Cat and Historic Towers Hotel

Not my usual post but I heard about the fire that destroyed the Towers Hotel in Dauphin on Thursday morning.

This hotel built more than 100 years ago was once one of the finest hotels in Dauphin. I believe that it was once called the Hamilton Hotel (Winnipeg Free Press). It will hold a lot of memories for many people.

Want to know what my memories are?

When growing up, many of us went with our parents to the Towers for that “first legal” drink in a pub. Yes, that’s right. When we turned 18, our parents, if they drank, would go into the Towers Hotel with us. Drinking age is 18 in Manitoba. Of course, we were immediately asked for ID. We then proudly, and yes, even smugly, pulled out our Driver’s license and showed it to the bartender. It was almost like an unwritten rite of passage.

It’s a strange memory but one that I think a lot of you may relate to when you go back and escape into your growing up years.

Oh and speaking of escape, check out this video of the hotel as it was collapsing. See the cat? Glad to say he survived and is doing well at an Animal Shelter.

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For the love of tomatoes!

Summer has come and we are quickly sliding into the next season. It’s been great feeling the hot rays of sunshine during the daytime. Even more pleasant has been the evenings where we could sit outside and enjoy the pleasant warm night-time temperatures. Yes, warm temperatures and just enough rain to keep everyone happy.

It’s been a good season for the garden too. Take a look at our tomatoes grown in our backyard.

This wonderful crop is a first for us. We are often troubled with blight on the tomato plants especially if we have plenty of the liquid sunshine. But not this year.

Tomato sandwiches have always been a favourite of mine. Thinking back to when I was young, I recall 5 gallon pails of tomatoes coming from my parents’ garden at least once a week for the whole month of August.  As kids, it was our job to blanch them, peel them, chop them and even help cook them in the pressure cooker. With mom’s help, we made preserves and stored them in the root cellar and enjoyed them during the cold winter season.

So needless to say, we are pretty happy that we finally grew our own tomatoes in our yard.

But here’s a funny thing that happened just yesterday regarding tomatoes.

A friend of mine phoned up around 7pm last night and asked if I would like some tomatoes.  Well, we love tomatoes so of course I said yes.  When we got to his place, he gave us a 5 gallon pail of his heritage tomatoes!

  Oh, no!  It’s back in time for me……the blanching, the peeling, the chopping.  Oh but how we love tomatoes!

Check out my pages on Cooking with Tomatoes!

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