which I did start to blog about, (and will be posting soon) but then Simon wasn't well, so I was occupied with him.
A couple of weeks ago, it looked, to both Jim and I, like Simon had a bit of a swollen face on one side. We were keeping an eye on it, but it seemed to go away. Then a few days later, it looked like his face was swollen again. The second time, we called the vet and booked an appt. to take him in. They assumed from our description on the phone that it was his allergies acting up. After all, it's spring and everything is starting to sprout and he has been itchier than normal.
Jim took Simon into see Dr. Woolard while I was at work, and upon examination, she found out that Simon had a cracked molar that had abscessed. That's why his face was swollen. By us giving him a vanectyl-p for his itching, it also took the swelling in his face down. They asked if Simon was an aggressive chewer and yes, he can be. He was prescribed antibiotics, and sent home for a few days. He was not to be given any other drugs, but antibiotics were to be administered twice a day for 5-6 days until they were well into his system and doing their thing and he was booked in for an extraction. We decided that while he was under, we'd have his teeth cleaned as well. It would save him the trauma of having to be put under anesthetic again at a later date.

This is how he looked a first. There is some swelling around his eye and nose.

Then things started to get worse. We were told that he wouldn't be in pain like a human would with an abscessed tooth and in fact, he was playing and running around like normal.

Things were really getting bad. I was really concerned. The vet assured us that this may happen and it may in fact pop before he was to go in for the extraction and if that did happen, not to be alarmed. That never happened. It just kept swelling.

This was the absolute worst. I took this picture the day before he was to go in for his appt. Later in the afternoon, the swelling started to go down and by night time, it was significantly reduced. I don't know if it did pop inside, or if it had just run it's course and starting draining on it's own.

He was not to eat after 10pm and Jim dropped him off at the vet's in the morning. I called to check on him around 1:30 and they said everything had gone smoothly, and in fact, while I was on the phone, Simon was standing up in his crate looking around. I was stuck at work until 8pm, so Jim picked him up around 4pm. They gave Jim the teeth - it ended up he needed 2 of them out! Both were cracked. The one that caused all the swelling looks a mess. Just as they were leaving the office, Simon was given an shot of pain-killers to help him rest through the night. Jim said it was sort of funny. He got Simon into the truck and he was all happy to be with his Dad, then the medicine kicked in and he just went all dopey and looked really stoned.

By the time I got home, he was pretty much passed out. Poor little guy! There was no bleeding and his face didn't seem to be swollen much at all. (The pinky colour on his thigh is from him licking. It's one of the areas that tends to get really itchy for him. Once we progress into summer, it's not as bad and by winter, it's usually gone)

He was looking much better now, even if he wasn't really feeling it at this point. He's high as a kite.

The next day he was still groggy and slept a lot. He did go out for his walk in the afternoon and seemed to be coming a long pretty well. Later in the evening, I put down a bowl of watered down kibble mixed with some canned food and he ate the whole bowl! Yay! He progressed like a model patient and look at him now

He's healed up in fine fashion. So, he had pre-op blood work done, anesthetic administered, 2 extractions (but they only charged us for 1), a dental cleaning, his heartworm blood work done, we took home his heartworm meds, they didn't charge us for the pain shot and they also threw in free mani-pedi. The total bill?

Can't quite see that? Here's a closer look -

Whoa! That's some bill, eh? But you know what?

He is worth every freakin' penny!

Cabbage & Butterfly

Last week Jim & I went to see Opera Hamilton's presentation of Madama Butterfly.

What a tear-jerker that is. The performances were top-notch and Ailan Zhu who played Butterfly has the voice of an angel. She gave me shivers. The whole thing was spectacular. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. If you've never been to live opera, you don't know what you're missing.
This isn't the performance I saw, but this is my favorite aria of the whole opera. Butterfly has been waiting 3 years for her beloved to return and she's singing to her maid about how she imagines their reunion will be. I find this part so sad because she's so hopeful.....


On the food front, I scored a massive cabbage at a terrific price and with those large leaves, made cabbage rolls. I had some frozen perogies that I cooked up with some onion, soy bacon bits & some Follow Your Heart mozzarella.

For the filling, I dig out my old Betty Crocker cookbook and use that recipe as a guideline. Instead of ground beef, I use Yves Veggie Ground and some extra spice to jazz it up a little. Cabbage rolls always turn out well for me, so I stick with this tried & true recipe.

Since I had a large cabbage, I also got some "little cabbages". I never used to like Brussel sprouts, but now love them! I par-boiled these, then baked them with a little olive oil, agave, salt & pepper. They turned out really yummy.
I've also been thinking about pineapple upside-down cake for weeks now and finally bit the bullet and made one.
Pineapple is another thing that, as a child, I would never eat. Now, I love it!

The top (or bottom, depending on how you look at it) it the best part of this cake. I love anything with butter & brown sugar (I use margarine with excellent results). Add nuts and I'm over the top.

This is another tried and true from a cookbook that I got from my mother years ago. It's never failed me. I used tofu instead of eggs and this cake came out so moist & delicious.

Did you happen to watch the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction? What a wide variety of musical artist they chose this year. I, of course, watched to see Jimmy Page induct Jeff Beck.

They've been life-long friends and played togther briefly in the Yardbirds...which morphed in a roundabout way into Led Zeppelin. After the speeches, they played together which is why I tuned in in the first place. Amazing guitarists, both of them.

(Quite different from Puccini, eh?)

Baja Citrus Tofu

One day when I was out shopping, I came upon this little package of seasoning mix.

It seemed geared to fish, but I thought - 'Hell, I can use it for tofu!' Club House has all kinds of powdered gravy mixes, marinades, add-ins for meatloaf, chili, etc. and I think pretty much all of them are vegetarian friendly.

I mixed up the marinade according to the directions and let the tofu slices hang out in it for a while so they could soak up some of the flavour. I then cooked the tofu on my George Foreman grill.

They cooked up nice, don't you think? I had these with a Spanish flavoured rice & Dreena's Lemon-Broiled Green Beans.

The marinade was subtle, but nice. It wasn't very liquidy - more like a moist rub. I liked this well enough to buy it again. It's quick for weeknight meals.

To drink before our meal, and what was left in the bottle with our meal, was this interesting German Riesling.

This came out in the March 14 Vintages release. Priced at $16.95, I thought it was an excellent price for what I was buying.

Look at the year on the label. 1987! I was 23 when this wine was made. Now I'm....considerably older. I've had a 10 year old riesling before, but this one is 22! This is also proof that certain white wines can age quite well. This one was interesting. It had the classic petrol, elastic band sort of nose that rieslings take on as they age. It was drier in style, but with still just a hint of sweet. We enjoyed it very much.

As exciting as the wine was, it just wasn't a match for what I did yesterday. I gots me 2 tickets for U2's upcoming world tour stop in Toronto!! There are two shows at the Rogers Centre and they both sold out in no time. I was poised at my keyboard, logged into my Ticketmaster account and ready to start clicking when the tickets went on sale at 10am. It took some doing, but I managed to get 2 for the Sept. 17 show. Our wedding anniversary is on Sept. 20, so this will be a great kick-off to our Anniversary Weekend. Woot!Woot! It's been years since I saw U2 live. The last time was during their Joshua Tree tour which was in 1987 - the same year the wine above was made! Well, how's that for a funny coincidence. If I have a good a time at this upcoming concert as I did at the last one.....it'll be an anniversary to remember.