I dragged my sorry cold/flu/whatever ridden a$$ home this evening to be cheered up by the arrival of our Green Box! Yahoooooo….
Oct 30 2009
Green Box!
Oct 29 2009
Gah! Can I get an extension?
Given that I’m down for the count with a bad cough and cold this week, I wonder if I could get a reprieve on the last week of the 40 days of 40? Can’t it be next week?!?!
Oct 25 2009
Days 27-33: Opps.
I haven’t posted a 40 Days of 40 update in a week. The early part of the week was admittedly uneventful. I was tired — exhausted really, feeling a cold coming on, and eventually just took to my bed and slept all day on Day 29. That worked, because the next day I felt normal again.
This led to Day 31 when I saw the movie The Invention of Lying. I was convinced it might be good when a number of online comments about the movie went along the lines of, “I can’t believe that the Religious Right isn’t picketing this movie!” It was a really good movie. See it!
Day 32 and 33 are winter preparation days… B needed clothes, halloween costume, and boots. The garden needed trimming and taking down (finally got a break in the crap weather on Day 33 and got that done!).
On Day 32, I also attended a wedding reception/party/celebration in the evening. It was really very nice. We had a good time and discovered a nice place to book for a good stand-up cocktail party — The Armada Lounge, upstairs from The Brig in The Byward Market.
The 40 Days of 40 are winding down; QUICK, must pack more fun stuff into this last week!!!!
Oct 18 2009
Day 26: Splish Splash
I swam lengths at the Plant Bath today. That’s probably not fun for a lot of people, but it’s my favourite sport & honestly I love that pool. It’s not quite my favourite pool ever (Hart House in TO still has that distinction), but this one is a pretty great facility with attentive guards who actually watch the swimming public and it’s well located.
I haven’t been regularly swimming lengths in a number of years ever since I started having some back troubles. So, it was a joy to be in the water and doing lengths again after so long. My back is in pretty good shape nowadays, so def. time to get back in the pool.
Oct 17 2009
Day 25: So Good …Thai Basil Pesto
Today’s highlights were dinner at So Good, where I had a Hong Kong Tea (hot) and Curried Veggies and Noodle soup (YUM!). Peter makes the best Chinese food in Ottawa & serves it up with unparalleled flare and enthusiasm. Quality always good and very high. Of course, I love the South East Asian Chinese dishes.
And then making A Thai Basil Pesto (See the recipe ‘Another Pesto Recipe’ in this link). I was particularly excited about this because most of the discussions and recipes online for Thai Basil Pesto are for fresh pestos which you can’t keep and which I’d be allergic to (fish sauce, shrimp paste, and/or anchovy paste)… and almost all discussion suggests that parmasean would be yucky… however, then I found this recipe and it just squashed all that fear. It’s yum! And I think I can use it to make salad rolls as well as pasta dishes.
yay!
Oh… and to top it off I turned the rest of my herb garden into herb vinegar, as I do every fall.
Oct 17 2009
Day 21-24 : Blue Monday
Well, going back to work this week was a bit of a shock. It’s a busy time of year to be taking a holiday, but it was well worth it. Still, I was so busy and tired all week that really nothing 40 days of 40ish happened.
However, on Friday evening I partook in a fancy Blue Monday Cocktail at The Metropolitan. Hence the name of this post. 
Oct 12 2009
Day 20: Apple Pie
It’s Thanksgiving in Canada today and it’s also the halfway point for the 40 Days of 40. Tomorrow I go back to work after a holiday, so it’s been busy organising and doing laundry. I also took a bike ride by the river and … made an apple pie.
This was my first attempt at an apple pie and as I know some serious pie makers I was rather nervous. Unlike the Soufflé, I hadn’t grown up watching my mother make pie. Tarts, yes… pies, not so much.
I used the remaining heirloom apples from Scott Farm, including several Colville blanc d’hiver apples, which were Julia Child’s favourite cooking apple. Not sure why, tbh, since peeling them is a bit tedious due to the the ridges on them. I guess it’s the flavour, which is very distinct — sweet, flowery/rosy, and yet a bit tart, too.
It was quite good, although I definitely need some advice from the pros on how to roll the dough out and how to transfer it successfully.
Oct 12 2009
Day 19: Getting Ready
It’s time to start getting ready to go back to work and to settle back in after the Vermont adventure. Today after sleeping in, I went shopping for food so we wouldn’t starve, started organising, and made a yummy mixed berry crumble.
Being a long weekend, there was no one around to hang out with so in the evening I watched some crazy TV shows and started uploading my photos from Vermont.
Today was not very “40 days” like at all!
Oct 12 2009
Day 18: Sleep, Music, and Movies
So, after our long journey back, we fell into bed and stayed there pretty much until 2pmish on Day 18. As there was no food in the house, and as it was an O’Connell’s open mic on Sat. afternoons around 3pm, we got up, got dressed and went to O’Connell’s. I had a grilled cheese (mmm… not like the one I had in Naulakha, but good) and the Beau played while I read the paper and sang along.
Then we went to see the Movie, The Informant… which could have been really powerful but somehow wasn’t Matt Damon’s best work. And the 1970s Retro theme didn’t work at all with the actual year(s) that the film took place in. Oh Well.
Oct 11 2009
Days 11-17: Naulakha
The word ‘Naulakha’ means “Jewel without price”. Having spent a week at Rudyard Kipling’s aptly named house in Vermont, Naulakha,, I can atest to the fact that there is a priceless jewel in Vermont (even though it’s owner wrote some of the most reprehensible colonial writing from Kim to White Man’s Burden…) . This beautiful spot just outside of Brattleboro in Dummerston, VT was the site of days 11-17 of the 40 days of 40. It’s a short (?) 6.5 hour drive from Ottawa and well worth the price and the scenery. The fall leaves were in full glory. The hiking was great. The apples from Scott Farm were just off the tree. And yes, I recognised a few shots of the farm used in the film The Cider House Rules. The ice cream was abundant and beautiful — not to mention made out of interesting things like Hemp Milk and Coconut Milk (Coconut Bliss!).
On the way back we stopped in the town of Woodstock — we checked out the main drag there particularly the ice cream at the Mountain Creamery and the soap at Thistle Bath and Body and just outside of town stopped in at the Long Trail Brewery before taking backroads (Rte. 4 and 100) to Waterbury and the home of Ben and Jerry’s for a quick tour before heading for the border. It was raining and late by the time we hit B&J’s so I am not sure I would have been so off put by the corporate sales job if I had been there earlier in the day. Due to rain and impending darkness, we missed the graveyard. A late good, though thoroughly devoid of spice, Indian dinner in Montréal capped off the week. Then I slept until we rolled into Ottawa in the wee hours of the morning.
Elvis Does the Molly Stark Trail.
Scott Farm
Naulakha
Hiking
Playing Pool
Click here for my complete photo set
And
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