Food & Drink

Food & Drink

Brussels Sprouts: From Blah to Oolala!

Deutsch: Rosenkohl English: Brussels sprouts

Brussels sprouts bounty (image via

Mount Stephen Club No More?

George Stephen House - Mount Stephen Club

Image via Wikipedia

Did you solve the Montreal Mystery in my last blog post? Did you guess which Montreal mansion was the location for our decadent brunch?

Plaudits to Steph Sirois (@StefS31) and Linda Coffin who answered correctly that the mysterious Montreal mansion in the video is Mount Stephen Club! Both Steph and Linda have personal connections to the property, one from college reasearch and the other from growing up two blocks away... Bravo, Montrealophiles! (Shoot me your mailing addresses, and a prize will help you celebrate your smarts.)

The Mount Stephen Club occupies the late 19th century mansion of George Stephen, the co-founder of Canadian Pacific Railway. This extravagant home in Montreal's Golden Square Mile was architecturally inspired Italian Renaissance palaces. The interior is extravagantly finished in detailed Cuban mahogany, English walnut and exotic woods and boasts many marble mantles, stained glass glass windows, and grand staircase fit for royalty.

Montreal Mystery

My bride and I escaped to Montreal, QC and environs this weekend to catch up with good fiends, Fabrice and Veronique.We stayed in their spectacular, almost-complete new home located about ten minutes east from Montreal. In the country! How many cities offer the bounty of culinary, cultural and professional opportunities of Montreal, with the luxury of country living only ten minutes away?

Costa Rica: Peninsula Papagayo

Our Costa Rican adventure starts out in Guanacaste at the Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica at Peninsula Papagayo. A "hardship post" for sure! Nine days of pampered bliss with in-laws, playing in the surf with my nephews, devouring fresh local fruit, fish and seafood, and generally shaking off the Adirondack winter.

Costa Rica Countdown: 3, 2, 1...

It's time for a mid-winter escape from the Adirondacks. And what better destination than Costa Rica? For the second year in a row my wife and I are venturing to the jewel of Central America with in-laws for ten incredibdle days at the Four Seasons Peninsula Papagayo. After that we join our friends Amy and Brian who winter in Tamarindo, but unlike last year when we fired straight off to Nosara, this year we're headed inland to Lake Arenal. Volcano. Hot springs. Windsurfing. Then down to Tamarindo for some surf, surf, surfing!

Rockaway Taco & Surf

Rockaway Taco video via La Flâneur

Feeding hungry grateful folks in Rockaway during the summer, sneaking in a little surfing when you can, then heading off to parts exotic and remote for uninterupted surfing during the off-season... Thank you Laura (@Flaneur999) for finding and sharing this inspiring video!

Turkey Flanerie

Meet America's Best Young Chefs


Sue Zemanick (Credit: ABCNews.com)

China's homegrown wine scene

My two previous visits had been in 2002 and 2008 and on the second I had been deeply depressed by the fact that, while the rest of the world was making better wine with every vintage, the quality of the Chinese wine seemed to have stagnated.

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