More Wine Tasting

One my favourite parts of summer in British Columbia is our annual trip to the Okanagan for sun, lakes and wine. Here are some pictures from La Stella in Osoyoos. Our lovely tasting lady gave us many interesting details about the winery that I (shockingly) don't recall, but I do remember the beautiful scenery and the fact that these grapes at the bottom are Merlot. 

Although La Stella was beautiful, it wasn't my favourite. Desert Hills has tastier wines and Hester Creek has a beautiful terrace. Now, the wine rack is full and my Scottish skin is a little less pale. Yeah summer rituals!

Cypress Falls

I have a new hiking partner - a downhill mountain biker who must temporarily slow it down while pregnant. We've been hitting up some of the gentler hikes on Vancouver's North Shore. 

 A few weeks ago, we went to Cypress Falls. It was stunning... 

 ...and sunny. (We've been having a terrible summer here on the West Coast, unlike the rest of the continent. Send us your heat! We'll trade you.)

Amazing Things: June

1. The computer industry creates as much carbon as the airline industry and concrete buildings create five times as much. In all honesty, I could be a bit more strategic about much of my internet use - from emailing coworkers who are in the same room to idle minutes hours online.


2. Baked Eggs Benny at Acme Cafe. Pesto and hollandaise together. It works.

3. McDonald's coffee is delicious!


4. When you use your own mug at McDonald's, they still use a disposable cup to transfer the coffee from the machine into your (obviously diseased and filthy) mug. Apparently, this is the "Standard Operating Procedure."


It's not that delicious.

Spring is in the air

Lilacs are my favourite flower, for both their colours and their scent. Most of the year, I wait while Mozart sniffs the flowers (and the grass, trees, building corners, cigarette butts, etc.). In lilac season, he waits while I sniff lilac bushes.

In honour of lilac season, I'm auditioning new perfumes. (Strangely, I don't like lilac perfume.) Yesterday, I tried Jo Malone's Nectarine Blossom and Honey. Loved it. Today, I tried Orange Blossom. Not my scent. I feel like I'm being stalked by jasmine. 

Royal Wedding Tea Party

The tea cups came out of storage. We watched the Royal Wedding on Saturday morning in a tea party, complete with egg salad sandwiches, pound cake and scones with jam and Devonshire cream.

We made it from Thursday night to Saturday morning with varying degrees of discipline. I lost. I saw the dress on the news and I saw the kiss on the front cover of the newspaper. Emily, off whom Mozart is mooching below, won. She saw nothing. 

My favourite part: the glance at each other when the bishop referred to "making a decision."

 I'd also like to take this opportunity to display to you one of my prized possessions: a Winston Churchill tea cup made during the Second World War to boost patriotism. Bottoms up!

The $340 Granola Recipe

1. Make granola from a recipe loosely based on this recipe and your sister's version: 3 cups of oats, 1/4 cup peanut butter, 1/4 cup apple sauce, splash of maple syrup, splash of canola oil, handful of diced apples, teaspoon of cinnamon, and a handful of raisins. Bake for 30 minutes at 350. Cool.

2. Begin to transfer to a plastic container. While in complicated mid-pour, watch as a raisin falls on the floor and your dog darts into the kitchen and eats it. 

3. Google, "Are raisins poisonous to dogs?" Answer: yes.

4. Of course, the regular, very reasonably-priced vet has just closed for the evening. Decide not to fix the situation yourself by driving very quickly around the block in your friend's Mazda 3 with your dog in the back. 

Take dog to emergency vet clinic to induce vomiting. Total cost to you: $340.

How I Made My First Wedding Cake

32 eggs. 24 cups of grated carrot. 15 cups of icing sugar. Yes, I made my first (only?) amateur wedding cake last weekend.

It's based on an Epicurious carrot cake that the groom remembered from a potluck long ago. The recipe is very forgiving. I made minimal adaptations, adding 1/2 cup of coconut and subbing 1/2 cup of apple sauce for some of the oil. I also had to bake the bigger cakes for an hour in order to get the centre to cook.




The first cake went into the oven at 8:30 am. The last one came out at 7:50 pm (granted, I went to work for a few hours). The cakes finally went into the fridge at 11:30 pm in their little nests of paper boxes lined with garbage bags.

Keys to success / mental stability:

1. A long skinny spatula.

2. The help of my lovely boyfriend. Not only did his mother teach him how to iron as a teenager, she taught him how to ice a cake. She is awesome.

3. Lots of practice cakes, which were consumed by my charming co-workers.

4. Accepting that I am an amateur baker, and it will look like an amateur cake. Yes, there were a few little flecks of cake in the icing. C'est la vie.