Montreal

Who would have thought that French Canadians speak predominately French? Not us, apparently. Everybody we encountered spoke French and English, but French first. The majority of the signs were in French along with stores, menus, and pretty much everything else.

We’re slightly surprised we didn’t have more difficulty getting across the border considering our car license is from CA, and our driver’s license is from CT. They must have decided we’re harmless.

We had a great time. We stayed at a B&B in the Old City (I think) and walked everywhere, except for one trip on the metro. The room was a cute little thing that provided everything we needed in addition to a daily glass of port. The breakfast at this place alone was enough to justify staying there. French toast, eggs (Benedict for me) any way you like, fruit, Belgian waffles, cereal, yogurt. They brought you french toast and waffles THEN asked you what type of eggs you wanted to order for breakfast.

We got around for the day we were there (it takes 6 hours driving to get there, so two of the three days are driving centered). We started off at the Montreal Botanical Gardens which was not quite in full gear outside yet, but the greenhouse and insect exhibits were fantastic. From there we hopped over to Old Montreal, ate lunch and walked around for the afternoon taking it in. The next day on the way out we drove up to the top of Mont Royal for a view of the city.

Besides seeing a few sites, we ate. And then we ate again and again. There was soo much good food. I can now say I’ve had rabbit and it was good. Actually it was delicious. Here are the pictures. I went nuts in the greenhouses and at with the insects. Thank God digital cameras have replaced film.

Mmm. Rabbit.

Montreal hosted the Olympics back sometime before I was born. I caught Elizabeth posing.

These were about the only thing blooming outside the greenhouses at the botanical gardens. This place must be amazing in the summer months.

This goes on for a while…

The orchid house was awesome.

Yeah… it’s a lot of pictures. Imagine if I wasn’t trying to limit myself.

On to the bugs…

Yep. That thing is as big as my hand.

Not much happening outside.

Old Montreal

I have wort.

Actually, I had wort. Now, we have beer. Good beer, or, at least decent, ingestable beer. Wort is the sludge you ferment to make beer.

It took about a month, but it was worth it. Pictures below are of bottling day about halfway through the process. Wort ferments in a bucket for about two weeks, depending on the variety, then a secondary fermentation take place in the bottle for a couple weeks to carbonate. To my surprise, it turns out that beer-making with the exception of a couple nervous moments is mainly washing, waiting for things to boil, and then waiting again for them to ferment.

Siphoning from the fermenting bucket to bottling bucket in an effort to remove the yeast sludge that settled out. There was at least an inch at the bottom of the bucket.

I don’t quiet think she knows how she got roped into helping.

I capped and Elizabeth filled bottles.

The finished product.

After two very long weeks of waiting.

In other news, not much has been going on besides school and work. Elizabeth is stil running a crazy schedule, and fought off the flu. I’m doing my best to stay warm. Although when it hit forty this week after a month of nothing over ~30 I was down to a long sleeve t-shirt, woohoo? We’ve been cooking a lot. E just made her first Tiramisu, and we’ve been savoring the last couple days.  The following is the obligatory Maple picture. We’ve been practicing with the mapes not to attack anybody sitting on the floor with slobber. She’s getting better, sort of…

Thanksgiving

Our turkey keeps on giving. At this point in time I wish it would just go away. To feed the five people we had over for Thanksgiving, all of us away from family and such, we bought a 17 lbs. turkey. We now know this is way too much turkey. We got through one leg and about half a breast. There is still turkey, mash potatoes (we made way too much of this too) and cranberry sauce sitting in our fridge.  Any ways it was a bunch of fun.

The Tunbridge World Fair

Last weekend we took up Erin’s offer to crash at her family’s place and experience the Tunbridge World Fair with a couple other YSNers. And was it an experience. We saw tons of cattle, pigs (racing!), chickens, rabbits and about everything else that moves. I think I ate more fried food in those 4 hours than I had all year (photo documentation below).  The historical farm part though is always great. It’s amazing to see the ingenious ways people make tools and components of life taken for granted nowadays by hand.

Yeah, I don’t know why, but apparently the local USMC (reserves?) runs the parking/tickets.

And… I’m tired after watching this guy do a few swings.

Interesting, but not nearly fried enough for me.

Now that’s just 400-some odd pounds of plain weird.

*** Disclaimer*** I did NOT eat all of everything below. I might have wished I did, but other people there stared at me funny after I said “sharing shmaring. That’s for kindergartners”.

Now these are vegetables I can get excited about.

At this point in time I had to remind myself this event requires pacing.

Can’t go to the fair and not have a corndog. The mustard was for Dad.

These are special fries. You want to know why they’re special? Because anything covered in gravy is special. That’s why.

At this point in time I’m feeling a little lethargic. I need something to wash that all down and get my system back on track. What’s that there? Sugar with a little bit of lemon? Awesome, just what I needed.

Ok, I didn’t actually eat this. But Erin got some fried dough, and I decided that the existence of fried dough the size of a plate needed to be photo-documented and shared with the world.

An in between heart-attack snack.

Dessert!

The only moderately healthy thing we ate while there, and with the amount of butter on there I’m not sure it still qualifies as a vegetable.

I’m still in a food coma…

Le Petit Cafe

Delicious. Holy Cow (with a capital “c”), it was that good. Two hours of the best eating I’ve ever had.

I feel so adult. Not only did I purposefully order it, I enjoyed the escargot appetizer. It was my favorite part of the meal.

That was followed by a great salad with a honey dijon vinaigrette with goat cheese. Ellie had the rack of lamb and I had the salmon, both were perfect. Creme brule and apple tart for desert.

I’m still salivating. We need to celibrate birthdays more often than they are scheduled to come around I think.

 http://www.lepetitcafe.net