The Joy Of Looking

It's beginning to look a lot like summer, actually it looked a lot like summer in January. Maybe it'd be more appropriate to say it's beginning to feel a lot like summer. The other day I woke up and it was pissing rain for the 5th or 6th consecutive day and I got on my bike and went about my daily-tasks, whistling along to my bike-tires splashing through puddles. Summer is a beautiful illusion, it's in the mind, not the skies.

There's a lot of excitement happening, big things are happening, lots of fun is being had.

Andrea and I celebrated 6 months with each other a couple weeks ago. We drove out to the beautiful Cowichan Bay region to partake in the 2nd annual prawn festival, which ended up being profoundly lame as a festival but still awesome as a day by the bay. We had some junk-food and walked around the romantic little sea-side town, then we drove into Genoa Bay which is a little speck of a town in an inlet in the Strait of Georgia. We went to the Genoa Bay Cafe for dinner, it's pretty much the only business in the town. We shared some mussels, Andrea had a seared chicken breast with yummy mashed potatoes and mushrooms and a pear jus and I had lamb-chops with risotto and chimi-churi. Strange but delicious combination.
















That's an image of the route to the remote town of Genoa Bay, followed by a picture of a floating-house in Genoa Bay.

Two weeks ago we ventured to Salt Spring Island and I practiced my new driving skills on the winding roads of the island. We checked out the Saturday market, then went to the Salt Spring Island Cheese farm to see the goats and sheep but the main-stars ended up being the adorable family of dogs that live on the farm and the cat that parks itself directly on the ashphalt of the walk-way to the farm who befriended Andrea. There were also two lambs that stole the show from the full-grown sheep and goats. I bought some surface-moulded/ripened soft goats cheese. We went for dinner before catching the ferry, Andrea ordered lamb which I thought was pretty hilarious considering she was swooning over them at the farm.























Andrea and the cat, me playing catch with one of the dogs, LAMB!

A few days ago we spontaneously went to Vancouver because my old-friend Nick was in town from Ottawa visiting another high-school friend, Tyler, who lives in Kelowna. We met for beers and then we called up our good good friend Katie who lives in downtown Vancouver and she came out with ANOTHER friend from high school, and some of Andrea's good friends came out too. We had a great time until around 2 or 3am when we realized we'd neglected to negotiate a place to sleep for the evening. We got in a cab and told him to take us to the cheapest hotel he knew of which ended up being a really really nice, quaint building called the Victorian Hotel. It was kind of a hotel/hostel on the grander scale of hostels. The bathrooms were shared but really nice, and the room was private and charming. The next day we went to the Granville market and ran into one of my ex-coworkers, Dawn, who now works for Osake sake on Granville. She gave me some Kasu which is the lees left over from fermented rice during the sake making process. I'm gonna use it to make An Pan which is An, a sweet bean paste stuffed into Pan, a sweet bread that looks like a burger bun. The kasu contains naturally occuring yeast and quite a bit of alcohol so I'm hoping the bread will rise without packaged yeast, we'll see.









Now the weekend is winding down and I have plenty more to look forward to for future adventures. My Dad and sister will be arriving here soon and I can't even imagine what we'll all get up to, when they leave I'll leave with them for a 2 week vacation across the plains of this great country, ending in Ottawa for a week's stay. Around the same time my great friend Robbie will hopefully be making his move to the Island and staying with me while finding his footing in the area. Very exciting!

Oh and I've been cooking unrelentlessly, I think I'm starting to get kind of good. Just a little bit...