I had made stir fry before with a group of friends, but this was my first solo-flyin’, stir-fryin’ experience.

Zucchini, onion, mushroom, green pepper, carrots, blah di blah veggies blah blah blah.  Julienne, stir-fry, no magic here.  I was really excited about the sauce, though.  See, the problem I have with a lot of home stir-fries is that it’s just veggies and rice, with no sauce to tie it all together.

I didn’t measure, sorry:

Honey dijon salad dressing

Water

Lemon juice

Vernors (trust me)

Minced garlic

Cornstarch to thicken

Mix it up.  Heat it up.  I used the same pan I’d been stir-frying in, so it had some of the veggie-flavored olive oil in it as well.  I had added everything but the Vernors, and I could tell it needed something.  I opened the fridge, and inspiration struck.  The ginger ale works great because it added some sweetness as well as a gingery flavor.  Very nice.

After that I added the shrimp and simmered the whole thing until the rice was done.

Oh man. Oh man oh man.

Delicious sandwich. They call it a Brewben, and it’s pastrami, hot pepper kraut, thousand island dressing, and Swiss cheese on rye. And it’s delicious.

Served with their freshly made potato chips. (Good and thick, the way I like my chips.)

Oh yeah, and they make their own root beer. Wonderful.

I’ll definitely be going back.

Well, those would have been up sooner, but I’m a doofis and couldn’t figure out how to use the silly program. All better now, just make sure to read the dates on my past several entries.

I went to a local Mexican place with a friend and his kids for dinner tonight and had a lovely meal. The service was fantastic (this is something many Mexican restaurants have in common, I’ve found) and the food was excellent.

I had the Fajitas Texanas, which is basically a combo fajita plate including chicken, steak, shrimp, and sauteed onions and peppers. It is served with rice, beans, and a guacamole salad. Mucho delicioso!

I’m writing this from a motorcoach en route to Montreal. We stopped in Niagra Falls for lunch and to catch the beautiful view of what we dubbed a “God-made and man-tweaked” wonder.

We ate at Pizza Pizza, whose tagline claims that it’s Ontario’s best pizza. Having not sampled all of Ontario’s pizzerias I can’t be sure, but darn tasty indeed.

I had a slice of “super,” or what we’d call deluxe in the States. I’d describe the quality as being a slice above Sbarro. I was very impressed.

For dinner I had a turkey bacon from Tim Horton’s, and then a cup of the best coffee I’ve had in quite a while. Delicious. Now another hour and a half on the bus til we reach our hotel.

More detailed blogging (and even photos!) when I’m at a desk with my laptop instead of on a bus with my iPod.

On Monday I’ll be boarding a bus to take Tri-C West’s production of Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They Cry Wolf to beautiful Montreal.

The itinerary contains the phrase “French restaurant” and the word “bistro” several times so I suspect there will be plenty of blog fodder north of the border.

I’ll be taking my camera with me as well as my laptop, so there should be plenty of pictures in the blog as well.

Hopefully the hotel has wi-fi.

I rather enjoy wine, but I know squat about it. I’m mostly a white Zinfandel guy, and I occasionally find other things I enjoy. I usually joke that I have all the discerning tastes of a six year old when it comes to wine.

Tonight I had a lovely dinner with my girlfriend and two of her friends, and for it I found a white Catawba from a local winery called Mon Ami.

Very inexpensive at around $7.00 a bottle, and doesn’t taste (to me, anyway) like a cheap wine. On the sweet end of the spectrum, and gives a nice warmth in the nose (I’m sure that has a piece of terminology associated with it, but like I said, I know jack about wine.)

Anyway, delicious!

We also had tortellini in tomato sauce and French bread. Fantastic meal.

And now for something completely different! I am now the proud owner of a new iPod Touch, so finding a blog subject and forgetting it by the time I get home should be a thing of the past! Updates to follow…

This one ended somewhere entirely different than I intended it to go, but it was tasty nonetheless.

I just some sauteed veggies (zucchini, mushroom, tomato, onion, garlic), and then simmered them in a cream sauce (roux, half and half, garlic powder, and a little cumin), and I served the whole shebang over rice.

The rice thing was a miscalculation on my part.  Cream sauce is white, white rice is white.  It made for a boring-looking (albeit good-tasting) meal.  In retrospect I should have used some green linguine or one of the more colorful rices.

For Valentine’s Day I surprised my girlfriend with a picnic lunch at the Winery at Wolf Creek. It was still rather cold that day, so we ate indoors, but the lunch itself was picnicky enough.

Menu:

Portobello mushrooms, tomato, carmelized onions, and monterey jack cheese sandwiches on ciabatta.

I marinated the the portobello slices in a mixture of grape juice, grape jam, hot sauce, italian dressing, and lemon juice <—Sounds weird, but it came out really well. Then I sauteed them with onions and garlic.

Brie and crackers.

A bottle of White Lies, a delicious, sweet, grapey wine that they make at Wolf Creek. Hands down, my favorite wine.

For dessert, something I bought at the grocery store called a “Devil’s Delight Parfait.” Basically, it’s chunks of chocolate cake with whipped cream and a ridiculous amount of hot fudge sauce, with a cherry on top. <—-Delicious, but would have been better with more cake and less fudge sauce.

The atmosphere of the place is absolutely wonderful. The winery has both an indoor dining room (with plenty of windows, of course) and a patio which overlooks a beautiful lake at the bottom of a hill.

All in all, a very successful date. Travel was efficient, and everything went off without a hitch. Very romantic.