the goose loves canada - day 1

Road trip! On September 10th, Billy and I took a much-needed and fairly-well-deserved vacay up to Vancouver, BC (yeah, Canada!) to see his cousin Lauren get married! The wedding was on Sunday afternoon, so we drove up to Canada on Saturday morning (we actually drove to Seattle on Friday night and then left from there on Saturday to break up the drive) and came back home on Monday night. This was my second time out of the country (going to Tijuana to build houses in high school counts, right?) and my FIRST time to Canada, so I was very excited, especially about the whole passport-customs-border-crossing thing.

 Luckily, the border crossing was pretty quick on the way up. We showed our passports and flew on through!

Best place on Earth? I thought that was Disneyland... well that's the happiest place on Earth, I guess.

 

 Here we are, driving down the main drag that heads into downtown Vancouver, where we stayed.



Look closely - a pink car and french in the background!

Here's our hotel - supposedly the tallest building in Vancouver - with a rotating restaurant on top. No, we didn't visit the restaurant. We were not up for spending $100+ on dinner, or spending $16 per person for a buffet breakfast, especially when the restaurant doesn't ROTATE in the morning!

 And the view from our room! This looks west, toward some mountains and stuff.

 And the ocean! (Right?) Some big tankers and probably a cruise ship or two hanging out.



Loved the purple chair in our room, especially how it mached my luggage!

After getting settled and showered, Billy and I headed toward the waterfront to walk around and look for a place for dinner. The city really is absolutely gorgeous.

 

 This was the area for the tours in river planes, or whatever they are called. The ones that take off from and land in the water? I would have loved a tour, but not loved spending $100 a person on one. (You following our travel trend? We don't spend $100+ on things... haha.) It was fun to watch them land, though.

 

 We then headed toward an area of town called Gastown, where we found the Steamworks Brewery. Naturally, if there is beer, we must stop. The restaurant was huge, and we ended up in their downstairs lounge area.

 After perusing the menu, we decided to get drinks and a small snack here, and opted for dinner elsewhere. Vancouver has so much great food, how can you waste an entire dinner on one place? :) I had the stout, Billy had the red ale, which tasted like a pale ale. He wasn't very impressed with the beer or the server, but Billy IS a beer snob, after all.

 All "glammed" up!



Tricky lighting - and did you see all my tourist maps and brochures? :)

And my cutie husband!

Some random building downtown, reminded me of the SoHotel, where we stayed in NY!

 Below (yeah, I know it's dark) is the Steam Clock. Funny story - later in our stay, we saw a magnet of the Steam Clock, as a famous Vancouver landmark. We're like - what Steam Clock? But we really had seen it all along. People don't make as big a deal of it at nightime, though. And it didn't chime for us. Good story, huh!

 Browsing in a tourist shop (we did have some people to thank, like Jackie, who was taking care of our pup (and maybe feeding him chocolate... haha. that's another good story, but for another time!).

 After walking around the darling cobblestones of Gastown, we settled on Indian food for dinner. Wow it was delicious. If we were local, that would be our new Indian spot. We shared a dinner thing, which came with pappadum, naan, butter chicken, lamb something or other, rice, and dessert.

 Here's the dessert - there's an official name, but they're basically donut holes soaked in sweet syrup. YUM.

That ended our first day in beautiful Canada. We slowly (with full tummies!) walked back to our hotel and crashed early. But don't worry - Days 2 and 3 were also filled with fun. Coming up next... the wedding!

the goose loves farmshare dinners

Since I'm so behind in my posts (darn that job and life getting in the way), I have no idea what night this really happened. But let's pretend it was September 10th. Which it really wasn't, since we weren't even in the country in September 10th, but whatever. We'll get to that later.

Billy and I were in a cooking mood and had lots of vegetables to use, so we pulled out our trusty Williams-Sonoma "Bride & Groom" Cookbook, which we used as a guestbook at our wedding. (The cookbook-guestbook thing worked out really nicely, actually - we wanted to be able to re-read our guests messages without storing a lace-covered book somewhere, and since we love to cook, this works out great! People had a good time writing on pages with recipes they liked, or even offering up better recipes!)

I settled on two recipes from the book: Spoon Bread with Sweet Corn and Zucchini-Potato Pancakes. Billy decided to make a gussied up pico de gallo to garnish my recipes.

Spoon Bread with Sweet Corn

For those of you who have no idea what this is: I felt the same way. Here's the description:

Spoon bread is a wonderful old-fashioned side dish that goes with just about anything.

Butter for greasing

1-2 ears fresh yellow or white corn

kosher salt

1 cup fine-grind cornmeal

2 tbsp butter

4 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk*

1/3 cup heavy cream*

*As is usually the case, I didn't have everything for this recipe. I made my own buttermilk by adding 2 tbsp of lemon juice to 1 cup of milk and letting it sit for 10 minutes. Instead of heavy cream, I used regular milk.

And here is the one and only prep photo of Billy's pico de gallo. Apparently I don't find his cooking very fascinating or something, so I don't photograph it.

Directions for Spoon Bread:

1. Preheat oven to 425. Grease glass pie dish or or square dish with butter. I used a round Pyrex bowl that was probably a little deeper than it was supposed to be. But it worked.

2. Shuck the corn and cut off the kernels. Or have your husband cut off the kernels, since he's already cutting off his own kernels for the pico de gallo stuff he's making. Ask him for at least a cup of corn kernels.

3. Bring 2.5 cups of salted water to boil. Measure out cornmeal in a glass measuring cup, and add enough water (or milk) to the cornmeal to make it fluid (dry, clumpy, or pasty cornmeal usually gives me clumpy polenta). When water boils, pour fluid cormeal stuff into the water and whisk vigorously. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook until it becomes fairly thick, about 5 minutes. Stir in butter and remove from heat.

4. Meanwhile (since you're doing nothing else anyways, like watching the dog or making other food or drinking), whisk the eggs, buttermilk (or fake buttermilk), and cream (or fake cream) together until well blended. Sorry for the fake stuff - at least I used real eggs. Add this mixture to the cornmeal mixture in the pot and stir until well blended. Pour into prepared dish.

5. Bake until golden brown on top and a skewer comes out clean. It will rise like a souffle, so serve at once, before it falls.

Here's my spoon bread, pre-baking:

Now let's switch gears to the zucchini-potato pancakes.

Zucchini-Potato Pancakes

1 large russet potato (or a few smaller ones of any type, really)
1 large zucchini (or a smaller one supplemented with egglplant, like I did)
1/3 cup diced onion
1 large egg, beaten
kosher salt
freshly ground pepper
olive oil

Here's my abused egg (get it? beaten? ha.) and some fresh dill. Billy was cutting up dill, so I said, "Oooh. Cut some for me too." Dill goes with potatoes, right?

1. Grate potatoes and zucchini in large bowl. To save time and effort, I just run them through the Cuisinart with the grater blade. I also sent the eggplant and onion through there, again to save time and effort. Easy is better.

2. Beat the egg and add it to your shredded mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Work quickly, or douse with lemon juice, or your shreddings will get a little brown.

3. Put a quarter or half cup of "batter" into a hot frypan with a little olive oil. Cook until golden-brown on the bottom - roughly 7 to 10 minutes. Then flip gently, and cook the second side for about 6 minutes, until also golden brown. Then remove to wire rack or pan and keep warm until eatin' time! I used my little non-stick All Clad fry pan, but if you use a larger pan, you can cook several at once. Just leave a couple inches inbetween each pancake.

Let's take a short break and check on our Spoon Bread, currently baking in the mini oven. Mmmm.

And finally, the results! Golden brown and crispy potato pancakes, with undetectable amounts of healthy zucchini and eggplant. Believe me - Billy doesn't care for squash-like vegetables, but he finished two of these quite promptly.

And our almost-too-toasty-brown spoon bread!

Our finished plates. The spoon bread didn't quite serve as nicely as I hoped (see bowl of yellow mush) but it tasted fantastic. Billy's pico de gallo turned into a wonderful medly of veggies, including avocados, and was delicious with the spoon bread and the pancakes. All in all, a decent effort for a terrific result!

the goose loves billy's birthday

Happy Birthday Billy!

(Yeah, I'm writing this on Sept. 20th, which makes me about two weeks late, but whatever.)

Sept. 8th is the birthday of my wonderful hubby, and I'm finally getting around to sharing his fun birthday activity (and present!). So the morning of Sept. 8th arrived, and I still had nothing for him. (Shh don't tell). We had already discussed a larger present (to be revealed later), but I couldn't just hand him a card and say "happy birthday" and call it good.

So I brainstormed at work, and remembered the most fun gift-giving activity ever - a scavenger hunt! Last Christmas, I devised a scavenger hunt to hide one of his presents - a big brewing bottle thing. I knew if he saw the box, he'd know what's inside. So a scavenger hunt was a really fun way to disguise the gift. And it was REALLY fun. All the clues were around the house, and I ended up hiding a few smaller gifts in some of the clue spots! So I figured that'd be lots of fun for his birthday.

I took off from work a little early, so that I could surprise him at home when he arrived (usually he beats me). Jackie picked me up from work (thanks again!!) and helped me get set up since I didn't have much time. I hid all the clues, and wrapped a few small gifts I had gotten him at lunchtime (such a procrastinator, I am!). She helped me hide the clues (also written at work), and I attached some clues to the small gifts I got. I hid the first clue in a present for him to open.

Billy got home and saw the dog was missing from his crate (we had Bentley hiding with us, without his collar to reduce noise and pacified with peanut butter) and started to freak out a little. I was cracking up in the laundry room. Billy was quite surprised when we all popped out of there!

Before commencing the scavenger hunt, though, we went to dinner at the Breakside Brewery and had some delicious food (and beer for Billy, of course!). And then we came back for some scavengering.

Here's Billy, with the first (and only, he thought) gift!

 Bentley's considering helping Billy with the wrapping.

 Voila - undershirts! What an awesome present.

But they have a clue on the back!

Dorky Billy thinking of the first clue.

 But of course, how can you complete a scavenger hunt without a little bit of "thinking scotch"?

 Letting the aroma energize his brain, or something.

 And he's off! I hid 20 clues around the house, from the garage to the master bathroom. About a third of them had little gifts, like some new work socks and some pretty dress shirts.

 One clue had a bag of Reese's, his favorite candy.

 And then three clues were attached to his birthday cards, which all arrived perfectly on his birthday! This one is from his dad, and he also had one from my parents and my grandparents.

 A clue in a tree!

The clue for this one was "If I stay out here too much longer, I might get peed or pooped on!"
(Referencing, of course, the backyard where Mr. Bentley does his business.)

 Oh look, its a card from me!

 Nope, not DSW shoes. A dress shirt!

 This clue was hidden in the half bathroom, on the curtain wire.

 Bentley LOVED the scavenger hunt - almost as much as Billy did! He would race from room to room with us, following in excitement. I guess it didn't hurt that he was getting a few treats along the way.

 And the finish!

 Billy's loot:

 He decided to collect the gifts along the way and then open the gifts and cards at the end.



Opening the card from his daddy.

And the big reveal: here's the big present I mentioned earlier!! We got it a few days after Billy's birthday.

 Billy and I decided to replace my old and cheapo BBQ that I had since college, and we figured we could get a good deal at the end of summer sales. We decided to go with a gas grill, since they're quicker to use on weeknights and in cold weather (hello, fall and winter). And we chose a Weber, for their superior quality!

Billy looking like a genius grill master. Or a grill nerd?

 We chose the Weber Genesis, and found it at Home Depot. Billy price checked at another local grill store and found it cheaper, but Home Depot ended up matching that price and charging 10% less (they have a policy about that) and it ended up saving us over $80! So whoo hoo for Home Depot. And price comparisons!

Billy's tested out the new grill and loves it! And we must send a special shoutout to our parents - Maria and William Dempsey and Bill McWood! :)  They all sent a few dollars to contribute to the grill purchase, for which we are very thankful! (Billy will be writing those thank you notes as soon as he's back from his business trip...) And we can't wait to have you over for some delicious grilling. (Yes, Mom & Dad - we'll be grilling something at Christmas when you're here in PDX!)