Wordless Wednesday - Fur Angels

 

Duffy

Gryffon

Ceilidh

Tucker

Beckett

Keltic

Wordless Wednesday - Things My Mother Made Me.

Christmas Memories

I thought I would drive out to Cabela's in the west end of town; it's about a 30-minute drive when the traffic is good. It's dog-friendly and has a nice fireplace that makes it a good place to take Christmas pictures with the dogs. I hadn't been there since I took Beckett and Keltic in Dec 2019.

The picture above was taken on 17 Dec 2019. How was I to know that just six days later I would let Beckett go.

Unfortunately, this year, the fireplace was blocked off by the tree and a table so I couldn't recreate the photoshoot.  We did get some decent shots in front of the tree and in Santa's workshop. Santa wasn't there though, probably a good thing.  I had thought to get both Teddy and Liam in the chair at the same time, but I don't think it was quite big enough and it was a rocker.

Liam did quite a bit of sniffing and barking at the reindeer. I'm quite sure he thought at first it was real. 

We did manage to get a few photos with the Christmas tree with the fireplace in behind. 

I don't know what it is about going into stores, but Teddy and Liam are avid shoppers. They really seem to like wandering around and sniffing everything. I did buy them some more Christmas gifts while we were there.

I think Cabela's must hire the most dog-friendly staff; one staff member even took their picture that he said he was going to post to Facebook.  I got lots of compliments about how well behaved the dogs were, while all the time I was telling them, don't pee.

So, while I couldn't recreate the 2019 photo, we did make some new Christmas memories. 

Acadian Meat Pie - A Christmas Tradition

When I was a child, we always went to Midnight Mass with Mum, not when we were very little but once we were old enough to sit still. While we were at Mass with Mum, Dad would heat up a Christmas meat pie and when we got home from Mass, we would have some meat pie, some sweets and sometimes would get to open a present before going to bed. My mother always called her pies "tourtiere" but when I was posted to Quebec, I found out that they weren't.

A tourtiere is made with a mix of ground meats and spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. My mother's meat pie had chunks of chicken, pork and beef and was flavoured mainly with summer savory. I was told that her mother's recipe used tea biscuit dough for the pie pastry but that my father found this too heavy, so she started making her pies with regular pie dough. 

So, with COVID when everyone seemed to be baking, I thought I would try to recreate her meat pies. My mother didn't have a recipe, she just knew it by heart. I found out there are as many recipes as there are Acadian families. The first year, I made one pie and it used some of the spices that you find in a tourtiere. It was good but didn't bring back those childhood memories. Last year, I made pies that just used summer savory and oregano, they were much closer in taste, but do you think I wrote down how I made them. This year I again edited the recipe and I think that I have something that's pretty close. I used three or four different recipes that I found online to come up with mine.

My Acadian meat pie is made with a center pork roast, chicken breast and chicken thighs. This year I used a small pork roast, three boneless chicken breasts and six boneless chicken thighs. You cut all the meat up into chunks, a half inch or bigger. If you use bone in chicken breasts and thighs, take as much meat off of the bone as you can. You put all the meat including the bones into a pot and cover with chopped onion, about a cup of onion will do. Fill the pot with water until all the meat is covered, I had water about an inch over the meat and onions. To this you add, some salt and pepper about a half to a teaspoon; then cover it all with summer savory. The picture below is not mine but from one of the recipes I used for inspiration. It has to be summer savory, which isn't always easy to find if you're not in the Maritimes. 

You bring this to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, stirring occasionally. You may have to add more water, some recipes say to just cover the meat, but I always put more water than that in the pot. This year, after the mixture had simmered for about an hour, I added a tablespoon each of oregano and of coriander seed as well as two packets of chicken bouillon powder. If you've used bone in chicken, you'll have to remove all the bones, allow them to cool a bit and pull off the rest of the meat, which is why I used boneless. Now you let it continue to simmer, until the meat, especially the chicken breast breaks down.  Then you have to let the filling chill for several hours, I let it chill overnight. If your filling, after chilling, is still watery, you can pour out the broth and with some flour and butter make a bit of gravy and mix it back into the meat mixture. Again, not my picture but the meat filling will look something like this before chilling.

This year I had enough filling to make three pies and some mini tarts. One pie is a little light on filling though as I still had meat mixture left after making the first two pies and the tarts, so I bought another pie shell. I guess I should learn how to make pie dough. My mother did have a Never Fail Pie Crust recipe, but it made enough dough for five double crust pies. I made it once and it worked the first time, but I never really needed five pies at one time, although she did say you could freeze the dough.

You fill your pie shells with the meat mixture, cutting some vents or poking holes in the top crust. Some people add an egg wash to the top crust, but I didn't. The pies are baked at 350F for 40 to 50 minutes or until the crust is golden.

The result

Mini Meat pies

The meat pies can be frozen and reheated. If you've thawed them, it takes about 30 minutes at 350F, if they're frozen it will take quite a bit longer. These pies will be part of our Christmas Eve supper.  My sister and brother-in-law make my mother's Acadian meat pie as well as his family's tourtieres for Christmas and I'm sure they will be on the menu Christmas Day. 

Making the meat pies made me think of my mum and dad making Christmas meat pies and all the other holiday treats we enjoyed that made Christmas so special. To paraphrase, Maroon Five's song Memories:

Toast to the ones here today,

Toast to the ones that we lost on the way,

Cause the food brings back memories,

And the memories bring back memories of you.

A Taste of Toronto

My youngest sister won four tickets from the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Toronto. So, another of my sisters and I drove to Kingston to meet up with my youngest sister and our brother-in-law. We then headed off to a hotel in North York. We had a beautiful fall day for the drive and arrived in North York with plenty of time for a drink at a local bar before heading downtown for supper and the show. 

We had a bit of a problem figuring out the subway, well not the subway actually, but how and where to pay your fare. We had three Presto cards but we needed four and the machine on the upper level only allowed you add money to the cards. Any way we put money on the cards we had and headed downstairs; there we found another machine where you could actually get the cards too. A little signage about where and how to pay your fare certainly would have helped. 

We had dinner at a restaurant called Three Brasseurs (Three Brewers). We ordered two Flammkuchen, one all meat and a BBQ chicken. They were very good.  We had another drink with our meal, if we hadn't been going to a show, we all probably would have had another drink. After dinner we walked over to the box office to get our tickets.  The prize also included a $10 voucher for a drink or a snack and a ticket for a reception to be held in the main lobby after the show. The CAA agent told us after the show that they had over 20,000 entries and chose 50 winners. The show tickets were over a $120 each so not a bad prize. 

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child takes place after all of the movies. Harry is sending his youngest son, Albus Severus Potter, off to his first year at Hogwarts. Young Albus befriends Scorpious Malfoy. The play is really about the problem of the relationships between sons and fathers. Albus and Scorpious cause some serious problems by going back in time trying to bring Cedric Diggery back to life. They have amazing effects in the show, some of which they won't tell you how they do them, but it was all very well done. There were wands that produced fire, transformations after characters had drunk polyjuice, and even people levitating.  The dementors were really cool. If you have the chance to see the play, I would highly recommend it. Not sure you'll get all of the same effects; the CAA Ed Mirvish theatre underwent a $5 million dollar upgrade and renovation specifically to be able do all the lighting and effects the play demands.  The new decor of the theatre was very classical though, a dark blue with gold accents. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures or videos during play. 

Ed Mirvish Theatre

Petronuses painted on the walls

Light fixture in the upper mezzanine

Death Eater

It's a long play, three hours and a 20-minute intermission but the time went by quickly, the play never seemed to drag. At intermission, my sister and I got lucky heading upstairs to the ladies instead of getting in line downstairs. As we went to the ladies upstairs, we noticed a small bar on that level so we redeemed our drink voucher there; impeccable timing we hardly had to wait at either the ladies or the bar. After the play, there was a reception as part of the prize, some of the actors came out and mingled with the crowd. CAA put on quite a nice spread of food: cheese, crackers, pizza, fruit kebobs, cookies, tarts as well as hot hors d'oeuvres, mini burgers, spring rolls and sushi. If it hadn't have been so late, we could have made it dinner. We got back to the hotel after midnight.

We didn't rush in the morning so as not to hit the morning traffic. We walked down to Starbucks for breakfast sandwiches and coffee and afterwards checked out of the hotel. On the way home we stopped at the Air Force Museaum in Trenton. The Presence in Absence Sculpture was at a service centre that we stopped at on the way to the museum.

North York Sculpture

Chalk art drawing

Mel Lastman Square

Flowers in November

TO Chair

Presence in Absence sculpture

In 2014, we had an Ad Astra stone dedicated to our father laid in the Air Park of the Air Force Museum. All of my sisters and some other family members were able to attend the dedication. I don't think any of us had been there since then. The late husband of another of my sisters also has a stone there. At the dedication, we really didn't have much time to walk through the museum and since military members and veterans get in for free, we decided to stop on the way home. Turns out the member or veteran can also have one guest so none of us had to pay.

Ad Astra stone dedication - Sep 2014

Ad Astra visit - Nov 2022

High Flight poem

My father's stone

NDT Memorial

My brother in law's stone

Brass Poppies

After looking around the Air Park, we took some time to look around inside the museum. One of the displays at the museum is a memorial to the service members we lost in Afghanistan. After we closed out the mission, the memorial from Camp Mirage, the main base we had there, was repatriated to Canada. One of the soldiers we lost in Afghanistan, worked for me in Gagetown, Sgt Craig Gillam. I bought a poppy for his plaque.

Olympic jersey

Avro Arrow model

Sgt Gilliam - Lest We Forget

Camp Mirage Memorial

Stained glass Rondels 

It was a nice break, and it made the trip back to Kingston seem shorter. It was just a quick stop in Kingston and then it was the last leg back home to Ottawa. It was a wonderful little journey; my first time in a large crowd since COVID hit. I wore a mask throughout the play and many others did too. I hope we have a good winter and hope that we will put the worst of this pandemic behind us.