The PNE starts two weeks before Labour Day and signals the end of summer before the “Back to School” frenzy.

Sidebar: The whole Back to School extravaganza is one of the rare shopping events from which we are exempt. This is probably just as well as late August/early September is always more than busy enough for us with our trip planning.

It’s almost a cliché that the first day of the PNE is going to rain and often it rains through much of the entire two weeks of the PNE. This year however, the weather has been great and the attendance strong.

Barb and I had talked about going to the PNE this weekend as every other weekend after that had things planned to do with our trip.

The crowds at the PNE were pretty heavy but we managed to get around to everything that we wanted to see. One of the things that Barb and I usually make a point of seeing are the agricultural exhibits. It seems only fitting since the PNE’s roots are based in agricultural events that this continues to be a large part of the event.

It’s ironic that with Barb and I both being the quintessential “city folk” that we would even have any interest in seeing farm animals and the like but I think that it’s good to be exposed to these kinds of things even if it’s only on a yearly or semi-yearly basis.

It’s funny that some of the people I work with actually own some of these kinds of farm animals or horses and I’ve actually never even touched a horse or cow in my life.

If there were a singular icon of the PNE that we look forward to each time it has to be the mini donuts. There’s just something magical about eating those freshly deep fried treats that you just pop in your mouth. I prefer the plain ones and Barb the cinnamon sugar coated. Luckily, they sell two bags at a time so there’s just enough for each of us.

Another staple on our PNE visit is to the Marketplace building where they have all the hucksters selling the latest kitchen cleaning solutions and vegetable slicing tools. I’m not exactly sure why we always go there as we never buy anything but it just seems to be a part of the atmosphere that we can’t resist.

Before we left tonight, we walked through the midway where all of the games were played. I wanted to try my hand at my favourite Whack a Mole but I just couldn’t get past the $3 that they wanted for what was going to likely be a 30 second game. I realize that one shouldn’t dwell on being gouged when at the PNE but this just seemed to be excessive.

We played a round of mini golf and then called it a night. We’d had our fill of mini donuts, chickens, and Sweepa Miracle Brooms for another year.

Baden

Yes, these fine Italian phrases and many more like them will be spoken by us as we travel throughout Italy in a few short weeks.

A few weeks ago, Barb picked up a Fodor’s “Learning to Speak Italian” CD which we have been listening to in our car on the way to work since then. I’m not sure exactly how much Italian we will learn from this method but I’m quite sure that it’s better than nothing.

When we went to Spain two years ago, we did almost zero Spanish training and we definitely felt that it hindered us in several spots.

Of course, we’re not expecting that we’re going to speaking fluent Italian just by listening to a CD a few times but even just having a couple of key phrases at your fingertips may be the difference between getting by and making a fool of yourself.

On the other hand there’s the theory that having a little knowledge of a language is worse than having none at all. We’ll have to see how many tractors we end up getting for dinner and make that the judge of it all.

Baden

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For those of you who have been following along with our trip planning, you know that I’ve been planning on taking along some extra electronic equipment. For most of our previous trips, I’ve had my camera, of course, along with a spare camera battery. This seemed to be adequate for many years until last year when I converted to a digital camera. Once I went digital the theory went, I would really be travelling light as there would be no bulky plastic containers of extra film to worry about – everything would be stored on small digital memory cards.

Things didn’t exactly turn out that way.

First, I needed to avoid the situation where all of my digital pictures were completely lost if my camera ever got stolen (along with the digital memory card). I looked at several options and ended up purchasing a portable CD burner. This allowed me to copy the files from the memory card to a CD every night so I would have a backup copy if needed. This seemed to work pretty well on last year’s trip.

Since coming back home and starting to think about this year’s trip, I had already decided that I needed to find some kind of portable computer so I could compose my Excellent Adventure stories in our hotel each night. Soon after this came the Dell Axim X50 Pocket PC (along with the companion wireless keyboard).

A couple of months later, I bought the Sony Camcorder. Along with the Camcorder goes a spare battery and battery charger. Plus separate battery chargers (and spare batteries) for the Pocket PC and digital camera.

I’m pretty sure that this is it. If I had to add any more electronic equipment equipment into my suitcase, it just might be considered excessive.

Baden

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As the weather was starting to cool down, the fall season just seemed so appropriate for making things like a hearty soup. The first few recipes that I had tried out (like Squash soup, Creamy Garlic and of course the Spicy Caribbean Chicken soups) turned out to be all winners and Barb seemed to enjoy them so they quickly became a regular part of our dinner menu.

One of the consistent themes in making many of my soup recipes was that once the vegetable ingredients had simmered to the point of being soft, the contents usually needed to be puréed. This process typically involved transferring the extremely hot contents of the soup pot to the blender (in batches) to be puréed before being transferred into a different pot.

After about the 5th or 6th time doing this, I began to think that there must be a better way of doing this that didn’t leave me with an extra pot and a blender to clean at the end of the night. I won’t even talk about the possibility of getting burned with boiling hot soup going in and out of the blender.

As with many things in life, there is kitchen technology to the rescue: the immersion blender.

The immersion blender is simply a handheld blender with a long stalk that can be immersed right into a pot on your stove. No more transferring soup back and forth from the stove.

When researching different immersion blenders, I ended up choosing a Kitchen Aid model due to two of its main features: first it had a stainless steel stalk. Since this is the part of the blender that actually gets put into the liquid, I figured that it being stainless would make it easier to clean and it is absolutely the case. The second feature that I liked about it is that the stalk disconnects from the motor making it easy to throw it into the dish washer if needed.

Using an immersion blender takes some getting used to. It’s really important that the spinning blades at the bottom of the stalk stay completely immersed in the soup. If the blades come even close to the surface of the liquid, it will start whipping soup all over the stove top and back splash. Believe me when I say that this will only happen to you once before you get the point.

Depending on how deep the liquid is in your pot, you may have to move the blender up and down slightly but I’ve found that just tilting the blender a little and moving it around the bottom of the pot is more than enough to draw all of the soup through the spinning blades to get all of the vegetables all blended up.

Right after I have blended up my soup, I unplug it and carry it right to the sink and rinse the blender under some water. If necessary, I’ll disconnect the stalk from the motor and put the stalk into the dishwasher.

My immersion blender gets used fairly regularly (although not as often in the summer). I think that once we’re back from our upcoming Italian Adventure and the weather becomes a bit cooler, the soups will be prominently back on the menu again.

Baden

We had been talking with Pete and Liz for some time about getting together for an Italian movie night to get us in the right spirit for our trip (as if that needed to be done). Over the past 6 months, Barb and I had been collecting several movies set in Italy which we were going to bring:

Roman Holiday, It Started in Naples, Under the Tuscan Sun, Three Coins in the Fountain and Only You. By no means were any of these movies travelogues but all had good visuals of many places in Italy.

We had planned on spending the day with Pete and Liz and ended up spending most of the day in Whytecliff Park in West Vancouver. I had never been to Whytecliff Park before but it is located in the western most corner of the north shore (see map) and offers a spectacular view of the Straight of Georgia and further west toward the Gulf Islands. Next to us in the park were a group of scuba divers who were going back and forth into the water all day. I had been told that this area of the Lower Mainland offered some of the best scuba diving in the world and judging by the amount of scuba divers in the park that day, it must be true.

Most of the rest of the night was spent at Pete and Liz’s place watching our Italian movies and generally talking about our trip. Much of the discussion has now shifted away from what places we are going to stay at (as they have all been booked) but more to what we are going to do on a daily basis. The most recent discussion has been around booking tickets to a concert while we are staying in Sorrento. I suspect that we will be doing many things together on the trip but some days may be split up depending on our interests. The last leg of the trip will be in the city of Milan and Barb and I have some serious shopping planned for that city as many of the most famous Italian designers in the world are based there.

I suspect that most of us will spend the next 3-4 weeks on the computer researching all kinds of things to see in do in the places that we intend to stay. I have several things of interest to me that I’m currently looking into. By my next update, I may have more specifics on what those are.

Baden

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The barbecued chicken is nice and tender coming off the grill with it’s tasty mustard barbecue sauce. I should point out that the coarse whole grain mustard that I used in this recipe is quite sweet compared to regular prepared or even Dijon mustard. We bought this mustard in Paris last year but we have seen it in most grocery stores here like Save on Foods and Urban Fare.

This salad is the perfect answer for a hot summer night when you’re not into making a whole big dinner in the kitchen. The recipe for the Barbecued Chicken Mushroom Salad can be found here.

Baden