Tag: cottage

Last Visit to the Cottage for the Summer

(I’ve been sick this past week, so I haven’t been up to writing much. Not only that but we’ve had a bunch of power outages, which has forced me to be away from my computer and even cut me off mid-try! So now I’m trying to fill in the gaps of the past week’s posts. So if you’re wondering why you’re just seeing stuff now from earlier in the week, especially if you follow via email or Facebook, well, that’s why!)

This past week I was lucky enough to spend a last few days of summer vacation at the cottage that my parents are renting. We did take a day trip while we were there (which I will write about at a later date), but the rest of the time was spent relaxing.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 discovered the joys of toaster waffles. I honestly don’t think I’d ever bought them for them before. I tried to make mine just a little more healthy by adding fruit salad (oranges, bananas, grapes, and strawberries). But I may have negated that healthiness by slathering it in maple syrup.

The weather was beautiful and sunny, with only a few fluffy clouds in the sky. Despite the lovely sun, it wasn’t terribly warm, so we didn’t really feel like swimming.

I spent most of my free time relaxing on the Adirondack chairs by the lake.

The kids, on the other hand, buzzed around like mayflies, alternating between crafting in the cottage and fishing with Gramps. Gramps caught a decent-sized perch and a rock bass, while Thing 2 caught two rock bass.

Dinner was baked sausages (bangers, I think), and Mom’s famous potato salad with bacon.

What a lovely way to end this summer’s lazy days at the cottage!

A Rainy Trip to the Cottage

Our last trip to the cottage my parents are renting was cut short by some rainy, stormy days. Not that I’m objecting to the rain! But when you have access to a cottage for the entire summer, you don’t feel the need to stay even when the weather’s not great.

The first night we arrived late, and so had a very simple dinner of hot dogs and sliced watermelon. Yes, I like mayonnaise on my hot dogs, which I know some people find disgusting!

When we got up the next morning, my mother made us all some blueberry pancakes, one of my favourites.

Because the weather was not supposed to be so great (although it turned out to be just fine), we headed into Shawville for ice cream and a trip to one of our absolute favourite stores, Renaissance Variety. This store is in and old house and is stuffed to the rafters with used books, video games, and movies. I could spend hours in there happily although, as usual, the kids have less patience.

Next we went to Mill Damn Park, which has a great playground for the kids to run off some energy. I was most interested in the peace and quiet of the babbling brook…

But the kids were more interested in the splash pad. Thinking the weather was going to be bad, we were woefully unprepared and the kids ended up playing in the water fully clothed… Oh well. No harm done.

After going back to the cottage to get dry clothing, we went to a local gourmet chip truck for dinner, courtesy of my parents. Then, thanks to all the rain that week, we were actually able to have a campfire, toast marshmallows, and make s’mores for the first time all summer! All fires still had to be contained, though, so we built it inside an old washing machine drum and covered it with a grate.

Then we got to go down to the dock and play with sparklers! The kids really liked playing with long exposures on my camera.

Thing 1 even learned how to spell “hi” in the air.

That night and the next day chucked down rain as predicted, so we left by lunch on our last day. We still had a lovely time!

Cooking for a Crowd at the Cottage

Another lovely day with friends at the cottage started with eggs (over easy or scrambled), toast (not homemade for a change because we ran out), breakfast sausages, and left-over fruit salad.

Then there was more fishing. My girls usually love fishing, but with friends along they developed a great deal more patience than usual! I think everything’s just more interesting with friends.

All this despite the fact that Gramps was the main one who caught the fish (unusual, that, since with all the kids around he spends most of his time baiting hooks and untangling lines). Friend 1 did manage to catch a small rock bass, and my friend caught this tiny little sunfish and a slightly larger rock bass. She did get one good-sized fish on that tiny little hook, but didn’t manage to land it. The water was so clear that we could all watch it and its buddies swimming away…

Of course, there was also lots of swimming fun to be had, especially since it was even hotter that day than the day before.

For dinner on the last night I made curry and rice, not Glico this time by S&B Tasty Curry Sauce Mix (mild, of course, since the kids have no tolerance for spice). The veggies were potatoes, carrots, and garlic scapes. My kids ate a fair portion, but I’m pretty sure that Friend 1 and Friend 2 weren’t so fond. I get the impression that they’re pretty darned picky eaters, though.

We all had a really great time! I hope that we can do this again.

Friends at the Cottage

We were lucky enough to get to spend a few days with friends at my parents’ rental cottage this week! With a good friend of mine and her two boys, it was a happy kind of chaos.

The weather was clear and hot, so most of the days were spent outdoors, either in, on, or beside the lake.

We started the day with a hearty brunch of French toast and fresh fruit salad, topped with a generous drizzle of maple syrup and a dollop of whipped cream substitute.

Then my dad took the kids out fishing. I’m pretty sure that was their favourite activity of the trip!

We tried our hardest to keep the kids spaced far enough apart that they didn’t hook each other, but it was a challenge because of course they wanted to socialize.

At one point before my friend arrived, Thing 1 and Thing 2 were out fishing with Gramps, and Thing 2 took a tumble off of the dock and into the lake. She was soaked, shaken, and a bit scraped up, but overall okay. However, it wasn’t until the next day that my friend was able to retrieve Thing 2’s rod from the bottom of the lake.

On a trip into town we discovered a really awesome second-hand book and gaming store. The older two quickly learned how to share the manga they’d scored. They were so absorbed in their book that I’m pretty sure they don’t know I took this picture.

Dinner may not have been the most appetizing-looking, but it was delicious! My friend and I both set up our slow cookers at the start of the day so we could escape the kitchen. My friend made the pork chops are from this recipe, and I made mashed potatoes with garlic scapes and chicken broth (no recipe needed, just throw ’em all together in the slow cooker for 6 hours or so on low and mash it once the potatoes are soft).

And of course after dinner was done, it was time to go jump in the lake!

Another Day of Cottage Cooking

Another day at the cottage meant more adventures and more cottage cooking! I started the day by making a family brunch of pancakes smothered in fresh fruit salad and maple syrup.

I have no problem admitting that I used boxed pancake mix; that’s a family tradition when cottaging or camping. No point in buying that “add milk and eggs” kind, either. I mean, if you’re doing that you’re essentially buying a pre-made mix of flour, baking soda, and maybe a bit of sugar and salt. I can buy those ingredients (and even pre-mix them) separately for much cheaper overall — and it’s just as non-perishable. No, we buy the “just add water” type, which is perfect for camping and cottaging. It’s not fancy, but it’s easy to transport and it’s really hard to make it go bad. Even the cheapest, non-brand-name kind usually works just as well.

The weather was beautiful and sunny, hot enough to enjoy swimming but not too hot. We did have a bit of a problem with deer flies when out of the water and horse flies when we were in the water. It was a bit of a pain in the patoot, but we had a good time hopping in and out of the water anyway.

My dad took the girls fishing, and while they caught a bunch of little rock bass (max 6″ long), Dad caught three good-sized smallmouth bass. Pictured above was the smallest of them. Dad had had very little luck previously with artificial bait, but taking the kids out with simple spinners and real worms to go after little fish netted him three big ones. He really wasn’t expecting it, and since he only had a rod intended for small fish and a six-pound test, his rod was bent double and one of the fish snapped his line and swam away with his bobber and lure. Thing 1 managed to rescue the bobber with her net, since it floated away, but the lure was gone.

Sadly, I haven’t the slightest idea how to fillet a fish, so all of Dad’s catches were released back into the lake. One of these days I hope that I’ll be able to find someone who can teach me how to make a proper meal with one of Dad’s catches. Or one of my own (although I don’t fish nearly as often as Dad, so the likelihood of me catching anything big enough to bother cooking is pretty darned low).

Instead of fresh fish, for dinner we used up the remainder of the food we’d brought to the cottage for that stay. I used up the majority of the bread I’d made the day prior (White Bread from page 596 of the Joy of Cooking (Rombauer & Becker, 2006 edition)) to make grilled cheese — with lactose-free cheese for me and goat cheddar for Dad, as usual. On the side we had the rest of the morning’s fruit salad with a bit of maple syrup, and the last slices of summer sausage from the farmer’s market.

Then it was time to pack everything back into the car and drive back into town, away from the peace of the lake but back to the convenience of WiFi and cell phone service.

Spending Time at the Lake

I was lucky enough to spend a few days this week at the cottage my parents are renting. We had a delightful time. Mornings were lazy and, when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed, I cooked brunch.

That’s bacon, eggs over easy, apple slices, and whole wheat toast — made of store-bought bread, which is unlike me. I decided I needed to remedy that situation and so after we cleaned up from brunch, I started to throw together some homemade loaves. I didn’t have access to the internet or my plethora of cookbooks, so I used the White Bread recipe from page 596 of the Joy of Cooking (Rombauer & Becker, 2006 edition). (Actually, I used the app since it has the whole cookbook on my phone and doesn’t need Internet access, but it’s the same recipe either way.) In the recipe I substituted olive oil in the same quantities for the lard and butter, which has worked in the past and did so this time as well.

That’s a horrible picture of the loons on the lake because my zoom lens isn’t spectacular. You’d think it’d be easier to get a photo of a bird that can grow to almost a meter long, but these ones had no interest in coming any closer. The loons were calling away while I was kneading my dough. I find it a very soothing sound, but I grew up with it. In understand that to some people a loon call, especially their mournful, echoing night call, can be kind of creepy. My father likes to tell us the story of going camping and being approached by frightened tourists in the next site over who were sure they were hearing the sobbing souls of the damned.

Anyway, after brunch and bread and loons, we all needed a dip in the lake…

Followed by a drive out to the ice cream parlour for a cool treat and some reading time.

It wasn’t too long before it was time to go back to the cottage to bake the bread, and then to make dinner. I made shrimp with garlic butter, jasmine rice with furikake, corn on the cob, and of course the freshly-baked bread.

Dessert was cherry drop biscuits baked the day before using the Rolled Biscuits recipe from page 638 of the Joy of Cooking (or the app again). I added a bunch of pitted, quartered cherries stirred into the batter and a sprinkle of sugar on the top of each biscuit before baking. I got lazy and just made them drop biscuits instead of rolled, and they turned out fine that way.

Then it was time for one last dip in the lake, followed swiftly by bedtime for the kiddos, who had had a long, fun day. I took the opportunity to bring my glass of maple Sortilège on the rocks out to the screened-in sun room (the mosquitoes are much too bad in the evening to simply sit outside) so that I could watch the sun set. It wasn’t the most spectacular that I’ve viewed from this spot, seeing as there wasn’t a cloud in sight, but I think I can live with that.

Spelunking

We started Sunday with a hearty brunch eaten out on the porch at my in-laws’ cottage. I had bacon, eggs over easy, an everything bagel, apple slices, and a banana.

With this fuel under our belts, we made the drive out to the Bonnechere Caves, which are caves carved by the Bonnechere River into limestone deep underground. I’d been there once as a child, and again as an adult bringing my eldest along, but this was the first time that both kids had been old enough to partake in the tour. I think that it was an experience that they won’t soon forget!

The tour started outside along the Bonnechere River (you can actually see the natural entrance to the caves on the left).

Then you take a man-made staircase down into the bowels of the caves as part of a guided tour. We’d been to the Lusk Caves a few years ago, where the caves are left au naturel (although there is a trail leading to them) and there is no guide, so this was a very different experience. There is a boardwalk over the naturally jagged stone floors, and the caves are lit.

Despite the somewhat staged air that the man-made additions add, they did allow me to get a much clearer look at the rock formations.

For the last section of the tour, the path runs under the water table, so concrete barriers and pumps are put to use to make the area dry enough to walk through. This lets you see exactly how deep these caverns really go. Although if you’re claustrophobic, I can see how the idea of all of that ground above your head would be difficult to deal with. One lady kept making comparisons to The Cave…

It was a very neat experience. Maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to take yet another generation of children to explore this enthralling natural formation.

Of course, after all of our spelunking we were ravenous, so we headed back to the cottage for dinner. We chowed down on grilled chicken legs with hot sauce, roasted fingerling potatoes, and a salad of mixed greens, red grapes, and ground cherries. What a great way to round out the day!

First Weekend of Summer

We spent this past weekend at my in-laws’ cottage, enjoying the fact that the weather had finally warmed up a bit. We spent the days looking out the window to views like this:

And enjoying the lake like this:

And partaking in meals on the porch like this:

It’s a good time.

When we arrived on Friday evening, my in-laws had supper waiting. We dined on smoked salmon, corn chips, fancy crackers, pickled beets, grapes, grilled pineapple, salad, and coleslaw. It was a truly eclectic meal, but a healthy one, and it was conducive to lingering to have conversation and laughter.

A Walk in the Woods

A few days ago at the cottage, the rain started at something like 6:00am and didn’t let up for another twelve hours. This wasn’t a warm, soft, summer rain that invites you to go puddle stomping. No, it was a cold, drenching downpour complete with thunder and lightning; it was a preview of fall. There were a few short breaks throughout the day, but the storm didn’t let up entirely until just before sunset. After a long day inside, my parents, my kids and I couldn’t wait to get out for a walk.

Small streams and even miniature waterfalls had sprung up in the aftermath of the storm, draining all of the water that the ground couldn’t absorb towards the lake. It’s been such a wet summer that the ground became saturated extremely quickly. The girls couldn’t have been happier, though, because this meant puddles and rivulets to splash in. Frogs were out in force, coming out into the damp after the rain to catch the evening mosquitoes.

Of course, monkey see, monkey do. Thing 1 and Thing 2 insisted on bringing along some of my old cameras so that they could take pictures on our walk as well. I can think of worse things about me to imitate.

Note that the girls are covered as much as physically possible by clothing. The bugs were really bad on that walk, what with a combination of the sun going down and the rain letting up.

As so many of our nature walks do, this turned into an educational session. We identified as many birds as we could, even though I’m no birder. The bluejays, chickadees, and wrens flitted from tree to tree in front of us, and a flock of wild turkeys crossed the lawn in front of someone else’s cottage. We identified as many plants as we could as well, in my case focusing on the edible wild plants that I recognized. I’m not an expert on the subject by any means, but I am eager to learn. We did find a whole bunch of what I had always been taught were a variety of wild raspberry along the side of the road, and we picked a few ripe ones to eat. I’ve learned that these are actually called thimbleberries. I mean, I knew that they were edible, but for years I had been giving them the wrong name.

We also found a small blackberry thicket, and of course we had to pick every ripe berry we could reach. It ended up being only a couple of handfuls, but I wasn’t wearing the right gear to venture into the center of the patch. I was pricked enough by the thorns just reaching in past the edge. It was totally worth it, though, and I have mentally marked the area for future pilfering.

As we walked back to the cottage, a mist began to rise from the clearings and low-lying areas as the temperature rose very briefly before sunset.

Cottage Supper

Supper at the cottage is always an informal affair. We often come to the table in bathing suits (if we’re not freezing after coming out of the lake), or wrapped up in sweaters and woolly socks when the evening turns chilly.

Food is often served directly from the stove, but this day we were feeling especially fancy, so we placed on the table in the dishes they were cooked in.

The main part of this dinner was an easy dish that my family has always tongue-in-cheek called “slop”. Basically, you fry up some onions and garlic (or in this case, garlic scapes), add ground beef (or a ground beef/ground chicken/ground turkey mixture, depending on what we have on hand), frying until browned. Drain off the grease, add a can of cream of mushroom soup, and a can of water. Optionally, you may add cooked frozen vegetables to the mixture at this point. Boil down the soup mixture until it has the consistency of a thick gravy. Serve the meat mixture over mashed potatoes or rice.

This time we served slop with a number of vegetables on the side; I had cherry tomatoes with basil, topped with goat cheese, as well as steamed spinach. We also served Brussels sprouts and broccoli, both steamed.