The rain scuppered plans for the Creative Cooking Group to celebrate the last day of summer in Lin’s back garden. But the ‘finger-food feast’ moved easily indoors and everyone enjoyed the delicious appetizers and desserts …and most especially the joy of meeting in-person after the 2+ year ‘damnpandemic’ shutdown.
The Creative Cooking Group meets once a month. They rotate the role of ‘host’ – the member who creates the menu, provides the recipes, and hosts the group in her home. Each participant chooses one recipe to create, and the result is a spectacular meal as ‘many hands make light work’. Today’s finger-food feast was an exception. Typically dinner includes wine/beverage, appetizer, soup, salad, bread/buns, main course of protein, vegetables and starch, and dessert.
Today we were delighted to welcome Nancy, a new member as well as Bea C whose daughters, Joan and Barb, drove out from Toronto to bring their mom to visit. Bea was a long-time member of Creative Cooking and her recipes continue to inspire us.
Category Archives: Interest Groups
Dining out in Wine Country
The Dining out group enjoyed a September afternoon in wine country at The Good Earth Food and Wine Co in Beamsville. The chefs source local produce either from their farm or other farms in the area and create dishes that are outstanding in both taste and presentation. All twelve of us recommend this restaurant if you are venturing into the Niagara area for great food, lovely wine, and friendly service.
Walking group and Murdoch Mysteries!
Today was the first walk of the fall and we were nearly foiled in our exercise plans because our scheduled trail was being used to film a scene for Murdoch Mysteries. The road was blocked with a flashing police car, but they did let us park further down and sneak onto the trail. It was interesting to sneak a peek of the cricket game in progress and the old cars!
The walk was fabulous. Perfect weather.
Dining out interest group
The Dining Out Group celebrated in style after 30 months of “Pandemic-caused Interest Group lock down”.
We dined at The Twisted Lemon in Cayuga. All eight of us swooned over the delicious dishes that were artistically presented complete with colorful and edible nasturtiums. We are very grateful that Chef/Owner Dan and his team weathered the last few years of Covid and maintained their standard of excellence in food, service, and ambiance.
It is important to note that Twisted Lemon is only open for dinner these days. They have an outdoor dining area, but it is good to go early if you dine inside as it gets noisy when there are large parties of people (present company excluded of course!)
We strongly recommend this restaurant as one of the very best in the area.
Here are some restaurants we’ll be exploring in the coming months:
Good Earth Food & Winery, Beamsville
Langdon Hall, Cambridge
Gran Sasso, Brantford
Olde School, Brantford
Devlin’s, Mount Pleasant
La Cantinella, St. George
Cambridge Mill, Cambridge
Weekly walking group
It’s always such a pleasure, walking with our deer friends.
Games group meets at Glenhyrst
Throughout the pandemic our games group met via zoom for some fun scavenger hunts and trivia challenges, but nothing can beat getting together in person. We took advantage of great summer weather to play some bocce!
Monday afternoon book group
Many of our participants were gone over the summer but three of us still managed to get together to talk about books. Unlike most book groups where the talk focuses on a single book, our group is made up of such avid readers that we often end up discussing half a dozen books or more. Zoom gatherings work because we can pull book images and reviews up on powerpoint to aid in the lively discussion. We are omnivorous in tastes and in a single meeting the discussion can go from memoirs, local history, historical fiction, nature, science fiction, fantasy and everything in between.
Biking group!
And we walk
Enjoying the weather after walking the trail.
We play games!
CFUW Brantford isn’t just about advocacy, it’s also about fun. Even during the pandemic our interest groups got together virtually. This is a snap from a recent games meet-up.
