Dufferin Island Niagara Falls

(***Note about our Road trip at the end of this post…***)

Some photos of our walk-a-bout at Dufferin Islands today.  Tons of birds about.  So nice to hear them after a quiet winter.  Yvonne and I also drove down the way near Queenston overlooking the Gorge.  There is a spot where eagles roost.  We met a fellow named Skip.  There is a post fence along the edge to keep the race from culling out certain carrels folks. 

Skip showed us an X on a post.  Just to the left of that is a line sawed a half inch into the cross beam.  If you look along that line, you can apparently see the tree where a couple of eagles oft sit waiting for prey.   Skip was pretty informative, telling us a number of other great spots to photograph eagles. 

But the coolest thing he told us was how to watch concerts for free.  There is an art park across the Gorge - Niagara Falls, New York side.  They have concerts in the summer.  If you sit at the Locust Picnic park on the Canadian side, because of the way the sound travels there, you can enjoy an almost ring side experience. 

I hope you like the photos. 

***Yvonne and I are heading out on a road trip on Sunday.  To Calgary and British Columbia.  Driving.  I will obviously be taking lots of photos.  I will try and post here on the blog each day.  That may be tricky on the longer driving days. I’ll send an email out from time to time but please check every couple of days to see what’s new… 🙂

Meatballs and Pasta

I like to cook.  I’m not the best cook in the world but, hey, I like to eat so…

I try and swim or work out at least three times a week.  Swimmers are known for their ability to eat.  Runners are lean.  Swimmers not so much.

I made a bunch of meatballs a couple of months ago.  They sucked. Boring. I think the problem was that the recipe called for one pound of meat and I used at least double and all the spicy stuff was not increased commensurately. 

I was more careful this time.  I read through a half dozen different recipes.  Figured what flavours I liked. 

I used a little over a pound of beef and pork each.  And I made sure that my spices were proportionate. 

Here are the ingredients:

1 LB of ground beef

1 LB of ground pork

(I use pork and beef that are free from antibiotics, etc.) 

@ one cup bread crumbs

1/2 + cup onion

2 egg

4 garlic cloves

5-6 tablespoons Worcestershire

1 tablespoon yellow mustard (or so…)

1 teaspoon ++ cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

1/4 cup milk

1 cup parsley

1/4++++ teaspoon pepper

1/2+ teaspoon himalayan salt

1 cup grated cheese (I use Asiago)

1-2 tablespoons of Berebere (essential - by far one of my favourite spices.)

1-2 teaspoons of Paprika (this depends entirely on how strong your paprika - too much will overpower the other flavours.) 

Mush it all up with your hands.  If you forget to wash your hands thoroughly, there are enough serious spices in there to kill anything.

Bake at 400C for 20 minutes.  I use a stainless steel baking sheet.  I don’t cook with aluminum.  Seriously not good for you.  I got between 40-50 meatballs out of this. 

Your choice of noodles, some white sauce, sliced cherry tomatoes, parsley and a bit more Asiago. 

Don’t forget to light the candles and pour some wine. 

All good.