Sunday, January 13, 2013

Great time with family..

John and Carol and Richard and Emily came over for dinner last night and we all had a super time and I must say the seafood lasagna I made was wonderful.  I was really happy with this since Carol is a wonderful cook....and Richard's not too shabby himself.  I'll post the recipe.  As usual,  with bad light, all my photos came out lousy.  Good thing John took a few....thank you, John!

Now,  you can't go too far wrong with good looking young subjects,  but John's camera even made an old lady look not too bad....maybe I should invest in a good camera.




Seafood Lasagna to die for

Original recipe makes 12 servings 
    1 (16 ounce) package lasagna noodles
    2 tablespoons olive oil
    1 clove garlic, minced ( I used two)
    1 pound baby portobello mushrooms, sliced (just used ordinary mushrooms)
    2 (16 ounce) jars Alfredo-style pasta sauce
    1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined (I cut them in hallf)
    1 pound bay scallops (I substituted the meat from 4 lobster  tails)
    1 pound imitation crabmeat, chopped
    20 ounces ricotta cheese
    1 egg
    black pepper
    6 cups shredded Italian cheese blend

Directions

    Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.
    Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Sautee garlic and mushrooms until tender. Pour in 2 jars Alfredo sauce. Stir in shrimp, scallops and crabmeat. Simmer 5 to 10 minutes, or until heated through. In a medium bowl, combine ricotta cheese, egg and pepper.
    In a 9x13 inch baking dish, layer noodles, ricotta mixture, Alfredo mixture and shredded cheese. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used, ensuring that there is shredded cheese for the top.
    Bake uncovered in preheated oven for 45 minutes. Cover, and bake 15 minutes.



Friday, January 11, 2013

Great sunsets, sunrises, sunny days

Wow,  we are certainly getting a streak of great weather!

Sunrise today.

 Sun going down


 Even the rock balancers had been out.


Fabulous meal at Denman Sushi....miso soup,  delicious Japanese tea,  6 California rolls with real crab, salad, fruit, 4 pieces of tempera,  good cooked veg, rice,...I had chicken teriyaki and Jim had the beef teriyaki.  Very generous portions.  The price at dinner?   $7.95...what a deal!

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Well said...

A super day....

Looking out at the sun going down over the water...really quite a bright sunny day today.  Unlike yesterday that wasn't fit for man or beast but at least we got unpacked and settled in.

We got to The Sylvia Monday night and split a fish and chips and enjoyed a pint of Red Truck Pale Ale.  Then to Las Margaritas for lunch today.   You just can't beat that place for good Mexican food and atmosphere.  We both had their wonderful tortilla soup then a chile relleno for me and Jim his standard beef enchilada.




 Jim and I at The Sylvia enjoying our Red Truck


 The famous
 Chile relleno and tortilla soup


The sun just really came out so off for a walk along the seawall.

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Snug Pub review

Pretty much what I would say.  Two good experiences there so far.  The old Snug had sometimes rather dreadful food.

http://www.victorianfood.ca/2013/01/the-snug.html

Monday, January 07, 2013

"Home " again

We got back to an immaculate apartment and a little gift of goodies.  Having a scotch enjoying the view.  Tiring few days...off to The Sylvia for dinner tonight.






Saturday, January 05, 2013

Dearest blog readers

I have recently become concerned about the security of posting the details of our life on my blog.  I have really enjoyed writing my blog but I guess all good things come to an end.  I am considering continuing my blog but probably only for people who I have some knowledge of.  So,  please email me if you would like to continue reading my blog if I continue to post.

janice.b.sexton@gmail.com

* Update

I have decided to continue my blog but I will soon be enabling Blogger''s Restricted Readers feature which means any email address I add will have access to my blog.  It will mean a little bit of hassle as you will have to sign in each time but I am doing this with my readers' safety in mind as well because most of you appear on my blog with personal details.  If you have appeared on my blog and don't want to appear on my blog,  please let me know.  And I will probably hide my archives from view.

Thank you for understanding.

** Further update

I am having some problems adding readers to my blog so if you can't get on,  let me know.

Best clam chowder ever recipe...


Thanks, Fern,  for this great recipe!  I think a key ingredient that can't be left out is the curry infused olive oil.  For vegetarians or people who don't eat pork,  the bacon could be left out of the recipe.  Fern served the bacon on the side so perfect to cater to all dietary needs.

This New England style clam and seafood chowder 

Ingredients:
1 can (5 oz/150 g) drainbed baby clams, cod fillet cut into 1 inch bites, prawns cut in half
4 strips chopped bacon
1 finely chopped onion
1-2 finely chopped celery stalks
2 minced cloves of garlic
1 red-skinned potato, small cubes
2 tbsp (25 mL) all-purpose flour or cornstarch
1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
1/2 tsp (2 mL) pepper to taste
1 cup (250 mL) chicken stock
1 can evaporated milk plus fresh milk to make about 2 cups )can also use half and half for richness)
clam nectar if you have it (up to 1 cup)
1/2 red pepper or carrot, small chop
2 tbsp (25 mL) chopped fresh parsley
large pinch of nutmeg (about 1/8 tsp.)
Preparation:
Drain clams, discard juice; set aside.  If you can get some fresh clams as well, steam them, cut to size and reserve the nectar to use in the chowder.  You can buy nectar I think.
In large saucepan, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp; drain off fat. Add onion, celery and garlic; cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add potatoes, red pepper, flour, salt and pepper; stir until vegetables are coated.
Stir in stock and clam nectar; bring to simmer. Cover and cook, stirring, until potatoes are tender, 15 minutes.
Add milk or cream, reserved clams, crumbled bacon;  heat until bubbling and hot. Serve garnished with parsley or bacon.
I made some curry infused olive oil to drizzle on top.

Friday, January 04, 2013

Wonderful lunch chez les Springs

It's always a pleasure to be treated to a meal at Fern and John's.  Fern is a wonderful cook and looking out over the Gorge and all the various goings on with sea birds and wildlife is just great.  We began with the best clam chowder I have ever tasted then panini sandwiches made on the grill John gave her for Christmas.  And ending with Fern's home baking....wow!




Thursday, January 03, 2013

Smoken Bones Cookshack

We're trying to use up a few groupons.  Last night we had a super meal at Smoken Bones in the Hudson complex.  I think the Hudson is going to be a pretty cool development especially when they get their Granville Island like market in.

There was a special on wings so we got 10 of the "jerk" flavour (kind of like sweet chill) for $3.50,  then Jim got the half rack of pork ribs with fries and I got the salmon with a dry rub and cornbread as a side.  Everything was excellent and we were impressed by the Cheap Eats specials and 20 oz pints of draft like Blue Buck for $6...a regular price.  Their daily specials usually include some kind of beer for $4.

Will be back!


Certainly be back for the wing special.  I'll get lemon pepper and Jim will get that they call "Killer"...hotter than "Flaming Pig".

Thursday special is "buck a bone pork ribs"...Jim's half rack had 6 bones.



Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Photos from New Year's Day

http://www.johndenniston.ca/blogwp4/

John has a very cool photo on his blog today taken at the Vesuvius Polar Bear Swim.   I guess it's that fancy camera he has.  I don't think I could get such a photo on my iphone but then,  he had to load it on his computer whereas my photos appear like magic.

John,  I think the new year is making you soft.  I think that photo could be described as a pretty picture and also the one previous to it.

I don't do Polar Bear swims although John photoshopped me doing one and my friends actually believed it was me!

A fairly new tradition for us is heading to Chinatown for hot and sour soup and Chinese food.  I even took a "John" photo yesterday :)



And now for some "Janice" photos....






I needed some side plates so thought these would be kind of neat and couldn't resist the sparklers.

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

A New Year Begins...

We had a nice quiet dinner with Derek and Mary for New Year's.  I served Fern's famous tourtiere and tomato and apple chutney which was a special treat for all of us,  especially me since I didn't have to cook!  Best tourtiere ever.

We toasted the New Year with some wonderful Crémant de Bourgogne that the Soles brought...fabulous!



Even some leftovers for today.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Saturday, December 29, 2012

First post from my new MacBook Air...you'll be proud, Richard

Richard spent a long time on Boxing Day and yesterday getting my new computer set up and getting all our gadgets synched and working together.  What would we do without this wonderful guy!  Thank you thank you thank you, Richard.

Not an easy task for many reasons not least of which I have a very random (i.e. non-existent) filing system for my computer files so as Richard said  it was rather like solving numerous chess problems to know how to go about it.   In the past when I changed computers,  I did so because my computer crashed and I didn't have a back up so that took care of organizing files...there were none!

My good friend, Patty, will LOL at this as we shared a classroom for a while and also organized an Open House Canada Exchange.  This means lots of essential and important papers come from the government.  I started putting them in various drawers, on a shelf, throwing them loosely in the file cabinet, or wherever.  I arrived to school one day to find a file folder labelled "Janice, ne touche pas!"   Henceforth,  I was not allowed to open any official government mail about the exchange or even touch the contents of the file folder where Patty filed it all away very neatly.
P.S. to Patty...are you still in the land of the living after hosting 18 people for Christmas dinner and out of town guests?

I am now not allowed to use iPhoto on my old computer because synching is a nightmare apparently if I do.  So, Richard has done something similar to "Ne touche pas, Janice!"...he's taken it away...or put it where I can't find it.

I am loving my new computer but it will take a while to get used to it since I'm going up "several generations" as Richard says.  But,  wow...some amazing features like I take photos on my iPhone and they appear on my computer magically without actually physically uploading them.  They are also on our TV!

Ok...now to upload some photos...I hope...

 Chris brought out this golf Rubik's cube at Christmas.  Somehow,  Richard managed to solve it along with everything else.  Perhaps it was child's play compared to dealing with my computer mess!


 My new Macbook Air...love it!


Jim's new iPad mini with a wireless keyboard.  I don't think he'll need another computer with this set up.  And yeah...I get the old iPad to myself now that Richard has got Jim set up with everything on the mini.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Another reason why French women don't get fat...

Don sent me this today...too cool!

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=yEH4Yum4nN4

A Wonderful time with dear old friends

We had a super time with Don and Elaine last night and they treated us to martinis with a choice of premium gins...we chose "Old Raj".  It seems the Scottish Whiskey companies are now doing fancy gins...who knew?  Not us but of course the Curlings are up on all such things!

We had lovely appies to start and especially some salmon jerky from Finest at Sea that is only rarely available....wow!  We're definitely going to try to get our hands on some of that.  Then,  the main course was especially for me (since Jim got treated with pasta last time) halibut,  white and green asparagus with chanterelle mushrooms,  and creamy mashed potatoes.  Yum!

Dessert was Elaine's wonderful baking and some very special rum balls.

Thanks so much, guys!  It was a very memorable evening and your place was so cosy.

Jim and Elaine

Elaine, Don, Janice

Elaine, Don

The gin!

Don enjoying a martini

Janice enjoying a martini

 The wonderful salmon jerky!



Don gave Elaine this carafe last year for Christmas.  It's very tall and holds two bottles.  Last night it was filled with some wonderful Alderley Merlot.  When the wine is gone the two faces appear....very cool!

Thursday, December 27, 2012

The Season of Miracles

I've been thinking a lot about two movements that have begun to gain momentum as 2012 winds down.  It would be a joyful irony if real progress was made on these issues at the exact time when the world was apparently supposed to end according to the Mayan calender.

"The Idle No More" and the brave actions of Chief Teresa Spence to address the disastrous state of Aboriginal health and living conditions on First Nations reserves.

Progress on gun control in the US.


These two issues seem almost to have no solution and yet I am reminded that those of us who grew us with the Cuban Missile Crisis,  imminent Nuclear Annihilation,  the Cold War,  and the Iron Curtain never felt that situation would change and yet the "Wall" came tumbling down.

It is the season of miracles.

Our own personal miracle, our son, came out of a visit to a family behind the Iron Curtain and to the Nazi death camp,  Auschwitz. 

 I wrote a story about it when I was doing my Masters degree in the early 90's.

Passport Control - by Janice Sexton

An old passport of mine is stamped numerous times from a country I have never set foot in and that no longer exists. In 1976 we had only a transit visa to pass through East Germany by train to our destination in Poland. I do not have any stamp in this passport from Spain although we spent a couple of weeks in this country in 1972. We entered Spain from Biarittz in the south of France on the Atlantic coast. The Spanish border officials were enjoying lunch. The procedure was to slow down and wave your passports out the window. They nodded and raised their wine glasses to us. It was a warm invitation to enjoy their country and we encountered many such warm invitations during our stay.

Some countries do not invite one so warmly. Taking the Orient Express route to Poland from Paris, one had to enter East Germany, then leave East Germany, then enter West Berlin, then leave West Berlin to enter East Berlin and East Germany again. A part of ancient history now. Intimidation seemed to be the name of the game as our passports were verified and stamped numerous times. We went through Berlin in the middle of the night and were rudely awakened by “passport control” shining flashlights in our eyes. Scrutinizing our real faces and the representations on the passports many times.

We began to get nervous as we had false information on our visas. Glancing out the window to see guards with machine guns didn’t provide much encouragement. The false information seemed so harmless when we were in Nice at the apartment of the representative of the Polish government that arranged for the visas. We were spending five months in France before doing a year’s graduate work at the University of Oregon. We were heady from the wine, the sun, the people...the myriad of sensations that make up the south of France.

Our friend, Marian, was a professor of French at the University of Katowice and had invited us to spend a couple of weeks with his family in Poland. We had met at a summer course in Cannes and had enjoyed each other’s company so much we cancelled our plans to go to Italy for our last two weeks to take advantage of this opportunity. We reasoned that we could always get to Italy but getting to an “Iron Curtain” country with a family was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Our friend had convinced us to claim we were “family” so that we only needed to exchange $2.00 a day at the official exchange rate, otherwise we would need to exchange $10.00 a day. This would allow us to exchange more money on the blackmarket, which meant three to four times the official exchange rate. He patiently explained the system in Poland. Basically, this meant that the system didn’t work so everything had to be done on the sly...on the blackmarket, the unofficial way. It was an accepted fact. For example, to buy a car you had to have the price in full then wait three to four years. Except if you could produce currency from the West, then you got it immediately. This worked for most things.

We expressed concerns about ending up in the Polish equivalent of Siberia. He assured us Polish officials “s’enfichaient litteralement”...i.e. “no one gives a damn”. He forgot to mention about East German officials who really seemed to be caring who went through their country.

The next morning we were still in East Germany and the train stopped inexplicably for over two hours. Our compartment companions assured us this was quite normal. At least, that was the message we picked up. Our companions who had begun the 32 hour journey with us in Paris were Polish and were returning home. We didn’t speak Polish and they didn’t speak either French or English but we felt like long time friends when we parted. Initially, we spoke French because we had been speaking French for so many months and they spoke Polish. After a while we figured we might as well speak English since the actual words weren’t being understood anyway. It was surprising how much was understood.

Before we finally left East Germany, officials came on the train and searched every nook and cranny for stowaways. It was a relief to be in Poland except that an abscess tooth began to bother me and I was in agony. We hadn’t booked a sleeper to save money. It was night as we journeyed through Silesia, the heavy industrial part of Poland, on our way to Katowice. I had never experienced such an area...slag heap after slag heap and raging furnaces intensified the pain of the tooth. I thought this must be what Hell is like.

So many images of those weeks in Poland come to mind. The instant acceptance of our friend’s family and their friends. The layer of soot every morning on the windowsill in our bedroom. Angele, Marian’s wife, cleaned it up every day, but the next day the same layer of soot was there. Because of the pollution, their children, Agathe and Simon, were small for their age with respiratory problems and had to be sent to the mountains in the summer for their health.

The empty shelves in the food stores and the lineups whenever a truck appeared out of nowhere with some food for sale. The paradox that food actually seemed plentiful in people’s homes but little seemed to be distributed officially. The blackmarket. The system didn’t work. No one expected it to anymore. People adjusted.

We were invited to another home where the people had a backyard. They had built a campfire outside for us as a special treat to make us feel at home since we came from Canada. Perhaps they thought everyone in Canada were cowboys. I was asked whether I had Indian blood since I had such dark hair. For a brief moment I was tempted to say yes, and talk about my people, the Haida, who lived in the rainforest. It seemed so exotic to be part Indian so far from home! I resisted the temptation.

They took us to Krakow, the university they both had attended, the university where Copernicus studied. They showed us a memorial to commemorate the time Poland had been annexed completely by other countries and didn’t exist at all. That night they played nationalistic music and tried to explain the history of Poland. They mentioned they knew that North Americans liked to make Polish jokes. You could sense their hurt and confusion about why people did this. Our indifference to our own country and lack of nationalistic feeling puzzled them.

One of the days we visited 
Auschwitz the Nazi death camp where over 4 million Jews had been murdered. Since it is a memorial it is very quiet, but the exhibits are shouting at you all the time. The gigantic rooms full of shoes, of eye glasses, of children’s toys...the Nazi’s saved everything and didn’t have time to destroy it all before the Allied Forces arrived. The shouting was so overwhelming. How could one truly relate to such atrocity?

At the end there was a chapel. People lay down fresh flowers and knelt. The hallway leading to the chapel had photos of inmates from the prison within the camp. A prison within a prison. Friends and relatives had lain flowers on some of these photos. The shouting stopped. We knelt as well and felt a real communion with the people who had lost their lives in this place. Jim and I talked about it later. It was something about the fresh flowers placed by the living on the portraits of the dead that lead to being so deeply touched.

We felt so affected by this experience and warmed by this family that we decided to finally take the plunge and have a child. We had been discussing the pros and cons for 10 years. In the end it was a completely emotional decision. We kept in correspondence with this family and we were all thrilled when we could reunite in Paris in 1987. They met our son, the child we might well not have had if we hadn’t met them.  A year later, their daughter wrote to tell us her father had died from a massive heart attack. We felt a profound loss.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Ian and Beau

Richard sent me this...just had to post it!  I guess his photo turned out so well because he has the latest iPhone...that's my excuse.



Old home movies with the Clebant family

It begins at our first house in Victoria on Forbes St.  Monique's dad then mom appears.  Then we're up at Gabriiola.  My mom is holding the flowers the Clebant's brought.  My dad is the tall one.  Tim,  you recognize the famous lamb bar-b-q...wasps were terrible that year.  The swimming pool is at an apartment where Monique used to live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAGf0SihJhI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Christmas Day at the Bings

We had a wonderful Christmas yesterday....thank you so so much,  Susan and Chris.  Excellent food and warm fellowship and many laughs and of course dearest Beau was the star of the show.    Many bad photos as usual but at least I manage to make some record...

Maybe the next trend will be bad Christmas photos kind of like ugly Christmas sweaters....we can compete!

 Emily and Richard opening the gift from Don and Elaine.  We feel very blessed to have two such wonderful young people in our lives.


 Richard doing the carving as usual...now a tradition.


 Jim and Tiny in anticipation of the bad Christmas cracker jokes.


 Monique and Susan


 Dear darling Beau.
 Ian, Beau, and Chris.
 In our family,  we always took a photo of the empty table...can't lose that tradition.


 The turkey!
 Emily and Richard  had a lot of fun with Beau and Beau loved them.  Beau started nibbling Richard's ear then headed for the "nether regions" ....typical guy :)