Whitewater Granola Bar Success

Here it is, Rachael's granola bar made from the recipe in the Whitewater Cook Book. It tastes as good as it looks. It contains sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, oats, coconut, peanut butter, golden syrup and chocolate chips. Perfect after a day at the ski hill or in packed lunches.

The main news of this week is that we have been to buy ourselves a new washing machine. After 6 months using the top loader (yes, you really read top loader - these are still commonplace in Canada) that was in the house when we moved in we decided that we really didn't want it 'eating' our clothes any longer. We managed to find a front loading machine which seems to have a huge capacity and a direct drive system which makes it much quieter on the spin. The delivery guys brought it into the garage but we still had to lift it up one flight of stairs to the main house level and along to the utility room. Here it is at the bottom of the hallway stairs awaiting a lift.

Thankfully our very good neighbour Al came to help Shaun lift it upstairs and return the old one to the garage. We have only had it installed for 2 hours and already given it a test drive!

Shaun has got his first Canadian cold at the moment and is feeling quite poorly but he did manage to get up to the ski hill today for half a dozen runs as we had 10cm of fresh snow overnight and there was no way he was going to miss out on that! It was a beautiful day at the slopes and it kept snowing all day but it was relatively warm at about -3 degress C.

This picture was taken at the top of Summit lift just about to head down Bonanza run on a rare blue sky day.

We have also enjoyed our fix of Radio 2 this week. We 'listen again' to the Radio 2 shows when we have a moment including Terry Wogan, Ken Bruce, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand. Whilst Rachael was waiting in for the washing machine to arrive one morning this week Ken Bruce kept her company whilst she was doing some ironing. Here is a picture of Phantom sat next to the laptop listening to dear old Ken.

We hope you are keeping well and we look forward to hearing from you.
Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom and Harley.
xx

How to find coriander in Canada

This week we decided to make one of our favourite dishes for dinner this week, a lamb and chickpea curry. One of the ingredients was fresh corriander. Off to the store we went only to discover there was no corriander. However on closer investigation of the fresh herb selection we realised that they call it cilantro which comes from the Spanish name for the plant.

Here is a picture taken by the Editor on one of her mid-week visits to the ski hill. This was taken from the top of the Silver King lift at about 9.30am. The temperature was -13 degrees C. At the moment we are having a cold snap. According to the local newspaper on Monday, we had the coldest day of the year to date in Nelson, at -15 degrees C. Although it was highlighted that the record coldest January day temperature was 29 years ago at -26 degrees C! However, over in the prairie provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the temperatures are regularly about -40 degrees C at this time of year.

Above is a picture of the queues or line-ups as they are called in Canada, that we have during the week for the lifts at the hill. In our experience, this is a far cry from the lift queues at other ski resorts such as Lake Louise and Sunshine in The Rockies. Saturday and Sunday obviously get busier when all the 'weekend warriors' come out to play. Our final Canadianism of the week comes from one of our friends we regularly see at the hill. He calls us the 'crack-o-nooners' if we don't appear on the piste before lunch time!

Afraid we have a slow news week this week as the Editor is working almost (!) full time which is a shame really with all the lovely snow we have.

The four of us are very well although there appears to be a 'cold' going around the staff at Shaun's work so fingers crossed it doesn't come our way.

Harley and Phantom are spending most of their time in the house during the cold weather we have at the moment. They are 8 months old now and almost fully grown. Here they are asleep on the mat at the patio doors. We are not quite sure what is happening with their feet!

That is our short news for the moment, hope you enjoy the rest of your week and weekend. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom (the grey cat) and Harley (the ginger)

xx

Dixie's Cafe

Firstly and most importantly, many congratulations to The Foster Clan who are now a family of five after the arrival of Edward Jeremy last week - well done Doctor Foster - keep 'em coming!

This week we thought we would share with you a bit of Nelson's history after we went out for a meal in town on Friday to Jackson's Hole - Bar & Grill. It seems that the bar was used as Dixie's Cafe in the 1987 Hollywood movie 'Roxanne' which was filmed here in Nelson.

For those who haven't seem the film, it is based on the play Cyrano De Bergerac. Charlie, played by Steve Martin is a fire chief, who just happens to have a huge nose. He hires a new fire-fighter called Chris, he is handsome, but is useless when it comes to women. Roxanne, played by Daryl Hannah, is an astronomer who has just arrived in town. She catches the eye of Chris, and he asks Charlie to help him woo her. Little does Chris know that Charlie is mad about Roxanne, but hasn't found the right way to tell her - yet.

The film was shot in Nelson and many of the facades of the shops, bars and restaurants appear as they were. The local newspaper here in town ran a story about the filming as the local firefighters actually took the actors into training for the roles as they learnt about firefighting. The article goes on to say that Roxanne provided approximately $700,000 into the Nelson economy at the time, and obviously Nelson still benefits today with its booming tourism.

Needless to say our Fire Chief in town doesn't have a huge nose in real life and Daryl Hannah doesn't live next door either! When we decided we were moving to Nelson we had to get hold of a copy of the film in England to help us with our integration into the Canadian way.

Guess where we have been this weekend? Yes, that's right - the ski hill. The Whitewater ski instructors this weekend were doing 'Free Ski Tips'. They positioned themselves at the top of one of the easy runs where you reported to the guy at the top who radioed to his colleague to watch you coming down the hill. The guy at the bottom of the section then gave advice on how to improve your style. Shaun had a go and picked up a couple of tips on how to improve his riding backwards and tricks. Only joking, tricks are next week! Shaun has also been trying out his new skis and is showing some improvement after a short time on skis and with just his first lesson of the season, today has followed his instructor down a black run.

After an exhausting day at the ski hill - the smiles are typical.

Finally, here us a photo from possibly the most beautiful car park in the world, showing our SUV that regular readers will recognise as Clive.

As always, we love to catch up with all your news. Until next time, ta-ta for now.

Rachael, Shaun, Harley & Phantom.

xx

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

This week we have mostly been on the ski hill enjoying the Whitewater powder. On Thursday evening in to Friday morning there was what the locals term 'a powder day' when there was 30cm of fresh snow! Needless to say the hill was very busy.

We heard that some of the stores and offices in town have a policy for employees where if there is 'a powder day' of more than 20cm they don't need to turn into work until 12pm - how cool is that? Unfortunately our offices don't have that policy - but it will certainly be suggested!

We spent New Years Day on a very quiet ski hill - we think many folks took the day off skiing and were probably nursing hangovers. There were no line-ups at the lifts and the weather was beautifully clear although quite cold for The Kootenays at about -11 degrees C.

Over the weekend we have experienced a bit of a thaw, with temperatures in town at about +3 degrees C during the day. Some of the snow has melted and we have had the snow plough/digger come along and remove some of the huge piles of snow that had accumulated at the sides of the road so that two cars can pass again on the road.

Whilst at Whitewater we purchased their famous Whitewater Cooks cook book. It is written by Shelley Adams who is co-owner of the Whitewater Winter Resort and is the manager of the Fresh Tracks Cafe which is based in the Lodge. All the recipes are those which appear on the menu at the Cafe and our favourite is the Whitewater Granola Bars which are heavenly! If you are interested in the recipe give us a shout and we can share it with you. It goes perfectly with a large mug of hot chocolate - yum!

We enjoyed watching the episode of Look North the day that you guys in Yorkshire had the snow - we understand it didn't last very long - would you like us to send you some more?

That is all for this week, next week we shall include some more local history and also some new pictures. We look forward to hearing from you.

Love Rachael, Shaun, Harley & Phantom

xx