Merrickville

Tim and I went to Merrickville today - about an hour's drive from Ottawa Centreville. It's a pretty little place, apparently known as Canada's most beautiful village. The main street is St. Lawrence, and both sides of the street are lined with curio and craft shops, and little cafes. I especially liked this shop that sold all the Christmas ornaments and decor, though I wondered what they would do for the rest of the year! There were also shops where we could do food and wine tasting, amidst a floor-to-ceiling array of jams, dips, spreads, oils, butters and pickles. I could have spent the whole day there! But no, we had to move to the gelato shop, where Tim was suitably fleeced when he paid $5 for what were essentially 2 chocolate coins!

We left Merrickville mid-afternoon to go back to Tim's place to prepare dinner. I'd brought a surprise dessert along, which turned out to have the same main ingredient that Tim had in mind for his dessert (pear - mine Asian, his Bartlett). So it was funny - we ended up with double desserts - a Chinese pear soup and a Pear & Cranberry Crisp! It was also the first time I'd tried baking anything outside of my own kitchen without having first looked at the recipe and knowing what I needed to do. Tim essentially drew the dinner menu out from a feature page in the The Globe & Mail, so I was reading the Crisp recipe on the spot and figuring out what we needed to do.

Tim stays in a lovely and very well designed 3-storey semi-D at Riverdale. His kitchen is a dream! Being the organised person that he is, everything in the cabinets from plates, cups and crockery, to spices, baking equipment and pots & pans were all lined up nicely, and everything properly labelled! I remarked to Tim that it was like a showroom kitchen; I felt like we were filming some cooking show. And he said that's exactly what happened! When he and David first moved in, the TV station came down and filmed an episode of a reality show on food in their kitchen!

It was a very fun evening in this kitchen. The zucchini & apple soup that David made from the recipe in the same newspaper feature was light but so flavourful - i didn't know zucchini and apples could taste like that! Their Australian friends Phil and Mary came down too, and whipped up a jambalaya for our main course. We were stuffed by the end of the meal, and just lounged on the plush couch in the kitchen for a while. Tim was curious, so I took them all through a tour of Hungrygowhere while we were "nua-ing" in the kitchen, haha :-)

So nice... I enjoyed myself very much today. I'm going to miss cooking here - it's been fun experimenting with all these "strange" combinations of ingredients. Maybe I should think about doing these unconventional soups back in Singapore...