La fin des tours

This week-end we celebrated the end of two important tours - the Tour de France and the Tour de Whitehorse. It was an opportunity to learn a very important lesson - it's not the size of the Tour, but how you watch it that counts. The Tour de France meant waking in the wee hours of the morning and catching glimpses of the ride while brushing your teeth or making breakfast. The Tour de Whitehorse meant buying a couple bottles of wine, some St. Andre cheese and a loaf of bread and sitting on the side of the Robert Service Way screaming "Vive le Tour" at the top of our lungs. Although I'm not sure our cheering was appreciated by the participants, it was certainly more fun then sitting in front of the television. To celebrate la fin des tours, we cooked up a big French dinner...and by French, I mean we referred to the chicken as poulet. The nice thing about dinner was it was largely supplied by the garden. The best part of the meal was definitely the Tour de France Poulet.

Tour de France Poulet

• Roasting Chickens
• Butter or Bacon Fat (don't underestimate the deliciousness of bacon fat)
• Fresh Garden Herbs (thyme, sage, savory, oregano and unidentified herb like plants)
• Baby Potatoes
• Salt and Pepper

Mix the butter/bacon fat with the herbs and mash them all together. Lift up the skin of the roasting chicken and stuff in the herbed butter. Rub extra herb butter all over the chicken skin and put some inside the cavity. Put the chicken on a grill above a roasting pan (if possible) and put the potatoes underneath the chicken, this way all the yummy chicken drippings fall on the potatoes. Salt and pepper the chicken and put it into a pre-heated over that's at 450 degrees. Wait about 15 minutes and then turn the oven down to 325. Cook your chicken for about 1 1/2 hours (or until it's done). When you have 15 minutes left, you can add swiss chard to the potatoes for an iron boost (or if you have a ridiculous amount of extra chard in your garden). ENJOY!!!

The rest of dinner included roasted eggplants and garden zucchini, garden salad and broccoli with gouda. The broccoli sure tasted yummy, but has left a big hole in the ol' vegetable garden. Soon the beets will be ready and I've already been stealing the occasional carrot.

The garden is looking good these days...my favorite section this year is the fuschia zone that features nicotina, petunias, sage, geraniums, snapdragons, pansies and dianthus. Time is running out, I'm going to have to take lots of pictures before the evil Mr. F makes an uninvited appearence.

Sierra posted this on Jul 30, 2007 from the kitchen | | permanent link

Is this going to be a problem?

I'm not known for being particularly responsible and I've had to explain the condition of my passport to more than one border official. Unfortunately, I think I've crossed the line and my passport will no longer meet the basic requirements for entrance to any country. How did I finally cross the line? I've already inadvertently laundered my passport, subjected it to a Thai water festival and left it in the bottom of many dirty bags. But, in the end, Starbuck crossed the line by eating my passport. That is correct - my dog actually ate my passport. He ate my pages of stamps, my Indonesian work visa and my Fijian student visa. He ate my picture and important contact information; he even ate the handy dandy bar code they scan at airports.

Unfortunately, I'm not blameless in this little fiasco as the passport eating incident did not go unprovoked. On Thursday, I had the brilliant idea of buying some elk meat from our local farmer's market. I put the meat in my messenger bag for the ride home. Unfortunately, my passport was at the bottom of this bag and as the elk meat defrosted, some delicious elk juice dripped onto my precious passport. When I got home, I realized what happened and left the passport out to dry out...apparently elk flavored passports are an unknown delicacy in the canine world.

In the end, I suppose it is a good thing the passport was completely destroyed, as walking around with a passport that smelled like raw meat would have been slightly embarrassing. The only question now is: do I send it back to Passport Canada, or do I pretend it's been lost and save myself from having to explain everything?

While on the subject of passports, I've started to plan the January trip to Egypt/Turkey. It should be a perfectly planned vacation from the frigid Yukon winter. If anyone has Egypt tips, I welcome all advice, especially from any scuba divers

Sierra posted this on Jul 24, 2007 from the outside | | permanent link

Veggie Garden - July 18

The lack of blog posts is due to an excellent Edmonton trip that included the rodeo, visits with friends and a fabulous pig roast at Lac La Biche. I brought the camera to document every millisecond of my vacation, but forgot it in my bag the entire time. That is because I'm so incredibly organized and on the ball...

I am back in Whitehorse and my husband did an amazing job keeping all the plants alive and healthy. The garden beds are full and I can't seem to eat enough lettuce. Here is garden bed number one:

The second garden bed:

My fabulous little herb wheelbarrow, it's awesome and full of yummy stuff:

The perennial beds are doing really well, especially the columbines. I'm thinking that I will add more and more columbines every year, since they are incredibly reliable and very showy:

The greatest garden surprise so far this year is my Alaska melons! They are fun looking and taking over my greenhouse...

I realize this post is incredibly boring, but I promise to try to be more entertaining in the future...

Sierra posted this on Jul 19, 2007 from the garden | | permanent link

Veggie Garden - July 2

It's only been 10 days since the last garden picture, but the midnight sun makes things grow at a ridiculous pace. Here is garden #1:

And garden #2:

Pretty incredible change, n'est-ce pas? I've already pulled out and re-seeded some lettuce. The greenhouse is also looking nice. Lots of tomatoes on the vine, although nothing ripe yet.

Here's my tomato bed:

The bean/zucchini/tomato bed (with hollyhocks in the back).

And finally the hanging baskets which are melons and tomatoes.

Sierra posted this on Jul 02, 2007 from the garden | | permanent link