Dayspring Fire Department Fireman's Breakfast

Dayspring Fire Department Hall
Dayspring, NS
Feb. 23, 2008

Well, it's been a bit of a drought for community suppers over the winter, but 2 recent suppers hosted by the Blockhouse Fire Department (reviews soon to follow) and this breakfast have broken the 'fast'. For anyone who's followed my blog, this breakfast is one of my faves. They just go the extra mile, on several levels.

When you enter the hall, there are usually 'goodies' for the kids at the table where you pay. Plastic fire fighter hats, erasers, pencils, etc.. Decorations are another matter. Every breakfast has a theme, this one was "Rock 'n' Roll" as far as we could tell. Cardboard record singles and musical notes adorned the panelled walls. A couple servers even dressed up as.....hippies? Rockers?



And the food, thumbs up! Home made hash browns, AMAZING bacon, cubes of cheese and muffins on the table, what's not to love? Keep an eye out for this one, and they serve until noon.....

Petite Riviere Christmas Tea

Wesley United Church Hall
Petite Riviere, NS
Dec. 1, 2007

This was the first time either of us had been to this church, but luckily Petite Riviere is a small community so it wasn't too hard to find. As you come up the steep hill exiting Petite, heading towards Broad Cove, the United church is on your left at the top of the hill. It is a towering building with possibly one of the creepiest graveyards I have ever seen.

Once we figured out where to go, we pulled back the heavy wooden doors and entered Cozy-ville! It was an amazing tea and a very special venue. Unfinished wood walls gave the space a warm and inviting feel. Festive cloth table cloths graced the tables, complete with holly and white pine sprigs at each table. Ours had a little 'drummer boy' drum ornament in it as well.

Wave upon wave of friendly servers attended to our every need. First we had our tea (delicious) and then the sandwiches started to arrive:



Ohmigod, cream cheese and cherry, ham and cheese, mock seafood (fake crab), tuna and egg salad (complete with onions). I wished the afternoon would never end. Lisa was beside herself, especially because the sandwiches came 'sans crust'. A plate of devilled eggs was not far behind the sandwiches as we devoured every one that we were offered.

Eventually we had to stop eating sandwiches and desert soon followed. We had a bit of each. An uncoventional trifle: I think it had jello instead of jelly, and what I think were canned pears in the base? Rainbow sprinkles dotted the surface of the dream whip (I'm pretty sure it was dream whip) topping. At any rate, sweet and delish! The other choice was a mincemeat cheesecake, with vanilla graham crumb crust and candied oranges on top of the dream whip topping. Again, sweet and oddly addictive!

I am SO glad we ventured out that day, considering the horrid weather I encountered on my drive in to Bridgewater earlier that morning. Luckily the snow had abated by lunch time, and there was hardly a trace of snow the closer we got to the coast. I highly recommend everyone attend next year's Christmas tea, I know I will.

Annual Maitland Christmas Tea

Maitland, NS
Nov. 24, 2007

It's never hard to convince me to attend a community supper at the local Maitland hall, and the annual Christmas tea is no exception.

The hall is set up with a slightly different layout than your average supper. There are more single tables, and half of the hall is reserved for craft, bake and other assorted tables.

We received some knowing glances when we sat down, I guess we're regulars now! We were set up with the oh, so delicious tea that makes the Maitland suppers stand out and we quickly received our plates of food:



The turkey salad was chock full of REAL turkey and the ham was yummy as well. The bun came pre-buttered and the little container of cranberry jelly was also a nice accent to the meal. The coleslaw was homemade, crunchy and delicious as usual.

Our plate came complete with all the little details, right down to the sprinkle of paprika on the potato salad, nestled on some crisp iceberg lettuce...doesn't it just make you want to say, "awwww"?

And then....the sweets...oh, the sweets...Chocolate covered peanut butter balls, skor toffee bars, chocolate covered coconut cherry balls, mint bars, and still the sweets kept coming. My only regret is that the batteries died on my camera so I couldn't take pics of the sweets for you all to savour.

The neighbouring chatter was fun to listen to as well. Our nearest neighbour entertained us with stories of when she buys finger cookies on sale, what cookies freeze well, what she and her husband had for dinner the last time out and what candy to buy for Christmas. Rivetting stuff! I was particularly impressed with her thrify nature with the Xmas candy, "why should I buy a 10 dollar box, when he's just as happy to eat what I get from the dollar store?" Why indeed?

The tea was capped off buy my purchase of 2 pairs of hand knit mittens for children and one hand knit dish rag. All for the grand total of 4 dollars. (^_^) The knitted goods vendor had a chuckle when I commented, "surely some kid I know needs mittens!"

To paraphrase the Beatles, a splendid time was had by all!

Crousetown Road burns

Crousetown?
Somewhere on the road between Conquerall Mills and Crousetown
Nov. 4, 2007

It's been a while since I uploaded any brake burn photos. These patches have been calling me all summer...

The highway crew patches the road, and it's like filling up the ink well or pallette..the old highway is the canvas:

Conquerall Mills Soup and Sandwich Luncheon

Conquerall Mills Community Hall
Soup and Sandwich Luncheon
Conquerall Mills, Nova Scotia
Oct. 27, 2007

These are hard to pass up. Imagine an endless supply of little sandwiches filled with all manner of good things: egg salad (with onion and without...ya gotta get it with onions!, turkey salad made from REAL turkey, ham and cheese slices, mayo and cucumber, mayo and tomato.....sadly no devilled ham. I guess we were too late.

Soups were from scratch and delightful. Turkey, a very smoky split pea and ham were our choices...both were the perfect antidote to a fall afternoon.

I was a train wreck that afternoon, a veritable bull in a china shop. I kept smashing my leg against the table when I would go to stand up. Spilling our teas all over the table. Repeatedly. Sorry for the mess I left behind!

And then came....the dessert table...oh man, the desserts....sorry some of them turned out blurry...:


The coffee cake in the foreground was amazing!








I think this might be my favourite picture of the lot..

The moral of this story, is arrive early if you want the devilled ham sandwiches!

Mahone Bay Anglican church Roast Beef supper

Anglican Church
Roast Beef Supper
Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia
Oct. 20, 2007

This supper is a guaranteed good meal. That's it. Tender roast beef, delicious pickles on the table, checkerboard cake, who could ask for more? The only thing that could disrupt our plans? Chatty Kathy.

We should've known she was trouble from the second she and her ex-con husband sat down across from us. Within seconds she was spooning chow chow on half of a dinner roll, voraciously eating it. Then, on to the coleslaw. Again, eating it off a dinner roll. Chow chow and coleslaw cascaded down on the vinyl table cloth. And still, she kept eating....

The next victim in her sights was our nearby 'table cake':


Seems innocent enough, right? A lovely looking cake, right? Not for long...she proceeded to cut off a small piece, and then only ate half of it. A puzzled frown quickly spread over her face.
"What kind of cake do you think that is?" she asked us, "i can't tell, it looks like barley bread, don't you think it looks like barley bread?"
For the rest of our meal she inquired with anyone who would make eye contact with her, if they thought this cake looked like barley bread.....

To be fair, she was only being 'neighbourly', and the only reason I mention her 'quirks' is because I've never seen anyone behave that way at a supper. As hard as I tried not to make eye contact, she kept talking to Lisa and myself:

"Where are you from?"
"Do you go to many of these suppers?"
"Don't you think that cake looks like barley bread?"
"These pickles are tough" (they were tough, I'll give her that)

Oh, and dinner was great. For dessert, we had squash pie and pumpkin pie, both were great. Squash pie is a little drier and less 'spicy' than pumpkin pie, well worth trying!

I ate up as fast as I could so we could escape without being pumped for more information by Chatty Kathy. I have a bad feeling this isn't the last we've seen of her...Stay tuned, faithful readers!

Parkdale/Maplewood Heritage Blueberry Supper

September 8, 2007
Parkdale/Maplewood Community Hall
Maplewood, NS

This is one of the annual suppers I look forward to. This year, we had some extra family friends 'in tow' which always makes it more fun. We met up at the hall, surveyed the parking lot flush with Buicks and found our way to the ticket table.

We found our way to the Parkdale/Maplewood museum to purchase our tickets. We had a bit of a wait ahead of us so we meandered around from building to building. The museum is an interesting slice of local history, and there was live music inside all afternoon. That Saturday was particularly humid so we quickly escaped outside and checked out the lovely perennial gardens surrounding the building.

There were several other small buildings with craft vendors (I'm guessing selling hand knit wool goods on a hot day was a hard sell), demonstrations (i.e. snowshoe making) and of course food vendors. Everything looked amazing, from the sweaty squares in their plastic bags (actually, everything was sweaty), to the lemon loaves, the pies and all manner of pickled and jellied goods.

Eventually our numbers were called and we entered the hall. How the work staff survived that heat all afternoon is beyond me! We only had to endure ~30 minutes and some in our party were feeling like fainting....The set up was different than the usual long tables, and sit where you can sit ordeal. This year, there were numerous tables to seat 10 or so, which I'm sure made sitting groups together much easier for the staff. Also a lot of fun for groups of 5 like ours!

Food service was luncheon style and we inched down the line getting a little bit of everything on our plates as we went. Eventually, it looked like this:




Delicious! Lunenburg sausage and pudding (I believe the cheese was meant to be eaten with the pudding), sauerkraut and sauerkraut salad, smeltz potatoes, hodge podge and solomon gundy all fit on this plate.

The brown bread was moist and sweet with molasses, I couldn't stop helping myself to another piece....Smeltz potatoes are so good, they consist of potatoes, pork scraps, onions apples and blend. Man, I'm hungry.....Hodge podge is usually an early summer dish made with the first crop of carrots, peas, beans and potatoes, all cooked until tender and served with cream (and lots of salt and pepper). Saurekraut salad is like.....coleslaw minus the mayo? Here's a recipe:

Sauerkraut Salad

1 quart sauerkraut (rinsed and drained)
1 cup celery (chopped)
1 medium onion (chopped)
green and red peper (chopped)

Dressing:

1 1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup salad oil

Stir dressing ingredients until sugar is dissolved. Add to other ingredients. Mix well. Keeps for several weeks in the fridge. Easy, eh?

Last but not least was dessert. I had to try the blueberry grunt. This consists of small dumplings covered in cooked blueberries. The pie also looked great and both were obviously made from scratch. Hard to declare a winner, but my personal fave is the grunt, just because it is uncommon. Stay tuned for a picture of the grunt, blogger is being...ehem...unresponsive to uploading pictures at the moment...