Quebec City
I went on a 2-day family road trip to Quebec City this weekend. It was fun! The drive was quite long, about 5 hours each way, but just more proof that my digestive problems are a thing of the past. I used to hate long car rides but this time boredom and hunger were the only reasons I wanted it to end. We got a chance to show Hong’s family some good old fashioned French Canadien food including meat pies, duck, and some meal and dessert crepes. They loved the food but I didn’t get to eat any of it. Seems the places we chose were just not gluten-free friendly. It wasn’t a matter of language barrier, I speak French and managed to explain to the waitresses my dietary restrictions. No one had even heard of Celiac disease but they understood food allergies and managed to prepare my meals free of contamination. I had a roasted duck leg served in duck fat with a nice vinaigrette salad for dinner (the only item on the menu I could have!), and a bacon, eggs and fruit breakfast (not even on the menu, the waitress jut prepared it herself). The rest of the time I just ate the food I brought with me. It was nice to be able to show Hong’s family authentic French Canadian food, but next time I think I’ll look up some gluten-free restaurants. My favorite stop on the trip was to the chocolate shop, where I could have spent all day but resisted and left with only a fun picture.
Ghee
I went dairy-free last week and plan to stick to that for the entire month of August. I’ll re-evaluate whether or not to add it back in right away at the end of the month. I did go completely dairy-free including giving up butter but to make it easier to get lots of healthy fats I decided to include clarified butter, called ghee. It’s butter with all of the milk solids removed so I’m pretty sure it will be ok to have and still benefit from being able to test out if dairy-free makes a difference in my health. Here’s what I ended up with on my first attempt at making ghee.
Egg Farmer
I went to visit my egg farmer this week to pick up some eggs. He normally brings them into town during the school year but during summer break I went to pick them up at his place. The hens were just so cute! I’ll do a full post on that soon. For now here’s a really blurry picture of me holding one.
Garden Update
We’ve had a couple peppers and finally got one nice red tomato. It was delicious! I’m a bit surprised how long these take to ripen after they grow to full size. It does take some patience to get nice fully red peppers and tomatoes. I’m not sure what variety tomato I have planted, but it’s supposed to be an Italian type good for making sauces. Anyone recognize it?
Surf & Turf e-Course Giveaway
If you saw my previous post you’ll know I’m pretty excited about Cheeseslave’s e-course starting in just a couple weeks. Well if it’s too costly but you still want to do it, I will be doing a giveaway for one free course enrollment! Check back later today for details on that and in the meantime make sure to watch the introductory video here.
Kat,
Did you see the cirque du soleil in quebec city? I hope you had fun…
@B-L I did! Wow I was not expecting a full out show with acrobats and a huge set. It was amazing, highlight of the trip. That was Hong’s family’s first time seeing any Cirque de Soleil show and they loved it. Next show in Ottawa they are definitely going to go. Until now it’s been tough convincing them that it’s worth the money, when they see Chinese acrobat shows often for cheap. But they just loved this! I’ll be posting some pics and videos to Facebook this week.
That looks like a “rome” or “roma” tomato. I started 6 plants from seeds this year. One plant survived and I am still waiting for several tomatoes to ripen. They are the tomato of choice for Italian cooking. At least that’s what Italian friends tell me. I haven’t got that far yet.
@RDunn At first I though Roma, but these are really small and bulbous. Or maybe I’m just used to grocery store tomatoes which always look different than what is grown in a backyard garden. 😉 I got one ripe so far and it was delicious. They will definitely be good for sauces and Italian style cooking.
If you really, really wanted to find out what kind of tomato it is you could send one (maybe just a seed) to a Dept. of Agriculture lab or maybe someplace like Penn State’s agriculture lab and they could id it for you.
Probably not worth the effort. What matters is that they are fresh and tasty.
Anyway, I’m glad I clicked over here from one of your comments on Mark’s Daily Apple because I found out about the cooking course at Cheeseslave.
I signed up.
I went paleo for the food.
R Dunn
@RDunn Did you enter the giveaway? I don’t see an entry for you. Looks like an awesome cooking class, I can’t wait!
I went over to Cheeseslave and signed up there. I read through the comments here and decided that there were people who could benefit from winning a free course more than me. I think it will be well worth it.
@RDunn That’s great! See you in the course 🙂