Toronto for the Weekend

Two weeks ago Mac and I drove up to Toronto to visit Julie (our pre­vi­ous, beloved stu­dio man­ager) and her husband. We packed a lot of great food, wine and laugh­ter into three days.
We’d plot­ted a week­end of culi­nary adven­ture, cook­ing from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking!! From the moment I walked into Julie’s apartment, I was put to work skin­ning tiny cipolini onions and scrap­ing per­fect champignons!! We were about to under­take the famous Boeuf Bourguignon!! Now infa­mous as the dish that Julie Powell incin­er­ated in the movie Julie and Julia! We braised onions and care­fully fried mush­rooms. We care­fully seared the boeuf and tipped a lot of wine into the pot. Following the recipe to the let­ter and keep­ing our­selves in fits of laugh­ter doing very bad impres­sions of Julia Child. Vive la Julia!!
Unlike Julie P or Julia C, while the Boeuf Bourguignoned itself, we shot off to the rooftop ter­race at Panorama Lounge, 51 sto­ries above Toronto, drink­ing wine while the sun set over the Islands, New York state just a hazy smudge across Lake Ontario. Much later we served our Boeuf with tiny pota­toes, peas and plenty of red wine just as sug­gested in the book. Delish!
The fol­low­ing day after a brisk stroll at Cherry Beach, we bought lob­sters from a fab Chinese mar­ket. That night we steamed 6 of them à la Julia Child in wine and herbs. Divine. Who knew steamed lob­sters were so much more suc­cu­lent?
Toronto has a fab­u­lous his­toric cov­ered Food Market, The St Lawrence Market where we ate break­fast in the diner after our walk. Later that day we had an hilar­i­ous trip up the CN Tower bravely walk­ing on the glass floor and rev­el­ing in the 360 degree views of this mod­ern city and the Toronto Islands. A snow cloud rolled past drop­ping white flakes upon the cherry blos­som 1122 feet below us at street level! The city has a European feel in many areas, Bloor-​Yorkville is the upscale shop­ping vil­lage, lots of glam hotels, stores and restau­rants. My fav was the very gor­geous Teatro Verde , a super eclec­tic house and flower bou­tique. Holt Renfrew the designer depart­ment store is famous for its great win­dows. A drive through the very English uni­ver­sity grounds nearby made me a lit­tle home­sick as did the Union Jack cov­ered sofa at Teatro Verde!
After another lake­side stroll along the down­town board­walk the next day, we lunched at the Rosedale Diner in Summerhill, a cute old diner in a rather posh part of town where leafy lanes are stud­ded with lovely old brick and stone houses.
Needless to say, food and wine kept flow­ing until we left on Monday for the long drive home, both ready for a week of water and salad. No but­ter please!!