Saturday, February 13, 2010

Opening Ceremonies

So, last night was the Opening Ceremonies for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. I'm so excited to brag that I actually have a friend that is "working" the Olympics. I'm so excited and living vicariously through her.
For Beijing, we joined our friend's the Julius's for Chinese food and watching the Opening Ceremonies, complete with Slumber Party for the kids. A Tradition was Born!

This year, the Winter Olympics are in Vancouver so I contacted Tamsin with a request for some ideas of All Good Canadian foods. We wanted more than Canadian Bacon and Beer. She came through...and Beyond! Days later, a package arrived, Surprise!...Canadian Candy Bars!

So, Last night began with Canadian Bacon Pizza! Appetizer Pizza if you will. We sampled the candy bars throughout the night, Our favorite? The CrispyCrunch! Like a Toffee Butterfinger! Though I could eat those Coffee Crisps all night, smelled divine, but I was outvoted.



Our main course was Tourtiere, a French Canadian Meat Pie. Yum-O!



We got our Recipe from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients
1 pound lean ground pork
1/2 pound lean ground beef
1 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
1/4 teaspoon ground sage
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie (Or in our case Kroger the refrigerated Pie Crust!)

Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
In a saucepan, combine pork, beef, onion, garlic, water, salt, thyme, sage, black pepper and cloves. Cook over medium heat until mixture boils; stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer until meat is cooked, about 5 minutes.
Spoon the meat mixture into the pie crust. Place top crust on top of pie and pinch edges to seal. Cut slits in top crust so steam can escape. Cover edges of pie with strips of aluminum foil.
Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes, remove foil and return to oven. Bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. Let cool 10 minutes before slicing.



For a Side Item: Poutine. Picture it: French fries topped with gravy and cheese curds. We found Cheese curds at Whole Foods, heated up a bag of frozen french fries and heated some jars of beef gravy. We didn't really Need to eat more than this. It would've been just fine to eat alone...but we didn't. :)



Oh and the Drinks!



Tamsin said that British Columbia is a huge grower of cranberries for Ocean Spray, so in that vein we got some Cranberry Juice, as well Canada Dry Ginger Ale, and some Canadian Whiskey--Crown Royal, and some Canadian Beer: Moosehead! We took advantage of the weather for Chilling.



Now, I'm not a big whiskey fan, but I do like Cocktails. So I made one up, our CANADIAN COCKTAIL. We mixed half a glass of Canada Dry Ginger Ale, with a splash of Crown, and top off with Cranberry Juice. Not Too Shabby!



Of course, the kids wanted their own special drinks too. So we made them. Chris only had a couple sips, but Emily LOVED hers. I swear, hers was Unleaded!



Now Sam was in Isolation. He'd been snotty coughing mess all week, and though he'd been without Fever for 36 hours, he hadn't stopped dripping. We thought that he'd had similar cooties to the Julius girls, but we weren't sure, so we didn't let any kids touch him. That was hard. But he had a good time, borrowed some 'cleanable' toys and played with Mommy and Daddy. He did great, and slept pretty well last night.



The Parade of Nations was not yet done when it came clear the kids were. No slumber party this year, so Daddy took the kids home, leaving Mommy to have a bit of Mom's night in...more drinking, more laughing...more Fabulous Olympic Fun. Proud to say I guessed Wayne Gretzky would be the Torch bearer too!

It's a Good Thing that the Olympics only come around every couple years, because I just can't party like that anymore. I'm So Tired, and going to get More Tired because you KNOW I'll be staying up late every night for the next 2 weeks!

Bring it on Olympics.

4 comments:

Carla S said...

I had a Canadian friend send me some Smarties after we discovered that our Smarties and their Smarties were different. YUMMY! I'll have to ask for one of the Crispy Crunch bars. They sound delicious!

And what a neato idea to have a theme Opening Ceremony party. That's a super fantastic idea.

And though not entirely in the vein of the conversation, but speaking of parties, you should all sign up at Houseparty.com . You register for free and then apply to become hosts for parties by applying through the site. If you get selected they send you a box with the stuff to throw a party. I've been selected a couple of times and it's pretty cool!

Unknown said...

Canadian Smarties are actually British, originally from a company called Roun(d)tree. Also try Aero bars and Coffee Crisp.

One of the best Canadian cereals was Shreddies which looked like spoonsized shredded wheat, but tasted completely different, until Americanized and are now just spoon sized shredded wheat. yuck.

Good efforts on Canadian Food, but in spite of all the French on the telecast, Vancouver has little French language and no culture except by government decree. Poutine, tortière, and frites (fries) are a Québec thing, although toutière is delicious, a good fresh pacific salmon dish, or even English style Fish & Chips (using cod, please) might have been more vancouverish.

If you do want to try more Québec style food, try a stimé (a steamed hot dog) with a stein of bière d'épinette - or spruce beer - actually a soft drink or only mildly alcoholic, it tastes like you just bit into your Christmas tree.

Cathy said...

We did try Coffee Crisp, but some of our group aren't coffee fans, not me of course. :) We toyed with Salmon, sushi perhaps, but some of our crew are very fish weary. So we tried something new, and these Canadian Comfort foods were perfect for our cold winter's evening! Maybe we'll try some of those other goodies for Closing Ceremonies!

Tamsin said...

So glad you tried all those foods and drinks, and that you all had fun. Coffee Crisp all the way... :-)