Cheese Tour 2011

So when my employers asked me if I wanted to accompany them on a little Cheese Tour of Prince Edward County, Ontario and then on to Montreal, Quebec I felt I might jeopardize my job my saying no so I reluctantly said goodbye to my family and hopped in the car with Casey & Wendy to do what had to be done.

First stop - Fifth Town in Picton, Ontario. A state-of-the-art cheese making facility in the heart of Prince Edward County. Ontario's newest wine region and foodie destination. Fifth Town is LEED certified and operates with solar and wind power, collects milk fresh from local dairies and runs education programmes and tours year round.

Checking if the curds are ready

The bosses enjoying maple syrup-soaked and maple-sugar dipped Quark on a stick

Transferring the cheese to the moulds. Today's batch was Cape Vessey,

a washed rind goat's cheese and one of my favourites.

Squeezing it into the moulds by hand

Just some of the goat, sheep and cow's milk cheeses made at Fifth Town

Great name for an antique shop

Meeting Gilles at the Atwater Fromagerie in Montreal's famous Atwater Market

Just a portion of the cheese counter

In the beer cooler surrounded by local brews

After Atwater we headed out of the city to the Eastern Townships and L'Abbaye St Benoit du Lac. Unfortunately I wasn't able to take any photos of the Abbey or their cheese making operation which has been run by the Benedictine Monks since the 1940's. Their Bleu Benedictin cheese is one of my favourite blues.

We returned to Montreal to visit Dependances, an importer and distributor of European cheese. Here we are in the massive refrigerated rooms where the cheeses are unpacked from containers and then repackaged to be shipped across the country.

Casey helping to unload the container

A huge pallet of the "Better Than Sex Cheese" aka Chateau de Bourgogne

The trip was a huge success if you don't count Casey getting food poisoning from some bad escargot and we met some wonderful people. After meeting Stephanie, the Master Cheese maker at Fifth Town, Lucy from Dependances, Alain "the godfather" of Quebec cheese and the monk who ran the Abbey fromagerie, I decided that cheese people are happy people because they get to spend their time making and selling something that brings people together the world over - good food made from fresh ingredients and love.

How to Enter Middle Age - The Chateau Frontenac

Life Lessons: letting them learn on their own

This week has already been a long one and it's only Wednesday. Everyone is looking forward to Spring Break next week although the weather doesn't look like it's going to give us much in the way of spring-like temperatures. My Other Half returned home after 15 long days on the road. He battled a snowstorm on the NY Thruway, a screw up at the border which resulted in having to wait two hours before he was allowed back into his own country with boats clearly labelled "Made in Canada." And he returned to the crushing news that Number One Son did not make it to the Provincial Ski Racing competition. This past season has not been B's year, he has battled anxiety and fear of crashing and despite his unbelievable ability to do well in training it did not translate into results and he didn't earn enough points to take him to the finals. Unfortunately most of the boys on his team will be going up north over the break to race. To add to it all Numbers Two and Three won three medals each in the Club Championships on Sunday and balancing their excitement with being sensitive to Number One's disappointment in his own performance was difficult to say the least. We've been through this before and it never gets any easier.

It is so hard to not try and make everything all better for your children. I am not, or at least I try not, to be one of those parents who fixes everything. I knew there was a good chance he wouldn't make it and I could have badgered the coaches to try and get another spot for him and they might have been able to but I don't believe that everyone should get a prize whether they have earned it or not. One of my issues with ski racing is that it has, at this level anyways, become a "pay to play" sport. As long as the parents are willing to pay for their kids to compete the coaches will take them. There are no try outs or cuts. Everyone makes the team. That is until the end when it really comes down to how you did in the races over the course of the season and unfortunately our son didn't do well enough to make it. It is a bitter lesson but a good one, one that we all have to learn at some point in our lives. He is an incredible athlete and his hockey team is still in the playoffs thanks, in large part, to B's incredible goal tending skills. It will be a tough weekend as he is back on the hill with the boys who are leaving next Tuesday for the Provincials but I am already so proud of him and how he is handling it. I just hope his friends are sensitive without being patronizing at their team party on Saturday as everyone knows who made it and who didn't. We won't make excuses for him and I know he has learned the first in a life-long series of lessons, one that I wouldn't try to shield him from no matter how much I feel his pain.

I've fallen in love all over again

The Old Married Couple

My IRL friend Kelly is battling cancer and has a great blog called Kicking Cancer Ass in which she chronicles the ups and downs of her treatment, wigs and even a kitchen renovation. Her last post included these words and really puts things in perspective for me as I get overwhelmed by kids, work and stuff.

This new cancer club that I have joined reluctantly has had its pros and cons;

You know the cons, I'll try and focus on some of the pros.... Once you are in, it is very difficult to get out.

The members are really supportive. "Seize the Day" and "Live for the moment" take on a whole new meaning.
You look at your friends and family in a whole new light; They are truly amazing.

And finally, I've fallen in love with my husband all over again - I'm not sure how I could have got through this without him...he's awesome

My Other Half and I have been together since I was 16, give or take a few interludes during the university years and after all that time I try very hard not to take this wonderful man I was smart enough to marry for granted. But even after all these years he can still surprise me. He has been on the road for the last two weeks so last Monday I flew down to Boston to spend three days helping him out at the Boat Show. If anyone has worked a trade show you know how unbelievably boring it is to stand around a booth for 8 to 10 hours a day trying to make eye contact with passers by so that you will have someone to talk to thus making the time go by faster. But when you do reel in a potential customer they might turn out to be one of those "Looky Loos" who have no intention whatsoever of buying a boat, they just want to tell you all about the one they are building in their garage and which cost them half of your custom-made, professionally-built boats.

But back to surprises. Now despite the fact that my Other Half is not exactly technologically savvy he has embrace the art of texting and it is kind of fun getting late night and early morning "thinking of you texts." And while they weren't technically "sexts" they did have me wondering what he was up to. Well, Monday I went straight from the airport to the show and endured six hours of boredom while trying to steal a quick hug and kiss despite his aversion to any form of PDA. After the show closed at 8 o'clock we had dinner downtown at Scollary Square before heading back to his bachelor pad in a suburban all suites hotel. There, he had stocked the fridge with Prosecco, my favourite triple cream cheese and homemade chocolate dipped strawberries! Yes, he had bought Hershey's kisses, melted them and dipped the strawberries himself. Unfortunately after the delicious lobster mashed potatoes and steak at the restaurant I couldn't eat another bite but we were able to continue on with the rest of his romantic plans. He had asked me to bring our travel Scrabble game and we ended up laughing ourselves silly trying to make up erotic words. Probably not what the writers of whatever blog or website where he found the idea intended but for an "old married couple" it was a wonderful evening on all counts.

The next day we hit the Convention Centre floor again and decided instead of going out to dinner that night we would take home some sushi and dip into the Prosecco and strawberries. We watched a couple of Sex in the City reruns (he likes chick flicks too) and then enjoyed the privacy of a hotel room with no chance of being interrupted by either a dog or child. Bliss.

Young, Footloose and Fancy Free Couple

Now it's back to reality with children, homework, hockey games and ski races. But only two more sleeps until he's back so I might have to do a little exploration myself of websites for Old Married Couples, although I'll try to avoid the ones that suggest greeting your spouse at the door encased in plastic wrap.

And so it begins ...

My Other Half left me this morning. For two weeks. He's off on the boat show circuit and will be away for the next two weeks and, more importantly, three weekends. Gulp. He'll be missing 4 or 5 ski races, the next round of hockey playoffs, the club championships and a trip to Toronto to see Billy Elliot. The boys are already worried about who will sharpen their skis. Me? I'm more worried about taking the three of them on the subway for the first time in four years and whether I/they will survive until the second week when I hightail it to Boston for three days to help S. out at the show.

So I will take it one day at a time. Today I'm dropping the boys off at the ski hill for training and then I am heading to the barn to see if my horse remembers who I am. I haven't ridden since before Christmas and I am persona non grata amongst my riding buddies. But the temperature is well above zero this morning despite the crazy wind blowing the next cold front in from the Arctic and I am going to enjoy every minute of it.

Stay tuned for more updates from Single Motherland.

Happy?

I've been reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and it has really got me thinking about being happy. Right now, in the depths of a frigid Canadian winter I'm having a tough time feeling anything but a longing for spring. My boys are all having issues of their own and my Other Half heads off on the boat show circuit soon for three weeks. The petty annoyances of life are all contriving to bog me down. The bickering amongst my boys, the never-ending snow piling up outside the door, never having enough time to do all the things I know I should be doing, let alone the things I want to do. When people make lists of the things that make them happy they are usually the little things much like the list I made when I first started this blog which is still there somewhere down at the bottom of the page on the right. There is nothing wrong in taking pleasure from the little things it's just that right now I need to think about the big picture. Rubin quotes William Butler Yeats who said, "Happiness, is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing."

This is the problem for me at this point, smack dab in the middle of my life - I am not growing while everyone around me is. My sons are growing literally and will in a very short time all be taller than me but they are also growing in so many other ways. In their maturity and independence and as people. My Other Half and my sister are both growing businesses, shooting for the big leagues, creating what they hope will be their legacy. Friends around me are growing as athletes, pushing themselves physically and some are growing emotionally, leaving a relationship or a career after many years. As for me, I am the ultimate in stasus. I have been in the same relationship for over 25 years, I haven't had a career change since before the boys were born. I haven't trained to run a marathon or even entered the Club Championships. And after starting this blog two and a half years ago I haven't really done much with it. I haven't started writing the great Canadian novel or had anything published in the local paper. So all the little things that do make me happy aren't adding up to much and I am finding myself on autopilot. Telling myself that I am doing the best I can raising my kids and being a supportive wife. I make lists and I have even crossed a few things off them but I think Rubin is right, what I need now is growth because before I know it my children will be grown and S. and I will be empty nesters and I don't want us to wake up one morning and say, "Now what do we do with the rest of our lives?"

Wordless Wednesday

(taken by one of the cousins)