Birthday Part 2: Ipperwash Beach

Continuing the dog-themed birthday weekend I've been having so far, today we went to Ipperwash Beach (Lake Huron) with Bo to swim and have a picnic dinner. Like usual, we went a bit later in the day so John could avoid the sun, and all of us were able to avoid the crowds. It's nice to pull up to the parking lot just as families with kids are heading home.

Bo was a champ in the car. She's either interested in looking around, or she settles down right away and enjoys the ride. This bodes well for our upcoming drive to Indiana.

Like most things, the beach made her a little nervous at first. So much noise! There were boats and kids and other dogs, and she was consumed with watching the seagulls fly around.

Several people complimented us on how beautiful she is - this happens everywhere we go. Obviously.

We made sandwiches and brought chips for our picnic, and I enjoyed a peanut butter and chocolate cupcake from Hey, Cupcake! Few things are better than sitting on the beach with your dog and eating a cupcake on your almost-birthday. 

Once my stomach was full of sandwiches, chips, and cupcake, Bo and I took a walk around the beach, and then a short run in the water. It went like this; I would coax her to jump and run a bit, and she was trot for a few steps, then try to shoot past me. When she couldn't keep going, she would do this horizontal flip in the air (a characteristic greyhound feat). I'm sure it didn't seem like real running to her, but she had a great time. Once she relaxed and had her dinner, she really enjoyed the lake. And bonus, my stress fractured foot didn't hurt at all! I think we'll be able to run together a bit this fall.

Bo rarely wags her tail or even raises it to show her mood. But once we got in the water, her tail curled right up to show she was having a good time. So far she only does that when she's swimming, meeting another dog, or staring at herself in the mirror.

I tried to take a family photo before we left. 

After Pawlooza and the beach this weekend, next weekend is going to seem awfully boring.

All the running and mental stimulation of the beach really tired her out and she slept like a baby the whole way home.

Victoria Day

Fun fact: Canada doesn't do Memorial Day like we do in the U. S. Instead, they celebrate Queen Victoria's Birthday with Victoria Day, aka, "The May Two-Four," as in, May 24. It's a long weekend that signifies the start of summer, not unlike Memorial Day. John and I observed the queen's b-day with a trip to Ipperwash Beach. We waited until late in the day, since John fries like an egg in direct sunlight.  And I've wanted to watch the sunset over Lake Huron since we moved here. It didn't disappoint!

Ipperwash Beach was perfect. By 6 or so when we arrived it was practically deserted. The water was WAY too cold to swim, but I did wade into the shallow part to take some photos. The water is always so clear in Lake Huron and the shallow part extends quite a ways out, so you can wade about 30-40 feet out with water below your knees.

We packed a picnic and read books on the beach while waiting for the sunset to begin.

Once it started, I took about 500 pictures and I was too in awe to read my book. 

The water was very still as evening set in. I love the texture of the water in all these photos.

The water looks like leather. Or oil. The weather was perfect for a beautiful sunset.

Ipperwash is dog-friendly and the parking is free. We'll definitely be back again soon.

Avocado Zucchini Pasta and Blueberry Muffins

Ah, the end of the summer.

I know in the last post I went on about how summer was over, but this time I really mean it.

(Note: this is not our dog. This is a random beach dog.)

Summer is really ending. John and I went to Lake Huron for Labor Day, and everything. We decided to go to Ipperwash Beach, the site of a WWII army base that now features a dog friendly beach with free parking! Everywhere on Lake Huron takes about the same amount of time to get to, and the beach itself was lovely, so we will definitely return.

John and I completely forgot to bring our beach chairs or umbrella, so we sat in the shade beneath some beach vegetation until the sun moved too far to the west. It was still a relaxing and beautiful afternoon. I love Lake Huron. 

Tonight, John and I had what I'd like to call the Last Summer Dinner of the Year. We made two summery recipes that came up on my feed reader this week.
First: Julienned Zucchini Pasta with Avocado Sauce, from Oh She Glows.

(Also featured: random counter items, including the Centennial IPA from Founders that John and I shared while preparing dinner, in a new-to-us Apricot Brandy glass from Talize, part of a mixed group of glasses I bought for a grand total of $2.) 

Angela, who writes Oh She Glows, posted that she bought a julienne peeler. It's like a regular peeler, but with teeth. It easily juliennes things like squash, cucumbers, and carrots. You could use it for salad toppings, but, like Angela, I saw it and thought of veggie "pasta." A spiralizer would do the same thing, but the peeler is much cheaper ($7 for the peeler, vs. $25 for the spiralizer). I took her suggestion and made the easy avocado pasta sauce (avocado + basil + oil + garlic in the food processor) for this raw zucchini pasta, and it was a total success. We each ate an entire zucchini for dinner, along with half an avocado each. Lots of raw vegetables in this meal! 

 I think you could easily heat this very briefly in a pan and top it with basically any pasta sauce. It's perfect for the end of the summer when zucchini is still plentiful.

Since our pasta was really squash, we decided to have "pasta" with a side of carbs, in the form of these Blueberry Corn Muffins from Daily Garnish. These muffins only have a 1/4 cup of sugar and not much oil. Instead, they get moisture and sweetness from the blueberries and corn. I ate three and could have kept going, if it weren't for all that common sense I have.


Now that it's September and there are only a few hours of Labor left, I really am excited for fall! One more post about summer running, once I get around to writing it. After that, I'll start blogging about pumpkin scones, or the 100 sweet potatoes I plan on eating this month, or how cheap acorn squash is. You know, whatever's par for September.

100 Year Old Spoilers

At some point during Dave and Carla's visit, we started talking about old books, like Pride and Prejudice, and how there should be a statute of limitations on spoilers. If you haven't read Pride and Prejudice, then only you are to blame for having the ending spoiled. The same is probably true for Harry Potter or The Sopranos at this point. Dave kept bringing up older examples, like Sherlock Holmes (as in, the original stories), and how those were 100 year old spoilers, and couldn't really be spoilers. In response, I said that he should write "100yearoldspoilers.blogspot.com." He could give away the endings to various bits of literature. 

 

We tried to keep our guests entertained with activities like: shopping, planning meals, beer, and "Let's go renew our license tags! It'll only take a second!"
That turned into "Let's go walk around Canadian Tire for an hour while we get our emissions test renewed!" They looked as bored as they do above the whole time they were here.





I keed, I keed!

We also went down to St. Thomas to try out the Railway City Brewing Co., and then we headed down to Port Stanley to drink beer at The Wharf, overlooking Lake Erie.



























We walked around Port Stanley a bit, and stopped by Sweet Beach. Dave stated in advance that he wasn't much of a beach person, so I love this picture of him pretending to enjoy the beach, while Carla and I pose for the camera. We stuck our feet in the lake, and it was like an ice bath, so the beach portion of our visit was rather short.

The car ride down to St. Thomas was probably my favorite part of the trip, and I laughed so hard that we nearly had to pull over so I didn't kill us. At one point Dave read the name of the Forge and Anvil Museum* off of a tourism sign, and, assuming he wanted to go there, I did a U-turn to follow the sign. Carla started saying that Dave didn't even necessarily want to go there, and that sometimes  he just "says words," that people take seriously. For instance: when I decided to become a vegetarian, it was partially because of a conversation in Summer 2009 between Dave, Carla, Kira, and myself, about knowing where your meat comes from, that ended with Dave shouting, "MAYBE YOU SHOULD STARE DEATH IN THE FACE A LITTLE MORE OFTEN!" The thing is, he was right. But Carla hated/was amused by the idea that it's Dave's fault that I'm a vegetarian, because he just "says words" and people think he knows what he's talking about.

Other highlights included Dave's impersonation of John's southern accent, that sounded something like Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel on the Simpsons. I also overheard Dave say the following: "Anything can be gay if you want it to be."

In somewhat related news, we got new neighbors who we already love. We made them cookies as a sort of "Welcome to the building!" gift. Two days later, while we were having dinner with Carla, Dave, and two other people, our neighbors showed up with, as John put it, "a whole goddamned pie." The two undergrad girls who live there baked us a double-crust apple pie! Goddamn.




*Unfortunately, we never made it there. Put it on the list for next time! But seriously, click here to read someone else's account of going there and a bunch of other places in our area.

Sweet Beach - Port Stanley, ON

As I mentioned here, I went with John and Lauren to our friend's new cafe in Port Stanley, Ontario: Sweet Beach.

Our friend Meg opened Sweet Beach earlier this summer. It's a really cute little place on William Street in Port Stanley. If you've ever been to Port Stanley, you've probably been on William St. - it's the one that leads straight to the main beach in town. Meg's location is fabulous, and the cafe appeals to people like me who would like a food option other than fries when they visit Lake Erie. The other big restaurant on the same street is Mackie's, which is kind of a Port Stanley tradition for a lot of people. They sell fries, fast food stuff, and ice cream. It's not there's anything wrong with that, but it's nice to have the choice of something else.







Here's Meg with their display case of delicious baked goods.
































Meg has a nice variety of baked goods: muffins, cookies, ham & cheese croissant, etc. Lots of yummy stuff, and she bakes it fresh every day.









Chocolate silk cake.













Sweet date squares.














Sweet Beach has the only soft serve ice cream in Port Stanley and it is seriously some good soft serve. She also has a ton of mix-ins so you can order a Sweet Storm - their version of a flurry/blizzard kind of thing.


















One of the perks of having a year-round place like this is the coffee - Meg has several kinds of organic, fair-trade coffee brewing daily, plus this row of pretty teas. You can also buy the coffee by the pound to take home.






















John and I had such a good time visiting Sweet Beach and we will definitely be back!




















Note: just a reminder, this ain't no fancy blog. I wasn't paid or given any sort of compensation for this post, I just like Meg and Sweet Beach a lot.

Lauren in Ontario

In the second half of July, my good friend Lauren came to visit us in London.





















Lauren and I have been friends since about fifth grade, and I'm sad to say that I don't have a scanner to show you some awesomely bad pictures from back then, because there are TONS: show choir, jazz band, our 8th grade trip to Gettysburg when I got the stomach flu and threw up all over the hotel bed we were sharing. Lauren and all the other girls in our room eventually got sick, too. Those were good times.

We stayed friends during college, even though she went to Pur-don't. Now she lives in Chicago and works for a health science company that does research on things like whether or not formaldehyde in wrinkle-free shirts can hurt you. Or how bad hair products are for your body. That kind of thing. Lauren is one of about 2 friends I have who "do science" instead of music, and I like to ask her sciency questions. For some reason I think it's like having the Discovery Channel on hand, though Lauren constantly reminded me that she doesn't automatically know everything about science just because she majored in it.






Home of the "chipnut": a peanut coated in potato, then fried and seasoned. Not as amazing as I hoped, but I'm glad I sampled them.












During her visit we did all the typical London things. You know - playing with sparklers on our porch. Then we headed down to Port Stanley, ON and stopped at Picard's Peanuts along the way. Picard's has most kinds of nuts you can think of, plus their chocolate-coated varieties, candy, jams, etc. It's a place that "has Abby's dad written all over it," as John said.

Then we drove into Port Stanley itself. We stopped at Sweet Beach, a new cafe run by two of our good Canadian friends, but it deserves its own post here. Next we walked around Port Stanley, something I've never actually done. Lauren and I stood next to this monument to take a picture, and then proved that we cannot stand still and take a normal picture without me laughing hysterically first.





















































John has the opposite problem. He can sit still for about 1 picture, and then he has to let off some steam being funny.





































It was SO FUN to have Lauren come visit us. Plus we got to learn where the Amtrak station is in Detroit! She's the kind of friend who I can go a long time without speaking to, but then we talk again and no time has gone by. Plus, Lauren is easy to entertain. We are both excited to see her in Chicago in August!

Beach Day - Bayfield, ON

My parents came to Ontario to visit in July and we took them to Bayfield, ON, a beachy town we'd never visited before.


















Bayfield is on Lake Huron, just north of Grand Bend and the Pinery. The town itself was cute (though I didn't take pictures), and it seemed more parent-friendly at least for my parents than Grand Bend.



















We tried out our new beach umbrella.



















On the other side of this pier is a marina where people park their boats.

























































Bayfield's sand on the beach was really nice, but the shore was really rocky. Everyone but me kept their sandals on to go out into the water because it was painful to walk on all the rocks. Someone recently told me that the rockiness comes and goes (weird!) so it might not be that way next summer. One we were out about 30 feet or so from the beach, the sand was really soft, and still very shallow. At that distance, the water only came up to my waist. The other big thing in Bayfield's favor is that the parking was free and it has public washrooms, though they were locked for the evening before we were ready to go home, so that was kind of a bummer. I think we'll definitely go back and maybe see some more of the town next time.