weekend round-up

The weekend you ask? Strange. Very, very strange.

Started innocently enough with a quiet Friday night at home with a movie and a fire. Watched Bobby finally as we somehow missed it completely the first time around. Great film, great cast -- learned a lot about something I really didn't know that much about. Even though Lindsay Lohan was in it.

Saturday met the Dogs=Awesome group for a dog play in the rain. God bless the one person who actually showed up ;). Ah well, gotta walk the dog anyway right? Ran some rainy errands and took a fruitful trip to the liquor store. I've decided I want to try drinking brandy so I wanted to chat with someone who actually knows something about good brandy. With all the fires we've been making at home, it just doesn't seem complete without a giant snifter of brandy. At least, that's what I'm thinking. It could go over like a lead balloon but we'll give it a try. Got home and made up a giant slow-cooker FULL of coconut chicken and vegetable curry. Honestly, I never love my slow cooker more than I do when it's cold out. As promised on Twitter, here's the recipe:

3 potatoes, chopped

some zucchini (but don't put in until about the last hour or else they will just disintegrate)

some tomatoes (optional, I opted IN!)

1 medium onion, sliced up

a good handful of carrots sliced

2 cloves of garlic minced

5-6 chicken breasts

Sauce:

1 14oz can coconut milk

1 cup chicken broth

curry powder to personal taste - I ended up with about 3 tsps

cumin - about 1 tsp

garam masala - 1 tsp

tumeric - 1 tsp

paprika - like 1/2 tsp

Hot pepper sauce or red pepper flakes or an actual hot pepper

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

For right at the end:

1 package frozen peas, thawed

1/2 cup plain yogurt

Place the potatoes, onion, and carrots in the bottom of the slow cooker and throw some olive oil in. Scatter the minced garlic over the carrots. The slow-cooker should be about half full.

Brown the chicken in some oil in a skillet and put aside.

Prepare the sauce by whisking the coconut milk, chicken broth, curry powder and hot sauce until smooth. Whisk in salt and pepper.

Put half the chicken on top of the veggies, pour half the sauce, put down the rest of the chicken and pour the rest of the sauce over top. Cook on high for about an hour then turn down to low and cook for another 4-5 hours. Don't touch it, don't take the lid off, don't stir it. In the last hour or so you can toss in the zucchini. In the last 30 mins, add the peas and in the 15 minutes add the yogurt. Serve it up on some yummy rice with naan bread.

Ended the night at the Townehouse and a great show by Zeus, one of our new fave bands over at Hot Bunny Radio. Great band, strange crowd...

Sunday began with another dog party before it started to pour rain. Then this is where it started getting strange. Driving home from the dog park, we pass by our neighbour's house and see his dog Rookie lying down in the grass in front. In the pouring rain. Strange right? Right. We turn around in the laneway and go back to confirm our fear -- the poor dog is, in fact, dead. We decide that we should ring the doorbell on the off chance our neighbour, an elderly man who lives with his ever more elderly mother, does not know poor Rookie's fate. When he answers the door sobbing uncontrollably we realize he does know. Mid-summer this neighbour lost his ancient family cat and then his OTHER old dog so losing Rookie just put him over the edge. So now, Marc and I are tearing up seeing his heartbreaking state. He says he's going to leave him there but we tell him no, we'll help him move him out of the rain and into the back of his truck so he can take him to be cremated at the vet in the morning. Rookie was actually 3/4 wolf so he was huge. Huge and beautiful. Imagine a cream coloured huskie the size of a Great Dane, very solitary and very wolf-like. The kind of dog that, if you met him at night, you'd be wary but in reality he didn't have a mean bone in his body. We roll him onto a plank of wood, our neighbour crying the whole time and stroking the dog's face. We get him into the back of the truck and our poor neighbour proceeds to fall apart, weeping over his poor dog who, we guess, must have had a heart attack on the lawn. It was just heartbreaking. Now there's 3 of us crying in the pouring rain over this poor dog. I can't imagine how lonely he feels now, losing all of his pets and only having his 95 year old mother to keep him company. Ugh.....it was just the worst and I couldn't shake the feeling all afternoon. Strangely, moving his body into the truck was the first time I ever actually got to touch Rookie because he was so solitary. Poor guy,,,

Thankfully we had a lovely dinner invite from some friends to help us shake off the sad turn of the afternoon. Last year Marc bought a bottle of Sagrantino and he and our restauranteur friend Mark (owner and sommelier at Ristorante Verdicchios) have been planning to drink it together forever. Well we finally got our schedules linked and we got together for an amazing dinner with Mark and his wife Laura and their gorgeous son Alessandro and some wild boar stew that Marc had marinating in a full bottle of red wine since Saturday morning. It. Was. Insanity in a bowl served over polenta. Delicious. Marc and Mark took it upon themselves to rev up their Sunday night and I ended up putting us in a cab, taking us home, and tending to an essentially passed out Marc. Basically he was where I was last weekend. And Marc is SO rarely like this that it was a great source of amusement for me. Oh how the mighty have fallen...

See what I mean? Strange, strange weekend for me on all fronts....

weekend round-up

I know, it's late again. I seem to be taking longer and longer computer vacations so let's just jump right to the best part of the weekend.

Our local restaurant association held the Savour The Street dinner on Saturday. They closed down one of our downtown streets and set up one long table for 200 right down the middle of it. 10 restaurants, 10 courses for $100. It was a glorious warm sunny night, we got a little gussied up and headed downtown and ate our faces off. Thank god we had to walk home because the exercise was needed and then some!! It was the first big event for this new association and I'm already hearing rumblings about what else is coming down the pipe and I'm super excited for it. It's about time we had something like this here and I'm on board for whatever they dish out!

Here's what we had:

• Appetizers of glazed back ribs, pork hock meatballs, bruschetta classico, tyropitakia and smoked rainbow trout;
• Tarragon and rosemary Ontario lamb rib chop, Umbria style stuffed quail with grilled asparagus and Orvieto stewed bean, bacon and green onion salad;
• Thai spring rolls, crab rangoon and mango salad;
• Gazpacho Andalouse with cilantro and Galliano;
• Classic Caesar salad;
• Classico Pasta Fagioli;
• Cold maple smoked Atlantic salmon with aged balsamic and Salmoriglio drizzle, purple mash potato, lotus root chip and crispy squid ink spaghetti garnish;
• marinated beef tenderloin, coriander, ginger, sugar cane, toasted sesame, with rice wine slaw;
• European white chocolate mousse with Grand Marnier and raspberries;
• coffee and crostoli

Seriously. So full. Here are some before and after shots.

Sunday we digested the food that was still in our bellies from Saturday night and since Marc was slaving away (still) at fixing the extra room off our master bedroom, I made a pretty killer turkey ragu that bubbled away for most of the afternoon on the stove. Thank you Gwyneth Paltrow.

weekend round-up: the anniversary edition

So as I posted, Sunday was our wedding anniversary and we've sort of loosely promised to always take a trip somewhere on our anniversary. Sometimes it'll be a big trip, sometimes a trip somewhere close by but we've vowed to always at least try to be somewhere kinda special on the 21st of June. This year, since we've been away so much this summer and have been (and will continue to be) bunking Sadie with her grandfolks, we decided that she's earned a little vacation herself.

So knowing we didn't have tons of time and didn't want to drive super far with Sadie we opted for a puppy-friendly cottage in Lakefield called Seldom Scene, a bed and breakfast with a guest cottage on the property. And what a property!! Log cabin, by a quiet windy river, meadow nearby, gazebo with loungers, a hammock, and inside the cabin you find all the luxuries of home including a jacuzzi bathtub, a super duper fancy Swiss shower with lights and a phone, espresso machine, homemade breakfasts brought to our door every morning along with brownies and muffins warm from the oven and hell, even a couple dirty movies in the cabinet for those you so inclined.

And as good a time as Marc and I had, I think Sadie had three times that much fun. She met her first turtle, chased her first frogs, spent most of her time diving headfirst into ditches filled with daisies and when she wasn't laying in the sun she was showing us how fast she could run all around the yard. I'm also happy to report that she now will successfully respond to the phrase "Sadie get the bug!!"

As for Marc and I , we happily explored the surprisingly lovely, lovely town of Peterborough. I don't know why I expected that town to be awful but it is quite the contrary. Great restaurants (had amazing tapas at a place called Elements), great little boutiques, killer cafes.....yup, Peterborough is officially awesome. We also managed to take a side trip to Port Hope, one of the best places to antique in Ontario and cuz we're those kind of people we did antique our faces off and picked up some great pieces (which I'll do a separate post about). Managed a trip to Michael Thomas's amazing shop which went splendidly well and we found a great early 1900's office chair made in Kitchener. So pretty and so comfortable!

We took another side trip up to the Kawartha Country Winery where they make some of Canada's best fruit wines. And trust me, these aren't the awful fruit wines that your mom and college roommate drank. This is the good stuff. We went and were spoiled rotten and sampled a pile of delicious beverages and left with a case full of fruity deliciousness, including a Golden Plum wine, a dry Rhubarb, a Blackcurrant, and an amazing bottle of Blackcurrant Port that knocked my port-loving socks off.

And really, other than that, we pretty much holidayed and then some. Here are some pics:

Another pic to add to our collection of us kissing in places far from home.

We even found turtle nests!!

Sadie met her first turtle. She is so, so brave.

And then she saw her first cow. He fancied her.

Who knows what she's getting in this photo.....

The river steps from our front door - so close you could hear it bubbling away at night....swoon.

Our little piece of heaven complete with gazebo, hammock and fireflies.

Then she met her first frog....

And hung out at her first vineyard -she even got to go inside!

Here's Sadie amongst the daisies, so at home.

days of wine and marco

Welcome to my guest blogger Marco!  He's going to be doing a monthly wine blog of sort - just a quick write-up of what we drank over the month good and bad.  He's my resident Winey McWinerson....

Hey there folks! Welcome to “Days of Wine and Marco”, my first foray into writing something people may actually stumble across and read. This will be a monthly addition to “Cowgirl You Got That Something” by my lovely wife Tara.  This first post is a bit of an intro of how I got into wine and what I’ll be looking at for the most part in the coming months.  

I remember spending a weekend every fall when I was a kid with family helping my grandfather and uncles make wine in his garage or basement.  there’s nothing quite like of  having 600-800 pounds of grapes to do with as you please.  Unfortunately he liked to leave all the stems in and didn’t let the juice soak with the skins long enough to get any real body.  I didn’t love his wine, but it did plant the first seeds of interest in me and I still have his wine press and grape crusher.   A few years back I made a few batches myself for a few years in the fall when the grapes come up from california.  I got some good results...some really good results, then some bad results!   I put the equipment away for a time when I could have better temperature control, and may be getting the itch again for fall of 2009.  

Since the time I started making wine, I started buying wine.  I started trying more, and reading more as well.  A friend and I would make monthly trips to the liquor store for our Bottom-of-the-Barrel run.  This is where we’d buy the cheapest bottles in the store in search of that hidden gem.  We found the odd thing for $7 or $8 that could’ve easily sold for $10 or $12.  We found some really bad ones too, forgettable...however I’ll never forget that Louis IV that made me double over in pain as if someone had roundhouse kicked me in the gut!  

Anyways, once I started getting more adventurous with different grapes as well as price scale my whole world opened up.  I still remember my first Teroldego, now one of my favourites.

I am a little biased to the italian wines, the reason for this is that I find there’s still a lot of value out there in the italian wines, and there is still a lot of different, not so-well -known things to try.  My favourites are Sagrantino from Umbria, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano from Tuscany and as previously mentioned Teroldego from Trentino.  I’ll likely get into these wines in detail on a future post.

You will find that I won’t speak much of  Merlot and Cab Sauvignons. The reason for this is that there are plenty around, plenty of great ones!  And they will always be there for the times when I want to come back to them.  But I truly love to try the oddball and lesser known grapes of the  old world wine producing companies. My wine shopping binges tend to hover among Italy; France; Spain sections  I’ve also been buying Argentina and of course I have to support Canada, but I’ve mainly been buying Canadian wines from Ontario.   That being said, I do welcome any comments, suggestions and wine recommendations as well.  If something is recommended to me to try, and I can get it here for a reasonable price, I’ll will try it.

So a quick note on tasting, I don’t usually sit around sipping wine saying “hmm I’m tasting wild cherries; earth from the prairies, saddle leather and barnyard with an old man in coveralls standing in the middle of it!”  I just like wine.  I’ll have to make some comments on the flavors so I’ll try to keep it simple.

After all, It’s all a learning experience.

wine away

Our friends over at Apartment Therapy have put out the question: Does it really work? My answer: Oh my god, YES! My mother got us all some for Christmas 2 years ago and it honestly is the best stain remover in the history of stain removers. My mother watched in horror as she spectacularly wiped out her glass of red wine onto their pale brown carpet and expensive sofa. Enter Wine Away and there is no sign that anyone even thought about wine in that room. For a $15 investment you get peace of mind that even the rowdiest of houseguests/over-exuberant Golden Retriever tail won't best your handmade Persian carpet.

it's time! it's time!

Today is Beaujolais Nouveau day at the LCBO!!! Yippee!!! Some aren't into it (Dan I'm talking to you) because, yes it's true, you never really know what you're going to get. It's young wine and sometimes it can be pretty bad. But that's half the fun! Marc's going at lunch to buy me something jammy and delicious. Mmmmm.......jammy.....

Weekend roundup

Alright so I wish I had some super exciting kickass news to share about how I spent my weekend but I was a tad under the weather this week, resulting in a fairly subtle weekend of activities. So since I spent Wednesday and Thursday at home sick, Friday was a fairly low-key night. We watched the first 4 episodes from season one of "Dexter" on the recommendation of Brittainy and Jocelyne and I gotta say, what a stellar show that is. It's smart, well written, thrilling, interesting and seriously F-ed up. Like seriously. It's the weirdest show I've seen in a while and I'm so down with that. We wished we had more episodes to watch. I loved him in Six Feet Under and am thrilled to see he went on to things of equal greatness. Dexter = awesome.
Saturday was spent doing a whole lot of nothing. I slept in a whole bunch which helped me to feel like I could finally see the light at the end of the sickness tunnel. We watched many Jaws movies cuz they all were on TV and Marc had never seen the sequels. I know, how is that possible you say? I'm not sure but we can consider that remedied. Then we watched the movie we rented that we thought was Bobby starring William H Macy but which turned out to be Bobby Z starring Paul Walker and Laurence Fishburne -- a decidedly worse movie. Note to Blockbuster -- don't stock your Bobby Z movies in a big pile behind the case for the movie Bobby. It results in sad customers. It was one of the worst movies I've ever seen and I'll never get those 2 hours back.
Sunday was spent hitting up the sales spotted in the Friday newspaper flyers and watching Marc seal up our backyard wedding arbour for the winter. Good job Marco! Hung out with the parentals and scored a sweet silk table runner that was bought and then disliked by Ma and Pa. Yay us! We then proceeded on to do some batch cooking with Dan and Lisa that rapidly turned into a Sunday drunk. On the menu, our famous pumpkin turkey chili and Dan and Lisa's turkey meatballs in a marinara carrot sauce. Also on the menu -- yummy Belgian beer, a bottle of Prosecco and a bottle of Shiraz. Result - me being drunk early on a Sunday evening. What fun times were had though. We finally scored some brownie points with Dan and Lisa's kids, Ava and Sammie and I think I officially rule. At least with Ava anyway. There was a lot of high-fiving going on and then there was some hardcore diaper-no-pants time which seemed like a heck of a lot of fun too. I wish I could have shared in that action. Oh to be 2 years old again....
Tonight the plan is to check out the Wooden Stars and Wintersleep at the Townehouse even though I saw Wintersleep at the Hillside Festival last year and they kinda blew. But the Wooden Stars rock and a little birdy told me they're going on 1) early and 2) first. All good news for Tara and her mental state Monday morning.

Wine show

So last night we had the extreme pleasure of checking out the LCBO Vintages wine show "Wine 101." Wha? Wine show on a Thursday? Is that allowed? Thankfully yes. We spent the evening eating amazing cheese (Stilton and Port, oh my heart) and drinking our way through some amazing wines. I feel in love with a Californian Pinot Noir, an amazing Sauvignon Blanc and got almost knocked over by a big fat Bordeaux that was too much for me. I sucked back some good ol'Chianti cuz you can just never go wrong and was pleasantly surprised by an amazing organic and an outstanding Australian Shiraz (Woodcutters I think?). All in all, despite making me miss the first part of "The Office" premiere, it was an outstanding night. Marc is an actual aficianado whereas I merely tag along for the ride and say things like "Yummy." Although pal/cousin-in-law Randy did pass along some overheard wine snobbery "Hmmmm, this is extremely well-balanced" which we used frequently throughout the evening. Wine aside, I was also blown away by the amazing footwear sported by pals Jocelyne and Sylvia who hit up MooShoes while in NYC. I now covet Sylvia's adorable Bridget mary-janes that look like this:


And Jocelyne rocked the Solar maryjane with the fancy kalso reverse heel technology that now has me completely fascinated. They looked like this:


Great wine, company AND fun shoes? I almost don't even need the weekend! That said, we still have a weekend o'fun to come with Gommfest 2007 on Saturday thanks to the superb planning of Miss Gomm. Full report to come on Sunday. AND my new J Crew red dress came in the mail today! Everything's coming up Tara!