I love soul food...working at Gratiot and McDougall for 3 years exposed me to some goooood food! This is real food and I hope this is as good as I think it may be.........
Windsor's Namaste Corner Cafe offers meals for $5
Corner Café hopes it'll pay off
THE WINDSOR STAR HEADLINE NEWS
Gallery: Toronto Santa Claus Parade
The Toronto Santa Claus parade has been a tradition since 1905 and is thought to be the longest running children's parade in the world. Photos by Staff...
For some odd happenstance I have had a spike in readership and all have seemed to go to the same page.
Its my hope that the new readers stick around and read about some of the great things going on down here. So here is a primer for people who know little of this area.
Wine: This is a cool climate area like Burgundy or Bordeaux. We are actually about as far south (42nd parallel) as Northern California so our winters are usually not too bad and our summers are long and warm. The wines come stylistically like French wines. Leaner and more complex than a hot region and minus the jamminess of hot growth areas. The French grapes all are grown here...Cab Sauv, Cab Franc, Merlot, Syrah, Pinot Noir, Sauv Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc (soon), Gewurztraminer, Riesling along with Nebbiolo (soon), and Pinot Grigio. Quite diverse and along with some hybrids, the wines here can be a little bigger than expected but they are not big jammy fruit-bombs. Alcohol content is close to the ideal 12.5% so they are “right”. No 15% Pinots here, and you get alot more complex tastes and more of the good wine stuff like anti-oxidants as they do better in cooler climates.
Golf: 2 Donald Ross courses (1 city owned) and an amazing number of courses throughout the county. Many are old so they have real trees and most are public.....great ones out near Kingsville (wine area).
Pizza: yup, the best in Canada and maybe North America. The best ones can trace their heritage back to the old Volcano, even if they don't have direct roots, style wise they are there. Thin crust, good sauce and yummy stuff. Chains try but with real Windsorites, we all fight the fight for our favourite pizza joint. Me I've always been a Sam's guy but now that I spend most of my time in the county, I can't get there...booohooo..had my first date with Terry there though.
Foods: down so south alot grows local and finally the restaurants are getting it. It took time but they do. Good ethnic food, but the best is getting local meats and produce and doing a 10 minute meal. Now thats cool!!!! 100 miles is just too easy.
History: we got it too....end of the Underground Railway, battlefield of the War of 1812, and Prohibition. Everyone down here has their stories. For some reason alot of whiskey got exported to the Bahamas in open boats by the Purple Gang.....they had a pipeline from East Windsor to Detroit under the river for whiskey.....and of course there is La Salle which was smuggler heaven (the river is really narrow there). Its fun stuff.
Nature: Point Pelee had the birding...don't quite get it but thats ok and its a Carolinian Forest (don't know what that means but it sounds good) and with water on 3 sides fishing and boating are big here.
Well thats my primer. Our wine is hard to get outside the area and with a certain Toronto sommelier buying up lots of the wine I like I am getting to hate TO even though I loved living there.
tootles
We recently held the inaugural meeting of the Cottam Wine Society. There is no Presidente for Life as this is an organic fun group.
The meeting was held at where else...the hub of the Cottam dining world and the home of the best local wine list....Calabria, in beautiful downtown Cottam.
There Terry and I dined with Gary and Wanda Killups from the Essex Wine Review and were often joined by our happy restauranteur John Driedger.
Wine brought was 2001 (my last bottle from Opimium)Grand Alsatiannnan Riesling, Sanson Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, Flat Rock Chardonnay, Aleksander Chardonnay and one other I forgot. John relaxed his corkage a wee bit after we bribed him with the Riesling. We later bought 2 bottles from John so they made out well too.
Our guest speaker was Gord Mitchell from Sprucewood. Actually he stopped by and said hello as he was having dinner there with his wife, but I still treat him as a friend and of course our inaugural speaker.
Dinner was pizza and we ate and drank far too much but we enjoyed it. Good friends and good food and wine...what more can you ask for.
We are arranging our next meeting soon and well it will be fun too I bet...anyone can come
We will remember them. In France , at a fairly large conference, Prime Minister Steven Harper was asked by a French cabinet minister if Canadian involvement in Afghanistan was just an example of "empire building". Mr Harper answered by saying, You could have heard a pin drop.
'Over the years, Canada has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not
return.'
A Canadian Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the Canadian, US, English, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks, but a French
Admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, North Americans generally learn only English. He then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English at these conferences rather than speaking French?' Without hesitating, the Canadian Admiral replied 'Maybe it's because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German.'
'You have been to France before, monsieur?' the customs officer asked sarcastically.
Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.
The official replied, 'Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.'
The Canadian said, 'The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it.'
'Impossible, Monseur. Canadians always have to show passports on arrival in France !'
The Canadian senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, 'Well, when I came ashore on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchman to show a passport to.'
You could have heard a pin drop.
Very amazing answers...and very true.
Remember our veterans and those that serve today.
Just finished racking my cider and of course tasting it. I was exceptionally careful in mixing the apple types (yeah right....it didn't quite work the way I thought it would) so the apple distribution has no effect.
Please follow the link and see/hear this music video. Only a person from the east coast could be so right. http://www.terry-kelly.com/pittance/pittance_en.htm
Our Appellations, Lake Erie North Shore and Pelee Island are the home of the Essex Scottish Highland Light Infantry, a regiment which my father and many other local men and women served in and liberated Holland from the Nazis. Prior to that they were involved in the infamous Dieppe Raid which was a disaster and decimated so many neighbourhoods in the area. In the Regimental system the regiments were located geographically so a disaster like Dieppe had horrible effects. About half the regiment was lost, but there was the “honour” of getting the furthest inland.
The Generals said that they learned alot and it saved thousands of live at D-Day. Well it is humorous that a member of the Royal Family was utterly incompetent and it took a dirt poor farm-boy from Missouri to get it right (well he made a great President too). I wonder how many silent cheers there were in the Legion Halls when Mountbatten was blown up by the IRA.
With our finest in Afghanistan, risking their lives and the tragedy at Fort Hood, I think that at 11:00 am tomorrow we should all bow our heads and pray for our brave lads and those who have served so proudly before them.
We need to remember with great pride how our brave men liberated the Dutch in 45 and maybe we can in time turn Afghanistan into a proper country.
So raise a toast to the brave ones and if you see an elderly man selling poppies ask him if he wants a coffee, he deserves it.
I always find it odd when local wine geeks refuse to try local wine, but are so quick to buy from any new wine region which the lickbo is promoting. True our region only has a limited number of wineries with limited to no support from lickbo or the local hospitality industry, so trying them requires effort...much more effort than it should btw.
So what happens when we take a local wine and have it go against a Sonoma, then a French wine. How can it hold up?
Last night we bbq'd some lamb, so what goes with this??? Syrah of course. Add to that we made an Herbes de Provence infused olive oil to marinade the chops and the Rhone wine should shine..right??.
We started with the Californian, Cline Syrah. This is a fine wine that Vintages carries all the time. It lacks that burnt fruit tastes and seems a bargain at the price.
Next was the Syrah from Ruthven via Mastronardi. My review tells what I think of it. Lean, not burnt fruit (basically can't happen here). It goes to say that I like this wine. Syrah can't grow here of course...but I love the local ones who somehow defy the spoken truths of the wine snobs.
Third was Venus Lauree, Cotes du Rhone Villages from of course the Rhone Valley in France. A very nice wine.
All are about the same price so there isn't a ringer.
The lamb chops marinated for about 2 hours. The oil was an extraction from Herbes de Provence and garlic. I was saddened that we didn't get local lamb but this was still good. We grilled them with pecan wood chips. Frenched green beans in garlic butter and a free form gratin aided as sides.
So how did it go? All 3 were great with the lamb and what was interesting was that all were fairly similar and none either stood out nor fell behind. That is interesting as the three regions are very dissimilar, but they had basically the same grape ( the Frenchy was a Grenache-Syrah blend which is typical from the Rhone). All blended well to the next.
It just confirms what a local winemaker keeps telling me. He believes that this area is wonderful and is the best area other than Napa and Sonoma in North America. He points to the development of the grapes which mature completely at harvest time. In hot areas the grapes may have the sugar, but they aren't mature therefore the have to hang and the sugar goes way up and the acid falls way down. The result is a 15% Pinot that is all fruit and no subtleties. Here the acid stays up and the sugar is there but not too high resulting in12-13% Pinot which is right in the sweet spot. Besides that, the good stuff in wine is more abundant in cool climate wines so the local wine is really good for you.
So it was fun and good to see that the local champion held its own . A winner wasn't chosen but I liked them all.
We just have to keep screaming that our local wine is as good or better than the imports. Just wish that the lickbo would support them rather than Yellow Penguin.
Tootles
CIDER UPDATE
getting ready to rack it as the primary fermentation looks to be almost done. Maybe Thursday
Awesome concept!!! I hope it works Kim, I'll be routing for you!!!! You should be proud!!!!