He’d found a small-ship cruise that fit into one of the few periods this spring where we could fit in a 10-day vacation.
And that’s about it, really. Jean did all the booking of this trip: the cruise, the flights (not that easy to arrange), the hotel in Dubrovnik, where we stayed before and after getting on the ship. I bought a couple Croatia travel guides and flipped through them, but overall, this was one of the trips I’d prepped for the least.
Reading the cruise itinerary, we both had similar thoughts: Wow, that sounds really relaxing.
Although we had no complaints about the food at our first visit to the Easy Pour Wine Bar, the service left something to be desired.
It’s not a high-end, white-linen place; we weren’t expecting anyone to hold our chairs as we sat or to be given a complimentary amuse to start.
But we did expect familiarity with the menu, as it is a bit of an unusual one. It has a list of items “to share”, then some salads, then flatbreads, then a small number of “heartier plates”. So it wasn’t as clear as at appetizer / entree / dessert restaurants how much to order from each category. We needed guidance, and we didn’t really get it.
And it didn’t help the situation any when Jean asked which cheeses were included on the cheese plate, and the waiter didn’t know, and then seem quite startled that Jean expected him to go to the kitchen to find out.
Hence the rather large gap since our last visit. But when some friends wanted to go out for dinner, we thought we’d give them another chance.
And fortunately, we had a much more “on the ball” waitress this time out, who opined correctly on the amount of food we’d ordered, steered in a different direction when we ordered two rather similar items, and gave some good wine suggestions. We decided to share everything, picking among the “to share”, salad, and flatbread categories. We started with the Mixed board, a nice selection of cheese, olives, deli meats, bread, and crackers.
The remaining items were brought out together, per our waitress’s suggestion:
Pea seared sea scallops
Warm pecan crusted goat cheese
Roasted beet salad
Truffle mushroom flatbread
Everything was really tasty, good texture, temperature, and presentation.
Our additional request for a special that day, oysters roquefeller, was apparently not heard, but just as well, as the above was enough food, and then most of us had room for dessert. I had the pumpkin creme brulee, which was light and delightful, and Jean went for the more hardy sticky toffee pudding.
The restaurant itself has character, It’s a stone building, not that large, with wood interior and open ceiling to the second floor. It was packed this Saturday night, and that made it a bit noisy, but we still managed conversation. (Although once the musicians started, that became harder, but that was only at the end of our meal.)
Nice night out. Good to know the service issues aren’t chronic.
Easter weekend this year looked like a lot like Christmas: Sunday we awoke to a coating of snow. It was pretty (and gone by Monday), but not really what you expect in April.
So it seems appropriate that I served up an Easter dinner of very hardy foods: Maple-Dijon roasted root vegetables, potatoes in duck fat, and herbed lamb chops. Served with a Cabernet Sauvignon from Peller Estates.
Everything turned out well. Not the prettiest-looking meal I’ve ever made, but still more photo-worthy than citrus cake I made for dessert. Poor thing looked so sad, starting with the fact that my two cake pans aren’t quite the same diameter, so it had an odd shape, with ominously dripping cream cheese icing. (It’s occurring to me I could have cut the larger circle to fit the smaller, but that does sound like a waste of cake.) Tasted great, though.
I had vampires on the mind somehow 🙂 so we also took in a movie at the Princess called What We Do in the Shadows. It’s set in New Zealand, and purports to be a documentary about the lives (or unlives?) of vampires. Specifically, that four vampires of varying ages who share a flat agree to be interviewed and filmed as they go about their usual activities.
My feminist self will point out that this yet another movie that over-casts men. All the leads are men; the women in it are side characters, servants or girlfriends.
With that complaint out of the way, though—this is a really funny movie! Very enjoyable. These are your classic vampires who can’t eat food, wear silver, or go out during the day. but who can fly and transform into creatures. The centuries-long age differences cause some tensions among the roommates, which are only exacerbated when they are joined by a newly sired vampire who can’t resist telling everyone that he’s “like Twilight.”
(“Keep a low profile?” he complains, when called on it. “You have a whole documentary crew following you around!”)
When we arrived at the KW Symphony’s gala fundraising dinner, we immediately noticed a glamorous-looking woman in a shimmery dress with a long train that we made a mental note not to step on. Next thing we knew, after getting a drink from the bar, she was introducing herself to us.
I’m Patricia Ward Kelly. Gene Kelly’s wife.
That would be Gene Kelly, actor, dancer, director, and star of Singin’ in the Rain, the greatest musical of all time. And no, Ms. Kelly is not 90 years old; she’s maybe 50?
“Big age difference when they met,” I told Jean, after we’d thanked her for talking to us and moved off into the next room. He was a bit stunned, not having read about Patricia Kelly in advance, as I had.
Everyone got dolled up for this “black tie optional” affair, which is always kind of fun. (Though I only have a picture of me, not a set of the well-dressed crowd.)
We weren’t able to convince any of our friends to join us at this affair, though, so we were seated with three other couples we didn’t know. (Should have been four, but one set was a no-show.) They proved to be good company. We had interesting conversations on topics such as travel, books, and Future Shop (which had suddenly closed that morning).
The event was held in the ballroom of the Crown Plaza Hotel (so, far from the pool smell…). Cocktails started at 4:30, dinner at 5:30, and they did an exemplary job of getting through speeches, an auction, and the three-course meal in time for us to get to Centre in the Square for the show.
As for the food, I think everyone was happy with the salad appetizer and the dessert, which was a choice of carrot or chocolate truffle cake.
Le salade
For the entree, I overheard some complaints of it being cold or the meat tough. Maybe just luck of the draw, then, but Jean and I found our meals quite fine.
For the auction, it was interesting that bidding was fiercest for the items that were essentially donations: for sending a school to a concert or for the symphony’s music therapy program. Instead of just taking the largest bids, Patricia Ward Kelly suggested accepting all the highest bids as multiple donations. Good idea!
She herself was quite a good speaker, talking of her meeting with Gene Kelly, when she didn’t know who the heck he was, and how they fell in love, and she’s become the keeper of his legacy. She’s never remarried. She was also very gracious about the community and the symphony organization.
The final part of the evening was at Centre in the Square (taxi ride to and from included), where Singin’ in the Rain was played with a voice-only soundtrack, and the KW Symphony played all the music live. Ms. Kelly spoke briefly here as well, and one of the items she told us was that all the original scores were thrown out by the studio, and had to be re-created later, by ear.
Evan Mitchell came back from Kingston to do the conducting of this show, and he did an amazing job of keeping the symphony in sync with film being shown. All really seamless, except for occasionally hearing the musicians turn the pages!
Jean concluded he hadn’t ever seen the entire movie before. For me, it was certainly the first time I’d seen it on the big screen. It’s so good! And for once, it totally made sense to applaud in the middle and at the end of a movie.
Good Mornin’ from Singin’ in the Rain.— the only song Debbie Reynolds actually sang in this movie. Otherwise, her voice was dubbed. Ironically. (This is I learned only last night…)
After the performance there was another reception downstairs, in the fancy member’s lounge. While it was nice to be in that room again (and get more desserts!), it wasn’t a terribly entertaining event, so we didn’t stay too long. We ended up cabbing back to the Crown Plaza with the Assistant Conductor of the KW Symphony.
Singin’ in the Rain plays again tonight (without all the gala accoutrements).
Last weekend we went out for our “late for me, slightly early for him” birthday dinner. After much hemming and hawing, we decided to on Bhima’s Warung, a restaurant we hadn’t been to in a few years.
It was much busier than we remembered! We asked the waitress if that was unusual, but she was said no, it was typical—even on weekdays. It’s not that big a place; the couple seated next to us joked about how we were basically dining together, our tables were so close.
Bhima’s offers the cuisine of Asia prepared using French culinary techniques. Definitely makes for an original menu.
This day they were also offering a surprise six-course menu based on the foods of Sumatra, for $47. Partly just out of laziness, Jean decided to go with that. I was not obliged to join in with him on it, though, so I puttered through the menu, which was made even more complex by the addition of three special appetizers and entrees that day.
Since we don’t get to Bhima’s that often, I wanted a sampling of items. The waitress described my ordered amount as somewhat “challenging” in terms of quantity. But she did point out that most of their dishes taste even better reheated the next day.
We didn’t take notes, so there’s no going through everything we eat (which is probably a relief to you). I will say that everything was very good, marking an improvement over previous visits, where the food could be uneven.
And we do have some photos.
Oysters times two
Oyster are ordered by the piece, so we went with two from the regular menu, in warm lemongrass, ginger, chili, and garlic sauces, and two that were specials of the day: an oyster shooter in vodka.
Squid with ‘rujak’ salad
I also tried the regular menu sotong goreng sama rujak, or tapioca and garlic fried squid in roasted chili, lime, and hoisin glaze with ‘rujak’ salad. Very nice; great texture on the squid.
Shrimp and ?
One of Jean’s courses featured shrimp and… Stuff we can’t remember.
Another Jean menu item: This one was monkfish and lobster ball
My main involved rabbit done three ways (a special), and it did indeed make a fine leftover. 🙂 Dessert for me was a tapioca and ice cream concoction, while Jean’s menu concluded with ice cream made of something we’d never heard of and now can’t remember—but tasted very good—along with some sort of pastry or apple or something. (Look, it was a lot of food!)
Mystery ice cream with mystery other things
It’s not a fine dining experience, but the dining was still quite fine. We should notify Where to Eat in Canada that Bhima’s is once more worthy of inclusion.
We originally thought of taking a day trip this long weekend—maybe do some snowshoeing—but the record cold temperatures dissuaded us from that plan. Instead we found entertainment closer to home.
Friday night we had dinner with friends at Aqua, the new seafood restaurant in the not-so-new Crowne Plaza Hotel. The service was a little iff-y—bit inattentive—but the food was pretty good. We all went with the Valentine’s special menu. The highlights were the beet soup with smoked trout, the ravioli and beef entree Jean had, and the two desserts: A chocolate mousse cake and a cookie with ice cream concoction. We all concluded we’d eat here again, amidst that special chlorinated pool ambiance. 🙂
Afterward we all attended a symphony concert. It started with a modern piece that our friend accurately described as interesting, but not that musical. Then we got Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concert no. 2 in C minor. For me, this would be the number 3 Rachmaninoff piano concerto I have heard live, and he is three for three in my books. I always enjoy them. The second movement of this one sounds so much “All By Myself” that Eric Carmen still pays royalties to Rachmininoff’s estate. (True fact!) The third movement was lively and sensual. The featured pianist was an attractive and obviously talented young woman named Natasha Paremski.
The second half of the concert featured Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, which was also good though, for me, not as good as the piano concerto.
Saturday was actual Valentine’s Day, and we don’t generally go to restaurants then. But it being a holiday, I decided to make a nicer dinner.
I tried a new (to me) Jamie Oliver recipe for slow-cooked duck pasta. We weren’t able to buy the duck until that morning, and it was frozen, so the main challenge was getting it defrosted in time for dinner that day. That required a whole lot of rinsing.
Otherwise, the recipe wasn’t tough: Just required time. The duck cooked at 350 for 2 hours, in its juices, and I had to turn it every half hour. Then in a fry pan I sauteed some pancetta, then I added various vegetables and some can tomatoes and red wine to make a pasta sauce. After the duck cooled, we removed the meat from it, and added that to the sauce. Then it was a matter of cooking rigatoni and mixing it all together, topped with Parmesan.
Quite delish. We served it with a Chateauneuf du pape.
For dessert I made a chocolate mousse cake. No flour, just cocoa, unsweetened, and bittersweet chocolate with eggs and Cool Whip, basically. It was another new recipe (to me), and it turned out well—not too sweet, good texture.
But we weren’t done eating yet. 🙂
Sunday we braved the cold and drove to Wilk’s Bar, which is at Langdon Hall, for lunch. It isn’t a cheap place (though cheaper than the Langdon Hal dining room), but they do a nice job.
We had the “From the Land” sharing platter to start, along with four oysters. The oysters were amazing. The land platter was fine, but not outstanding. The highlight of that was probably the almonds!
Muskox stew with mushroom risotto in the background
Both of the lunch entrees were very good, though. I had the wild mushroom risotto and Jean had muskox stew. The glasses of wine were quite nice, also.
But no time (or room, really) for dessert, as we had tea dance tickets for 2:00. After a detour to the wrong location, we got to that event around 2:15. It was a fun time, and a chance to work off some of the food—especially dancing to “Jump, Jive, and Wail”! Wow, that’s a fast song. (Which is why the wailing after the jiving, I guess.)
And then, we dashed to a 4:20 showing of The Theory of Everything at the Princess. Pretty interesting movie about the relationship between Stephen Hawking and his first wife, Jane. Definitely shows the challenges of her having to cope with his increasingly serious illness. Though of course, as we know, he continued to do amazing physics work through it all.
Then we were ready to go back home and relax. Family Day was pretty quiet, and that suited us just fine. Especially as we got some news Sunday night that definitely had us thinking about family.
Our annual “weekend in Toronto in winter because Jean has a conference” wasn’t terribly eventful—we drove back before da big storm really hit—but it did provide some photographic opportunities.
We visited the very crowded, kind of expensive, but still pretty neat Ripley’s Aquarium.
The big draw seemed to be sharks swimming overhead.But there were other interesting critters, tooHello moray
We had some trouble getting dinner reservations Saturday due to (I assume) Winterlicious being on. But we managed to get in at Frank, at the AGO. Jean had their Winterlicious items while I ordered from the main menu.
This was the mussel appetizer.
I had a roasted squash salad. For mains, we each had a tuna entree, but prepared different ways—both good.
This was the Winterlicious entree.
For wine, we had a bottle of a Spanish white, an albarino, that was on special. Quite nice, and appeared to be low in alcohol.
For dessert, Jean’s had rum raisin crème brulée. Yum.
I had the Tres Leches Cake—not too shaby, either.
For January, the weather wasn’t too bad. It was partly sunny on Saturday, and not that cold, especially when not in the wind. So we did do some walking around, and Jean took some photos.
Toronto City HallSkating rink at Nathan Phillips SquareView from our hotel
Sunday we had some delicious dim sum (no photos), then visited the Douglas Coupland exhibit at the ROM. It was more to my taste than Jean’s. Therefore, you must now prepare for a precipitous decline in photo quality, because the following ones are mine.
If you look at the next image through the camera of your cell phone, they’ll look quite different than they do with the naked eye. It’s really weird. (And if you actually take the cell phone picture, you lose the effect.)
I don’t know what you do if you’re looking at this post on your cell phone.
The exhibit was very pop art-like. One set of paintings was of QR codes that bring up phrases like “Sworn to fun, loyal to none” and “I wait and I wait and I wait for God to appear”, that you can then text to your friends to confuse them. Another was a large installation of found objects, arranged to represent the four quadrants of the brain, and the cerebellum.
The following photos might help you judge how interested you might find all this. How many of these coloured squares do you want to read?
With Verses closed, we were at a bit of a loss as to what to do New Year’s Eve. We finally went with just a dinner at Marisol. And that was fine—food and service were good, as always—but it just wasn’t particularly special. Except for a salmon carpaccio starter and roast duck on duck confit main—both very good—it was just the regular menu.
But at least I got to wear a new dress.
Next year we might see if Haisai does anything for New Year’s. We did stop there on the drive up to Timmins, and meals there are always special!
The intriguing desserts at Haisai. (They tasted good, too.)
Yesterday the weather turned frightful with a winter storm, so it seemed a good day to do our new year’s cooking thing. We decided to return to some past fave items.
The starter was a tuna carpaccio with avocado quenelle, which we’d first made last year. This was the fastest, easiest item we prepared, but quite good, with its dressing of good olive oil and lime juice, And the Stratus 2010 white we had with it was complex and amazing.
The main course took the main amount of time to prepare: Duck confit and mashed potato ravioli with white truffle sauce (first attempted in 2009). You have to prepare the mashed potatoes, and chop up and heat all the duck meat, then combine all that and stuff it into about 60 sets of wonton noodles… Fortunately, it really does taste amazing in the end.
We served that with a roasted butternut squash salad with pears and stilton, which was a new recipe. We followed the recipe except for cutting the squash a little thinner than we were supposed to (that was an accident, saved by less cooking time), using mixed greens instead of escarole (what is escarole?), and using “speck”—double smoked bacon we’d acquired from Michael Stadtlander’s farm after visiting Haisai—instead of regular bacon. It was very tasty, even when we forgot the dressing!
And the GSM wine we selected stood up well to all the strong flavors.
Dessert was chocolate souffle (from 2010). This year we got smart and only baked the two we planned to eat this night, since souffle really doesn’t hold up well to being a leftover. We served that with a raspberry wine that was less sweet than expected, but still a classic pairing for chocolate.
And, I took the opportunity to wear another new dress. (I may have a dress problem.)
This might be a record number of Christmas posts in a row, but it is more than a one-day event for me (albeit not 12 days), starting with our Noël à deux in advanced of December 25. I’ve already mentioned the meal we had, but we also do a small gift exchange. Jean’s main gift from me was a new watch of a brand he admired, but he got some other little things, like a Chromecast and “life-changing” Saxx underwear (as the ads I now encounter everywhere I go on the web remind me).
My main gift was a record player, which many people thought was an interestingly retro choice of gifts. What I didn’t mention too loudly was that this is actually my second record player (we won’t even talk about how many DVD players I have). The main feature the new one has that the other didn’t is a USB connection to make it easy to digitize LPs. (Because some songs are rather difficult to find digital versions of.) But it also has a nice Start function, and is hooked into the better stereo system. I’ve already listened to more LPs in the last 2 days than I have in the last 2 years.
I received other little items, including a great deal of chocolate: Not one, not two, but three boxes of Purdy’s chocolates; a raspberry chocolate bar; and mini snowballs! I also happened to win a Godiva chocolate basket at a Christmas dance. So the chocolate stores are shored up for a while.
Then we headed to Timmins, where it was weirdly mild this year, but not so mild as to melt the snow:
We took advantage of the nice winter weather to go walking and snowshoeing, once on our own, once with toute la gang (almost).
Five of the fourteen of us who went snowshoeing one day
A day after a fresh snow fall, the kids couldn’t resist doing this:
Christmas Eve my side of the family had dinner and stockings at my brother’s house, then the two of us went out to the Réveillon with Jean’s side of the family. As usual, everyone was fasting:
A tiny sampler of the available food
There was a very good turnout, with only a few nieces and nephews away this year. The gift exchange from Jean’s side is an anonymous one on a theme, which this year was royal purple. I am now the proud recipient of two purple travel mugs. My lucky giftee now owns Prince’s Purple Rain on CD and BluRay.
With my family it was the first time in quite a few Christmas’s that all the siblings were up. We had a terrible time. 🙂
Two siblings and an in-law, as I don’t seem to have a photo of all siblings. Perhaps I’ll get one from Dad later.
We also attempted a theme this year, though it was only loosely adhered to: comfort and joy. Cozy scarves were a popular item.
Cashmere!S-S rockin’ the faux fur
As were books! I have, like, six new books now. Most everyone else got a least one, I think. I made my sister’s fit into the theme with the Pleasure in the title—pretty close to joy, right? (Plus, John Taylor—yummy! Joy!)
To add to my haul and increase the utility of my earlier gift, I dug through the LPs from our teenage years that had been languishing at my parent’s house, and brought home a bag-ful. Duran Duran, Aha, Prefab Sprout, Adam Ant, Depeche Mode, Talking Heads, The Housemartins, Paul Young, Squeeze, Echo and the Bunnymen, … I have quite the makings for an Eighties party.
“Our” Christmas dinner à deux featured duck, which is becoming typical. Less typically, I wasn’t too lazy to make a jus for it from the drippings, featuring rhubarb and ginger. That give a nice zip to the rich, juicy meat.
The mashed red potatoes were seasoned with sour cream, butter, chicken broth, and wasabi paste. They were also a little zippy — and quite delicious.
I’m generally not a fan of stuffing, which usually seems too salty and greasy to me. But this version (cooked on the side, not in the bird) had base of quinoa, lentil, wild rice, and cranberry, to which I added some olive oil, and crisped whole-grain bread. It was very tasty, without all the salt and grease.
Not pictured but also cooked and eaten were maple-glazed butternut squash. And dessert was a custard pie (tarte au oeuf), whose lovely filling made up for the center crust being moderately underdone. The crust at the edge was lovely flaky.
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