E. Stilker

CHURROS - SPARE RIBS

A couple of weeks ago, Tinneke suddenly had a craving for Churros ... It's a South-American or Spanish long fried doughnut (something like it anyways). Luckily MTL is one of the world's food capitals (only NY has more restaurants per inhabitant), so we went to Churros Montreal for empanadas and chocolate and dulce de leche filled churros. Que bueno!

But one cannot live on sweets alone, and with summer still going on (haha Belgian suckaz), what better way to celebrate summer, the weekend, friends with a BBQ party. And I have the perfect BBQ recipe for you: marinated spareribs.

For 2 -4 racks of spareribs (I prefer babybacks). For the marinade: in a bowl, mix a can of coke (real coke, no pepsi), 100ml of soy sauce, 100ml Jack Daniels and 100ml Maple Syrup, a good squirt of ketchup, a couple of cloves of chopped garlic, some crushed bayleafs, a couple of turns of freshly ground black pepper and some hot sauce for that kick. Mix and throw together with the spareribs in a ziploc bag, marinate for 24hrs in the fridge. Get your barbie smokin' hot, and grill those ribs, occasionally turning and moistening with the marinade. It's a guaranteed killer!

MARBLE SOUNDS

We needed some time to recover from all the guiding around. Why not recover and listen to the great music of our Belgian friend Pieter.

He gigged in the charming little town of Val David in the Laurentians, about an hour drive from Montréal. Marble Sounds deserves your full attention ... maybe he'll play in a venue near you soon! If not, buy that EP, trust me, you won't regret it!

Travelling in la belle province

Only a couple of days after our weekend, my inlaws arrived. So the first week T. showed them around MTL, we left to Magog in the Eastern Townships for the weekend, then they went to Quebec City whilst I was working (freedom, yihaa) and the next week I had some holidays as well, so we all went for the full tour on the Gaspé peninsula.

It's about the size of Belgium, has some of the highest peaks of QC (around 1200m) surrounded by water and its population is about 160,000 humans, a great number of moose (most Canadians don't know the plural of moose ... maybe coz you never see more than one at the time), some black bears, lots of birdies and whales, seals, dolphins and other mammals on sea and land. After La Gaspésie they came back to Montréal before finally taking the Iron Air Transat Bird home.

Some indigenous tribes believe that their soul is taken away when someone takes a picture of them ... Luckily Belgians are less superstitious ...

MTL, tall building on the right, 39th floor, that's where I work

Don't have 2 go to Madison County to see these covered bridges ... (Estrie)

Chateau Frontenac in QC City

Jardin des Métis (Métis-sur-mer)

On top of Mt. Jacques Cartier. (Parc de la Gaspésie - secteur ChicChoc)

No bears ... no moose ... (Parc de la Gaspésie)

But ssssssssssssnakes! (Parc de la Gaspésie)

Baby humpback whale doing acrobatics. (Parc National Forillon)

Not one but 2 whales! (Parc National Forillon)

Where are those whales? (Parc National Forillon)

Gannets ('Jan Van Gent') -> very smelly animals (Ile-Bonaventure)

The magical Parc du Bic.

Rivière-du-Loup falls.

Riviere St-Anne

Let's boldly go where no Flemish has gone before (er .... at least that's what I think): Rivière St-Anne.

Little more than a 2h drive (who cares about speed limits, not the Québecois apparently) from the royal mountain city, we joined S & S for a weekend of canoeing and what not. Here's the pics.

Our cabin in the woods

Our own little private lake

Marhsmallow on a stick

Mister S. Red

Miss S. Green

Miss T. Brown

"Spring in't veld"

Love is in the canola air

Jazz Fest

I still don't seem to catch up with my posting ... Bu tryin' very hard.

So the day after the party, S & S arrived. So we showed them around MTL and the finer spots of Mile End, they did some discoveries on their own (where are those pics Mama'h??) and then they left to QC city to be joined by us a couple of days later in Rivière-St-Anne for a weekend of canoeing, BBQing and marshmallowing on a stick in a logcabin on a lake.

But the couple of days without them were not to be wasted, coz the Jazz Fest was in town.

So we went to see Montréal's music prodigy Patrick Watson (yeah, him again) and The Besnard Lakes as support. For those of you going to Pukkelpop (and have time to read this blog), you can catch TBL 2morrow and Mr. Watson & band on Saturday.
Needless to say TBL were excellent (although the m'as-tu vu crowd was more interested in the main act - so-called hipcats know what's cool in MTL) and Patrick Watson was his quirky witty talented self. And this would not be a proper blog without stereophonic mulitcolour evidence:

Clip The Besnard Lakes: For Agent 13

Crowd going wild for Mr. Watson at the Jazz Fest Metropolis gig

Even before S & S arrived (yeah I am mixing up the chronology here, forgive me dear reader) we went to see the amazing Spaghetti Western Orchestra. This musical ensemble from down under plays the songs of Il Maestro with a nice dollop of theater (a bit like De Nieuwe Snaar).

A part of the MTL Jazz Fest show

Another part of the MTL Jazz Fest show

PARTYTIME

And the day before S & S arrived, we decided to throw a belated B-day party with lots of Belgian beer, cocktails, bison burgers and happy faces!

The thunderstorms were almost party pooping on us, coz the power went down for about an hour. But we got lucky: not everyone was sleeping @ Hydro Quebec, so the power was restored and the DJ could go back to work.

Fernanda + me (wearing a Brazilian "tuque")

Trip to Belgium - PICS

Sorry folks ... I am way behind on my postings, but July has been pretty busy (work, travels, visitors, parties, summer). But first things first, a couple of pics from our trip to "le plat pays qui est le mien".