The Canadian adventure continues with this email. (Warning, food photos! Don’t read if hungry!!)
Charmaine and Linda are world travelers. To bring them something unique we had to think “close to home.” We brought wine from Chateau Morrisette, a winery down the road in Floyd just off the Blue Ridge Parkway at milepost 171.5. There are other nearby wineries, but Randal really likes their Sweet Mountain Laurel which really goes well with salty Virginia ham. I forget what the other bottle was, but both certainly got finished off. I know I filled my glass a few times. We also brought peanuts from Emporia, Virginia, home of the annual Peanut Tour bicycle ride that we’ve done too many times to remember. The ham was a spur of the moment decision and we bought it on our way into Chincoteague, our last stop before we crossed the border into Maryland. (Virginia ham bought in Maryland wouldn’t have been the same.) We just hoped the ham would make it across the border into Canada! It did; no problem probably because it was cured or whatever it was that made it not need refrigeration. I don’t have a really good sense of “cured ham” as ham was definitely something else my mother didn’t make. Actually probably no one’s mother made it since we were Jewish and so were most of the families in the neighborhood.
The ham was cured with salt so overnight soaking was necessary and then rinsing before it could be cooked. Randal rinsed and Charmaine did the cooking. Here Charmaine is testing the temperature of the cooked ham to check if it was done. It actually took less time than we had calculated.
Getting the ham out of the pot and finally onto a cutting board. You can see the soap resting and setting up on the counter in front of the ham so it was a really busy morning with both soap and ham projects going on.
Ready for dinner that evening.
A huge bowl of salad, scalloped potatoes and rolls made for a wonderful dinner…And there was ham for lunch the next day, and, and, and then we received this email from Charmaine after our visit.
“I made split pea soup with the ham hock (bone) yesterday; it is fantastic!
Up here, we call it "French Canadian Pea Soup" – I am not sure why.”
Bet it was really good too! Everything Charmaine made was really good and I insisted on getting Linda’s recipe for the salad dressing.
Charmaine had made a spicy tomato soup for a lunch one day. Salmon was dinner our last night.
Potatoes, salmon, garlic green beans and also a huge bowl of cauliflower with Hollandaise sauce. It tasted as good as it looked on the beautiful platter.
I must say here that our friends Har and Julia each also made salmon while we visited and it was wonderful, and wonderfully different, each place we went. Truly, we had great food everywhere and I still say that the best food you get is served at the home of friends!
After dinner games. Charmaine and Randal were the winning partners. Every night we played different games and Randal kept winning until the very last game which I had no clue how to play but won, I think!
Our last afternoon Randal and Linda got out their guitars and both played and sang. I worked on arranging and resizing photos to use for our emails and Charmaine relaxed and read. It was a perfect afternoon with Virginia peanuts and wine for snacks!
And beer!
Lots of smiling in these photos!
Charmaine relaxes from her cooking with a book. The painting is by Linda.
Lovely and comfortable as it was, we didn’t just stay in the house the whole time. We went off for walks, lunch in Lake Sharbot and a drive to the nearby town of Westport all the time keeping an eye on the weather because of its impact on the dinghy ride back to the island.
The next, and sadly final email from Canada, (and our “road trip north,”) will be “off island” adventures.