I celebrated Canada Day by working from noon until 10:30pm. Such is life right now, I guess.

Thankfully Nellie didn’t have to work, and dedicated herself to grilling up delicious meals all day…apart from my gigantor cappuccino this morning, which was 100% Fahrenheit. Anyway, here’s what she made:

Lunch was burgers from Sausage King (I used a bourbon-chipotle barbecue sauce), with a Sawdust City Lone Pine IPA for me and a Red Racer ISA for her. We ate on the balcony for the first time this year, goddammit.

Dinner started with four jumbo scallops and two prawns the size of my hand paired with a Benjamin Bridge 2014 Riesling (part of their wine club* shipment last week), followed a while later by New York strip steaks (also from Sausage King) with Ontario asparagus and tomato, paired with a Black Hills 2013 Nota Bené. We decanted this one about 9 hours in advance, and it tasted much better than the one we drank one at Bat Lake in March.

I really only emerged from my work lair to eat and watch a bit of TV (a Daily Show, the first few episodes of TURN), then skulk back to the den to try to un-fuck the rest of my week. Nellie was the hero of the nation this July 1st; she even wore a red tank top all day.

Sorry for being lame on your birthday Canada. I’ll catch you next year.

* We actually dropped out of the BB wine club earlier this week. We love their sparkling, but they just cannot seem to make a decent still wine — their Sauvignon Blanc wasn’t good, their Chardonnay wasn’t good, and the Riesling was decent at best. I get that the vines are young, but given that our family connections in Nova Scotia can get us the sparkling when we want it, it just wasn’t worth paying the premium price (plus shipping) for the other wines in each shipment. We dropped that subscription (and Black Hills) and signed up for Le Vieux Pin‘s club today.

.:.

Cover photo by Alex Indigo, used under Creative Commons license