Our trip to Lake Placid, NY - Our Hotel

As promised, I'm going to tell you a little bit about our trip to Lake Placid, NY that we took over the long weekend of Labour Day!

We started out on the high: things were packed in advance and we actually left on, if not before, the time tha we were planning. The drive was smooth until we merged onto the Hwy 417 and stopped... for an hour and a half!... because some dummy rear-ended an OPP cruiser pulled over on the shoulder. Anyways, apparently there were no fatalities and after a long-ish detour we were back on course to the Canada-US border.

We eventually got to our hotel, tired and hungry, at around 5 pm. Let me tell you, the hotel was beautiful!!!

We stayed at Crowne Plaza Resort & Golf Club on top of the hill. Yes, it's pricier than other places in town (there are TONS of places at Lake Placid) - 2 nights here would've paid for 3 nights somewhere else - but we thought it was worth it!

Let me share some photos of this place:

The Great Room

Cherry Bomb Jello Shot

Past weekend, we finally had an adult party at our house, which to me means LOTS OF BOOZE, he-he :) Of course, there's your usual selection of beer, wine and hard liquor to mix with various juices... BUT I wanted something fun! Like the good old days when parties had jello shots, remember?! Also a kick-ass punch (stay tuned for that one).

I scoured the Internet in search for a perfect recipe... Finally, I came across 2, which I sort of combined (they had different quantities of ingredients, and only one of them had instructions)... Anyways, here is it!

Cherry Bomb Jello Shot

Russian Meat Pie

Let me start this post by saying that I've never done anything like this from scratch. Come to think of it, I don't remember ever having a truly homemade meat pie before either. Usually it's one of those prepared from frozen meat pies (which we don't often), and those are alright, but I've always found the top crust a bit... tasteless...

Now, I don't know whether this is a truly Russian recipe (it's probably not), but I found and translated this recipe from a Russian-language website. What intrigued me about it was the use of eggs - 6 eggs to be exact! (I know, what???!!!) - also the dough for its crust, which is a basic non-sweet pastry dough. One of the more important outcomes from this was that hubby liked it!!! Oh and did I mention that he does NOT eat eggs?

So, without further ado, here's the Russian Meat Pie recipe.
(as usual, click on the image to enlarge)

Meat pie, complete with delicious moist crust!

Mini stay-cation

Last weekend we were camping at Ivy Lea Campground at a Thousand Islands. What a beautiful place it is (not necessarily the campground itself, but rather the area it is in)! On our second day there we decided to be tourists for a day and go on one of those day cruises (well, 5.5 hours actually) and visit the Boldt Castle as well. What I didn’t realize, of course, is that this castle is located in the state of New York! Thankfully, I thought ahead and brought our Canadian passports as everyone getting off the boat at the island is required to go through passport control.

Let me tell you a little bit about our trip…

Fresh Summer Salad

A few people were over having supper with us the other day and I made a simple salad that I think goes well with on a side of anything. It's packed with fresh veggies and herbs, dressed with simple oil and it just delicious. I was asked how to make it and I didn't even think about because it's SO easy! I swear to you that this is probably the easiest salad you'll ever make.