Michaelmas daisies, chills in the air, and a little Tippett.

Autumn has arrived!

Autumn arrived all at once here, this weekend.  Suddenly, there was a definite chill in the air, and the trees have started to show a little colour in the Don Valley.  This morning it was only 4 degrees  outside when I got up - definitely needed my cozy goose down duvet this morning!  On my routine Thursday with the boys at the end of last week, we even lit the first log fire of the season, as we settled down to watch Downton Abbey and tucked into apple crisp.  I think this is only a blip - rest of the week looks more seasonal.  Things are progressing with the house.....today some new laths were added to the sections of stucco which needed full replacement, and the metal mesh has been replaced.  Expect to see the new fresh stucco up there shortly.

What am I listening to this evening?  Something I haven't heard for years, but which I discovered towards the end of high school, and one of those things I listened to absolutely obsessively....I completely adore the last two minutes or so on this Youtube video!

Walking round Wychwood & Halifax donair.

When I first moved to Toronto, I lived overlooking Christie Pits park.  Today, I went for a mooch around the old stomping grounds, and visited the Wychwood area, including beer and lunch at the Wychwood Barns, a stroll through Wychwood Estates, topped off with a wander around what is now the urban hipster hub of Ossington & Dundas.  Today, I had my first Halifax donair, which was something I'd never heard of, but apparently, I'm not up to speed on my Canadian delicacies.

Old signage at the Wychwood Barns, reclaimed transit garages which are now a community arts & environmental hub.

Halifax donairs:  we watched the pita bread dough being rolled out and cooked in a wood burning brick pizza oven.  The "Halifax" aspect of the kebabs is the sauce.....a very sweet concoction with condensed milk as a starting point.  Unfortunately, although the pitas and meat were delicious, I wasn't too keen on the signature sauce!

Eggplant and feta pastries - these were absolutely delicious (and I don't even really like eggplant that much).  The olives were served warm from the wood burning oven, and were smokey and delicious.

This is the oven in which our food was cooked, including little pitas which puffed up like balloons in front of our eyes.  Note the homemade catering cart - a Heath Robinson affair of plumbers pipe and bicycle wheels.  Food courtesy of "Hot Mess Hall"  

A beautiful house, with dramatic charcoal grey shingle front, in bucolic Wychwood Estates, a privately gated enclave in the heart of midtown Toronto.

Arts and Crafts style house 

Wychwood Estate is like a little private English village in the midst of Toronto's urban sprawl.

Love the exterior of this house...inspiration for my current renovation project at home.

My dahlias were flattened in the storm this weekend, but these on a Davenport Road garden were absolutely amazing.

The Ossington and Dundas area used to be Toronto's Little Portugal, but it now has more of an urban hipster feel.  This colour scheme would look charming and exotic in Havana or San Juan, but on a cloudy Toronto day, on a Victorian house, it seems a little out of place.

Comfort Food: Toad in the Hole aka Clafoutis aux Saucisses

Other than some overnight frosts, we've barely had a cold day so far this December.  Last Thursday, we had a high of 12 degrees, and other than a bitterly cold and windy day on Saturday, we are back up in the high single digits today.  This is, of course, not what my garden needs.  The japonica quince I planted a couple of years ago is quite confused and has been sending out pretty coral coloured flowers with abundance, only to have them nipped at by overnight frosts.  I hope there are some buds left for the spring!

None-the-less, it's perfect Christmas shopping weather, and I've taken the day off work to finish off that task.  Despite the rather unseasonably mild weather, for some reason, this weekend has served an abundance of hearty comfort food and toasty log fires.  There's been a gingery sweet potato soup with chunks of crusty bread, pork chops baked with sauerkraut, onions and bacon, and mounds of fluffy mashed potatoes.  Sticky pear and ginger parkin with custard, and the charmingly named British standard, Toad in the Hole.  I made a decidedly delicious version, with upmarket pretensions, following a Nigel Slater recipe, where the sausages are stripped of their skins, and re-wrapped in proscuitto.  I think it could be renamed quite fairly as Clafoutis aux Saucisses, but I might be getting carried away.  Nigel calls for strongly flavoured, herby sausages, which makes me think of lovely Cumberland sausages, but in Mimico at 5pm on a Friday, the best I could come up with were some mild Italian Sausages, so I boosted the flavour by chopping up fresh sage and rosemary, and rolling the naked sausages generously in that mix before applying the prosuitto.  The result, although not exactly calorie light, was quite delicious.  Accompanied by some onion gravy, made rich with Marsala, it was just the thing to stick to the ribs and keep out any draughts......even if we've been spared the big chill so far!

Toad in the Hole, also known as Clafoutis aux Saucisses, or Virtue in Danger