St-Albert and Montreal adventure

It's always so great having a long weekend, that extra day helps to be able to do more things. Friday we didn't have any baseball so I got the house cleaning done and relaxed. Saturday I had the chance to do laundry, chopped up vegetables, and prepare a dip for snacks during the week. I also made some cookies and got to relax and read. We had a friend come over for supper and we enjoyed a steak oscar with roasted potatoes and asparagus, all cooked on the BBQ. We opened up a huge and more expensive bottle of wine, which we were suppose to do all this for my hubby and our friend's birthday's back in June but then my hubby got sick. We finally got the chance to get together and enjoy a delicious meal.

You can find the wine we had at this LCBO link. I do recommend this wine, it went perfectly with our supper and it was really good! On Sunday I drove over to my friend's place and we drove out to St-Albert which they also had a market just outside

I picked up some green onions, green pepper, some maple jelly as well as some homemade Jamaican jerk marinade, which I got to try some chicken and it was delicious! Inside we bought some cheese curds, marble cheese and I got some herb goat cheese.

It was time for lunch so we also enjoyed a small poutine. Then we were off again and drove to Montreal. Our first stop was the SAQ to get Ricardo's wine. For those who don't know Ricardo, he is a chef on the food network. I picked up 3 bottles of red and 2 of the white. Just across the street was Ricardo's store

The store was beautiful, so many amazing kitchen supplies. Anne and I were in heaven!  We both love to cook and bake and love an opportunity to get things for our kitchen. I picked up a pan to make donuts, which I have been dying to try the recipe in the Chocolate covered Katie cookbook. I got a melon baller, but a bigger size, perfect to scoop the right amount of dough for cookies, or for muffins. I also got a container for herbs, it's got the line at the bottom showing how much water you should have, and you put fresh herbs in it and there's a lid, creating a "green house" to have herbs to last for a longer amount of time, and also got an oil spritzer. Just have to pump it and then it sprays whatever oil you decide to put into it. Although I didn't get to meet Ricardo in person, I did get to take a picture with his life size poster

We did get to meet his daughter, she was very nice, and even told us how her dad dropped her off that morning. To bad he didn't stay so I can meet him =)  Their store also has Mama Choka which I bought two of their chocolate bars. Pretty expensive but I hear it's amazing! I got one for my hubby but we haven't tried them yet. I got one with peanut butter and the other with Quinoa. We also tried out their ice cream sundae, which I got chocolate ice cream with maple and toasted almonds, it was delicious!!

Once we left there, we decided to go get some bagels, but with all the construction in Montreal we had a hard time getting there. The GPS kept having to find a new route to get us there, which it took us about double the time to get to our destination.

It was warm in there, but smelled so good! I got some blueberry bagels as well as some pumpernickel.

 I had the blueberry bagel this morning and it was really good!  We still had some time before supper so we decided to go to the Casino.

We didn't get any luck there, but we were excited to head to Le Garde Manger, which is Chuck Hughes restaurant, another chef from the food network. He had an amazing wall right when you walk in.

We were very disappointed once we found out that they were fully booked for the whole evening. We couldn't even sit at the bar or anything. We will have to reserve next time and we plan to bring our hubby's with us. We walked around in hopes to find a new place to try out but we didn't find anything that interested us. It was getting late and we were really hungry so we decided to get out of downtown and stop at the Keg along the way home. We started off with an appetizer, which is a iceberg salad with some tomatoes and bacon.

Then we shared an entree of chicken oscar with mashed potatoes and asparagus. Anne doesn't like seafood so I had all the shrimp and scallops, along with some of the chicken.

It was all so good!  A good way to end the evening and then we drove home. Other then the bad drivers, road blocks, and not getting into Chuck's restaurant, we had a really good time. It was a really fun day. Got home rather late but thanks to today being a civic holiday I got to sleep in this morning. I also got busy in the kitchen and got to try out my melon baller and oil spritzer. I made some Pina colada muffins. I found out about toneitup.com from a friend. She was at Chapters and found the Tone it up book and was telling me how amazing it was. I looked online for it and saw they had a few books at the Chapters near my place so I picked up a copy. I saw they had a website so decided to check it out and when I saw the recipe I knew I had to try them, which you can find the recipe here.

They turned out great! The topping isn't quite the same as theirs because I didn't have any coconut butter, but I tried out some crushed pineapple with some coconut oil, a splash of maple syrup and some arrowroot powder to thicken it up a bit.

It's been an amazing long weekend!  Glad I had time to get into the kitchen but also go out and have some fun. Now time for me to go get dinner ready. I'm making some pasta tonight with some vodka sauce, ground sausage and lots of veggies. We may just open up Ricardo's wine to go with it.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!