Food and Friends

This fall has been much milder than last year. In fact, one year and one week ago, Freda and I saw a deer laying at the edge of the water on the other side of the lake, being 'guarded' by two bush wolves. We walked around the lake with the dogs to scare off the bush wolves and give the deer a chance to escape. Unfortunately, the deer had broken one of his front legs when he broke through the ice while crossing the lake, and was probably exhausted from swimming across the ice encrusted lake. Click to read the full blog entry: The saga of the young deer.

One year and one week ago was also memorable for another reason - that was the day that Freda fell through the ice and was rescued thanks to the efforts of our neighbours Emma, and her mom Colleen. Also, Emma and Colleen would not have been around to help Freda if it wasn't for Maddy visiting at our next door neighbours. We were too traumatized to think straight last year, but we needed to say a special thank you to our neighbours for helping Freda. So I decided to make a special meal and invite them over.

This is what we had on Saturday (after the Christmas parade in Carleton Place).

This was the appetizer - baked brie. It looked yummy and it was very yummy!! I served it with Triscuit crackers, which was a nice accompaniment. This was the first time I had done anything with phyllo pastry, or made this dish before, so I was very happy that it turned out.

I guess I got busy with things and forgot to take photos of the other dishes. The other dishes were maple glazed baked butternut squash, roast beef (sirloin tip), and spinach and tomato salad. For dessert, I made a four minute chocolate mousse which was so very delicious! I garnished the mousse with some grated milk chocolate and it was pretty as well. Yum!!

Actually, making the "four minute" mousse took me about two hours - but that includes the measuring and the cleanup :). Obviously the "four minute" part of the title must exclude the measuring and cleanup. It took me so long because I kept messing up the meringue. The first time I put the sugar in the meringue before I started whipping the egg whites and of course it wouldn't make stiff peaks. The second time, I crunched up the sugar too much in the coffee grinder (I cleaned it out thoroughly first) so the meringue was just kind of gloppy. I was crunching up the sugar because I couldn't find caster sugar in any of our regular grocery stores. The third time I was lucky and it worked out.

But what to do with the extra meringue? I thought of the Pecan Sandies I had made before. So I grabbed some pecans, chopped them up a bit, mixed them into the egg whites and plopped them on a tray into the oven. Except for making them too big, they were perfect and were super delicious!

This is Freda with our heroes, from left: Emma, Maddy, Freda, Colleen. Thank you very much!!! And thank you also to Steve who didn't mind that a soaking wet person was sitting on the seat of his new truck when he had only had it for two days!!

New deck is finally finished

This is the new deck that is finally finished. It took me over 2 months to do it, and I should have been able to do it in a weekend, but was unable to do so because of constant headaches. In front of the deck we were going to put a step down, but we discovered -- thanks to all the heavy rains that we have received this "summer" -- that the water pools in this area. So instead of a step, we built up the area in front of the deck with sand and Freda put down some flagstone, and then sloped the extra dirt to blend the new, higher area into the lawn. We hope this will help the water run off and no longer pool in this area.

By the way, the black recycled rubber square tiles aren't going to stay on the dirt, they are only there temporarily to keep Tawny off the dirt and she loves laying and rolling in sand and dirt. We are going to get a few strips of sod to put on top of the dirt, so we don't have to deal with Tawny laying on and rolling in the dirt, especially after she's been swimming.


This angle shows the vertical wood fence boards that follow the level of the rock across the deck.


Taz is getting a bit agitated as he doesn't like getting his photo taken. Tawny, on the other hand, absolutely loves laying in dirt and sand, as you know already...


Freda's brother Mike was visiting for about 10 days, and has now returned home. The dogs wouldn't behave for a group shot - this is not for lack of trying!

Pickerel River

Paradise, just outside Sudbury.

Doggy playtime

All these photos were taken on Feb 19th.


Believe it or not, it was rare to be able to get all four dogs in one photo.


Labs are a really special breed of dog. Beautiful, intelligent, trainable, hard-working, hard-playing, food-loving, lovable doorknobs. As you might have guessed, Tawny and Toffee have their eye on a treat.


Here are Tawny and Toffee playing fetch. Toffee didn't quite get the concept. She thought it was more fun to play keep-away with Taz, and she was quite good at it too!


Here Freda is having a moment with Tawny and Toffee.


Toffee loves sticks too, just like Tawny. (go figure)


And this is an excellent action shot of Toffee playing keep-away with Taz. Tawny is on her way to pick up the branch in the background.

Snowstorm

Freda took the dogs out after work in a snowstorm, as you can see.

Walking the dogs

I was walking Tawny and Taz in the morning (Jan 6th) and Taz noticed something in the trees and starting whimpering when he gets all excited. I couldn't see anything, but I could see some branches moving a bit. I figured it was a squirrel but wanted to check it out.


Here's a close-up of the trees with the squirrel. I circled it so you can see it for yourself. They really blend in but Taz has the amazing senses - eyes, ears, nose - to be able to pick them out from quite a distance.


January 6th was a beautiful but cold day, but that doesn't stop Tawny from wanting to play. We have to make sure that Taz has a "bone" (rawhide roll) or another toy to keep him occupied because otherwise he will steal the toy right from Tawny's mouth. She is a happy dog that is willing to share so she gives it up to him. Silly girl!

It had been cold for quite a time so we hadn't been down to see the horses. As it wasn't so cold this day, we walked down to see Cooper (horse on the right) and his stable mate (don't know his name) and brought them some nice juice carrots. We bought a bag of carrots for their Christmas present but hadn't been able to share it with them because of the cold.

We had snow forecast for tomorrow so I took this photo of Tawny and Taz to document how little snow we really have, which is really just a light dusting...