Kev

I miss having a regular sunday night dinner with the fam, and try and invite friends over as much as possible. tonight I bribed mike and jen (ok, I bribed Mike. I just have to make sure I keep chocolate in stock and I think Jen will be happy) over by ordering the sens vs. pens on pay-per-view, and cooked up a pot roast. there was also a fairly straight-forward salad and a fresh baguette to provide a little texture, and a spinach-artichoke dip as an appetizer to keep us from starving until the roast was ready.

’twas delicious.

if you’re interested, the preparation/recipe follows the jump (click “more…” 😉 ). there’s also a set of pics of the process over on my flickr account:

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a quick update: five (!!!) years have passed since I posted this, and the only thing that’s changed is one of the recipes 🙂 there is never enough time, and I wish she had been around to see all of the amazing things that have happened in the last five years. I have a beautiful and amazing wife, two phenomenal kids, a dog, a house, and happiness. oh, and a cat. can’t forget him. I still miss mom every day, and cherish everything I have from her, including a big chunk of who I am.

this month marks the 13th anniversary of my mom’s passing. time is supposed to heal all, but I don’t think there’s enough time in my life for this one. there was no chance to say good-bye, and there’s very little that’s tangible I have from her.

I was going through a box that has followed me around from place to place over the years, and re-discovered the recipe box. in it is a treasure trove of memories from growing up – the meals and treats (and boy were there a _lot_ of baked treats!) from the first half of my life. most of the recipes are from the first 10 years of my parents marriage – so the late sixties through the late seventies.

potato pancakes were one of my faves, but never got made much because they were labor-intensive (no food processors, so grating of potatoes was by hand), and three active kids made any kind of lengthy prep something rare and reserved for things like Christmas dinner. however, when they were made, I savored every bite.

chocks were a christmas favorite. mom would make several dozen a few weeks before the holidays and freeze them. we’d dig through the freezer and eat them frozen, and hoped that our pinching would not be noticed. it usually was, and then there was the year I ate 6 dozen of them by myself… amazingly, I still got presents.

ahhh… play doh. what more need be said, really?

baked beans were my dad’s fave in the winter. I can’t remember hating them, but I can’t remember liking them, either. he’s been wondering if the recipe existed for a loooooong time. I’m happy to find it, and an e-mail to him is next… although sue will probably need to invest in some bean-o.

all these recipes were made multiple times, and I have lots of great memories of my fam’s time around the dinner table. I miss those dinners, but treasure the memory of them. you can see how often the cards were used, and my mom’s handwriting is also a nice memory jog.

there’s so much more than paper and ink here… it’s amazing (to me)

So, Ottawa fans… with your team surrendering three third-period leads in a row and losing all three games, are you concerned yet?

You probably should be. In the playoffs, you don’t get points for tying through regulation.

As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes flickr spits out a gem. Sesselja is one of those talented people whose photostream is worth watching on a daily basis. She does great still life work, and her experiments with liquids are awesome (and the shots from around Iceland are equally compelling).

At the risk of sounding a little, well, “happy”, the starfruit in this pic make me smile. They look like they belong on stage in a Broadway production.

Cool shot, I like.

There’s an old adage that time heals all wounds.

I don’t think it’s true.

It doesn’t matter how many years pass, today always hurts.

I miss ya.

If anyone out there has upgraded to WordPress 2.1.1 recently, be advised there is potentially a wee problem with the code. The server the distribution package resided on was compromised, and the 2.1.1 package was modified to contain an exploit which allowed execution of code locally (which in turn could lead to your boxen getting boned, and not in a good way).

If you’re using 2.1.1, read this now.

A friend of mine came up for the weekend to take in the last bit of Winterlude, Ottawa-Gatineau’s winter festival. Another friend of theirs came along, and they arrived just before midnight. We had “a” drink, which somehow stretched out to a couple bottles of wine and a 4:30 bedtime.

Saturday was brunch at Woody’s on Elgin. I don’t recommend this place at all. None of the eggs were cooked properly on any of our plates, and the home-fries were deep-fried crap. The service was friendly, but I don’t think I’ll be going back there any time soon, there are much better deals and places to drop $10 for eggs on.

We followed up brunch with a skate and walk covering the canal starting at the NAC, down to Dow’s Lake, and back. The on-ice skae rental line was insane, so we walked down to the Pretoria Bridge and went to Cyco’s to rent skates for Aleks instead. Cyco’s has been around as long as I can remember, and the renting experience was a thousand times better than what the on-ice rentals looked like they were going to be (some folks said the wait time was over an hour – ugh).

Any who, we spent several hours on the ice and headed home. Everyone was wayyyy too tired to do anything, so we grabbed some Thai from Som Tum and watched most of John Pinete’s new stand up special and a little bit of An Evening With Kevin Smith in front of a fire and more wine. A day well seized.

Yesterday was brunch at Carmen’s Veranda on Bank Street in Old Ottawa South (right across from the 7-Eleven). The food was amazing (although a little expensive), and they have the best maple bacon anywhere. The restaurant is small, but the brunch menu has a lot more to offer than most places in town.

Next time I think I’ll try the goat cheese, pear, and pecan omlette. They also make no bones about what kind of establishment it is. Highly recommended, and the lunch and dinner menus look to be equally excellent, although again, a little more expensive.

Following brunch we headed up to Gatineau Park to rent some snowshoes and trek along the Wolf trail by Meech Lake. I’m not sure what I was thinking, although it’s more suitable to say I wasn’t thinking. I had jeans and running shoes (my hiking boots are in Kirkland Lake, it appears) with low-cut socks, and cotton everything. Not recommended.

The trail is compacted, but has some decent elevations over a fairly short distance. We all got to work our quads and calves, and I think we all lost a little weight on the ~5.5km trek. The weather was gorgeous, with the temp at around -7, and it was a great time. We’re so incredibly lucky to have an all-season park like the Gats on our doorstep.

We stopped off at Les Saisons (on the recommendation of the friendly and very helpful folks at the park’s Visitor Centre) for hot chocolate on the way home, and it’s highly recommended. We hit home, warmed up a bit, and my friends took off for the trip back to Toronto.

’twas a very nice weekend, and I was a little sad to see them go.

Shamelessly stolen from Hoye, because I think it’s a great idea. (Thanks, Mike!) Here’s what iTunes will tell you about me:

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