I was hoping to visit with my family over Thanksgiving, but I had to postpone my visit until later in Autumn. For a few weeks I was thinking that the gentleman and I would have a quiet weekend at home filled with long naps, and that maybe we'd roast a chicken and some vegetables and maybe watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles. In reality, we were flooded with invites from friends new and old. It was a spectacular weekend with a feast every night.

Saturday evening began with a crab boil. Our gracious and generous hosts (Chris and Jill) had advised that we show up hungry. I tend to take that sort of advice quite seriously, particularly after receiving email reminders during the day reminding us a second time. Jill and Chris know how to put on a crab boil. They had transformed their dining room into a sort of crab-shack (an elegant one) and equipped each guest with all of the utensils and napkins necessary to address the pile of seafood and vegetables before us.

Jill starts bringing out the food.

Jill brings out even more...

more again... We are slightly daunted by what we have before us.

The gentleman readies his bib.

We ate and ate and ate, but there were still leftovers.

 
Part of the magic of the night came when it was time to cleanup. Once the glassware, utensils and butter warming dishes were cleared away, it was simple to just roll up the paper that covered the table for some really quick party cleanup.

Post dinner we retired to the deck with coffee and blankets for more conversation and a special accordion concert. We stayed outside for a few more hours, talking and laughing with our new friends.



 


We chatted while drinking wine and enjoying the set Thanksgiving menu. We arrived around 7:30 and most of the other diners were finishing their meals so we had the restaurant to ourselves. This ended in our favour since the kitchen brought us out extras of everything. I would definitely go back to try their regular menu (and check out the back patio in the summer) and maybe while I'm there go to the wool store next door.

 

I woke up Monday with a sinus cold, so the Thanksgiving feast from the gentleman's family came to me by way of leftovers. The one up side of being forced to stay at home (my sneezing was deemed to be unappetizing), was that I was able to watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles, thus fulfilling my original Thanksgiving plans. I hope that I recover from this cold soon so I can get back in the pool to work off this weekend of feasting.

After my adventures in lemonade making on Saturday, I woke up early on Sunday to finish preparing my contribution for afternoon tea with the ladies. I can't remember the last time I felt inclined to bake something (I went through a brief phase of making pâte à choux a few years ago) and instead elected to make some classic tea fare, otherwise known as the cucumber sandwich. Plain jane, but tasty enough.



The other ladies in attendance brought a sampling of other goodies. Hostess Sarah provided the location and variety of teas, one which was famous for curing English gentleladies' afternoon lowness of spirit. Crystal brought salted caramels in individually wrapped boxes so we each had something to take home. Lisa made some great brownies which I unfortunately don't have any nice pictures of. Elize made a duck egg quiche with salmon and Leanne made a gorgeous looking (and tasting) fruit tart with berries and mascarpone cheese.





I'm a little bit jealous of the light in the bungalow, because it makes it so easy to photograph inside during the afternoon. Pictures have a nice glow to them, something which is quite a bit harder to accomplish in my north-easterly facing apartment.

Tea-time was a quiet little affair... like the series of Leanne below, we spent the majority of the afternoon quietly sipping, savouring and smirking (I made more than my share of bad jokes).





Following my tea date, the gentleman and I ran some errands before investigating the mayhem of the mayfair hotel demolition. At some point in the afternoon part of the remaining wall had collapsed during the final stages of the demo, crushing the scaffolding that covered the sidewalk on Jasper Avenue. The Mayfair had been vacant for a couple years and was being demolished to make way for a new housing complex (all rentals) with street level commercial units including zip car rental. The collapse of the wall was apparently rather spectacular (as far as I know no one was hurt) and continued to draw a crowd as the demo crew worked to clean the debris from the road. Had the gentleman and I been home at the time of the accident we would have been sure to hear the most monstrous crash. Alas, we only got to see things as they were close to being cleaned up.




We capped off the evening with dinner on a patio and a visit with the gentleman's parents (also to photograph the sunset from the balcony of the dream apartment). Weekend successful.

I'm going out to a summer ladies tea tomorrow and in addition to the sandwiches I will be making, tonight I prepared a batch of pink lemonade to take along too.

The recipe itself was pretty simple. Slice up some lemons, add some sugar, pound the hell out of the lemons to release the juice so it will mix with the sugar to create the base syrup, then add water. I used some organic sugarcane and also a bit of brown sugar (not the type you bake with), which made the syrup kind of gross looking, so I decided to make pink lemonade and added some raspberries. I also had some mint from the farmer's market, so that was included in the mix as well.







I had a few lemons leftover so I made up a batch of just regular lemonade at the end. It's chilling in the fridge along with the rest of the pitchers, ready to be served up as a nice cold refreshment on a hot summer day. I certainly hope this lemonade is as delicious as it looks.