I will reveal our latest adventure now! Drumroll please: We spent the month of November in Arizona. We have dear friends who live there during the winter and when we were visiting during February, we tossed around the idea to buy a second house there. But before we make the plunge, we wanted to be certain we liked it so we rented an awesome house in the same community that our friends live.
Now who were we kidding? It was -5° C (23° F) (but it felt like -10° C (14° F)) in Toronto while we were enjoying 28° C (82° F) with sunshine. Every. Single. Day. What’s not to like? The community is tagged as resort-style living with a gorgeous golf course and 4 swimming pools, a spa, workout facilities and a couple of restaurants. Yep, I could get used to it!
The community is located in Queen’s Creek. Queen’s Creek is situated in the San Tan Valley, south-east of Phoenix, Arizona. As another friend said, “it’s not quite the end of the world, but you can see the end of the world from there!”
It is also a mere 4.5-hour drive to the Grand Canyon and that is where we did our EPIC hike! We hiked 7.5 hours to Indian Grove and back. Going down was relatively easy, we bought good hiking boots and sticks, but going up was significantly more challenging because of the altitude and lack of oxygen. We stopped and rested a lot. Listening to your body is essential as is allowing your muscles to recover as you’re ascending. It took us 3 hours to hike down and 3.5 hours to hike back up (which isn’t bad for a couple of old folks!), the rest of the time we spent at Indian Grove eating a delicious lunch I packed. The worst part was the day and day two later, my calves ached like a demon. But it was worth it! I’ve put together s little slide show of our hike at the end of this post, if you are interested. And by the way, my stupid FitBit died sometime during our hike so I don’t even know how many steps we did, but if the last time we hiked only 1.5 hours down and back was any indication, we did 22,000 steps! This is my third FitBit Zip and when I called them that it was eating the batteries like crazy (one every 2-3 weeks) they said it was a known issue and they are working on fixing it but would do NOTHING ELSE. So I am done with FitBit, they let me down in one of the most epic hikes of my life and had nothing but “oh, sorry” to say about it. I am going to get a Garmin which I hear are much more reliable.
This cookie has nothing to do with the hike or our trip, it’s a cookie I made for Canadian Thanksgiving at my sweet cousin Lucy’s place. My dear blogging friend Liz (of That Skinny Chick Can Bake, blog) was the inspiration, I saw the recipe on her site a while back. These cookies were all the rave in the 90’s on restaurant menus but I haven’t seen one in ages. Liz’s recipe will change that for sure.
Skillet Chocolate Chunk Cookie
Makes 1 12″ Cookie
Please click here for the original recipe.
Click here to print this recipe.
Ingredients:
- 195 g butter
- 100 g granulated sugar
- 150 g brown sugar
- 15 mL vanilla
- 1 egg
- 1 egg white
- 350 g AP Flour
- 3 g baking powder
- 5 g salt
- 100 g chocolate chips (I used Belgian milk and semi-sweet chocolate)
Directions:
- Pre-heat the oven to 375° F (I used the convection setting). Prepare a 30 cm cast iron skillet with non-stick cooking spray.
- Melt the butter and sugars in a heatproof bowl in the microwave, stir until sugars have melted. Cool slightly and then stir in the vanilla. Combine the egg and whites and whisk. Whisk into the butter-sugar mixture.
- Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt, add it to the butter-sugar mixture and mix until well combined.
- Fold in 3/4 the chocolate, reserving about 1/4 to dot the top of the cookie for garnish.
- Bake for 25-35 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
- Cool to room temperature. Serve slicing fractions of the circle.
Notes:
- I like to buy Belgian chocolate disks (not molding chocolate) and melt them, spread them on a cookie sheet and chill until set. Then I break up the sheets by hand, making different sized pieces with a variety of thicknesses.
It’s a cross between cookie and blondie that is quite difficult to resist.
Click on the first photo to see the slideshow.
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- JT sitting on the patio stoop of our room.
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- View from our back door.
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- On our way to dinner, we bumped into these guys.
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- This one was quite friendly.
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- Canyon View.
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- Morning view across the Canyon.
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- These are the donkeys they use to traverse the hiking path. They are amazingly sure-footed.
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- Canyon Squirrel
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- Cabin at Indian Grove, the base camp that you can hike to and back in one day. To go further, you have to stay overnight.
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- This dear and her calf joined us for lunch in Indian Grove.
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- The Dear at Indian Grove.
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- Morning views.
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- The Bright Angel Canyon path.
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- Looking up from the Canyon.
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- Looking up from the Canyon.
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- Looking up from the Canyon.
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- On our way up.
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- This is me right after the hike. I may have been a wee bit tired.
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- Morning view of the Canyon.
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- We bumped into this guy on our way out. He is an elk.
Kitcheninspirations 