Summer of Chaos: Week 8/9

The next two weeks touch three cities: Los Angeles, Halifax, and Calgary… twice.

Food… on the road

Once again, here are some of the week’s rather eclectic food discoveries from the above locations:

Green Elephant (Nova Scotia). This is a new-ish edition to Kingston… meaning it has only been there for a couple of years. It’s a sit-down coffee shop built into an old house. The set-up is a bit odd and you have to walk through tables of people eating to get to the take-out counter. But what makes this a great discovery is all of the food and pastries are cooked/baked in-house using good old fashioned ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, milk). And, the coffee… they use Pacific brand almond and soy milk, which is best for making non-dairy based drinks. Finally, real coffee around Greenwood!

The French Bakery (Nova Scotia). This is a traditional French bakery in Kingston. The shop’s owner, Guy makes everything using ancestral French bakery traditions. The bread is fresh, organic, and doesn’t contain a lot of the filler and “extras” that you find in store-bought bread. This became a lifeline for La Niña who inhaled the sourdough baguettes like they were potato chips.

Aioli (Calgary). This is a newer edition to Calgary’s NW foodie scene and I feel like it is a breath of fresh air amongst the many average restaurants that exist in this part of the city. Aioli is a fusion of Western European comfort foods: Italian, Greek, Portuguese, French, and Spanish. The owner has spent quite a bit of time travelling throughout Europe looking for ideas and experiences to bring back to his restaurant (and is more than happy to chat about his travels).

Church and State (Los Angeles). This restaurant deserves “three Fs”: French. Foodie. Fantastic. This is a part of the L.A. food scene that I’ve been searching for endlessly… and I found it on my LAST DAY in the city. I dined here with co-workers and we wanted to try everything on the menu: duck, fish, beef, vegetables; there was so much of it, and we ate it all. The bone marrow was so good that for the first round I blinked and it was gone; inhaled by everyone else. We had to order a second round. The only thing that seemed “off” was one of the wines. I think we simply had bad luck with one of the Côtes du Rhônes.

Renovations

Yes, I have a house. Yes, it requires care and maintenance that I never have time to do. And, said house is a mess… and it irritates me… constantly.

So, late-August/September was devoted to the house and required a lot of work: new flooring, paint, new furniture, new windows, new baseboards, new fixtures, new fricken everything. I walked around for a month covered in paint, dust, and cobwebs. I walked out of the house with just about everything… and donated it. The new plan is if it doesn’t make the weekly cut into the suitcase, and I’m not willing to put it into storage, then it is gone.

The bad thing about renovations is that once you start on one project, you uncover so many other projects that need to be done. It’s like peeling an onion that never gets any smaller. But, for the first time in my life, I have an adult house with adult furniture.

Summer Camp: Synchro Camp

The last camp of the summer was meant to help La Niña reconnect with friends she hasn’t seen all summer… and to give her a kick start back into the world of synchronized swimming. The camp itself really helped connect the brain to the now much taller body ahead of tryouts and all the messy things that happen in sports in September.

The other value here was getting La Niña back together with all of her friends during the last week of the summer so they could get their mad rush of playdates, sleepovers, and storytelling out the way before the first day of school.

Next Destination

Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia

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