A Cozy Christmas Honeymoon: The Food

One of the reasons we chose Hovey Manor for our honeymoon was because of the incredible food. They are very well known for their local and regional gourmet cuisine and we were so excited, since we've pretty much never eaten a meal that could accurately be termed gourmet. We like our meals out to cost less than $15 each please.

Each day began with their "full country breakfast". This included a buffet of things like amazing Quebecois cheese, croissants, homemade granola, freshly squeezed juice, smoothies, muffins...etc.

Me enjoying a mini smoothie:



In addition, we also got to choose something from the menu which included options like omelettes with brie and smoked salmon, oatmeal, bacon and eggs, pancakes...etc.

Here's Mr. Knitting trying to decide:



Here's my first breakfast choice. French toast with butterscotch sauce. Amazing:



Mr. K was especially partial to the omlettes:



Lunches were not included so we would go have lunch in one of the small villages nearby. Here's a look at our favourite lunch.

Poutine (we were in Quebec after all!):



I also spent some time searching out some amazing food souvenirs like local honey (I just ran out of it and am very sad even though we do have lots of delicious Ontario honey available) and maple butter, which I think is one of the best foods of all time. I'm sort of kicking myself that I didn't buy a case of it!

Our dinners were definitely a major highlight. Mr. Knitting and I were a bit worried about how we'd do with long, multicourse dinners since in our normal lives we never linger over dinner. At our favourite restaurant, Tokyo Sushi (at Bay and St. Joseph Toronto ladies), we're usually in and out in about 45 minutes tops. However, I am happy to report that the dinners were amazing and we had no problem enjoying 2 and a half hour dinners every night. Who knew?

They won me over right away with the salt. I'm (sadly) a salt addict so to be provided with 3 different types of delicious salt made me really happy right away.



Here's a few of our favourite things we ate. While they all had fancy long names that indicate pretty much every ingredient in the dish we'll be using simplified versions of the names made up by me!

Appetizers

Scallops and artichoke puree:



This was probably Mr. Knitting's favourite dish from our honeymoon. He is now obsessed with scallops.

Salmon Gravlax with beets:



Main Course

Sable fish and risotto:



This was my favourite dish. That fish was just completely moist and flavourful.

Christmas lobster:



Dessert

White chocolate mouse dessert amuse bouche:



Wouldn't these be so cute at a wedding?

Chesnut macaron amuse bouche:



Rocky Road dessert, complete with a macaron and homemade marshmallows:



My favourite dessert:



This was basically chocolate cake with peanuts, homemade vanilla ice cream, and that little jug is full of fleur de sel caramel sauce. I wish I had ordered it every night.

I also ordered the cheese tray one night and it was fantastic. The cheese guy (no, that's not his official title!) comes by your table and helps you select 3 cheeses. Here's what I ended up with:



The goat cheese on the far right was my favourite and it actually won Best Cheese in the World 2009.

So, as you can see, we definitely ate very well on our honeymoon. Mr. Knitting was especially happy because he got to ate great food 9like at home!), but he didn't have to do a single dish after (I might be not so good at household duties like cleaning!).

Up next: what we did when we weren't eating.