A quiet week

October 26

A quiet week on the physical front, no biking, no hiking, no woodchopping, weather wise we did see our first snow flakes early in the week and now the temperatures are back up close to 20 degrees with tornado watches in Southern Ontario, a prefer this warmer weather but really don’t care for the temperature swings, it makes the cold days seem even colder. 

A pleasant surprise this weekend I meet up with Ed, a fellow TdC rider and partner on the road as we eat and rode our way across the country, we both showed up at the “ Tour du Canada 2010 review meeting “, it was quite interesting how much planing goes into these rides. 

Photo courtesy of Ed as he brought his camera and I didn't 

On friday a letter arrived from the “ Ministry of the Attorney General “, never got one of those before , I thought " this just can't be good news" , what had I done ??? , I decided not to open it so as to not spoil the weekend !! ( it had me a little worried ) Yesterday I opened it and found out that I’ve been put on the Jury list !!!, the letter was a questioner to see if I qualify ( just gave me 5 days to fill and send back ) . I wouldn't mind being a juror but I don’t think it will be possible as I’m the only employee here and I already took the summer off !!, but we shall see how this progresses and I’ll keep you informed.

So for lack of some nice scenery pictures I’ll share my cooking experience from this past weekend, we had Bev and Dave over for dinner on Saturday and I spent a a long time searching for something interesting to cook, finally I found this recipe online it sounded tasty , so as I'm an adventurous cook I gave it a try , here it is:

  

Sausage-Stuffed Rack of Pork with Sage

It called for:

1 (6-pound) bone-in pork loin roast

1 cup plus 1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil, divided

4 large sage sprigs

1 pound Italian sausage ( about 6 ) casings discarded

6 scallions ( green onion ) , chopped ( 1 cup )

2 celery ribs, chopped ( 1cup )

20 brine-cured black olives

1 ( 750-ml ) bottle white Orvieto Classico

 kitchen string

Preheat oven to 500°F with rack in middle.

Partially cut roast away from bones to create a "flap" (for stuffing, allowing meat to be returned to bone). Rub pork inside and out with 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper, then rub outside with 1 teaspoon oil. Put sage, then sausages and scallions, inside flap and tie roast with string.

Put roast, bone side down, in a large roasting pan with celery and olives, then pour in wine and remaining cup oil. Roast 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 325°F and roast, basting meat every 30 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted into center of meat (do not touch bone) registers 155°F, about 1&1/2 - 2 hours more. Let stand 15 minutes. Serve with pan juices.

So yes a whole bottle of wine went in !!! , I have never done that before,  well it was almost a whole bottle as I tasted it before poring it in and it was good stuff !!. 

I just couldn't bring myself to use a whole cup of oil so I just use 3/4 instead and probably could have used less, and I used fresh sage laves ( layered on the bone side and put the stuffing on top) instead of sprigs as I thought that might have been to much also. 

I also added portabella mushrooms, garlic and carrots around the roast to ad flavor to the gravy we made.

It turned out excellent !!! and I definitely will make it again, but next time I think I’ll put some of the olives in the stuffing and probably add red peppers, garlic and some of the celery also.

The ingredients, well most of them.

Stuffing the pork 

Stuffed, tied, seasoned and ready to go in the oven

Of course I forgot to take a picture of the roast when it came out of the oven ( it looked beautiful !!!) , what with entertaining the guests and drinking a beer or two picture taking was totally forgotten, so this is a consolation picture taken of a left over chop we had for dinner on Monday and amazingly it tasted even better then on saturday !!!!

Long week , tiring week !!

October 16

Thanksgiving last weekend, and the usual turkey dinner was cooked ( a 20 pounder !!! ), mash potatoes, turnip, baked carrots in a bag courtesy of Lisa and cooked on the BBQ, and of course stuffing, all followed by apple pie and pumpkin pecan cake, way too much food and not enough eaters. 

The rest of the week was spent working off the dinner by stacking wood , two cords is a lot of wood, it took me two evenings to get it all in !!! and then I spent another evening cutting and moving Pat’s tree up here from it’s summer drying place in the valley up to the garage to be split and stored hopefully tomorrow. Needless to say I have a sore body !!!

This is a rather sad week for us as it marks one year since the passing of Mom. A lot I could say but it’s all summed up in the saying

“you never really know how much you love someone until they are gone” 

  

She was a lovely lady and we miss her !!.

Today we were going to head up to Bala for the Cranberry festival , but of course horses got in the way again ( this time with Evelyn’s horses ), so Bala will have to wait till next year. 

Instead we went for a pleasant drive up to Lake Simcoe and weaved our way through the countryside on the way down ending up at the York Regional Forest at the corner of McCowan and St Johns were we went for a very nice hike with the dogs. 

The fall colours are not as vibrant as last week, a lot of the leaves are off the trees blanketing the ground making for a nice crunchy walk . We spent an hour and a half walking the trails ( almost got lost walking into the archery range )  The dogs loved it, and met many other pooches out for a Sunday walk, we even came across riders on horseback. A enjoyable experience which we will have to do more of !!!

Autumn colours

A beautiful fall day today, not to cold , not to hot , I was going to go for a bike ride but between the cold and allergies my lungs are still not 100%, so I decided to take the dogs and and go for a walk in the forest down in the valley. It’s one of my favorite places here on the farm and this time of the year even more so.

The colours are spectacular, but I'm about three days too late as they were more vibrant earlier in the week.

This is Magic one of our barn cats , she likes to follow me on my walks.

Brinks and Montana my companions, they love the sound they make running through the fallen leaves !!

Such a peaceful and serene place the forest this time of the year, leaves gently raining down creating a carpet of colour on the ground. And no mosquitos so one can linger and enjoy it !!!

Brink making sure I was still following

About ten years ago or more i created a trail through this part of the forest, lately it has fallen into disrepair with fallen trees blocking part of it so we hardly ever use it, but the deer and coyotes still do!!

Montana the great white hunter, no mater how much we tell her not to chase squirrels, chipmunks and wild turkeys she persists that it's her job and is on the scent of prey all the time .

Looking up, way up!

Ok, this one is not from down in the forest, it's up by the house but it's a typical fall picture.

Hockey is back !

And so on a warm fall evening a new hockey season has started , “next year” is here and we shall see if this is our year, I know a Stanley Cup is pushing it but making the playoffs would be a refreshing change !! 

At least it started good 3 -2 against Montreal with some good goaltending at the end !!! I only watched part of the last period ( out grocery shopping for thanksgiving ) and it looked good, some good back checking , good shots , and some hustle, a lot of which has been missing the last few years. 

Finally we have a captain, “Dion Phaneuf” that too has been a long time in coming, so together with a few new faces and some old familiar ones ,( I’m glad Kaberle is still with us ) we have our team to cheer on and dream of that elusive cup !! , something to keep us entertained during our long cold winter. 

So I’m back on the bandwagon ( for now ),GO LEAFS GO !!!!!

If pigs could talk.

October 5

For a change I was out driving this last Monday, a friends father had passed away and I was on my way to the funeral. So I turned on the local all news channel to hear the traffic updates as I had a ways to go, and what caught my attention was this traffic reporter doing a so called interview with a pig on the side of the highway, asking all kinds of silly questions like “does your mother knew you are out here ?” and others like that, which one could say would be funny except for the circumstances . Earlier that morning a tractor trailer had flipped over with 200 pigs onboard and some 50 of them had gotten out of the truck somehow. What bothered me was that this reporter had no care at all about what condition the pigs were in, if they were hurt or not , scared or not , no he only found a humorous side to it, somehow I would think that having 200 pigs hurling around the back of a tractor trailer as it flips would have caused some injuries at the very least, but I was left to wonder as he kept joking on about there presence on the road. Rather sad I think , a sad comment on our media and a sad comment on the listeners, as for sure if we were not to listen they would not be broadcasting ! ( they blame us saying this is what the public wants to hear and we blame them for putting out this garbage we listen to ) 

If that pig could have talked instead of grunting I’m sure that reported would have gotten an earful and I’m quite sure that none of it would have been funny !!!!

At the very least animals have some basic emotions like we do, ( this is a controversial subject) I’m not trying to say they share all the emotions we have but they do feel the pleasure of being alive just as we do. It’s not always there but when it is you know it, when you see a cat on its back rolling on the driveway in the heat of the sun, when you see geese doing aerobatics as they come in for a landing tilting left and right and even flying upside down,  when you see ducks bathing in a pond going wild with the flapping and deking and diving, when you see young calfs bucking and kicking with there tails up running around there elders in the morning sun , that is just sheer pleasure of being alive !! 

If we can share this feeling, this pleasure of being alive with them, we at least owe them some respect as we take there lives away from them. I won’t argue against the need to eat meat, we are not the only carnivores on the planet and I’m no vegetarian myself, but somehow this act of taking a life for substance needs to be acknowledged, some respect needs to be shown, we easily just ignore the whole thing , it’s just a package we buy off a supermarket counter , were it came from and how it got there , well we just don’t care , and we should ! 

So this Thanksgiving while we are sitting around the table about to enjoy our turkey, pig, lamb or beef , perhaps we should take a second or two and “Thank” them for “giving” there lives so that we can enjoy ours.

These guys were not involved in the accident , I came across them this summer quietly enjoying a snooze in the mid day heat on the side of the path as I cycled from Victoria to Vancouver 

Sick as a dog

 October 3rd 

No cycling this week as I’ve come down with one of the worst flu/cold ( not sure which ) that I’ve had in a long time, started with a raspy throat early in the week and by Thursday I was sick, Friday and Saturday were hell as I must have been running a fever  and to make maters worse I had no one to cover for my day off so had to drag myself to the barn on Saturday and look after the horses. 

I’m better today and thats mainly because Evelyn has me full of drugs !!!, at least I was able to put in a full day of work. 

Fall is here in full swing and I need to get out with some good light and take pictures before the colours are all gone, I just snapped a quick one today .

Big frost warning for tonight, not the first of the year but definitely  a killer one so it’s bye bye to the flowers and the garden. Here’s a picture of a cucumber gone wild, it has to be about 3 feet long !!!, I should enter it in the Royal Winter Fair !!!. It’s from a plant that Max started in the spring at home and eventually got transplanted to our garden , it growing up the trestle was not intentional.

And with the cold the wood arrived also , a bit late this year as I was away, that pile is  two bush cords, and I have about one bush cord down in the valley from the maple tree taken down at Pats house  I just have to split it and bring it up before winter sets in !!!!

So four weeks have gone by since the end of the big trip, I still find myself trying to adjust to normal life, to fit in. On the road there was purpose, pride, satisfaction, achievements, and I miss all of that. So I’m just going to have to kick myself in the ass and get motivated !!! ( once I’m better )   


Deb, like to here more about your kayaking trip sounds like lots of fun !!!