June and I like to go to  the Willow Bakery Niagara on the Lake to enjoy a coffee with our friend Pauline as it has a wonderful atmosphere and the owner Cathy O'Donnell is one of Canada's top pastry chefs, she was a great help to us when we were adapting British pie recipes to Canadian ingredients. One day a  couple of weeks ago we bumped into John Higgins the Scotsman who heads up the George Brown Culinary Program, John led Canada's team to gold medal wins in international competitions. I told Higgins about my dilemma over which cooking oil to use in the new restaurant, should we go with the traditional beef dripping for flavor or a hydrogenated vegetable oil for convenience or a premium non hydrogenated non trans fat oil. It turns out this Icon of the culinary world loves fish and chips, his immediate answer was to use premium n.t.s non hydrogenated oil. A week later Cathy O'Donnell gave me a message from John, he had asked several of his friends (who I imagined to be other top chefs) and they all agreed with our initial choice of the premium n.t.s.non hydrogenated veg.oil...So be it. My daughter Sarra came from Vancouver to help June and Dave with color choices I was excluded as I once painted a wall dark brown thinking it would make it look like wood.

We now have all the permits in place thanks to Joan, Magda, Dave and Phyllis of the building department.

June and Pauline at the Willow Bakery

Cathy O'Donnell Likes to talk almost as much as Bake

A picture of John Higgins waiting for a Fish Supper

A view towards the front door

towards the kitchen

June and Sarra in their Designer mode

Dave June and Sarra pretending they know more about colors than I do

Just paint it brown girls

June came back with the cheque book

Anyone for a home made buttermilk biscuit.

Cheers Frank and June