Newfoundland Labrador

Bacon, either you love or you hate it or because of religious reasons, you don’t eat it at all. Other’s may not eat bacon  because of their conviction of animal cruelty or they don’t like the smell of bacon being cooked. For whatever reason, I respect their freedom to choose. Well, I like bacon!

I have tried many flavors and many suppliers. Schneiders is one of my favorites.  There are only two of us in the household now, so we usually cut the package in thirds and make three meals. Those are frozen in freezer bags

Today, I cooked bacon and eggs for both of us, although my wife only wanted bacon.  The following are photos of how I cook the bacon. We have been using The Gotham Steel frying pan and compared to other pans, that we have used over the years, this is one of the best.  We can control the crispiness  of the bacon and the eggs don’t stick to the pan. Also, when you are finished cooking, it’s easy to clean the pan.

This is how we like our bacon cooked. To remove most of the grease,I put the cooked bacon on a paper towel and wrap the towel around the bacon. This gets rid of most of the grease.

I pour the access grease, that’s left in the pan, in a mason jar. In the fall, winter and spring I lay the bottle outside for the grease to solidify. It goes in the refrigerator in the summer. This is how much grease came out of 1/3 lb of bacon. The right photo is the solidified grease. Usually I scrape the hardened grease, from the bottle and place it in the garbage. Some times , I keep it for frying eggs or sausages.

There is just a film left in the pan to fry the egg or eggs. Today, there was only one egg  to fry. I only added pepper as there was enough salt in the bacon fat. Toasted homemade bread and pieces of orange is enough for this breakfast meal. When we have family or friends for breakfast, we will have peaches, yogurt  and pancakes with the bacon and eggs.

Yes, we like Purity crackers or Purity Cream Crisps. Lately, we have been buying the crisps as there are too many crackers, in a box and they become stale. The stale crackers are used as a base for onion pies. It may seem strange but we use homemade partridge berry jam on our toast and bought raspberry jam on the crackers.

Clean up is easy as most of the grease has already been removed from the pan. Just a matter of wiping clean with a paper towel and if you like you can use a few spoonfuls of boiling water and then wipe clean.

Any left over bacon, if there is any, is used to make a tomato, lettuce and bacon sandwich.

What’s for breakfast at your house??

Heh, Gord, do you like bacon and eggs??

Why was the meat packer arrested? For bringing home the bacon.

What do you get when you cross a pig and a chicken? The best bacon-and-eggs of your life.

Why did the pig kill the farmer? To save his own bacon.

 Safe and Secure

Labrador websites and blogs.

Transportation

Labrador Marine Ferry Service

The following is a photo I took of our snack of home made bread with molasses. My wife usually makes bread, once a month and I always look forward to a slice of fresh bread and molasses.

I recall as a child my parents and others talking about the crust man. If we didn’t eat our crust, the crust man would come and take us. This is a ditty that my father-in-law would sing to the grand-children.  “If you don’t eat your crust, they’ll come back at night and dance around your head on your pillow singing ‘we are the crust that you did not eat, that you did not eat.”

Here are a few comments from some friends who remember the crust man stories from their childhood.

Geraldine: “I was scared to death of the crust man.”

Amy:  “I used to have nightmares about that dude!”

Courtney: “It’s a wonder we went to sleep at night:”

I ate my crust and my favorite slice of bread is the heel, the heel tap or the crust.

The Crust Man (Poem)

I sat at the table and hungrily ate,
But the crust of my bread still remained on the plate.

 

We very seldom hear of  anybody seeing or hearing fairies today.  When I was young and living in Creston South my parents and grandparents would tell stories about fairies.

There is one story that I recall about my Grandmother Wiscombe. Her and a friend were picking berries about a mile from Creston. When it was time to go home, I believe it was my grandmother, starting walking in the opposite direction.  Her friend called out to her but she kept on walking.  The friend ran after her and when she caught up to her she said, “can you hear the fairies playing and the bells.” Her friend heard nothing and eventually she was able to get my grandmother to turn and head for home.

Our parents would always tell us to watch out for the fairies. I would suggest there are many such stories that have been told, in many communities, through Newfoundland Labrador.

The most famous fairy is the tooth fairy. When a child loses a tooth, it is placed under a pillow and the tooth fairy comes at night, takes the tooth and leaves money. The value of a tooth  has gone up with inflation.

Then there is Cinderella’s fairy godmother. That’s one story that even fascinated the boys.

Links to Stories

A Fairy Abduction Story

The French Fairy Tales In Newfoundland

Away With The Fairies

It’s been extremely windy here in Newfoundland and the forecast for the next few days, is gale force winds. I recall fishermen saying it’s blowing a gale.

Many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are familiar with the devastating damages and loss of life caused by those extreme winds. Some of us have first hand experience and respect it’s power.

Those are a few pictures that I took today down at the end of Cherry Lane. The wind was gusting up to 100 kmh or higher.from the west. It was a mixed bag of weather as one minute the sun was shining and then we had rain and wet snow flurries.

That’s Kelly’s Is in the background. I would not want to be out there today. When I was sixteen, I spent a summer as a mate on a tuna boat. I recall one day we were steaming from Cape St Francis to Long Pond after a day sport tuna fishing. The wind was blowing down the bay. It was a rough ride coming up the bay. The bow of the boat would dig into the waves and throw water back over the bridge. You had to hold on so as not to be knocked around on the deck.

A number of years ago  a relative and I were turr hunting and as we went around the eastern end of kelly’s Island the wind changed direction. We were met with high winds and waves similar to what’s in the photo.  My relative was able to turn the boat and get back into the shelter of the island. We did make a decision to cross over to Long Pond.  It was a little nerve wrecking, however; my relative was good at reading the water and the waves.

Looking down the shoreline towards Manuel’s Head.

 

My sister put up, on Facebook, an old photo from from 1966. It was a photo of the Queen Elizabeth Regional High School Volleyball Team.
This is the photo

The photo brought back many memories of my time in high school especially the many sporting activities that I was part of. I loved team sport and through much practice, I became pretty good at most sports. Basketball was one exception. I spent too much time being called for traveling so I dropped basketball. Many players on the volleyball team also played basketball.

The date 1966 was what really reminded me of  an important time in Newfoundland’s history. It was what made me think about the topic come home year newfoundland. The year 1965 was when The Trans Canada Highway was finished across Newfoundland. In my opinion that is when we really started to feel Canadian.

The then Premier, Joey Smallwood decided that with the Trans Canada finished we should have a Come  Home Year in 1966. There was a lot of planning and promoting leading up to the start of Come Home Year.

We were all excited. For me and my family, we would be meeting relatives that we never knew existed.

I recall cousins from the Boston area. They were fun to have around. One memory of their visit was a trip to Bellevue Beach. The caplin were in and my aunt, who was rather big decided to go for a swim with the caplin. She looked like a whale with her long black dress floating on the water. The caplin scattered but I still have a vivid picture of that event.

Another memory from those celebrations were the many out of province license plates that were around.  We would play games trying to guess which province or state plate, the next car going pass, would have. Ontario plates were in the majority as many Newfoundlanders had moved to Ontario for work.

My parents had plans for us to go to Ontario, when we moved in to the St John’s area from Creston PB back in 1957, however; my father found steady employment in St john’s and area as a carpenter.

I consider myself a Canadian with Newfoundland Labrador my home.

Do you have memories from the 1966 come home year Newfoundland  Labrador celebrations?

When we were young, our parents and most people in our community grew their own vegetables. If I remember correctly, all gardens were planted on raised beds with trenches separating them. The fertilizer was manure and capelin.

When we got married, each year, my wife and I would plant our own small vegetable garden. There were the staples, potatoes, carrots and turnips. Some years we tried growing, with little success, tomatoes, cabbage and strawberries. I always found it rewarding and inspiring to see the plants growing and to harvest our small crop.

We are now in our senior years.  From 2008 to 2016. we were living in the Ottawa valley region of Ontario. When we returned home, we looked forward to having our own small vegetable garden.

We now have a twenty by twenty garden, that’s located behind the garage in our daughter and son-in-laws garden. Thus far we have planted a row of carrots, beet and  spinach. We still have two more rows left.

Just showing the grand-children, the eenies clapsies game. I believe it should be easies

easies, clapsies, twirl around tabapsies, right hand, left hand,
high as the sky, low as the sea, touch my knees, touch my toes,
cross my legs and under it goes
Can anybody remember the correct wording??
We played this game with an indian rubber ball

 

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My son and I were watching an Anthony Bourdain episode, from newfoundland Labrador where sea urchins were on the menu. He asked me if I would ever consider eating sea urchin? My response was ,”I might, if I knew they were cooked properly.”

A few days later we were out for a drive, with his two year old son, my grandson and we noticed a number of sea urchins on the parking area where boaters launch their boats. They had been dropped there by sea gulls as a way to break them open. The following is a you tube video showing sea gulls dropping the urchins.

I have picked up sea urchins from tidal pools and from rocky beaches. I wondered what happened to the insides of the ones we picked up on the beaches and road ways.  Most of my sixty something years have been spent near the ocean and fish plants, however; I did not hear of anyone eating the flesh of this crustacean.

Will I eat the roe of an urchin? I have eaten the dried roe from a capelin and the roe from a codfish but a sea urchin!

I’m subject to gout so I have to check to see if sea urchins are one of the foods that I should not be eating.  Lobster, crab and other shellfish as well as other seafoods and trout are foods that are not recommended for gout sufferers.

If I should eat a sea urchin, I will take a photo and place it here.

The Japanese are the biggest consumer of sea urchin roe.

“We are traveling to Newfoundland, for five days, what do you recommend” was the question an acquaintance asked me?  They were leaving in a few days and had made reservations to fly into Deer Lake and return from St John’s. This was their first trip to Newfoundland.

My wife and I were born on the island and I had visited most areas of the province. We had moved to the Ottawa area, for eight years, so our view of home was a little different because of this. Also, I had spent many years as a travel consultant so I knew the questions to ask.

They had already booked their accommodations and as they told me what their plans were I knew that they were going to be rushed. This was not a holiday but a marathon.

Their itinerary was as follows.

Day 1: Arrive in Deer Lake in the afternoon. Over-night

Day 2: Visit the Corner Brook area and then drive to L’anse aux meadows. Over-night in St Anthony.

Day 3: St. Anthony to Gander with an over-night in Gander

Day 4: Gander to St John’s

Day 5: Leave St John’s, in the afternoon, to fly home

I looked at the schedule and quickly figured that they would be driving and or sleeping most of the time with very little time for sight seeing. They wanted to see icebergs and the best place to see them, this time of year, would be Twillingate.  My suggestion to them would be to see if they could change their itinerary and eliminate l’anse aux meadow until their next visit. They were planning another five day trip for the following year.

By making this one change, they would have time to visit Twillingate and spend an extra day in the St John’s area. I suggested a few short side trips and the main attractions that they could visit.

I didn’t speak to them, after their return but our friends said that they had a really good holiday and were looking forward to returning to Newfoundland next year to visit the west coast, l’anse aux meadows and Gros Morne national Park. They told them to thank me for my suggestions.

We hope you have an enjoyable and memorable time here, whatever your reason for visiting our province.

Photo taken during a cod fishing trip.