Tag: Food and drink

Posted on in Food and drink, travel

Here’s to Happy Hour!

Is there any happier time of the day than happy hour?

It’s the perfect excuse to stop what you’re doing, especially if you’re working, take a load off, enjoy some cheap food you don’t have to make yourself, glug back some cheap drinks, and catch up with new or old friends.

On our recent trip to the Maritimes to pick up Clare from school, it was pouring rain on our final day in St. Andrew’s by the Sea. After seeing the sights through windshield wipers on high speed, and dodging puddles and downpours as we browsed the local shops, we dried off at the beautiful historic Kennedy House Inn where we were staying and popped downstairs for their happy hour from 3-5 for half-price wings and pitchers of beer.

As we played darts and watched the ball game on the big screen TV in their bar, we started chatting with the “locals”, most of whom had moved to this picturesque seaside town from Ontario in the past few years. It was the perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon.

“Happy hour” was born in the late 19th century, when social clubs in North America started planning activities in the late afternoon, such as dancing, quilting, games and lectures. They actually included the name “Happy Hour Club” in their titles.

In 1913, the US Navy adopted the idea of happy hour when a group of sailors who called themselves the Happy Hour Social started hosting twice weekly events aboard the USS Arkansas. The navy prohibited alcohol on ships, so the focus of the hour was on entertainment like boxing bouts, movies, and music.

It wasn’t until the prohibition years, the 1920s and 1930s when young people flocked to speakeasies to eat and drink at all hours of the day that alcohol figured prominently in happy hour.

Restaurants and bars quickly realized they could lure patrons in earlier in the day by offering discounted food and drinks before the busy dinner rush and the modern version of the happy hour was born.

In a cruel, cruel joke, I had just turned drinking age when the Ontario government decided to ban happy hour in 1984, claiming it promoted drinking and driving. The government relaxed its rules in 2019 and happy hour happily has made a comeback in the past five years. Now just about every bar or restaurant offers some kind of happy hour specials.

What’s your favourite spot for happy hour? Leave a comment and share the happy!

Posted on in Food and drink, Hobbies

Hail to the mason jar

Grapes and beans in mason jars

Ever since I can remember, my chosen vessel of choice has been the humble mason jar.

My love affair with mason jars began in my university days, when my girlfriend Caralee and I would drive up each weekend to Kitchener Waterloo to stay at the Weber Hotel, the name we gave to the party central townhouse a bunch of our guy friends lived in going to Laurier and Waterloo.

When we arrived, the entire kitchen counter would be covered with dirty mason jars. It became a Friday night ritual to wash the jars and the rest of the dishes in preparation for the weekend party festivities.

It’s been a long time since my university party days, but my vessel of choice is still a mason jar.

The mason jar was invented in 1858 by a New Jersey-born tinsmith named John Landis Mason who was searching for a way to improve the relatively new practice of home canning. In the early days of canning, jars were soppered with wax and corks which was messy and didn’t have a tight seal. The revolutionary screw top lid of the mason jar created the perfect seal, keeping food fresh.

Mason jars are cheap, practically indestructible, and can be used for just about anything. Some of my friends they are the best way to keep berries and vegetables fresh. They’re also eco-friendly because you use them again, and again, and again.

Here are some things you can do with mason jars:

  • Store buttons, pushpins, and paper clips in them
  • Use them for crafts like candles and birdfeeders. See this website for ideas
  • Throw all your loose change in them
  • Fill them with ingredients for soup for a lovely homemade gift
  • Make rainy day (or retirement!) jars and put ideas in them for family trips and outings

And that’s just the beginning. The website Cotton Creations lists 60 different uses for mason jars.

It’s canning season. This week’s #HappyAct is to pay homage to the humble mason jar. Cheers!

Pink lemonade in a mason jar
Berries and grapes in mason jars

Ed. note: One of my Facebook friends posted the two photos above of the items she keeps in her mason jars in the fridge. I had downloaded the photos but can’t remember who posted them now, so whoever you are, I hope you don’t mind me sharing the photos and thanks for sharing your love of mason jars!

Posted on in community

Harvest the grape

Me in the vineyard

Yesterday, my friend Annie from Montreal and I spent the most amazing day picking grapes as part of a community harvest at Scheuermann Vineyard in Westport.

The owners Allison and Francois couldn’t have picked a more perfect day. As the first rays of the sun crested the hills over the rows of their picturesque vineyard, carload after carload arrived to help with the harvest.

Overlooking the vineyard

We first rolled up black netting that had been protecting the vines from birds, clipping it to the metal wires so snow wouldn’t build up in the months ahead. Then it was time to start the harvest.

The French have a word for harvesting grapes: la vendage. It has such a wonderful sound to it, and rolls off the tongue as sweetly as the delicious juice of the grapes we snipped from vines.

Dog in vineyard

 

We picked Vidal, a beautiful, light green grape. When picking grapes, you work in pairs facing each other through the vines. The buddy system ensures that no grapes are missed and left on the vine. The term picking grapes isn’t quite accurate either. You snip the stems from the vines.

Harvesting grapes can be back breaking work so each person sits on a stool. You “pick” with your partner, placing the large bunches of grapes in bins, working down the rows from post to post.

Woman with stool
The owners Mom, Francine won the prize for most innovative stool–tied to her bum!

The fruit was magnificent, large green bunches hanging off the vines—Francois later told us it was one of their best years yet.

bin of grapes

The day was spectacular. We took a short break to drink coffee from mason jars and have some homemade cookies, then it was back to the vines. By early afternoon, as our mouths were starting to get parched, they delivered cold beer and homemade pizza to us in the fields.

Pickers leaving the field
Francois’ son photo bombed this picture of us leaving the fields at end of the day

We worked hard, but it was so worth it. By 4:15 all the Vidal had been picked. It was time to celebrate.

We ran into our friends Tim and Susie and had a great day and dinner with them

Our gracious hosts uncorked Vidal and Cabernet Franc, which we sipped in big Adirondack chairs overlooking Wolfe Lake. Then dinner was served, a delicious harvest meal of garlic potatoes, cauliflower, roasted carrots and beef, topped off with the piece de resistance, homemade apple pie and pumpkin bread pudding with caramel sauce that bubbled on the pot in front of the open fire.

Destemming machine
Scraping all the stems away from the destemming machine

We dined al fresco as Francois and his hard working crew poured container after container of grapes into the destemmer (which removes the stems), then into the press to extract the juice.

Bins of grapes being emptied into pressers
Emptying the grapes into the presser

We picked 10 tons of grapes, about enough to make 10,000 bottles of wine. I was in heaven.

Bottle of wine

This week’s #HappyAct is to join a community harvest. Vive la vendage. And special thanks to my camera shy amie Annie for making the trip and being my picking partner for the day. Same time next year–a la prochaine!

Posted on in Food and drink, Uncategorized

Take the one thing different challenge

Funny meme

I was wandering around the grocery store the other day, filling up my cart with the same old items I buy every week.

As I unpacked the grocery bags, I realized I hadn’t bought one thing different. It made me sad.

You see, the problem is I’m a creature of habit. I come by it honestly from my Dad.

You could almost set your watch by my Dad. He’d walk the dog at the same time every day, go to McDonald’s for his daily coffee at the same time every day, read the papers, watch the ball game and have his supper at the same time every day. He even did his grocery shopping on Saturdays in retirement despite it being the busiest day of the week because that was his routine.

Dave says I’m getting more like my Dad every day, and yes, I’ll admit, I have my little routines, but I’ve decided to change it up a bit at least in the culinary realm. I am challenging myself to make one thing different at least once a week.

So last night, I made a delicious sweet and sour chicken dish I never made before called The Thigh’s the Limit from one of my favourite cookbooks, Looneyspoons. It got five stars from the fam.

This week’s #HappyAct is to join me in taking the “one thing different” challenge and mix it up in the kitchen. See my blog post “Spice it up” for more culinary inspiration.