Ride for Refugees
One of the charities that Carly and I like to support is Journey Home Community. They provide resettlement assistance and transitional housing to refugee claimants in the Lower Mainland.
This year, on October 3rd, they will be participating in the global Ride for Refugees.
If you have a heart for helping refugees, and could spare a few dollars, we'd be incredibly grateful if you'd be willing to support their efforts. You can donate by clicking here.
Terrace Mountain Fire
We had planned to go camping for a week after we finished innsitting, and camp we did. Well, until we were evacuated from our campsite due to the 4000-hectare-burning-out-of-control Terrace Mountain fire.
These are some shots we took of the smoke while driving.
Innsitting, eh?
Following our Calgary trip, we headed to Kelowna for a week of Innsitting at Willow Beach. Carly and I met Jim and Deb (the owners at Willow Beach) last summer when we stayed there for a few nights. We hit it off, and they asked us if we'd consider innsitting for them this summer so they could take a week of vacation. It sounded like a great time, and the rest is history.
We has a lot of fun, met couples from Alberta, Ontario and Belgium. We made dinner reservations, called taxis, did laundry (did more laundry) (then we did more laundry after that), mowed putting greens, swam in the lake - the whole works.
This was definitely one of the highlights of our summer vacation. We love to entertain, enjoy meeting and conversing with people, and food (if it wasn't obvious already) is quite possibly one of our favorite pastimes.
Calgary Stampede
Now that we're back in the saddle (groan), vacation is over and it's time to write some posts. We spent about a week in Calgary, enjoying time with friends and family, and also headed to check out the stampede.
I haven't been to the stampede since I was about 8 or so, and Carly had never been. We had a good time, to be sure, but looking back - I wish we'd gone to some of the rodeo events. I'm not sure what I was thinking when we only bought tickets to the chuckwagon races and grandstand show (more on that later), but we did manage to see some sheep-shearing competitions, cute animals, etc. The best part of the day was definitely the USA Break Dancers - funny and entertaining (and free, unlike the grandstand show).
As for the grandstand show: colossal disappointment. To be honest, I still have no idea what went on for the whole show. Our $82.13 tickets (EACH), apparently in the "gold" section, was so far away from anything that we pretty much might as well have not shown up. We were so high up in the grandstand that the overhang blocked our view of nearly all the fireworks. If the show could be considered entertainment at all, it was only by sheer sensory overload.
From dancing crazy-people to goth-man in spandex (or leather? or some sort of plastic?), to bands that you couldn't understand playing music from the back of GM pick-up trucks, to motorcycle jumps, back to some patriotic Canada song about something or other, back to crazy-dancers and goth-man - I have no idea what this show was supposed to be/do/convey. Needless to say, we'd never, ever go to another.
On Alberta
It turns out, Alberta does have some redeeming qualities. A shot we took on the iPhone 3GS while driving.
Hopefully off to the Stampede today!
Chambar
Last night we had dinner with some friends who were out from Nelson for the weekend, and returned to one of our newly found favorite restaurants. Chambar Belgian Restaurant (near Gastown, 1/2 block from Stadium Station) is absolutely outstanding, and has climbed to one of our favorite places to eat.
With amazing food (even french fries pommes frites) and a Belgian beer list numbering around 40 - you'd be hard pressed not to love this place.
Oh, and this is the first photo I took with my shiny new iPhone:
And we're at T-Minus 5 days until vacation go-time. It's gonna be great to get away for a bit.
Blog Moved
I've decided to move our blog away from Blogger and onto WordPress in an attempt to amalgamate, and have a bit better control over things. I couldn't be bothered to set up all the redirection properly, so the search engine rankings for the blog are going to get totally killed. I don't think it matters, because I don't know if anyone actually reads this anyways.
Stay tuned - miniature summer adventures are coming, and with them, hopefully some time to write!
Neglect Your Blog Much?
One might wonder if we were dead. Alas, I am sorry to report that we are not.
Neglecting the blog, definitely, but very much alive nonetheless. Can't really say why we've been neglecting the blog. Probably we've been too busy eating, or cooking or something to bother with writing.
As usual, the reason for this post is food-related. Carly and I headed out to Crescent Beach after church yesterday in hopes that it might be sunny over there, and we could go for a walk. We were in luck. It was pouring rain until we got onto 24th Ave, but then the sun began to shine, and we we enjoyed a fantastic walk in sun and light drizzle along the ocean.
No trip to Crescent Beach is complete without stopping at Fieldstone for a Lemon Tart. As Carly said (18 times) - "This is my favorite Lemon Tart in the whole world". I have to agree.
So do yourself a favor, and go get a Lemon Tart from Fieldstone - your world will become a better place.
Relax
Relaxing doesn't seem to be very high on the priority list of 'stuff to do' lately. Well - perhaps it's high on the priority list, but ends up pretty much at the bottom of the feasibility list.
But, we still have time to eat good food, and take a few pictures.
Every now and again I feel like messing around with the camera and tripod (especially with longer shutter speeds) - so I got this shot of our couch, mid-afternoon the other day, with a 6 second shutter.
A symbol of relaxation - something we don't get to do muchAlso, I bake apple pie (and yes, it is the best apple pie ever):
Best apple pie everAfter hanging out with John and Becky Dyck for a while on Saturday - we were inspired to cook up some Patacones (aka: fried plantain) - which went absolutely awesome with a bowl of chili.
Fried plantains. The Yum.
Chris sent me a message saying "Come visit for a weekend, we'll entertain you. And by entertain, I mean we'll eat a lot of good food and won't watch TV." - our idea of a good time.
Other than that, not a lot to report. Carry on.
Iron Chefs
After an inspiring viewing of Iron Chef several months ago, we shopped, cooked, laughed and tasted in our own iron chef fashion.
The key ingredient for all dishes - Chocolate!
The rules were simple: no recipes allowed, use chocolate in everything, and have fun. The last rule was certainly easy considering chocolate was abounding everywhere...even in places it shouldn't have been (some might argue)!
That night, we made 4 dishes with 4 different kids of chocolate.
On the menu:
Asian Acorn Squash Milk Chocolate Soup
White Chocolate, Cheddar and Sour Cream Biscuits
Oh So Chocolaty Glazed Carrots
and
Cacao and Spice Crusted Filet Mignon
Daniel always has a knife
Carly's cooking...or goofing off
Plate it up! Time to taste.
By the way, 2 of the dishes were excellent, 1 of the dishes was passable and 1 of the dishes was horribly wrong. Can you guess which was which?