This week we have discovered Canada Flag Day. Unfortunately there was no Public Holiday attached to the day but we thought you may find the history quite interesting. After some research on t'internet Wikipedia provided the most comprehensive account as below:"The National Flag of Canada, popularly known as the Maple Leaf and l'Unifolié (French for "the one-leafed") , is a base red flag with a white square in its centre featuring a stylized, 11-pointed, red maple leaf. Before this flag, Canada used variants of the British Red Ensign with the shield of Canada charged in the fly. The Red Ensign that took familiar shape in Canada was introduced by Prime Minister Mackenzie King after the First World War. From the 1940s until 1965, Canada made several attempts to create its own flag by holding national contests, but the Red Ensign still flew for Canada. A serious debate about a flag change did not occur until 1964, when a committee was picked by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson. Out of three choices, the maple leaf design by George F.G. Stanley was chosen as the winner. The flag made its first appearance on February 15, 1965, which is now celebrated annually as Flag Day."
The history of the flag is described on the link above and shows pictures of the flag designs that were proposed and originally used.
The culinary creation for this week was Focaccia from Antonio Carluccio's Italian Feast recipe book. Here are a couple of pictures of Rachael's creation topped with rosemary.
It was quite a large bread - here it is sliced ready for eating - sat on a standard sized dinner plate to give you a sense of scale!
Antonio's book is very good and contains recipes that even a bucket chemist like Rachael can follow - we would also recommend his Tiramisu Di Allesandro which we made to take to one of our neighbours pot luck parties. One of the couples who hosted the party were Italian and said that it was the best tiramisu they had ever had! Good old Antonio.This evening we have been watching Knight Rider - it is the premier movie of the new series to be shown in 2008. If you manage to come across it in the UK it is certainly worthy of viewing and David Hasselhoff even cameos as Michael Knight. It features KITT who is a Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500 in disguise (kind of). He still talks and came even change colour!
Finally to continue the washing machine story we have been training Phantom to programme the washing machine - but as yet he hasn't been able to put the clothes into the drum before grabbing for the control buttons.
Well it is Sunday evening here and we are signing out for this week having undertaken 11 hours of skiing / snowboarding in the last two days!Enjoy the blog, love Rachael, Shaun, Harley & Phantom
xx
