I’ve got excuses! Lots of them.

* I’ve been busy with my work blog – Everything Eggs.

* I had to develop recipes to teach a couple of Afternoon Tea classes – one at Thyme to Cook in Guelph and the other at Household China and Gifts in Waterloo.

Triangle- shaped herb-crusted egg salad sandwiches pair perfectly with a cup of tea!

* I’ve been doing some recipe development and food writing for Roomplanners‘ e-zine.

* We’ve been doing some spring cleaning, home renovation and backyard landscaping.

We cleaned out the garage. Yes, we kept the sleepy looking dog!

We sold a few things on Kijiji.

Did some much-needed landscaping. Well, we hired someone to do it who actually knew what they were doing! Here's the start. Bye bye old back yard as we knew ya!

* Cocoa got some new pet steps to get up onto our bed, and he had to be taught how to use them! LOL!

Note the treats on the steps! This was the only way to get him to go up the steps. I'd love to be rewarded with food every time I do something right! I'm sure I'd be eating non-stop. Ha ha!

Going down was less of a problem.

* I’ve been doing some traveling – for work and for pleasure:

• Spent a few days in Ottawa (all work except for a fun wine and food pairing event one evening!).
• Took the train to New York to take a Meringue class at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan and to visit Loreen on Long Island.

Made angel food cakes (plain, green tea, and citrus), among other egg white-based recipes in the Meringue class.

Enjoyed afternoon tea at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan (near Central Park) with Loreen.

Sipped Sangria with Loreen at her lovely home on Long Island, closely watched by Jerry the cat (and his brother Ben).

• Spent an extended weekend in Las Vegas.

View from my hotel room (the Hilton) in Vegas......

More view......

And still more of the view from the hotel room!

• Spent a few days in Niagara-on-the-Lake, one of my favourite places in Ontario. Stayed at the Prince of Wales Hotel where we also enjoyed afternoon tea and a couples’ massage. Saw two plays at the Shaw Festival, did a little shopping – bought a small Edward Spera print of an adorable baby chimp (click on the link, then scroll down to see Gombe Girl – I bought a print, not the original!!). Walked around the historic part of town and enjoyed the beautiful flowers. On the way home, stopped in Port Dalhousie for lunch and a stroll down to the beach.

Prince of Wales Hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake

Can you see Toronto - and the CN Tower? Looking at it across Lake Ontario from Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Just some of the flowers in Niagara-on-the-Lake !

Ducks sunning themselves on a dock in Port Dalhousie.

Enjoyed a Cobb Salad for lunch on the patio of a bar near the beach in Port Dalhousie.

But the main reason for not posting for so long will be revealed in my next post!

But what if, while you were picking peppers and bagging broccoli at your local grocery store, Michael Bublé tunes were being piped over the sound system?  If you’re a Bublé fan like me, that would definitely help make the shopping excursion more pleasant.

Then, what if you saw the velvet-voiced Canadian crooner actually singing in the grocery store, say in Aisle 8, sitting above the shelves of pickles? Well, that would be quite lovely, but possibly a bit weird, although I have to admit I’d much prefer hearing him belting out tunes while I’m filling my cart with milk and eggs rather than the ‘good things grow in Ontario‘ guy (even though I’m a huge fan of Foodland Ontario and always try to buy locally-produced, seasonal foods!).

Since it’s highly unlikely Bublé is coming to a store near me or you anytime soon, his new video  – Haven’t Met You Yet from his latest album Crazy Love – will have to suffice. It will also help explain what you just read!

Enjoy!

There were a few food and drink-related achievements among the winners:

* The winners in the Veterinary Medicine category were Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University (UK). Their research showed that cows who have names give more milk than cows that don’t have names!

* The Peace Prize went to Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern (Switzerland) for determining whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle. (The answer? Empties are sturdier than full bottles, you really don’t want to be hit on the head with either because both can fracture your skull!)

* Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México won the Chemistry Prize for creating diamonds from liquid. Tequila, to be specific!

* The Biology Prize was awarded to Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences (Japan) for demonstrating that bacteria extracted from panda feces can reduce the amount of kitchen garbage by more than 90%.

As for non-food related research, these were my favourites:

* The Physics Prize went to Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati (USA) Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University (USA) and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas (USA) for figuring out why pregnant women don’t tip over.

* Public Health Prize: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago (USA) for inventing a bra that can be converted into a pair of gas masks in an emergency! One for the original bra wearer, the other for someone in need.

For more information on these and the other winners, visit the Ig Prizes’ website.

Now really. Who wouldn’t be hungry looking at colour chips like these?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go make dinner……