Kemptville Wine and Food Show

Last night we went to Kemptville's first ever Wine and Food Show. It wasn't very big, but admission was free. You could buy tasting tickets in five dollar strips, worth 50 cents, each and exchange the correct number at any of the stands to taste their wares.

We have been to the Brockville Wine and Food Show twice, and as I said, this was much smaller. There were just three wine companies, two beer companies, and maybe five or six restaurants or other food vendors represented. Costco was there trying to drum up some business by offering reduced membership rates and free food samples. Marlin Travel and a couple of other product vendors were also on hand so not everything was wine and food related.  I found that a bit strange.

Normally we find the samples at such shows are just wee tastes of things. After all, you have a lot of booths to work though. Since that generally takes a while, and you nibbling over a period of time, it's not like eating an actual meal. We decided to eat our supper before we went.  That was a mistake as the samples at this show were much larger and I'm sure we would have left feeling like we had eaten a whole meal if we had tasted from several of the booths.

Catered Affairs was offering two main dish foods but I opted for the brownie s'mores.  Red Hatters like to eat dessert first, you know.  We used up most of our tickets on those, actually.

The Empire Cheese people, from Campbellford, are always a welcome sight as they offer a wide variety of flavoured cheeses and never charge you anything. Tonight I discovered that Mrs McGarrigle's mustard has now been added to two varieties of their cheese.  They didn't come with the salsa cheese this year, which is one I'm always looking for, but their extra old cheese was absolutely amazing. I'll be bringing some of that home soon.  While Mrs McGarrigle's carries some of their cheeses, I was told that Kemptville's B&H store carries most of them.  I have not been in there in years, but I will be now.

I think I spent most of my tickets on various wines. I especially liked one that comes from the Harwood Estates Vineyards in Prince Edward County. It was a Pinot Gris, if I remember correctly, but I'll be able to find it easily when I go there, as it's in a distinctive blue bottle.  It's not found in the LCBO. I was given a card for a complimentary wine tasting when I visit the winery.

The local winery, Blue Gypsy Wines, was also on hand. I thought I had tasted all their wines at the winery last fall, so I didn't use any of my tickets at that booth. My hubby tried their raspberry wine though, as apparently it wasn't available when we went there.  

We stopped by the Nakhon Thai booth and I asked if the food was very spicy. The lovely lady, assured us that was a misconception. She said that 80% of the dishes on their menu were not spicy, and if we wanted something that normally would be, we could always ask them to cut back on that and they would.  To prove her point she offered a plate full of rice with a curry dish, as well as some Crispy Lemongrass Chicken. She didn't take any of our tickets, but she certainly made a fan out of my hubby. He really enjoyed that food, and went back to tell her how good it was.  She pointed out the dishes he had tasted on her menu, and I suspect we will be visiting that establishment in the near future.  I notice, from the menu that they have several meals that are vegetarian (not vegan) and gluten free.  I know of people who are always on the lookout for such things.

Another booth had fish and other things from The Landing. That's a take out place known for it's fish and chips. I saw a bin off to the side and I asked what was in there. They had cut big cinnamon buns into quarters and she gave us each one of those. I asked how many tickets she wanted, and she just waved her hand at me and said, "We're good."  I sometimes find that I have trouble with cinnamon buns these days as there is often too much cinnamon in them. I like them but they give me heartburn. But these were perfect. I asked if they always have them, and was assured that they do. We have never been there for a meal as we usually go to sit down restaurants,  but we do now have a reason to stop by and bring home a treat.

The Kemptville Chamber of Commerce has worked a long time to get this show up and running and ran into various problems along the way. Though the show was small and I was initially disappointed, I think they did succeed in bringing more interest to the various businesses that took part.  Several of them now will now have us as new customers, and I'm sure others who attended can say the same.  Next year promises to be even better.

Year One.... A Summary

I had a well established blog about my geocaching adventures but I came to the conclusion that sometimes I wanted to tell you about other places I go, or things I felt like talking about, so a year ago I decided to start this new blog. I have tried to tie the two of them together, but never succeeded.  Now that this new one has a good following, I'm thinking I might just put the future geocaching adventures in here too.

Blogging has been quite an experience for me. This is my 77th entry in this new one, and I've published 82 comments so far.  The most popular post so far was called Nothing Natural About Art.  I was in an online webinar by Johannes Vloothuis with at least a thousand other students at the time.  I happened to mention the blog post in one of the forums about that at the time, and so it's not surprising that so many people decided to check it out.  The second most popular post was Girls Just Want To Have Fun, and that's not too surprising either. It was about Red Hatters and Elvis Impersonators, so I'm sure it popped up well on the search engines.  The third most popular post is my own personal favourite. It's called In Case You Didn't Know .  I just felt the need to explain why it is that I am always offering so much unnecessary, and likely unwanted, information and advice.  The next three most popular posts all have to do with food.  They are either about  testing Chatelaine recipes, or about the 17 Day Diet. 

Statistics show that I not only have a following across all of North America, but also in Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom and even Singapore.  Others have dropped in from Sweden, Iran, Hungary and South Korea, among other places. I can't help wonder what it was I said that drew people from such far away locations to my page, but I do hope they continue to drop by.

Most of the comments I get are from people I have never met, and I love that they take a moment from their lives to let me know what they think. I often click on their link, if they have one, and follow it back to their own blogs and leave a comment there too. 

Because of that, this year, through blogging, I have enjoyed watching one family adopt 3 little girls, to add to the 4 children they already have, and then try to get to a point where life could continue in some sort of normal fashion. I really enjoyed stories another mother writes about her "twinnies" and younger daughter....and sometimes her hubby who, like many men, is often just one of the kids anyway.  I have followed several art related blogs, where I learn all kinds of interesting ideas and techniques.  I have recently become more interested in multimedia and art journals, and always enjoy stopping to watch the videos by Donna Downey, where I learn not to be afraid to just try something different.  There's no telling where it, or blogging, will take me.

I actually feel like I've made a few new online friends this past year, and I even got a lovely homemade Christmas card from one of them.  So, please, if you're reading this, feel free to comment at any point.  I'd love to hear what you think.

Unusual Halloween

I got on Facebook last night and asked the question, "Where are all the kids?"  They were more than half an hour later getting started, and few and far between.  By the end of the night, I'd had only 56 total. And come to think of it, there were no cars on the street either.  That's a good thing, safety wise, but also means the parents in the outlying countryside didn't bring their kids into the village either.

News reports apparently stated that it was expected that there would be fewer kids this Halloween than there ever has been in the past 40 years.  I had noticed that there didn't seem to be as many children around as when I was raising mine, but thought that was because the population of my village was aging.  I guess there was an age group that didn't bother to reproduce for a while there.  Thankfully, I see lots of babies these days, so I guess I can expect more kids at Halloween in a couple more years.

In the meantime, I had a bit of fun anyway.  My Red Hat chapter gathered at a local restaurant yesterday morning to have a Witch's Breakfast.  We let our Red Hatter's protocol slide for the day, and came dressed as witches instead.  Being Halloween, most of the people in the restaurant never even batted an eye, but we did manage to amuse a few people, including ourselves.  We might have to try this again sometime in the middle of the year, just for the shock value alone.  That could be fun.

Weighing In

I’ve been asked a few times lately how the 17 Day Diet is going. Well, I was really good at sticking to Cycle 1, and I did lose some weight rather quickly. Then Cycle 2 allowed me to have carbs on alternating days. Not a good idea since I’m definitely a carb addict, but it did confuse the body enough to allow me to lose a few more pounds. However, I never did get into the swing of the menu plan for the second cycle and was off the diet as often as I was on it.

There were lots of meals out, and they were special celebrations, so, no I wasn’t eating salads with a vinaigrette dressing on those occasions. I had a special birthday, quickly followed by Mother’s Day. Then I had 3 really great Red Hat functions to attend. The menus for those had already been decided on, before I started this diet, so I just tried to be good the rest of the week, when those events came along.

I don’t think you can say I’m actually on the diet anymore, but I learned a few things along the way. I don’t eat as much bread or potatoes or pasta as I used to. At least not on a daily basis.

I’m down a total of 12 pounds and two holes on my belt, so I have to say, I still think this was a worth while experiment. I have not gained back any of what I’ve lost, even though I was at a Pizza Party this week, on the same day I had another big meal including apple strudel for dessert at the Red Hat Queen’s Council Luncheon. I’d definitely recommend the 17 Day Diet to anyone who wants to kick start a weight loss program.

Girls Just Want to Have Fun!

Last week the Red Hat Society celebrated it’s 13^th anniversary. Locally 250 women, from various area chapters, gathered at the Villa Lucia on Carling Avenue, in Ottawa. There was an excellent meal, complete with a slice of anniversary cake. An Elvis impersonator from Gatineau was there to entertain us all.

Now, this fellow, Sylvain Simard didn’t really look like Elvis, though a photo he was giving out when he was younger and thinner showed that he used to have more of the look than he currently has. He spoke to us with a French accent and I didn’t think the show would be any good at all. He sang a lot of songs, not just by Elvis, but Engelbert Humperdink, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and I forgot to listen to see if he actually sounded like Elvis, as we, as Red Hatters, tend to make our own fun anyway. Many of us were actually up dancing during the show. He actually encouraged that, though it really didn’t take much encouragement if he launched into some old rock and roll type song. At one point I even got to jive with a total stranger, much to the delight of my chapter mates.

Fun is all in the attitude anyway. We went to enjoy ourselves, and we certainly did.

Local Rambles

Part of the idea of this blog was to let you in on some of the other things I do, besides geocaching . I guess I haven't been very good at that, since I've been on several interesting outings since I started this. There's no sense trying to go backwards too far, as that's what caused me to stall out on the other blog, so I'll just give you a bit on the most recent activities.

On February 16th, a group of Red Hatters came up from Ogdensburg to celebrate the anniversary of their group, and they invited my group (yes, I am Queen here) to join them for lunch at a local restaurant. They even hired a musician for the occasion, though we were likely all so busy visiting we didn't really pay that much attention to him playing in the background.  The Ogdensburg Mad Hatters are a lovely bunch of women, and I understand they come up this way quite frequently, so I do hope we can get together again sometime.

On February 23, the New Horizons Club held a Medieval Festival. We were encouraged to dress up for that, and while it was clear everyone had their own idea of what era they were supposed to be in, a good many of them did take part.  There was a tax collector who set about relieving those who didn't dress up of some of their gold. There was food and games and a lot of good fun.

Yesterday (March 5) we attended the annual Soup Fest in Winchester Ontario.  Many of the restaurants from miles around that area gather in one hall, and offer samples of their best soups all for one low admittance price.    This year there were 16 restaurants represented. That's down somewhat from last year's line

up, but still enough to fill you up and test your sense of adventure.  There was everything from a cold cucumber avocado soup, with a kick of jalapeno peppers, to a very popular Mexican offering that was more like chili than soup.  It's great fun to attend this fundraiser for TLC (True Love in Christ) Ministries, especially if you go with others, so that you can discuss and compare your views on the various offerings. Amazingly, we don't always agree on what we like, but we all get to vote on our top three favorites. There are official judges too, including some very prominent chefs and other celebrities.  Chef Michael Dunn, for instance, was once the Royal chef to Queen Elizabeth.  We like to take this opportunity to gather other family members for a good chat while tasting. It's becoming an annual family event, and we're already looking forward to it again next year.

Year One.... A Summary

A year ago I decided to start this new blog. I had one before, but it was all about my geocaching adventures. I felt that sometimes I'd like to tell you about other places I go, or things I happen to be thinking about, so that's why I called this blog Other Rambles.  I tried to link them together, but was not successful, and I think, now that this one gets so much more traffic, I'll just plop the geocaching adventures into this one too, in the upcoming year.

Blogging has been an interesting adventure for me.  This entry will be the 76th of the year.  I've had 82 comments so far, and I seem to have a following not only from all over North America, but also quite a bit from Russia, Germany, Singapore and the United Kingdom.  Various other have wandered in from Sweden, Hungary, Iran and South Korea, among other places. I can't imagine what I've said to attract such far away readers, but I do hope I can hold onto them as I continue to ramble on.

Not surprisingly, the most popular post so far was the one called Nothing Natural about Art. I say this was not surprising as I was taking an online course with with Johannes Vloothuis and at least a thousand other people at the time, and I mentioned the blog in a forum connected with that.  The second most popular one was called Girls Just Want to Have Fun!  Since this was about Red Hatters and Elvis impersonators, I'm sure it popped up well in the search engines. The third most popular entry is my own personal favourite, In Case You Didn't Know. I just felt I had to tell the world why it is that I'm always passing along unasked for, and probably unwanted information and advise.  After those, the next 3 most popular entries were all about food, whether it was because I was testing some recipes for Chatelaine magazine, or simply trying out the 17 Day Diet.

As I mentioned, there have been a number of comments through out the year. Most of these have come from people I don't know.  I love that.  Not only does it let me know that I'm not just spouting off for my own benefit, it lets me know what others think.  I often follow the links back to these readers own blogs, and sometimes leave comments there too.  I actually feel like I've made a couple of new online friends this past year. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a lovely hand made Christmas card from one of them by snail mail recently.

I closely followed the adventures of one family as they adopted 3 little girls from the Philippines, adding them to the 4 children they already had and continued on with life, trying to make things as normal as possible for everyone in the family.  And I got some good giggles as a mother told stories of her twinnies and their younger sister....and occasionally her hubby, who , like many men, is often like another child in the family.  I also follow a few artistic blogs, where I pick up all kinds of new ideas and techniques.

It's been a great year, both reading and writing, and I'm looking forward to sharing more of my life, and taking a peek at yours.  Go ahead and comment so I can  find you!