Area

I finally made it out to visit Prince Edward County for the first time. It was everything I imagined and then some. The fall beach walks, winery & brewery hopping, excellent local food, and stunning country drives all helped to satisfy my travel bug. Read my full post on The County here, to discover my favourite spots, advice for building a great winery-hop, and the perfect two-day itinerary. Most people flock to PEC in the summer, but I’d urge you to consider visiting in the off-season. Not only does it help support the local businesses, but it also gives you all the charm without the crowds.

Activity

Through spending time putting together recommendations on the best things to do this fall and for the Thanksgiving long weekend, I inspired myself to spend a day farm hopping. We drove out to Springridge Farms and picked up fresh apple and pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving dinner. Springridge is a beautiful farm, about 1.5 hours west of Toronto. The family set up quite the operations – they have a bakery with the most delicious treats (we enjoyed a pecan tart and a sugar donut during our visit), a market with fresh produce and other local goods, and pumpkins and apples for sale. They also traditionally run a Harvest Festival in the fall and many other great activities that were sadly put on hold due to the pandemic. Nonetheless, it was still plenty of fun (and tasty!) to visit. Taking in the beautiful scenery on the drive to the farm was worth it alone.

After Springridge, we drove less than five minutes over to Applevale Orchards for apple picking. Until this October, I had never been apple picking before, so hopefully that’s a good reminder that it’s never too late to do something! Applevale was especially appealing to us as you can bring your dog – as long as your pup remains on leash and you pick up after them. They have a huge variety of apples and lots of rows of trees to wander and pick from. We walked away with plenty of apples to share with our extended family. 

To kept the outdoor adventures going, we returned to the same area to walk the Rattlesnake Point trails the following week. The main trail is dog-friendly with minimal incline and there are stunning views at the end. Afterwards, we popped over to my friend’s newly launched cider company – Carlisle Cider Co. to purchase apples and cider to take home (highly recommend, and not just because they’re my friends!).

Learn

We started puppy school for @leonardthedood at Deena Speaks Dogs. Frankly, Deena was intense and somewhat intimidating, but we definitely walked away with some great tips. Leonard recently graduated and we are proud pup parents.

Dining

If you’ve been following the blog since the beginning, you know that one of my Top Five restaurants in Toronto is Sugo. They opened a sister spot next door – a pizza joint called Conzo’s – and of course, I had to check them out. We picked up one of their pies (which is probably the most restraint I’ve ever had when ordering) and enjoyed it at home. While we found them to be a bit expensive, they’re fairly big and worth the dough (one pie was more than the two of us could finish in one sitting). The sauce was excellent (as expected, coming from Sugo!), and the slices were crispy on the bottom with soft centers. I’ll definitely be going back for more (and might even try to coordinate a simultaneous Sugo order so that I can have some rigatoni on the side).

Speaking of pizza, we also tried Maker Pizza’s square pepperoni pie, which I had been eyeing for some time. I enjoyed it but found that I prefer Descendant’s Detroit style pizza better, if I am going deep dish. Maker is still one of my favourite pizza places in the city, but I think I’ll stick with their regular wheels for my next order. I found the square pie a bit heavy and less flavourful than Descendant (It also probably didn’t help that it is meant to serve six, so I was eating pizza for several days straight…).

On an opposite note, I ordered Mary Be Kitchen for breakfast. The MBK Ricotta Toast comes with Broadflour Bread (if you know, you know) and the Smashed Avo Plate is the perfect, fresh & healthy breakfast option. Their dishes are flavourful and bright and will keep you coming back for more; there’s a reason I mentioned Mary Be Kitchen in the July edition of Somewhere Spotlight, and was enticed to return and try breakfast.

Also noteworthy was Maryik, an Armenian restaurant in Leaside. I highly recommend ordering their “Date Night” offering, which includes hummus, banaganoush, rice, salad, 2 chicken skewers, 1 beef skewer and fried potatoes. The chicken and beef were incredibly flavourful.

Finally, I tried enjoyed many great eats in Prince Edward County – find recommendations in this post.

Drink

I had a few favourite drinks in October. Firstly, I picked up hard cider from the newly launched Carlisle Cider Co. They have three variations, each with a different level of dryness that is cleverly indicated on a scale on their cans. I enjoyed the variety and would recommend picking up all three to determine your favourite.

I also enjoyed patio drinks at Maison Selby. They have a full menu of warm cocktails, which was perfect as the weather started to turn. I’m looking forward to safely returning once the lockdown comes to an end (and in the meantime, they have plenty of great items to order!).

My friend made stunning & delicious Fig Bees Knees cocktails (recipe here), and as someone who loves figs, I can’t stop thinking about them.

Also, notably, I enjoyed many wines and beers in Prince Edward County, with the standout being Slake Brewing. Read the post on Prince Edward County here for the other recommendations.

Make-at-Home

Since we had so many goodies from apple picking, I had fun trying new apple recipes. The first was an apple sauce recipe from my good friend. Most recipes that I found online require you to add sugar, but her version is much healthier, with no sugar added. Fresh apples are already so sweet anyway! To make the delicious, healthy apple sauce:

• Peel and dice (exclude the core) 8 apples and add to a pot. Add 1/2 cup of water, 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1 tsp of vanilla.
• Note: We halved the recipe and added extra cinnamon, for the two of us.

For dinner, we made the easiest one-pot chicken and apple dish:

• Slice 1/2 a small onion lengthwise, sautée in a pan with olive oil and a pinch of salt until browned 
• Peel and slice 2 apples
• Slice baby potatoes lengthwise (no need to peel)
• Add onions, potatoes and apples to the bottom of a baking dish. Add olive oil and salt and mix.
• If you have a broiler tray, use that so that you can put the chicken on top of the rack. Otherwise, you can use a baking dish and put the metal rack from an Instant Pot on top of the onions, potatoes and apples and then place the chicken on top of the rack. If you have neither of those, just place the chicken directly on top of the onions, apples and potatoes. Drizzle olive oil over the chicken and sprinkle salt and pepper on top. Add rosemary sprigs on top of the chicken.
• Bake at 400 degrees until the chicken is cooked through.
• Serve the chicken with a side of the potatoes, apples and onions!

Beauty

I tried bamboo cotton rounds for the first time, and they exceeded all of my expectations. I typically use disposable cotton rounds to remove nail polish, but was recently introduced to the reusable, biodegradable cotton rounds from The Green Co. You can use them, throw them in the wash and reuse them (yes – even if you put nail polish remover on them!!). They are 100% biodegradable and can replace many disposable cotton rounds. It’s a really simple switch you can make to help protect the environment.

Not only that, but I actually found them nicer to use than the disposable rounds, as the disposable ones sometimes leave pieces of fluff stuck to my nails. No residual fluff with the reusable rounds!

They also come with the cutest mesh bag for safe keeping!

Brand

In October, I had the pleasure of interviewing Desiree, the founder of Armed Jewelry. Read the post here to learn more about Desiree’s journey from a jewelry making hobby to having a full-blown retail store on Toronto’s popular Dundas St. She also provides refreshing transparency about materials, and the downsides of gold plated pieces – which are so common in the costume jewelry industry today.

As she explains, gold plated jewelry can easily tarnish and therefore plated pieces should be worn with restrictions: “Don’t wear it in the water and avoid wearing it when you are sweaty – and what kind of parameters are those on someone’s life? People are more spontaneous than that!”

Armed Jewelry’s focus is on costume jewelry, and their amazing niche is that their pieces don’t tarnish! Feel free to wear their jewelry wherever life takes you – even if that is to the gym or dancing in the rain.

Read more here.

Clothing & Accessories

I am super digging The Silk Labs lately – a female founded brand based out of Toronto. Jenna launched The Silk Labs in 2019 and it’s quickly taken the world by storm (her brand has been featured in Vogue Italia!). It’s been fun watching her brand grow and I’ve acquired quite the collection of scrunchies. The product quality is amazing – the scrunchies don’t pull my hair or leave it creased and the elastics have retained tension over time. There’s a reason the scrunchies sell out within seconds of a new drop!