Longing for home
I am missing Maple in the County. I love everything about Maple in the County. I love maple syrup. I love maple cheddar. I love maple sugar tarts and taffy on a stick. I love maple bacon with pancakes smothered in maple syrup. Is there maple wine or maple beer? Bring it on. I love […]
Dear diary
MARCH 17, 2012 Here I am, 4,700 km from home and in spite of my almost chronic gripe-fest about email, Facebook and Twitter, it is precisely because of social media I read the news from the County. In particular, the relaxing of the death grip on our revered cultural institutions including our museums, our libraries […]
Distilled pleasures
The grape is a marvel. Either fresh or dried, it provides a source of food. When pressed into juice, it offers a wonderful thirst-quenching beverage. In the hands of the winemaker, it can be transformed into wine. And, refined even further, it provides the gift of brandy. Two thousand years before Christ, the Mesopotamians understood […]
Heads up!
I strongly encourage you to pay attention to the game when you are in a hockey arena or at a baseball game. Public address announcements inform you that you might get hit with a puck or a ball or other projectiles that may enter the seating area during the game. It can happen. They have […]
Glossy wisdom
Maybe you’re as confused as I am on this topic, “The 10 best things you can add to your diet to make your life perfect.” Really? Only 10? In reality there are literally hundreds of lists of the best foods, juices, vitamins, supplements out there. I’m a magazine junkie, I know. LOML and I subscribe […]
A haven on the shore
I did not know this. Wellington—the old incorporated municipality of Wellington—has an official coat of arms and flag. You can look it up on the Web to get all the official registration details, or if you want a better quality image than the newspaper can reproduce. The coat of arms and flag have fallen by […]
Florida Tarpons open arena season
The Florida Tarpons opened their inaugural season in the Ultimate Indoor Football League last Friday night with a resounding 58-35 win over the Mississippi Hound Dogs. The UIFL is an arena football league, with teams from the southern States, with a couple of exceptions. The league is the brainchild of Andrew Haines and Michael Taylor, […]
Song and dance on the palate
The center of the Pays de la Loire region, is located approximately 60 km. inland from the estuary of the Loire River which, in turn, feeds into the Atlantic Ocean. Not surprisingly, its wine is renowned for an excellent ability to pair with seafood, in particular oysters. Muscadet is a dry white wine made exclusively […]
Magical places
Libraries. Really! Our public libraries are on the chopping block? Is this what we’ve come to, putting our cultural assets and social institutions on the market? What the H E double late fines is this scroogey-crap all about? When did Prince Edward County become Toronto? When did Mayor Rob Ford become a mentor for this […]
What’s in a (grape) name
Nowadays, we customarily choose wine by its grape varietal name (i.e. Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon) but this option is not always available, notably with wines from Europe. California growers heavily promoted varietal wine marketing in the late 1970s, and consumers gravitated toward this method of selecting their wines. Instead of ordering a glass of white […]