Sunday, December 7, 2008

Guided Tour - Formal Living Room

From the Dining Room, a large double pocket door leads into the Formal Living Room. This room still has the houses original main fireplace and mantle, whcih has been converted to an open gas burning hearth about 20 years ago. The pocket door is a wonderful piece of work, completely original, with 16 etched glass panes in each slider. I have no idea how the individual panes were manufactured, as they are certainly not identical, but some of the leaf like patterns seem to repeat randomly through various panes. Originally the house had at least two, but possibly four fireplaces, all of which were used to heat the house, with the addition of a coal burning furnace in the basement. in the 'twenties, a central hot water furnace and radiators were installed, and the less desireable fireplaces removed. The furnishings (two pink loveseats, and two blue upholstered chairs) were cast-offs from my parents in Thornhill, but they seem to suit and fit quite well. An antuique vertical desk from the 'twenties, and a small glass front bookshelf from the turn of the century were bought fairly inexpensively at Bonds Corners Auction Ltd. If you are ever interested in buying excellent furnishings for incredible prices, auctions are the way to go. You can find beautiful solid wood furniture from early to mid century all in excellent condition, and get them less expensively than laminated MDF junk from China at Leon's or The Brick.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

New Traditions - Friday Night Pizza!

About 6 monhths back I was flipping through the glossy LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) Magazine "Food & Drink" when I happened across an article on home made pizza, with the suggestion of pairing different styles of pizza with different beverages. Well something snapped in my head (in a good way!) and next Friday I had assembled all the basic ingredients for toppings, loaded the dough ingredients into the Cuisinart Bread Maker (thank you Peter and Donnaleen!), and an hour and a half later, Rudi, Katherine and I were "decorating" our pizzas. Fifteen minutes after that we were sitting down and enjoying fresh, hot out of the oven, home made pizza, while Alexander whinged after scarfing down his veggies, and had to be sustained on bits of crust!

Although the "Food & Drink" article featured rather exotic styles of Pizza (Artichoke and grilled chicken, and roast beef and spanish onion varieties) ours are quite a bit simpler, generally sliced pepperoni, chopped onions, mushrooms, and red pepper on tomato sauce, but always delicious.

I sometimes wonder, if Mr. Field were to ever happen by, dropped in from the year 1898, the shock he would get. Watching as Katherine arrived home from work in her little fuel sipping Toyota Echo - a half hour trip for her now, a half-day undertaking in his time (we're not perfect, our other vehicle is a fuel guzzling Ford Freestar) with some groceries bought at the local grocery store including red pepper available any time of the year (a store right in Tavistock, with probably over 5000 items in stock all the time, from all over the globe), and then as our handy electric breadmaker whipped up a batch of pizza dough in short order, with no effort on my part really. I think he would have a lot of questions!