Mama's night out - dishcrawl style

It's Mama's night out and I'm on a dishcrawl. 

What's a dishcrawl you ask? It's like a pub crawl, but rather than have your head swimming from too much booze, your stomach is bloated and delightfully full from all the food you've eaten.

We stumble all the same.

For the next three hours we will visit four restaurants, with three samples at each. The theme: a foodie's paradise. NOM NOM.

The night starts off with a glass of wine at the first restaurant and I'm delighted to see an old co-worker has joined the tour. I catch up on all the gossip from my old radio station - which is indeed juicy with news of former co-workers, and I fall into a relaxed rhythm of chatting with a handful of the other people doing the crawl. It turns out I know a few people and the night turns into a little bit like work as I network and possibly score myself a new freelance client. 

I take out my fancy new phone that takes great photos - then I realize restaurants and pubs are dimly lit and i should have brought the good camera. 

The other mama shows up. She has brought her husband. So much for a mama's night out. But I really like her husband so it's okay. Kiss kiss. More wine please, and bring on the food. 

Arnaud, who manages the Tir N'an Og downtown gives a delightful spiel on the pulled pork hoagie we're about to ingest - it's on a pretzel bun and it's AMAZING. Gluten-free goes out the window for the night. 

Good thing, because after a beef and mushroom pot accompanied by a yummy grapefruit draught (only 2% - it's so light it tastes a bit like juice... if juice had hops) they bring us the temptress that is a deep fried red velvet donut dusted with sugar and drizzled with white chocolate. 

It goes great with the last of my wine. We are rushed out of the pub as we are running late. I will get a smaller glass of wine next time.

I'm pleasantly fuzzy as we trek to the next stop on the tour, which happens to be one of my favorite spots downtown Sir John A's Public House. Here I get giddy with excitement for Scottish fare - yes haggis with gravy is included and it's all melt-in-your-mouth-joy-on-the-palette. (piccalilli relish ftw!)



Paul, the owner, regales us with tales of the food we're about to eat and how it's prepared. 

This evening is delicious and educational - who knew!?

We are whisked off to the next location, Chez Piggy. It's beautiful but I love the pub and wish we could have stayed there longer. 



My attitude quickly changes as the chef chats about the local and sustainable food choices they are serving. Organic Enright Cattle - deepfried oysters - and the most exquisite cheese I have ever tasted, sourced from Woodstock ON -- "We sell it next door in our bakery," Chef Ian says - which causes me to dance on the inside knowing I'll be back tomorrow for more. 




My editor from one of the papers I write for shows up and we decide to slowly finish our glasses of wine. We get so caught up with work talk that we miss the group going to the next and final stop for dessert. I know it's amazing carrot cake from SIPPS but rather than rush for it, we realize they'll be half way through by now, and I trust my pregnant mama friend to eat my portion so we finish our night on a work note. 

Being able to taste all these samplings from a restaurant's menu and do so from FOUR different spots was an incredible experience. I'm happy dishcrawl has come to Kingston and honestly, can't wait to go on the next one Wednesday, October 23. This next one I'm sure will see a group of mamas trekking through the downtown core tasting from place to place. It's too good a deal not to. Christine, the organizer (that's her below) tells me she's aiming for a haunted theme. Awesome.

***update: So it turns out Christine likes the blog and has offered a free ticket to the next event to give a deserving mama the chance to join us!

Enter by telling us in the comments below why you need a mama's (or papa's) night out and you could win a free ticket to the next dishcrawl! (value: $60)

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clowns, rides, sugar and a petting zoo - what could possibly be wrong with this equation?

Okay, so she didn't get any sugar. I know, I know - I'm a shitty mom. Take your kid to the fall fair and don't let them get cotton candy or a candy apple. We will all be thankful at bedtime tonight and my natural mama instincts will be glad that I didn't allow my child to ingest a pound of refined sugar. 

But still, what an asshole. 

I did, however; completely guilt trip my partner into taking us so the afternoon was about rides - primarily so he could get me to shut my trap about not having been on one since way before mamadom 3 years ago - it was also about demolition derby (no, I'm not joking actually) and attempting to get our child excited about goats and chickens, donkeys and llamas. The llamas she dug. The rest she didn't really have any use for. 

Until she saw the horses of the merry-go-round. I never got why they called it the "merry"-go-round. I mean, yeah I'm not so dense that I miss the "go-round" part, but I never found the ride exceptionally happy. Now I get it. The look on a two year old's face when, after picking out her favorite color of horse (oooge), going round and round and up and down, registers that she is indeed holding on to a horse and going round and round and up and down. 

  Also, when she spots her papa filming from the crowd and yells out a "HI PAPA" so loud I'm convinced he can hear it over the insane clowns-a-dancing-carnival music. He cannot. 

The slide was the other ride she got to experience. I have a photo of me and my grandfather on one of these from when I was 3. Who was I to deny the kid the slide.
She didn't love it. It was just... well, it was. Not as much excitement as I had hoped for. Expectations right? 

Interspersed with all of this I got to go on a ride with my friend Liz - who seems to be the only person in my life who isn't lame and will go on rides with me - and even the reluctant grump went on a ride.... 

and LOVED IT. 

The fair is so much more fun when you go on rides. Even when you don't get the sugar. 

Tribe. Fire. Sisters.

Women for centuries have been raising babies together. Gathering food and water. Forming a community within themselves where secrets are shared, tears are shed and honesty is prevalent.

My sisters are plenty and each of them I cherish. While I have an equally wonderful tribe of mamas and friends in the city in which I live, I am also very blessed to be part of a tribe of intelligent, fiercely beautiful women. These are women I have known for well over a decade, who met me as a coming-in-to-my-own-but-I'm-still-lost-twenty-something, and who have grown with me into adulthood. Each of them have had their own majestic and heart-wrenching experiences along the way. Through it, we know each other. No walls. No bullshit. Just raw beings; wild women who see one another in truth.

Because of my life's path and because I live much further away, I sadly only see these delicious creatures once or twice a year. It used to be more - as the summer festivals rolled around, we would congregate in forests, and clearings, farm houses and campsites to reconnect, to share and learn from one another; to run Amok and partake in shenanigans - often around a gargantuan bonfire, the sounds of drums and giggles our soundtrack.

This year there were giggles. There were drums. There was fire. We were and are tribe. But it's different now. Rather than see the sun come up because we are stumbling back to our tents from hours of dancing and running amok for hours, we see the sun come up because we are waking with our toddlers. We are taking arnica or advil for our aches from sleeping on the ground instead of the fact that we had too much mead or because our hands hurt from beating a drum all night. But, instead of mourning the festivals past, I have come to grow content in the gentle shifts. (There may or may not have been a bit of pouting and nostalgia along the way.) 

It was being faced with a choice that caused me to realize I had reached that point, that I had indeed shifted... Upon coming out of the privy a few nights back (yes, there are privies in the woods if you know the right people) I had a choice. I could turn left and follow the sounds of the drums, knowing it would take me to fire, dancing, frolicking and letting the wild woman in me run, if only for a couple hours. 

Or, I could turn right and follow the sounds of my child crying and my partner attempting to soothe her back to sleep. I wasn't aware that I had a choice, let alone that I was making it until I was at my tent unzipping the door to fold my girl into my arms and give my love a sweet, gentle kiss goodnight, telling him he was a beautiful father.

As I lay there the next morning I realized that it wasn't so much a sacrifice as it was a shift to not run with the wolves that night. That shift wouldn't, couldn't, have happened without the support of my sisters. We will run again, and often... and thanks to that, our pups might just run along with us.