B&B in use again

In 2011 we lived a couple of months in Helsinki in the apartment of my cousin and her husband, who themselves lived then at their summer cottage. As a thank you we had given them a Bed&Breakfast voucher to Canada for 2 weeks. So on September 14th they came to visit us for 2 weekends. In between they traveled through a part of Ontario. The first weekend was still quite summery and we went to see the typical tourist areas and walked a lot. On Sunday we took the ferry to the Toronto islands and enjoyed ourselves there for about 5 hours. The next weekend I went with them to Casa Loma. I had never been there before either and to understand more of the history of Canada and Toronto in particular it's very useful to visit the castle. The castle was build by Sir Henry Pellatt, one of the most ambitious men of his time, who had a lot of influence and fortune. He is well-known for his role in bringing hydro-electric to Toronto, but also a well-known soldier and financier. With his fortune he built a huge castle on the top of a hill in Toronto with all it's luxury and high-end amenities. Unfortunately as a consequence of the depression after World War I, he went bankrupt and had to leave Casa Loma. Nowadays it's a museum open for the public.
On Sunday we went to High Park in the Western end of Toronto.
It was great to have them over and now they are exploring New York. They only used 8 days out of the 14 we had given them, so we'll expect them back someday :)

Chinatown

Paula and Mika

Street meat

Local beer brewery

The Distillery District

Now serving Hertog Jan at the Biermarket

The Hockey Hall of Fame

Casa Loma

the library and living room

the entrance hall

Living room to entertain guests

Sir Pellett's bathroom

Lady Pellet's bedroom

We climbed the stairs to the tower

Sunday at High Park

It is not really hard to get homesick, if you don't count the miss of beloved people, because both Finnish and Dutch food can be bought in different stores around Toronto. Today I found a bakery, literally around the corner, where they sell Finnish pastries as well as other goodies. In our local supermarket I found Dutch salted licorice. Of course they are a bit more expensive than back home, but sometimes you can treat yourself :)

Korvapuusti

Dutch pie

On Saturday we went over for dinner to Kevin's house and since we don't have an oven, I saw my opportunity to bake a Dutch apple pie called appeltaart.

It turned out delicious and I served it with vanille ice cream.

Here is the recipe if you would like to make it yourself.

For the dough:
- 300 gr of flower
- 175 gr of (salted) butter (softened)
- 80 gr of sugar
- 2 egs
- (cinnamon)

Filling:
- 1 kg of apples (preferably sour apples)
- 50 gr of sugar
- cinnamon
- almonds and raisins are optional

Mix all the ingredients for the dough together. If the dough is still too sticky, add more flower until it doesn't stick to your hands anymore.
Use a round baking tin and butter it. Put 3/4 of the dough in the tin. Make sure you put dough on the sides as well about 1 cm high. This will help to keep the filling inside the pie.

Cut the apples in (large) dices, mix the sugar and the cinnamon with it and if you like almonds and/or raisins you can add those as well. Fill the tin with the apples. Roll out the 1/4 of the dough you had saved and cut long stripes which you then lay over the filling (see picture). Brush egg wash on the dough stripes to get a nice golden brown look.

Bake it in the oven for about 60 minutes.

Enjoy!

Summer 2012: Timmins

Timmins has become our second home town. Since Porter was having a huge sale, we'd decided to visit Timmins in the summer. We flew there on Friday night and went with Matt and Renelle to the local pub where we met some of their friends and had the best poutine at the end of the night. On Saturday we packed the car and drove out of the city to Gogoma, where Matt's aunt owns hunting and fishing lodges. We stayed in one of the trailers and went fishing, made a camp fire and enjoyed the nature. On Sunday we went to see Amanda, Eric and Jack who were in Timmins as well. The boys went golfing and we went to see Renelle's mom. The guys had seen black bears at the course, so on Monday when we went golfing I was hoping to see one as well. But no luck for me. Tuesday we went golfing again, but at another course. Of course we ended our trip with a dinner at East Side Mario's. We said bye for now to Timmins and hope to visit it with Christmas again.

Summer 2012: Lake Placid

In Canada almost every month has a long weekend. In August we have Civic Holiday and we'd decided to make a trip during that weekend. On Friday night we rented a car, which was exactly the same car we owned in Finland, a Saab. We had decided to drive to Lake Placid in NY state. It is a 6 hours drive, but because we left so late on Friday we stayed the night in a B&B in Kingston. On Saturday morning we took the country road along the shore, which went through cute little towns and showed us the beautiful lake. At Ogdensburg we crossed the border over yet another international bridge.
The road to Lake Placid was very nice, showing us little Amish villages, where you would still see the horses and carriages and the closer we got to Lake Placid, huge mountains.
Lake Placid hosted the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics and you can still visit the different sites.
We found a nice little cottage where we stayed for 2 nights.
On Saturday afternoon, after we arrived, we went immediately to the nearest golf course which was situated between the mountains. We had beautiful views, unfortunately my phone was dead and I wasn't able to make any pictures.
On Sunday it rained a bit in the morning, so we went to see the old hockey stadium. Later the sky cleared up and we drove to the nearby Whiteface Mountain (1483 m). We took the gondola up and thought about hiking down. We didn't have proper hiking shoes and the mountain was too steep to walk down. After trying to hike down for 1,5 hour we gave up and walked back up to take the gondola down again.
On Monday we played another round of golf in Tupper Lake.
Again beautiful scenes and definitely a place worth visiting.

We liked Lake Placid and its surrounding very much and might come back some day in the winter to see how the winter-sports over there is.

B&B in Kingston

Thousand Island Parkway

Bridge to the USA

CHEAP!!!

Our cottage

You couldn't see the top, because of the fog

Some deer

All gravel and so steep

The summit

No fog anymore

A tough course with small greens