I Just Want to Celebrate: Lisa's B-day at The Sun Room & The Local-Come-Lately Turns 1!!!

This week, I had a lot to celebrate. My incredible wife Lisa had an unforgettable 35th birthday bash at The Sun Room Restaurant, and... 

The Local-Come-Lately turned 1!!!

I'll get to the Local-Come-Lately blog-iversary in a minute. 

First I have to tell all about the great Dinner-Come-Disco birthday shaker we had at our good friends' Carly and Ryan's wonderful restaurant on Saturday night.

Lisa is an extremely lovable person. Of course, I am somewhat biased in that observation... but I'm clearly not alone in my affection: forty of our best friends from Stratford and beyond came for dinner on Saturday night. 

Amanda and Paul Finkelstein (Paul above, digging into a Caesar Salad appetizer) were in the house.

Lisa and I had the roasted Duck Breast with Cranberry Compote and Blue Potatoes (above). Such a treat: Lisa had personally requested this festive dish for the custom birthday menu they'd put together especially for her (good news: it's available all the time!).

Others had the prime rib (my sister's above, perfectly cooked to medium rare).

A beautiful Asian-style noodle dish was also on the menu (above).

But nothing was more beautiful than Lisa that night (above). Her best friend Matty Ian (who also deserves a big "Happy First Anniversary" for his own  just-turned-one-year-old blog about the Stratford social scene!) made her a colourful - and really delicious! - cake we all shared for dessert!

Once the fabulous meal was over we set up the DJ decks and the night promptly evolved into a booty-shakin' dance party (sorry no pics, too busy having fun)!

Only two days later, it was time to celebrate another milestone: the first anniversary of the Local-Come-Lately's very first post! 

The first blog ever was on April 12, 2010. I wrote about the exchange between Paul Finkelstein's Stratford Northwestern High School culinary arts class and another group of foods students from British Columbia. 

Little did I know back then that I would go on work with Fink and his students to put nine gardens in elementary schools across Stratford, and that I'd eventually travel all the way to Nunavut with him and his class on what had to be the most epic Canadian food blogger adventure of the past year [sorry The Chew I love you but you've got a long way to come].

So here are some highlights and stats from the Local-Come-Lately's year in review:

 

Nearly 10,000 visits!

Over 15,000 pageviews!

Visitors from 98 countries around the world!

812 followers of my Tweet cult!

56 followers on Blogger!

My Top Five most visited posts:

1) Cambridge Bay, Nunavut: Local Food Adventures Above the Arctic Circle [I linked it once above, and doggone-it I'll link it again!]

2) Getting My Hands Dirty at Soiled Reputation

3) The Stratford Guerrilla Gardeners Strike Again! [OK, I admit it - it was me and a few friends!]

4) Choc-in' Up Brownie Points on the Stratford Chocolate Trail [I love the pic of Lisa smooching me at the end!]

5) Arctic Charlie [about an Arctic-sourced 'anti-restaurant' dining experience I helped pull off with Fink and some other lovers of Northern cuisine, which is to be replicated next month at the James Beard House in New York City!]

Since I started my blog a mere 365+ days ago, I've had the best year of my life as a writer and a lover of all-things-food. 

I'm not sure if my blog is good because I've had amazing food adventures, or if I've had amazing food adventures to make sure my blog is good. 

Either way, I know that moving to Stratford a little over a year ago was the best decision I ever made (next to marrying Lisa) and that this is only the very beginning of the story of The Local-Come-Lately's Stratford culinary adventures!