southern hemisphere so i've been enjoying these  beautiful colors that we are surrounded by they  

just peaked like a week ago and yeah it's just  really nice really beautiful and super peaceful  

here in the countryside and autumn here in the  sierras means that we have really cool mornings  

then really hot afternoons and it cools down once  again in the evenings because of the altitude  

so i thought it would be really nice to just show  you what an autumn day in the sierras is like  

i've planned a nice little menu we're gonna  prepare a hearty autumn stew and just enjoy  

nature enjoy the colors and we'll see what the  day brings but you're invited to come along

so

okay so this is the part of the video where i  tell you i'm not really an amazing cook but i  

figured i would share my recipe in case you want  to try recreating this so basically this is a  

sweet potato potato and carrot stew because  that's what i was able to find at the market  

so i started off by chopping some onions some  leftover salami that we had in the fridge  

put a little bit of extra virgin olive  oil fried that up caramelized the onions  

then i added in all my vegetables potato sweet  potato carrots i put in some tomato paste  

and then i took those canor cubes you know  how you can get them with like beef chicken  

vegetable flavor i took a veggie and  tomato one diluted that in warm water  

added that in because we needed more more  liquid more volume and i've just tried it  

now it needs a little bit of salt and i'm  also going to be adding a spoonful of sugar  

because i find the sugar kind of cuts that i don't  know acidity the tomato sauce can have so that is  

the plan so far i'm gonna let this cook for about  half an hour or until my vegetables are soft and  

then we will serve up this wonderful autumn stew  and i also found a rosemary bush here in the yard  

of the house we're renting you can see it right  there so i just grabbed like three little shoots  

i guess you could say and i'm just going to add  them in a hole to add a bit of flavor to our stew  

all right it is lunch time hi cheers cheers  thank you for this wonderful stew this is  

100 your creation effort i've been i've  been writing a blog post all day so  

i haven't done anything to help well sam does the  dishes so i do the cooking he does the cleanup  

i appreciate the warm plate of food in front of  me yeah and it's just a quiet sunday the sun came  

out so we've got blue skies oh there goes kitty  running on crosstalk oh meowsies that's actually  

where mr or the fox hangs out yeah wonder if they  intersect here at some interact interact intersect  

it's a very skittish cat i have to say oh yeah  it's more skittish than the fox believe it or  

not yes yes the fox is willing to get a little  bit closer um and the funny thing about the fox  

and i've noticed this about the other foxes on  the property is that they will run away from you  

but you have to get close and they only go a  little bit they kind of only run away a little  

bit and then they're at their comfort level away  from you and they're not afraid but for instance  

this cat just like just bolts and takes right off  well i'm curious for you to try the the stew and  

tell me what you think you don't need to exactly  serious that's really good yeah that's great  

it's funny like whenever we have a cloudy overcast  day like low-hanging clouds i would say it's  

really really cold and it feels like the middle  of autumn but today the sun came out and it feels  

like a summer's day so i've got this hearty dish  for us and meanwhile that's not even that cold out  

yeah the funny thing is you  have to prepare for both right  

being up in the high altitude too means that  the the you do get that extreme of temperatures  

we've got the t got the t  now let's go find the shade  

or in your case the sun take the shade  thank you which way shall we go today um  

we've got a lot of options why don't we go  down to the big tree let's go to the tree

it's funny it's maybe the one of the funnier ones

tea please ty would you like your toy i'd love it  here you choose here you go enjoy your time thanks  

that's the worst accent of no particular country  of all time sorry guys i just uh just had a shower  

my hair is drying in real time yeah but um your  hair is getting long yeah it's a busy day for  

me i i banged out a 2 000 word blog post and um  just took a shower so i'm letting my brain kind  

of relax you know when you're writing when you're  writing all day it sort of uh sort of takes up  

a lot of your mental space so i'm really really  excited just to chill right now i love that mate  

cheers to relaxing cheers to the perpetual sounds  of nature we hear out here yes cheers to all the  

sunlight we've been getting too so this is a nice  little routine we have going on we tried to go  

out in the afternoons and either like have a cup  of tea outside or enjoy a little 15-minute snooze  

or just like lay down on the grass or go for like  a sunset walk oh yeah we've been doing lots of  

those yeah both we might do all three today we'll  go hiking today for sure that's part of the plan  

we still have we still have some sunlight hours  yeah it just turned out to be such a nice day like  

today honestly feels like summer this is not what  i was expecting it was not the plan it doesn't  

feel very automated temperature-wise we we kind of  we kind of uh catapulted ourselves away from the  

you know the end of a canadian winter too so  even though it's not like mid-20s or anything  

just feels very relatively warm at the moment  so yeah it's just wonderful what do you think

no better place to take a nap i'm  seeing all kinds of birds there's  

little green green parrots that are coming  back yeah another one i couldn't identify  

they're very vocal you can hear them right now up  there somewhere in that tree is that better than  

netflix it's like this is like actually i should  say this is like our own little personals not geo  

and we have appears to be condors soaring above us  oh my gosh well the gopro can't capture it they're  

like little black dots but for now the parrots  keep us company they're our best friend no the  

foxes are best fox is the best one yeah it's  ahead of the cat i like cats more but that cat  

just doesn't get close enough so the fox is the  best friend so basically our plan is to walk down  

a new street every day wait a minute i love it  yeah this is a the funny thing is probably the  

the most convenient or easy route from our place  and this is actually the first time we've tried  

going down here literally no idea what we're gonna  find just a dirt road let's see where it leads

this is a very cool plant  here look at those feathers

there you go with the pigeons they  are frightened away by our presence

so the two animals that are always in the back of  my mind whenever i'm kind of walking down a very  

rural lonely dirt road are the wild boars and the  pumas now the pumas don't tend to wander into town  

but they are in the area they do live in this part  of the province but they're more they dwell more  

in the mountains i would say yes so be quite a  rare sighting to see one the thing is about the  

puma i grew up in a i grew up in a part of canada  where they had the pumas we call them cougars  

is that they're they're so stealth that  the chances of you actually seeing them  

are they'll they'll see you before you'll see  them most of the time they're usually camouflaging  

or open trees or you know they're they're  extremely strategic in the way they approach  

well i guess potential prey really yeah so i have  a funny story actually yeah on one of the earlier  

trips not the first trip where i brought you here  maybe the second one when my parents also came  

but like you my mom and i had gone walking down  a very lonely back road it was a dirt road and  

people had warned us be careful for the pumas and  then we went pretty far and then we're like oh we  

should turn around and go back so we start walking  back and i hear something that's following us and  

i turn around and i see this furry like beige  creature and i'm like oh no a puma has followed  

us but it took me like a second for my brain to  clue in like no this is a dog this is just a beige  

dog that kind of looks like a color that  reminds me of when we took togo to nova scotia  

on cape breton island and he was we let him loose  because we thought we were the only people in the  

on this walking trail and i think the kind of  kind of went around the corner and some people  

thought he was a bear black bear it's quite  bushy oh this is a nice nice area i've never  

been here before this is actually this looks  like it could lead a fair ways down so yeah  

it's crazy because i grew up in this village  and like i walked up and down the main road and  

visited a few neighbors down some side streets but  there's like some lovely like look at these views  

you're gonna see the sierras in a few moments  interesting brick home over here yeah so yeah  

this is nice it's obviously new development since  you since you were a young one here a young little  

yeah this is so nice i'm excited to explore  new roads and get to know this town and  

what it's become over the past two decades we're  filming uh a little clip for a week in the life  

because we're just hanging out here on the porch  as the wine as the wine goes down we've got sunset  

the wine is going down by the way but sam just  said something that's so true this is better than  

netflix because right in front of us we've got a  fox visiting who needs to be watching television  

when you've got like wildlife wildlife not go to  give it some gourmet cheese so whoever made she  

loved it yeah i mean probably not the best thing  to feed it obviously but it is absolutely lovely  

but it was our first meeting with the fox the  first meeting of welcome yeah and it was just  

sitting around and hanging out on the grass like  yeah if it feels like i think it feels okay around  

here like we're not does it feel threatened it's  just sitting down i think it is used to tourists  

staying in the cottage and most likely feeding  it because he came like a dog and he just lay  

down and he was staring at us here on the porch  and it's like oh you want something buddy it was  

kind of cute yeah and now he's he's he's doing it  now he's just curling up with his steel he's like  

i'm just gonna rest here this is where i live  actually i saw this fox when i woke up this  

morning i think it was the same fox but we've got  these big glass windows and he was just like dude  

we've got some residents we've  got some cats coming through  

we've got some wildlife for sure we've seen

so yes wine chocolate that is how by the way  this is a great flavor first time to try it  

this is yours thank you trees swings three dreams  shall we say it's milk chocolate white chocolate  

and dark chocolate combined three layers of  chocolate it's really nice stuff yeah and the  

fox is still hanging out boxes that's great we're  chilling we're chilling the fox is chilling every  

creature every creature in the property is  chilling including us also i just scooped  

out two little flies from my for my wine but  we're still going here still going strong

you