ElsieD

Beautiful.

Me too.

Amazon.ca does not carry 10 x 10 parchment paper.😕

Tonight was my second time using the CSO. I had skin on chicken thighs that I had marinated in a liquid jerk seasoning. I cooked them at steam bake 425F for 30 minutes. The skin while "crispyish" was not what I call "crisp". Was that because the thighs had been marinated and were still wet when they went in? Also, do you clean the baking tray and rack in the dishwasher? Thanks!

We are home, landing on time in the heat. It is 33C here, with the humidex it is 45C. It seldom gets this hot and is quite a change. I thought I would pass on a few of the quaint names we saw in our travels. Jumper's Brook Tickle Point Toogood arm Squid jigging road Seldom Little Seldom Little Heart's Ease Come by chance Dildo Butter Pot provincial park I did get my puffin prints, a picture is below. I'll get them framed and hang them in our foyer next to the loon. My overall impression having been there three times in four years is that if we went again I would concentrate on the east side of the island. There is lots to see on that side. I found on the western side there was a lot of driving through a lot of empty spaces which wasn't very interesting. Mind you, there are some spaces on the west side that are best avoided for the same reason so it pays to do your homework. If you have never been, I'd encourage you to go. The scenery is spectacular (I know, there's that word again, but that is the only word that does it justice), and the people are amazing. The food is good, some of it very good, but most of the time is not fancy. Should you ever decide to go, I'll be happy to answer any questions. Elsie

Lucky you to have access to wild strawberries!

We are now at the St. John's airport waiting to board. It is 10C here this morning and when we woke up it was to a thick fog. Thankfully, it has burned off. It will be odd to get home to sweltering heat, but we are looking forward to getting home. We have enjoyed our trip and thank you all for following along.

We have just come back from dinner at Oliver's and had a much happier experience. I had the seafood platter and John had the seafood fettuccine. We were given some bread with molasses butter and the butter was addictive. Everything was really good. We looked st the dessert menu but decided we were too stuffed. We did have a nice pinot grigio with our meal. We have done a lot more eating than we are accustomed to and in a way it will be good to get back to our normal eating habits. I guess.😕

We did not try the cheese. We have had some local pinot which is okay as a quaffing wine.

Here are a couple of pictures of St. John's. One is a picture of the jelly belly houses so called because of their colors. There are a lot of them. The second one shows a set of stairs going from Water street to Duckworth Avenue. These stairs are common, and these weren't particularly steep. You can also find them in the middle of a block, not just at the end. St. John's is a very hilly city and some of these stairs are very steep. You need what I call St. John's legs if you do a lot of walking in the city. We spent the afternoon shopping for gifts for people and that was a lot of fun. We don't have any checked luggage this trip so I can't bring any jams back with me. As @Shelby mentioned, the wild blueberries here make terrific jam and it would have been nice to bring some of that and bakeapple jam back.

Brunch was terrible. Their web page listed smoked salmon eggs Benedict which I was planning on having but when we got there the menu had been changed to Benedict of the day which was ham, sausage or bacon, none of which appealed. I ended up with the George street breakfast which consisted of poached eggs, ordered yolks runny which came near to being well done, baked beans which were good but not very warm, toutons which were good, burnt bacon, as in black, sausages that had no salt and greasy home fries. Dreadful stuff. John ordered fish and chips and as he usually does, asked for the fries well done. The batter on the fish was soggy as in not cooked enough and he peeled it off. When he picked up a fry, it flopped over. The waiter was apologetic and reduced our bill by $6.00. Our meal before tax and tip was $40. If I ever come back here, I won't be darkening their door. We hope to do better with dinner.

I don't know but I'll find out.

We had a good hotel supplied breakfasy this morning. The usual cold stuff was on offer plus oatmeal, scrambled eggs, omelettes, pork sausage, beef sausage and hash browns. We tried not to eat too much as we have brunch at Bacalao coming up at 1:00. Not much on tap for today. After brunch we plan on roaming the downtown core and doing some shopping. I am determined to find a picture like this to bring home with me.

I just bought one and paid $249.99 Canadian. At current conversion rates, that's $190.11 US.

We went to Harbour Grace and went to our friend's cousins place. We were greeted warmly by the couple, Cathy and Rex, hugs all round, in true Newfie fashion, and visited for a while. Then Cathy, John and I went to the cemetary and planted the flowers. After that, and a bit more chit chat, we left, visited Cupid's archaeological dig and then made our way to St. John's. We had wanted to go the the Salmonier nature park but we did it have time. We checked into our hotel and went out for dinner. Dinner was at Tavola, a restaurant downtown near the harbour, we had cioppino to start, followed by lobster pasta for John and Cod with roasted potatoes and carrots for me. John liked his pasta, I liked my dish but thought some lemon for the fish would have been nice. The fish was wonderful, local, flakey and moist. For dessert we shared the chocolate dessert. It proved to be too much and we brought the rest of it back with us. I don't know why, but the pictures didn't turn out all that well. We are pooped. We have driven 2,000 kilometers since we arrived and are glad to be staying in the same place for two nights. Tomorrow we will do something locally, we are not sure what. What we do know is that we have reservations for brunch and dinner at two very good restaurants tomorrow and are looking forward to that.

This morning we stopped at a place called Vernon's Antique Toy Store in Swift Current. He buys old/older cars and restores them to factory condition. Two of his cars are pictured below. On the way there, we stopped at a place that sold plants. This was a one -man operation with a plastic little greenhouse that he stored his plants in. We bought some pansies of various colors as we are on our way to Harbour Grace to a cemetary there. A friend of ours from Ottawa is buried there as that was her hometown. We want to pay our respects and plant those flowers on her grave. We are meeting her niece there who will take us to the grave. We thought we had an interesting place to have lunch but when we got there it turned out the cook was not there. At that point she was 2 hours late and had missed the entire lunch service. We elected not to wait the 20 minutes or so it was going to take for her to get there and so it is that we ended up yet again, at Timmy's. A chipotle chicken wrap for me, a grilled bacon and cheese melt which could have been grilled a bit more. We bought a small package of Tim Bits for the car.

Nice!

There aren't that many Tim Horton outlets in Newfoundland. You will only find them in bigger towns, bigger being relative. There is one here in Clarenville and there was one in Cornerbrook. St. Johns no doubt will have a couple. We were almost surprised to find the one in Cornerbrook. Tim H. Used to make their donuts fresh at each location but now they are brought in. The quality has suffered but when you have a craving......... P.S. where are you now? We are in St. John's Friday and Saturday nights, going home Sunday. We have some good restaurants lined up for those days.

I'm almost embarrassed to post this picture of our supper. We finished lunch around 3 so knew it would be a while before we would want to eat again. We decided to pick up a couple of sandwiches from Tim Hortons and eat them tonight whenever we feel hungry. John's is turkey and bacon club while mine is a chicken salad. Hopefully we will be on a better schedule meal-wise for our last couple of days.

15 cars did not get on the ferry as there was no room. They get to wait four hours for the next one. The guy who was first in our line-up was the last car not to be let on the 6 o'clock ferry so he got to wait 4 hours. Some of the locals who were taking the ferry had parked their cars in the lane the night before and had someone drop them off this morning. Clever way to make sure you get go board. We just had lunch in Gambo, via Gander Bay and Musgrave Harbour in a place called Cashen's Chestnut Cafe and General Store. We were here 4 years ago and wanted to eat here again. As you can see from the picture, it's an unremarkable looking place. Four years ago there were 4 tables running down the middle of the store. The side shelves held the general merchandise. This year he has added another small room with 3 more tables. I had toutons, baked beans and yogurt with some fresh fruit. I wasn't expecting the yogurt. John had a hot turkey sandwich with potato wedges, dressing, carrots and peas, gravy and mustard pickles. He also had pickled beets which I ate. Sadly, I did not have room for cheesecake with bakeapples. The food was solid, good, home-style cooking just as we remembered it. We are now on the TCH on our way to Clarenville. We are staying at a hotel we have stayed at on our previous trips called The Wave and so are very familiar with it. It is a beautiful day here today, sunny and warm, the temperature is about 23 celcius. Quite a change from the cold and snow the other day. We just passed a sign that said there 8 moose accidents last year and 4 so far this year.

It is 8:20 AM and we are lined up waiting for the ferry. Said ferry holds 73 cars, although I was told that they can sometimes squeeze in 74. When we came across yesterday I asked the ticket guy about what time we should arrive at the ferry terminal today and he said to show up an hour before. The ferry leaves at 10:00 and John did a rough count and said we are somewhere between 35th and 40th in line. I'm glad we came as early as we did. Looking forward to getting on so we can get some coffee and tea.

And the menu.....

The rest of the day contained a couple of self-inflicted errors.. First, neither one of us read the ferry schedule correctly and as a result, got there three hours before departure. It is too far from anywhere to go somewhere so there was nothing for it but to wait. At this terminal there isn't anything to do, you can't even get a coffee and so we were limited to working on our St. John's legs by walking around a while. Eventually the ferry came, we got on first by virtue of being the first in line and therefore got off first. We wanted to see Fogo, the town, before we headed off to Tilting where we were staying the night, or so we thought. So we toured Fogo, then went to Tilting. In Tiltiing we could not find our accommodation so we stopped and I asked someone where the street was. They had never heard of it. Eventually, we realized that our accomodiation was in Fogo itself, so back we went. While these places aren't far apart, they aren't next door either so that ate up some time. We found the place and realized we had passed it on our little "tour" of Fogo. We unloaded the car, and realized that although it was only 6 o'clock it was time to find somewhere to eat, not that we were starving but because most places close by 8. The place that looked most promising was a restaurant called Scoff, in Joe Batt's Arm, a town between Fogo and, you guessed it, Tilting. Off we went. This is now our third trip to/through Joe Batt's Arm. We found the restaurant without any problems and settled in. I had the duck confit on a touton, with orange, molasses, pickled shallots and raisins. John had salt cod pierogies with scrunchions, onions, crème fraiche and mustard pickle. We shared some French fries and dressing with gravy on the side. We could have licked the plates it was that good. For dessert we had a piece of caramel apple pie that could only have been improved upon if it had been served warm, rather than chilled. We were a pair of happy campers.

Lots of trout in the streams here. It is called "troutin'", as in "let's go troutin'". And even better, the trout are speckled trout.

Seen while waiting for the ferry: