A Fine Weekend Indeed

This past weekend was quite pleasant. The weather cooperated in being nice and warm without actually being very hot and I managed to get a lot done.

The ongoing trucker strike is keeping a lot of the containers at the Port of Vancouver idle including some of the produce imported by the local grocery chains; what is in the stores looks a little tired. Fortunately, on Saturday morning we got to the farmer’s market at Trout Lake and stocked up on lots of fresh fruit and vegetables for this week.

Saturday evening, we managed to get out for the evening and enjoy the Illuminares at Trout Lake. My daughter was particularly captivated by the fire weaver show, shrieking with delight and clapping with glee. It was way past her bedtime by no way she was going to be missing any of the fun! Public Dreams is a group that promotes and puts on public spectacles. They have been very successful with their events at Trout Lake and it seems to be getting larger every year.

Sunday was a good day for getting things done. I slept in, despite good intentions of getting up early, but went for my bicycle ride around Stanley Park along the seawall and back and had a nice late brunch of croissants, generously dosed with the Straßbourg terrine from Oyama on Granville Island. I then went out to Magnet Hardware on Commercial Drive. This is an independently owned Home Hardware, and the staff there is fabulous! They know their stock, and if you go in and say, “I need a ___”, they will take you to the right spot in the store and show you their selection. Anyways, I finally spent the money on a turkey deep fryer! For $139, I got the complete kit with outdoor burner, 30qt pot with insert, turkey stand, and the all-important deep-frying thermometer. I’m not sure exactly when I’ll do a turkey, but in the interim I have a lot of veal bones and chicken parts waiting to be turned into stock, and when I do canning later this summer, there’s no reason I can’t do it outside.

After the shopping trip, S and I went to La Casa di Gelato over on Venables. They boast over 168 flavours of gelato – everything from vanilla to pear & Gorgonzola and back again. My favourite flavour of ice cream has always been pistachio, and they make a nice one here. I also like many of their other flavours, including the aforementioned pear & Gorgonzola, basil Pernod, and, yes, dill pickle! Of course, these novelty flavours are best as samples – I’ve never had an entire scoop of them.

I managed to clean out the garage and get all the recycling down to the depot and most importantly get our lawn furniture! My reward was I spent part of the afternoon sitting outside under my pear tree, reading my latest issue of Gastronomica, listening to the birds at the feeder, enjoying the shade and drinking wine spritzers; when you make your own wine, making spritzers out of it is a fine thing to do on a hot day indeed.

Tonight, we’re hosting a barbecue for H&M and our good friend T who’s visiting from Montreal with her beau; we haven’t seen T since she moved to McGill to take up a professorship, almost two years! It will be nice to see her again and to meet V, of whom we have heard many nice things.