Keeping Busy with Mom

Today Mom and I finally took some time to play tourist.  I wanted to take her back to Mahone Bay and Lunenburg because they are both just sooooo East Coast (well, to us outsiders anyway!).  I will admit that maybe I’ve been there too many times in the last two years now though, because once we were there I really just felt like I’d seen everything already.  Maybe I’m just a crabby-crabberton today though.

I worked the morning so promised myself only healthy eats, just in case we found something unhealthy yet necessary while on the road.  :)

The peaches are finally ripe so I had one of those (bought last week…had to ripen them up in a paper bag for a few days).  With coffee.

Then a farmers market Sunrise apple with an ounce of organic old white cheddar.

On the way out the door I made a portable snack of some leftover tuna Mom made yesterday rolled up with farmers market spinach (LOVE how much longer the market veggies last than grocery store veggies!!) in a small ancient grains tortilla.

On the road we decided to try out The Java Factory in Upper Tantallon.  I’ve heard great things about them so thought we should give them a go.  The shop carries a wide variety of lovely snacks (many gluten-free)…we chose to get an oat bar to share with our two non-fat vanilla lattes. 

Verdict: 

Lattes – thumbs up!  (great coffee to milk ratio!!)

Oat bar – one thumb up (a bit dry)

Overall – two big thumbs up! (super friendly, nice atmosphere, good location, great menu)

We took a different route to Lunenburg this time…the main highway.  I’ve never gone that way and I hate not knowing where I’m going when I’m driving.  If someone else is driving and there’s no rush, I am happy to just toodle along…but today I was just plain annoyed a couple of times because I wasn’t sure how long the route we were on would take. 

Funny the stuff you learn about yourself that you didn’t know sometimes!!

Once finally in Lunenburg (it really wasn’t all that long…but like I said I’m a crabby-crabberton) we decided to get lunch first.  Last year we discovered a yummy pub, The Grand Banker, so we went there again.  (I learned how tasty haddock was at that pub!)

This time I opted to try their awesome sounding spinach salad and a cup of soup.  The soup was corn and bacon chowder, which I expected to be a creamy chowder…but it was more of a broth and kind of meh.  Crackers helped.  :)

The salad was as good as it sounded though!  I ate every last bite of spinach, apple, craisins, almonds and blue cheeeeese!  with tangerine-lime vinegrette…which I did the fork dipping method with…it was great!  Deeeeelish even.  :)

After that we finally got to see the Bluenose II.  We planned to see it last year but the weather went sour and we never got to it.  Today was lovely for picture taking!! 

We didn’t go on, but it sure looked nice and shiny.  I liked the flags.  I have a thing about trying to take pictures of flags.  I blame an ex-boyfriend for telling me how hard it is to get a good photo of a flapping flag, so now I’m determined.

Then a little shop wandering.  We found this cute gift emporium with ecclectic local arts and trinkets.  Too pricey for us, but still fun to look and enjoy.

 

And they had a great garden area out back!

Then to Mahone!  I almost drove right through because they usually roll up their sidewalks by 5:00, but Mom saw a few open signs so we managed to get into a couple of little shops.  Mainly I enjoyed looking at the Bay and watching Mom take pictures of ducks. 

 

Once home we just puttered around, went and got a movie, looked for a book for Mom, then settled in for the evening.  Because of our late lunch/early supper (lupper?) we opted to just make soup and crackers for dinner.  Good ol’ Campbells.

  

I broke out the Skinny Corn Chips for my evening snack.  Kind of like a healthy cheese puff.  I’m not in love.  But I still managed to chow back a whole lot of them!!!

Tomorrow we are off to Wolfville to wander the main street, see the gardens, and find the good pub with the lobster club!!  nom nom nom.