It’s been a while since I posted any recent updates. I’ve been trying to catch up on posts from the Netherlands, and I’m most of the way through those. It’s been slow for a number of reasons, which I’ll go through in this post. There are some interesting updates from Justine’s birthday, mushroom foraging, and our recent “bomb cyclone”.

The main reason for the lack of posts has been that I have been in recovery from having knee surgery on October 22nd. I’ve been working towards his for a while and finally got in to have the surgery done. It was mostly just clean up, but the surgeon did a bit more invasive surgery than I had expected, and my recovery has been taking longer than I had hoped. It has been difficult to sit for long periods, and so I have not been able to get any updates onto the site. I seem to have turned a corner recently, so hopefully I can get caught up. I’ll spare you the photos of the knee post surgery…

Justine’s Birthday!

Justine’s birthday was in early November, a couple of weeks after the surgery. I was still struggling, but the birthday dinner that we had booked was a good excuse to get out of the house for the first time since the surgery. It was a bit rough getting around, but we made it!

Justine had managed to book us a table at what some people think is the best restaurant in Vancouver, Annalena. We’ve wanted to go for a while, and Justine finally managed to figure out their complex booking system to get a table a couple of days after her birthday. We were stoked to try the place out.

Annalena only does a tasting menu, so there were limited choices to be made. We just got to experience the very interesting and creative choices the the chef came up with.

Happy Birthday!

Our first “course” was an oyster, with shaved fois gras, served on dry ice in this mini cooler. It was spectacular, and bonus points for the presentation.

The oyster, rescued from the foam cooler.

A couple of our initial appetizers.

Justine opted for the fish on the “main course”…

… while I went with the lamb. Both were delicious, as we swapped a bit of each.

One of multiple deserts.

The ice cream and cake came separately, and you mixed them yourself. It was interesting, if a bit too salty (ice cream).

One final mini desert.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a Michelin-starred restaurant.

It was a great night, and a great meal. A little too pricy, but worth it to be celebrating Justine’s birthday!

Galiano Weekend

Last weekend, we headed over to Galiano Thursday night through Monday. I was starting to feel better and was hoping that we could get some work done around the property, and maybe start to walk a bit more. Overall, it was pretty successful!

We arrived Thursday night, and sadly as it’s that time of year, it was pitch black when we arrived. It was cold, so we got a fire going in the wood stove and we just relaxed until it was time for bed. Friday was a work day, which was hard as it was actually nice out! So tough to do work at the computer when you look out at the view…

The last full moon of the year, rising up over the city.

Justine getting fancy with hummingbirds and the moon.

As it was a nice day, we knocked off work at a reasonable time and headed outside to have a look around and see how the place was looking. It’s been raining a lot, but everything was looking pretty good, and the cover on the furniture on the new deck was doing it’s job.

As it was likely to be the last nice day (lots of rain in the forecast), we decided to make a fire and enjoy sitting outside as the full moon rose and night set in around us.

It was time for a nice outdoor fire.

It was pretty cold out, as sadly, winter has arrived.

A nice fire, with a full moon rising.

Justine get’s credit for all the fancy photos in this post.

Saturday, we slept in a bit and had a lazy morning. Eventually we got up, got dressed and headed out to do some chores around the property. There’s always lots to do. As I’m still recovering, I can’t go for too long without needing to rest. One of the tasks I wanted to get done was to start stacking all the firewood into the new wood shed. I was able to do a couple of hours of that before I needed to head back inside, ice the knee and rest a bit. Still, i got a fair bit done and moved about half of the pile.

Saturday night we went over to visit with our neighbours Dana and Bradley, and had a drink with them. We had not seen them in ages, and it was good to catch up.

Sunday was more of the same, and after a good night’s sleep (one of the first since the surgery), I was feeling like maybe I turned a corner. We tackled a few more projects - stacking some more wood, cleaning up and reorganizing the shop and cleaning and putting away the BBQ for the winter. It was a productive day, and I was still feeling pretty good. So we decided to go for a short hike in the forest and see how the knee felt.

Out for a walk in the woods. We have lots of big leaf maples around, and yes, they have big leaves.

This year has been incredible for mushrooms. There are so many around, and luckily, there are a ton of golden chanterelles, right close to the cottage. So our walk had two objectives - test out the knee and forage for some tasty wild mushrooms!

Chanterelles growing up out of the moss and leaf litter.

There were so many! It was super easy to pick as many as you could eat.

These ones, not edible. But so interesting to look at!

The walk went well. I felt fine after it, and we were able to pick a whole bag of mushrooms to take home with us. We’ve never seen this many before - the theory seems to be that the wet start to the fall made it a great year. We picked as many as we really wanted and still left most behind.

Sunday night was actually pretty nice and clear on Galiano.

Over Vancouver, it was a different story. There were these huge storm clouds having over the city, and we could see lightning flashing in the clouds. I heard from a friend that there was even hail in the city!

We still have 3-4 Anna’s Hummingbirds hanging around. We keep them well fed.

Vancouver Christmas Market

Tuesday afternoon I had a physio appointment for my knee downtown. Jus was working in her office, and so we met after my appointment and after the workday ended to go to the Christmas Market! It had opened a few days earlier, and as the rain (and huge storm that was being called for) had not moved in yet, it seemed like a great chance to go see what this year’s market had in store.

Justine took this photo from her office - mountains, seaplanes and the Christmas Market - it’s a pretty nice view!

This was the earliest we had ever been to the Christmas Market.

Looking out to the North Shore, with it;s fresh dusting of snow.

This is pretty early for snow - it’s predicted to be a good year!

It would not be the Christmas Market without mulled wine!

They do a really nice job of creating a festive atmosphere.

The market is a good size, and always has an interesting assortment of food, drinks and vendors.

It felt a bit early, but we have season’s passes, so it will be good to go back again a little closer to the holidays.

The weather was still OK after we left the market. It was cold, and the wind was picking up, so we wanted to head home and make sure we were inside when the storm hit. The weather people were calling it a “bomb cyclone”, and parts of the province got hit hard. The power went out on Galiano around 8 p.m. Tuesday night, and still was not back 24 hours later. Over 300K people were without power across the province and there were over 350 outages, when we checked the web site.

This is a representation of the storm, to show the scale of it. I think we got lucky in that it mostly stayed offshore.

While we were not on Galiano, our neighbour Dana has stayed and got trapped on the lane due to downed trees on the power lines and across the road. She will have to wait for BC Hydro to come get the tree off the power lines. As she was there, she was (kindly) able to let us know tat our place looked fine and had weathered the storm.

That’s a pretty big tree down on the power lines. We would not have been able to leave or get to our place.

So it looks like we got away without major issues, but we’ll have to wait and see, the next time we are over. On Wednesday night, I took those mushrooms we had foraged and turned them into mushroom risotto. It was delicious!

Mushrooms cleaned and prepped…

The final dish!