A Bavarian breakfast in Prince Rupert

This weekend Jeremi's ship was in Prince Rupert for a port visit in the middle of their two weeks of "Sovereignty Patrol". This is when they go up and down the coast and prove that we're a country looking after it's own borders, or something like that. Anyhow, I decided that it would be fun if I flew in for the weekend to visit him there. (He's got a woman in every port but it's always the same one.)

While we did get a chance to visit the waterfront, some shops, a couple restaurants, and a bar, the only pictures we took were at the hostel in which we stayed. It was called the Black Rooster Roadhouse, and was a fabulous place. It looked like it had been recently refinished and refurnished, and our room was great, with a full private bathroom and cable TV. Not bad for a hostel! And, being a hostel, there was a full kitchen, conveniently located next to our bedroom.

One of our favourite things to do on weekend mornings is to cook up a "Bavarian breakfast", first introduced to me by a German roommate I had in Montreal. It involves big bready pretzels, weisswurter (white pork sausage), and weissbier (German wheat beer), all served with Bavarian sweet mustard. Now starting the day with a beer or two might not make for the most productive weekend, but if your plan involves sitting on the couch and doing a crossword puzzle, it's not a bad plan.

Anyhow, we tried to have this breakfast last weekend when Jeremi was home, but it didn't work out so well. Usually I make the dough, but I was rather ill still with the flu so he was making it and letting me sleep. Unfortunately it didn't come out quite right, and was actually beyond repair. We were going to start again on a second batch but he'd used the last of the yeast on the first batch. Running out to the grocery store sort of defeats the purpose of having beer and sausages for breakfast, so we nixed the Bavarian breakfast for that weekend.

Anyhow, since I knew there was going to be a kitchen where we were, I decided to bring the breakfast to Prince Rupert. So I brought along a couple of beers wrapped in clothes, a batch of frozen dough, made up the night before, a package of sausages (also frozen the night before), some coarse salt and a bit of flour knotted into a plastic bag, a single egg (for brushing the tops of the pretzels), a pastry brush, and a silicon baking sheet for easy cleanup without having to bring something to grease the sheet. And of course this was all in my carry-on luggage, which, needless to say, they searched at the airport after seeing odd things on the x-ray. I realized at the last moment that we didn't have the right mustard in the house so I had to make do with a take-out container of honey mustard dipping sauce from a restaurant at the airport in Vancouver.

So we did manage to make our Bavarian breakfast in Prince Rupert. Unfortunately the other part of our plan, doing the crossword in the Saturday Globe and Mail, rather fell apart. It seems that the Saturday Globe doesn't actually make it to Prince Rupert until Sunday. This didn't enter into our calculations. Nor did the fact that this morning when I had to catch the bus to the ferry at 8:25 that it would be before sunrise.

One final bit about the trip to Prince Rupert - the airport there is on an island, Digby Island, and there's a ferry which brings loads of passengers from side to side, and a bus that picks up everyone from the airport and brings them across on the ferry and right to downtown. The bus is the only way to get there - you can't go meet people at the airport there, you meet them at the drop-off point downtown about an hour after their flight actually arrives. This morning while taking the ferry across (during a beautiful clear-sky sunrise), the bus wouldn't restart on the other side. This caused some delay as they had to figure out how to hook the bus's battery up to the generator run by the ferry's engines so as to give the bus a boost. After that all was fine, but it led to a cold wait on the bus. I think the view made up for it though. Things really are a bit different up north.

And now Jeremi's got the camera with him on his ship, so there should be new pictures next weekend showing scenes of life aboard HMCS Calgary. Check in to see more then!

Jeremi's birthday

Jeremi was home on the weekend from sea so we were able to celebrate his birthday a bit. We went out for a very nice supper on Saturday night at Paprika Bistro, but opted to stay in on Friday night for homemade cabbage rolls, roasted onion and garlic soup, and some tasty birthday carrot cake. The cake is very nice, from a recipe from one of the girls in my knitting group. It's really carroty - 3 cups of grated carrots (about 6 carrots) in the cake shown. Quite tasty too.

On Saturday I (Julia) was out much of the day at a meeting of my book club held over brunch, which lasted most of the afternoon. We were reading a Michael Crichton book - State of Fear - which sets out to convince people that anthropogenic (man-made) climate change is not a real problem, but rather a conspiracy cooked up by self-interested scientists and environmental organizations. Right. Since most of the book club members are atmospheric scientists and oceanographers working in climate science, this was not a popular view point. What makes it worse than just a silly novel is the fact that Michael Crichton puts references to scientific (and not-so-scientific) articles and books throughout the book which he claims support his claims. While he does include some reputable peer-reviewed articles in his bibliography, in each case he grossly misrepresents the finding, essentially choosing a single quote out of context to support his argument. And people do take him seriously, despite the fact that he's a novelist. He actually testified as an "expert witness" last September in front of a US senate committee regarding climate change. I kid you not. This is the guy who wrote Jurassic Park and he was called to give the US government advice regarding their environmental policy.

Sorry, I just got a little carried away in my rant there. I need to calm down if I'm going to be able to handle a whole evening of election coverage...

Some much-needed pictures of the cat

So I've finally gotten my act together and I'm posting a couple of pictures of the cat. The first shows her standing guard at the back door, prepared to attack the plexiglass at the first sign of a neighbourhood cat. This has happened a few times in the past couple of weeks, and the funniest part is that the giant tabby from next door just sits there, about a foot from the glass, and watches as Aeris throws herself against the glass, yowling and hissing. And the other cat just calmly sits there, watching the crazy housecat flipping out. Also, at the side of this picture is the Christmas wreath sent by Marlène.

The second picture shows the cat grooming herself in the nest that she made in our new down duvet (a Christmas present from Jérémi's parents). She's quite taken with the new duvet, and no longer sleeps in the duvet in the spare room (which is synthetic). Clearly a cat with very discerning tastes.

A post with no pictures

Hello all. I'm sorry that it's been a while since the last posting, but I (Julia) have the flu and Jeremi's away at sea. So yes, he's stuck on a ship for his birthday. I've been sick since last Friday night, and was home from work both Monday and Tuesday. While I am feeling better now I still would rather be sleeping than here at work, and I'm not convinced that I'm actually getting anything useful done with my foggy brain.

Anyhow, there will be a better post on the weekend when Jeremi's home. I'll put up pictures of him opening gifts and having cake (assuming that I have the energy to make one tonight). And my plan is to send the camera to sea with him when he leaves again on Monday so that you all can see what he's up to when he's not in Victoria.

And yes Marie, I promise to put up more pictures of the cat soon.

Dad's sweater finally finished!

So also on the weekend I finally got around to seaming Dad's sweater and weaving in all the tails. I still haven't trimmed them afterward, but here are some pictures of the finished project. It's too small for Jeremi and too big for me, so I think it should fit Dad fairly well. You'll have to send a picture of him wearing it once it gets there.

Crocheted flowers

Well about a month ago mom asked me to make a couple of white crocheted flowers, one for her toque and one for the one she was knitting for Baba. I sent her a website with dozens of crocheted flower patterns and she chose one. Personally, I didn't find them the most exciting flowers, and I think they only looked nice because they were made in really beautiful colours. I didn't think they'd look as good in white, but I was going to make the ones that she chose. But then I looked more carefully at the pattern and realized that each petal was made individually and then they were all sewn together. The crocheting itself was really easy and would have been done in minutes, but I really hate sewing stuff together, so I knew that they weren't going to get done anytime soon. But then I was looking through the knitting magazines that mom sent me for Christmas and found some patterns in a Patons insert. One of them was for large (~10 cm in diameter) crocheted flowers which were much more interesting as far as the crocheting went, but were worked as one piece, i.e. no sewing up at the end. I thought 10 cm was a bit big so I did them with a smaller hook using some white sock yarn I had left over from another project, and I think they look pretty good. The picture's a bit out of focus and the tails haven't been woven in yet (did I mention that I hate doing the finishing work?), but at least it gives some idea of how they look. I hope you like them! They'll be mailed off soon with Dad's sweater.

Jeremi's strange medical condition (tree on head disease)

Sometime about a week ago I (Julia) was talking with my mom about not knowing which day the Christmas tree pick-up was in my neighbourhood. My plan had been simply to look out the window each morning and determine on which day all the neighbours seemed to think it was. Mom didn't think that this was the greatest idea ever, so I ended up checking on the website of the city of Victoria, only to find that there is no Christmas tree pick-up here. Instead, there was a handy listing of all the charities offering tree chipping services for a donation, as long as you brought the tree to them. The closest one to our house was at Hillside Centre, where our grocery store (Thrifty Foods) is. It wasn't too far so we decided to carry the tree there and get some fresh air despite the fact that it was raining, which prompted pretty well everyone to stare at us.

Random Food

Here is a picture of stuffed eggplant that we made as part of a Middle Eastern-themed meal that we had for supper yesterday. They were stuffed with onions, tomato, parsley, dill, garlic and salt. The eggplants are shown before they went into the oven, so imagine them fully cooked and soft and collapsed more.
This also gave us a chance to try out our new roasting pan that we bought at a Paderno sale in the fall. It's the first time we used it, so we wanted to take a picture. It's a beautiful deep pan with a lid, and cleverly designed handles which are not right on the end, but rather offset, sort of on a diagonal. This means that the pan itself can be longer while still fitting into the oven. Oh, those clever P.E. Islanders.
As for the meal, we also had tabouli, hummus, kibbeh (a fried lamb and bulghur wheat patty) and sourdough bread. Delicious.

Happy New Year!

Last night to celebrate New Year's Eve we went over to the Montenegros' for supper. Eunice cooked a beautiful giant turkey, and there was stuffing, rice with pinenuts, lentils (a traditional Brazilian New Year's Eve to provide good luck with money over the next year), salad, cheese on polenta rounds, mashed potatoes, and homemade chutney with chipotle peppers. Dessert was a delicious passionfruit mousse as well as an ice cream birthday cake for Eunice, as her birthday is January 1st. The first picture shows Eunice blowing out all her candles.
There was much food and drink as we waited for the new year, and the moment at which we could eat the delicious pot of saurkraut and smoked pork soup brought by Gerd. He mentioned the soup at Christmas and promised to make it for us all at some point. Apparantly it is a tradition in Austria, or at least the region from which he comes, to eat this rich soup as the new year arrives. He swore that it not only helps the stomach better digest all the food and alcohol, but it also has the miraculous power to sober up all those who eat it. I tried to ensure that I was as drunk as possible at midnight so as to test these claims. Though I'm not certain that I was entirely sober afterward, I did feel surprisingly well this morning. Perhaps he's on to something. We were all a bit suspicious as Gerd was the only one who didn't eat the soup, but this had more to do with him being a vegetarian than anything else.
The other picture was taken just as we were leaving. We're still not really used to taking pictures, so we didn't really get any of the food or from around midnight, but this is better than nothing. Missing from the picture are Eunice (who took it), and Bruno and Bruce, who had left earlier. In the picture, from left to right, beginning with the back row, are Alvaro, Gerd, Shelley, Shannon, Jeremi (our sober designated driver, as he is on duty today), and myself. In the front row are Jason, Chris (Erico's friend), and Erico, with Storm the cat and Smores the dog. All in all it was a very nice evening.
And so we went home and tried to get a good night's sleep so that Jeremi could get up and work early this morning. But then we were awakened at around 4:00 by the sound of cats fighting inside our apartment. I shook Jeremi awake and asked him what was going on. In he half sleep he calmly answered that the cat was fighting with one of the neighbour's cats. I pointed out that all the windows and doors were shut, and that when we went to bed there was only one cat inside our apartment. He agreed that we should probably check it out, and then promptly fell back to sleep, despite the yowls and hisses coming from our living room. I tentatively got up to check it out, a bit worried about what I would find. What I found was our cat with all the hair on her back and tail standing up as straight as possible, attacking the sliding glass door with all her might. On the other side of the glass was one of the neighbourhood cats, doing the same from his side of the glass. I scared the other cat away and went back to bed, but it really was quite a terrible ruckus. I hope it's not indicative of the rest of the year...