Thankful Thursday #8

Today I'm thankful for good times, memorable times, laughter-filled times, with good friends.

I talked with a dear friend from Alberta earlier this week on his birthday.  So glad, and thankful, that nowadays phonecalls are so reasonable (in our case, free, as we have magicJack).  When we lived here in the late 80s, it was incredibly expensive to call, so calls had to be timed and infrequent.  Now we have FaceTime, or Skype, both of which shrink the 2000 miles between provinces, or between countries, in the case of some of our American friends--

This past week we also FaceTimed with another dear friend who winters in Florida, but lives in upstate New York.  He was actually in Vermont at the time, so we got to see the campground where he spends the summer weekends in his 5th wheel trailer.  So cool that I can now picture him there.

Last night we had two other couples over for a BBQ.  We'd already been to each of the others' houses, so it was our turn.  And it was a great evening.

I was once again reminded of how very lucky I am to live in such a bountiful county, also known as the Sun Parlour, Essex County.  We enjoyed wine from Pelee Island Winery, from grapes grown on Pelee Island, 17 miles south of our house in the middle (literally) of Lake Erie.  The retail and secondary operation is just 2 km from my house.  Dangerous...

Bread from our bakery, homemade by moi tapenade

 Yep, that's an Alberta Wild Rose spoon in the tapenade, a nod to my home province.

I thought this was really neat - I will now be on the lookout for Lucky Stones!

We enjoyed a couple of terrific salads off pinchofyum.com, and finished off with homemade baked peach and raspberry cheesecake from an old recipe book.

Gotta love leftover cheesecake, yum!

The weather cooperated magnificently, as did Mother Nature with no bugs (I think fishfly season is over, fingers crossed) so we enjoyed everything from appetizers to dessert, on our patio, the labours of Joe's gardening green thumb to enfold us at one end and Lake Erie upon which to gaze at the other.

And just because I've had two suppers of terrific new foods, here's another Pinch Of Yum from tonight's supper (there was virtually no leftover salads from last night, which is, really, a good thing, right?)

Healty Pesto Baked Rigatoni

Good food, good friends, good wine, good times.  That's what really matters.  Tomorrow I'll show you what I've been working on over the past couple of days.  It's not amounting to much, sigh.