Hangin' with the Italians

Unfortunately a Top-Up Day

My little 1982 Alfa Romeo Spider had a great day today. She got to tour some of the beautiful Ontario back roads with 25 other pure-bred Italians. Of course, I am taking about Italian Alfa Romeo automobiles, but I will admit, I did notice a few Italians drivers behind the wheels of some of these beautiful Italian vehicles. 

I brought my sports car to Toronto with me in the hope of joining some of the interesting events I had been reading about on the Toronto Alfa Romeo Club Facebook page. It took me a while locate and connect with the club, but I finally joined the club, and got an invitation to their final outing of the year, The 8the annual “Fall Colours Drive”.

A line of Alfa Romeos

Now although I can walk or take transit for most things I need here in Toronto, the city is so big that in order to get to places where you can actually drive your car without traffic, stop lights and skyscrapers blocking the views of Ontario’s fall foliage, you need to drive an hour just to leave the cityscapes for the countryside, so we left the downtown and drove north to meet up at a bakery where the parking lot slowly filled with not only Alfa Romeos, but also a group of Porsche enthusiasts who were trying to fit on one last drive of the season. 

Lots of Spiders in attendance

After breakfast and a lot of car talk, the 26 club members fired up their Italian cars and formed a train of Italian vintage workmanship along with a few modern Alfas. The club president lead us through the Ontario countryside so we could enjoy the fall colours as well as the nice twisty roads. The tour lasted about two hours including two stops for photos and breaks, and ended up at a country restaurant for lunch. 

Me and my Spider

The day dawned with sunshine and clear skies, but “Showers” were forecast, and we left with hopes of a good day. Unfortunately the “Showers” arrived and really never left, and was serious rain at times. My little car is not used to being driven in the rain, but she performed admirably; the little-used wipers did actually clear the windshield, and the convertible top kept most of the rain off the passengers. 

The day was cool and wet, but still was very enjoyable, but I am looking forward to springtime and warmer top-down drives next year.

Out and About

When we moved to moved to our nice little condo here in Toronto, we left our Toyota Camary in Nova Scotia, only bringing my classic Alfa Spider. You really do not need a car in Toronto; the city has an excellent public transit system and we can walk to get most things we need. And our son has a car he does not use much which we can borrow if needed.  

However, there are times when you do need a vehicle, for example when you need to pick up things to furnish the condo and they are too big to carry home and certainly would not fit in the Alfa. Yesterday was one of those times. 

Fortunately, our son’s partner Ben was flying to Florida to meet up with Ryan so we offered to drive him to the airport and use their car to run errands. This ended up being a full day’s outing. 

Coffee and breakfast

Ben had to be taken to the airport at 7:00 am, and nothing we needed was open until 10:00 am, so with time to kill, we found a bakery in the area that the Google reviews said served excellent coffee. This was a great find, and the coffee was as good as the reviews. Rustic Bakery was obviously located in a VERY Italian neighbourhood and as we sat enjoying our coffee and pastry we heard more Italian spoken than English. We left with some interesting bakery products, but still had time before we could do any actual shopping. 

We decided to go to Grande Cheese, another Italian shop specializing in every type of cheese possible that opened at 9:00. They also stock lots of Italian specialist foodstuffs and we ended up leaving with over $100.00 worth of cheese and other items, but more important, we managed to kill another hour and the mall would finally be open. 

Our goal was to look for a nice comforter for our bed, as well as one to keep any guests

No comforters, but I found a Harley

comfy when they visit. But although it was suggested we look in Hudson’s Bay, we discovered that very few of their options were within our budget, and to be honest there was nothing we really liked either. 

So, we decided to try Walmart, and there we found not only much better deals. But also a nice choice of colours and styles and we left new confuters and a cart load of “stuff” we needed.

Now our next stop was an optician where Regis had an appointment to have a pair of new glasses fitted into a pair of frames she liked. Now you can get anything you need in Toronto, but today we had to cover a lot of territory to get the items we needed. Google maps got a real work-out for us to find everything; It was a 45 minute drive to the airport, then another 30 to breakfast followed by 20 minutes to the cheese shop and then 15 to the mall and 15 more to Walmart. The Optician was then back past the airport for another 30 minutes, putting us there at noon where we found a restaurant for lunch while her glasses were prepared. 

Time for lunch

Our final stop was to one of the larger IKEAs in the Toronto area. We have an IKEA within walking distance of the condo, but it is the “Downtown” store and does not stock everything and did not have the things we wanted, so that was another 40 minute drive, but at least it was back towards the condo. We filled a cart with items we wanted and loaded it all into Ryan’s Lexus, but when we went to leave an alarm went off warning us that the passengers in the back seat had not done up their seatbelts - our shopping was heavy enough to fool the car into thinking we had the children with us in the back seat, so everything had to be rearranged for the final 30 minute drive back to the condo. 

Returning the car

We got home by 3:00 pm, beating the rush hour traffic which is crazy here, and I dropped Regis off with the condo’s luggage dolly packed with our purchases while I drove the car back to Ryan & Ben’s condo and walked the five blocks back to our Toronto home. 

Cooking With Angela

Cooking with Angela

You may recall reading about my Italian Haircut from the cruise to New Zealand. We met a wonderful Italian lady on this trip who volunteered to trim my beard and hair on our stateroom balcony, and have developed a friendship with her and her husband. They live in Toronto so we always try to visit when we are in the city.

Every time we visited her, she insisted on cooking a delicious Italian meal, so we knew that although she was a hair stylist by profession she easily could have switched to the food industry. After visiting them in Toronto a few times we convinced them that a trip to the maritimes would be a good idea and finally they agreed to come spend a week with us here in Dartmouth.

Tomato, Cheese & Basil - salad!

Angela loves to cook, so when we knew she was coming, we suggested we wanted her to cook some Italian food with us. She misunderstood and though we just wanted her to cook for us – I'm surprised she was willing to come visit thinking this, so you can see how much she enjoys cooking. She was a bit surprised to find that we insisted on cooking and learning how to cook Italian with her instead of just enjoying her delicious food.

She is used to preparing her meals in her small Toronto condo kitchen, so was pleased to have room to work with prep chefs and kitchen apprentices here in our large kitchen designed to accommodate multiple cooks.

We had some problems finding ingredients so Chinese eggplants had to fill in for the Italian variety, and the rapini just did not pass her inspection, so we did not get to sample her pizza. As well although her English is excellent, her request for a “Bigger” pot to simmer stuffed eggplant in took me a while to accommodate as I did not realize that our saute pan was a “Pot”, but when finally after no pot I

Pasta drying on the rack

pulled out was big enough and I pulled the saute pan out she was happy.

I made fresh pasta, she made a fresh pasta sauce, we worked together to make stuffed eggplant, and some of our delicious Nova Scotian Lamb was made “Italian”. Regis and her created authentic Italian osso bucco, and we learned how to create some delicious Italian Salads. We hope to work together to create some lasagna before they head back to Toronto, so I can use some of my home-made ricotta and demonstrate my pasta making skills . The food was delicious and our cooking skills have improved through cooking with Angela.

Stuffed Eggplant in sauce

Italian style Lamb