Potluck and Scottish Dancin'

In need of some dessert and not willing to buy chocolate cake I decided to make some cookies to snack on. Peanut butter and Cinnamon with an almond topper. I added some raisins to make them more interesting.

I made these last year for work in Abbotsford. (I forgot to post this to that blog)

The next day Cass and I went to a potluck at one of her friends. We had a candle lit dinner because the light went out at the house we were at. THe power lines are still pretty weak at some locations. It was fun though, there was a diverse group of grad students (all girls) from different disciplines and backgrounds. Cass and I decided to make two dishes from the Essential Vegetarian Cookbook.

Cass made this egg and tomato tart with a brown rice crust with fresh thyme garnish.

I made this lime butter carrot and pea thing with roasted almond slices and paprika dusting.

Today Cassandra and I decided to go to a Culture Days celebration here in St. John's at the Masonic Temple. The St. John's pipe band played and there was highland, Scottish step and kaylee or Scottish country dancing. We participated in the Scottish country dancing. I thought it was good time and was worth putting off some homework for. 

We tried several dances all very simple, heres an example of one.

This is a slightly more complicated dance than what we tried

Back to homework now. I'm going to have a pretty busy 3rd week of October with mid-terms and assignments that are due.

T

Hurricane Igor

I thought about making "I survived Igor" T-shirts but decided against the idea. 

Cassandra and I and our whole block went without power for just over 50 hours. Which is a very large inconvenience when you start noticing everything you use electricity for. Thursday evening we decided to go out for dinner. After dinner, before we made evening plans Cass thought we should just swing buy the house. Cassandra had a hope but I was skeptical the power came on in the space of an hour. To my astonishment the lights were on in the window. It was nice to finally be able to flick a light switch to see in the dark and not have to light candles for warmth.

On the first day I just thought power would be out overnight. I didn't realize the devastating winds that Igor brought with him downed hundreds of trees over power lines. Even 100 year old trees in peoples yards were up rooted. Across the province communities are still stranded with washed out bridges and limited or no power, water, gas or food. I hope they pull through.

T

Clean Bin project

Cassandra and I just got back from a screening of the Clean Bin Movie. http://www.cleanbinmovie.com/

The movie was great it made you feel inspired, guilty, frustrated and made you laugh. It's about these two people from Vancouver that decided to go one year producing no garbage and buying nothing. They had to recycle and compost everything they could. At the end of the year they measured who produced more garbage over the course of the year. They both were able to limit their garbage to a small sized bucket.
You can read their blog here http://cleanbinproject.com/

These two people decided to do a film bike tour across Canada promoting this video and this was their last stop. They plan to submit the video to film festivals and then have it come out on DVD or download afterward.
I feel like now I have to be conscious of my consumerism and whether I really need to buy everything I do.  There is much more of a green movement now then even a few years ago. Propaganda and other social views are changing so that more people frown on cities and other people that don't at least try to reduce, recycle and re-use.

Cassandra and I are both still shocked that there is no curbside recycling here, they say it is going to start next month. Others have said that promise has been around for two years. We are saving our recycling though in a hope that it does start. If not, there apparently is a depot where you can drop recycling off but can we trust it doesn't just go into the garbage anyway? I hope everyone tries to do something at least. Cass and I usually always have re-useable bags for shopping, and try to avoid the use of the small plastic produce bags. We can't wait to start composting, the city says a program will be in place next year. Again we will wait and see, in the meantime we frown every time a banana peel goes in the garbage.

T

Cape St. Mary's

Last Week Cass and I ventured out to Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve. It was a two and a half hour drive to get there, several windy roads and hills with the last 13 km only on a 1.5 lane road. Another coastal location with cliffs 100 ft above the water this place is home to 50 000 Ganets, a type of seabird. Following a 1.4 km hike down a slightly prairie type landscape (except for the fact you are near a cliff) you can get surprisingly close to a nesting rock covered in birds.

It was also incredibly windy. It looked like some of the birds would just hover when they tried to fly into the wind. When we got back to the silent and calm confines of the car you could tell how loud the constant wind really was. My ears rang for a bit after.

That cliff face is covered with birds.

Here it is zoomed in.

On the hike.

The Ecological Reserve is essentially a wide open field extending from the cliff edge. All activity, other than following the trail, is banned. Oh and sheep grazing is allowed as well. I guess they have to mow the lawn in some way.

You can see the visitor center on top of the cliff.

This one Cassandra took. She's starting to like snapping the trigger a bit.

Th babies are born in the spring covered with down. They start to grow out of it in the fall.

 

The view further down the coast.

There isn't much to do there but look at the birds and walk around the visitor center. There is a look out nearby that we ended up skipping and a restaurant that serves Moose. After a couple hours of bird watching we headed for home and stopped in a little town called Branch along the way. It's a small fishing village with a sandy beach that the waves come crashing in on. There were kids chasing them in and out. There were also some break waters that the waves crashed on that were pretty cool. Cass promptly fell asleep in the car once we headed home from here.

T

Cape Spear

Last week Cass and I went to Cape Spear. A hill much like that of Signal Hill. This place is slightly different though. It is the most easterly point in North America. There is a light house and instead of many small cannons it was armoured with two 30 tonne cannons in 1941.

 I've heard they loose a couple tourists every year because they get too close to the rocks despite the warning signs. They get swept out to sea and are never recovered.

Click on image enlarge

Click on image to Enlarge

You can see the light house in the top left corner of the image above.

Click on image to enlarge

In this picture you can see the Cabot tower on Signal Hill that we went to two weeks ago.

This is one of the two 30 tonne cannons. The carriage that supported it was dismantled after the second world war. It had 36 000 kgs of lead weights used to raise the gun above the concrete barrier in front of it to protect it from enemy fire. It could fire rounds that weighed 250 kg every 90 seconds with it's support team.

The coastline as seen from the foot of the light house.

After viewing the coast we walked a bit of the east coast trail and found many blueberries to munch on before we went home.