Central vacs are still made in Canada

Our central vacuum failed. No loss as far as I was concerned. Big loss according to my wife. We got a new central vac.

Our old unit was a Cana-Vac, which is made in Canada. It lasted 31 years! Our new unit is also made in Canada. It's a Vacuum Canada product. We bought our new unit and had it installed by a local shop specializing in vacuum cleaners. We considered buying our new unit from Costco but decided to accept the extra cost and support a small, local business.

That said, Costco would not have been that bad a decision. Costco likes to support local and/or Canadian companies. Costco sells a line of made in Canada central vacuum systems. I'm sure they use a local installer, as well.

Why did I pay more to buy locally? I believe the presence of strong, local businesses supplying good, needed services enriches a community.

No recipe recipe

Ah, summer. What a wonderful time to live in southwestern Ontario. Cherry tomatoes: grown locally. Asparagus: grown locally. Sweet bell peppers? You guessed it; grown locally. Garlic? Yes, it too came from an Ontario farm. The pasta may not be local but it is Canadian; it came from Montreal.

The Parmesan cheese came from Italy. If it came from anywhere else it wouldn't be Parmesan would it? And the artichokes also came from Italy.

If you think this looks good, it is. And it is simple. This dinner for two starts with 110 g of penne rigate. The packages usually call for a lot more but when cooking for two but I find less is better. I pump up the flavour and cut the calories by using more veggies and the like and less pasta.

Get the pasta going, it'll take about eight to tens minutes to cook al dente. Immediately drop the cherry tomatoes into a frying pan of hot olive oil and cover. If the tomatoes carmalize, all the better.
After a couple of minutes, add the chopped sweet pepper and the quartered mushrooms. Stir and cover.

With about three minutes left until the pasta is done, add the chopped asparagus spears. Keep the tender heads out of the mix. Stir and cover.

Check the pasta. When al dente, save a cup of the starchy, pasta water and then drain the pasta and set aside for a moment. Add a couple of cloves of coarsely chopped garlic and one chopped hot Thai red pepper with the seeds removed. If you want heat, the more seeds you keep, the more heat you deliver.
Stir the mix for a minute or two but no more. Don't blacken the garlic. It goes a little bitter.

Add the cooked penne rigate, add a little of the reserved pasta water, not all, plus add 60 g of soft, goat cheese broken into chunks. And don't forget to add the asparagus heads and the half dozen, canned in water, Italian artichoke hearts. If you like, you can sprinkle a little ground Parmesan into the mix at this time. Adding asparagus heads and asparagus now will ensure they do not overcook.

Stir all until the goat cheese has almost totally disappeared into the sauce. If more liquid is needed, just add more pasta water, a little at a time. Don't add too much. You want sauce and not water. Before the white of the soft goat cheese has completely disappeared, serve! A little bowl of ground Parmesan on the table is nice, as is a container of flaked, hot peppers.

I used:

110 g of penne rigate
dash of olive oil
just more than a dozen cherry tomatoes
1 chopped sweet pepper
5 big, quartered mushrooms
10 asparagus spears
1 big, minced garlic clove
1 hot Thai pepper
60 g soft goat cheese
set 1 cup of starchy pasta water aside (I didn't use it all.)
salt, pepper and hot pepper flakes at the table

The amount of vegetables and the like is not etched in stone. Feel free to add more of something you really like and less or even none of something you don't. Not using too much pasta and pasta water and making sure to serve while the goat cheese is still visible are the two rules I try not to break. Otherwise, the ingredient list is fairly flexible.

Line dancers in the almost empty mall parking lot

Shooting pictures for City Daily Photo can bring a bit happiness to people at this very difficult time.. To that end, I went to the nearby mall tonight and took some pictures of the ladies dancing in the nearly empty mall parking lot. 

Read what my neighbour wrote in an email about the pictures, posted a few days ago, that I took for the City Daily Photo group of her and her friends dancing in the court in front of my home.

These are great photos! Love them.

So happy to see you tonight (at the mall parking lot). Line dancing allows each person to learn what they want with no stress about a partner. I love country music and dancing lifts our spirits, awakens happy moods and is pure escapism. And we all need that! So glad we have worked around the virus.

Thanks so much for your interest. Everyone has been very positive towards your photo taking.

Mary

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Signs of children

Kids leave their mark in a neighbourhood. Even when you don't see them, you see signs that just shout, "Kids!" Chalk coloured paving bricks are one of the more common signs that say, "Children."

The Abby in Sparta, Ontario

This colonial style home in Sparta, Ontario, is known locally as The Abby. It was built in the early 1840s. Originally it served as a home, then a furniture store and later it was a coffin shop. Today, it is a private home again with one area set aside as an art studio. It may be a small town but Sparta boasts quite a number of heritage properties for a place of its size.

Sparta House Tea Room

The little village of Sparta was founded by Quakers more than two centuries ago, in 1813. The Sparta House Tea Room was built about twenty years later and has served the small southwestern Ontario community ever since. It has been a hotel, a general store and even a funeral home. It sounds a little ghoulish, but today the funeral parlour is a tea room.

Sparta House is a great destination when taking kids, or grandkids, out for a Sunday drive. I have found that kids, especially little girls, love tea rooms. The Sparta House has a some outside seating making it an even better destination during these summer days steeped with the threat of COVID-19.

Another picture from Winter Wheat

The large piece of folk art sits beside the county road passing the Winter Wheat property. There is website dedicated to Winter Wheat and it is still up although the site seems closed. Possibly permanently. There is a chain across the entrance and a large No Trespassing sign hangs from its middle.

I believe the wife, Lucy Ogletree, was a painter in the folk art tradition, while her husband, Mike Roberts, was the folk art sculptor. I love the piece shown. The giant bird has wings made from scrap saw blades. Truly imaginative.

I have re-edited this post in order to add the following from a Sparta village website:

The loss of Winter Wheat by fire this winter has been a real blow to Sparta. This very popular attraction was totally destroyed. Mike Roberts, the owner is taking a year off to recuperate and may do something on a smaller scale in the future. Mike has done so much for Sparta. He started the first tourist attractions in Sparta in the 1970’s and continued to the present day. He restored two buildings in the village and then opened Winter Wheat. We are thankful for everything Mike has done for Sparta and wish him all the best.