As you may have guessed, living in Canada is a whole new ballgame to me. Especially French-Canada. I can read enough French to function, but can’t speak a lick of it except for basic pleasantries and I can’t understand when people speak it to me. Sometimes this makes me feel rather sheltered and in so feeling, I tend to retreat.

But there are only so many times you can sit at your laptop and catch up on episodes of Supernatural, pacing around the house, looking longingly at the cityscape spread out below. There are times when your husband emails you to meet him at a local gastropub—the St. Malo, for the terribly curious—for a beer or two. You initially say no, thinking you’re not up to it, and then you say yes, because while Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles are horribly handsomely distracting, you probably need to get out of the house. And frankly, you’ve never been one to turn down a beer on a patio on a rare warmish day.

We sat outside and had a couple of delicious high-gravity Belgian beers, served to us in these glasses I rather like. The patio of St. Malo is terribly nondescript but the interior of the bar is lovely and I could easily imagine passing drunken afternoons with friends here.

The LSC ordered us a couple of small plates to nosh on whilst we sipped our beverages. I apologize for the starkness of the plate in the background but we devoured that nosh like a pair of starving jackals.

In the foreground is a small clay bowl of frites, served with an odd spicy mayo. The Plate of No Return had a thin slice of hot brie, a mound of sundried tomato pesto, a stack of apples and a small sliced baguette.

It was all very enjoyable and I would not hesitate to order anything on the menu. Something about hot brie and apples really got my engine running.

I felt kind of raggedy yesterday, good only for reading on the couch and watching the wind whip through the trees in the backyard. Thank goodness I decided to make a simple pasta dish for dinner. My brain functions were of the skill that anything more taxing and I might have lost it.

I’d also like to add that living in this region affords us access to many many boulangeries so that means I can indulge in my love of real honest-t0-goodness baked breads.

Anyway, so the dish I prepared last night called for fettuccine but the only kind we had in the pantry was citrus & pepper; I didn’t think that would be a good fit for what I had planned so I opted to used odds’n'ends of small pasta instead. I like doing that with pasta dishes, using up what may be wasted. Honestly, I think the smaller pasta worked much better than the unruly long kind.

Caramelized Onions with Red Peppers and Balsamic Vinegar over Fettuccine

adapted from “Robin to the Rescue”, Robin Miller, The Taunton Press

12 oz. spinach or regular fettuccine

1 tbl. olive oil

1 medium onion, halved and sliced

2 tbl. sugar

1 cup sliced drained roasted red peppers (jar)

2 tbl. balsamic vinegar

1 cup fat-free chicken broth

salt and pepper to taste

Cook pasta according to directions; drain. Meanwhile, heat oil in a large nonstick skillet on medium. Add onions and sugar and cook 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally until onions are gold and caramelized. Stir in red peppers and vinegar and cook 2 minutes. Add broth and pasta; simmer 2 minutes or until heated through. Season with salt and pepper and serve.