Eastern Canada - Tastes and Sensations

Even though Montreal won the award for the best food in Canada, the East Coast challenged that with a variety of delicious delicacies. Of course the Lobster dinner was the expected highlight of the trip, but there were so many other amazing dishes that we tried on the coast that are completely underrated!

Cooks are always talking about how amazing fresh food really is, and I've always been of the practical student mind that fresh also costs a little extra. However, when it comes to seafood, fresh is best.

I had an amazing Maritime Chowder in Lunenburg Nova Scotia, the home of the Bluenose Schooner! Back on the prairies, seafood chowders taste very fishy, and you get (what you think) is a really good seafood dish. But out east, the chowder doesn't have an overpowering seafood flavour, it just tastes plain old good. You can of course taste the seafood additions of lobster, scallops and halibut inside of the soup, but they dont try to force it upon you. It will be hard to eat chowder now that im home again!

My girlfriend got herself Fish&Chips, made with an Alexander Keith's  beer batter. The freshness in that fish also just blew our minds. Its odd being used to something, and then finding that the real deal tastes completely different.

We also discovered a brand new food that we had never tried before... Fiddleheads! Now, these are a rather unusual vegetable that im told only appear on the east coast. They have a very short season, and we were lucky enough to be around for it! They are best cooked steamed, and then served with a little butter and some cider vinegar. Im not a giant fan of eating just vegetables, but these were a surprise. They are apparently extremely healthy for you, even more so than the blueberry, the powerhouse of nutrition!

We spoiled ourselves twice while we were on vacation and dined on lobster! The first time we were in Louisburg, Nova Scotia at the Point of View Hotel. We got lucky for finding a room there and managed to work out a good deal with the owner! They went down to the wharf right before dinner and purchased freshly caught lobster, then brought it straight to the kitchen, and then to your plate. This was my girlfriends first experience with these armoured crustaceans. She dug straight into the claws and legs, and before I could warn her, she had torn off the tail. It took her a couple glasses of wine to get over the sight of the tamale. Tamale is the lobsters liver, which becomes a green paste inside, and is considered by some to be the best part of the lobster. It is not our favourite, although I did end up trying it. Just imagine it's like a seafood pate!


The second dish was at the New Glasgow Lobster Dinner in PEI. While it was slightly more expensive and had a smaller lobster, this location had something I had been missing since my last visit out east. MUSSELS!! Sure they aren't the sexiest thing you'll ever eat in your life, but steamed with some garlic and some butter and you have yourself a tasty appetizer! These beauties I like to think of as popcorn, you just keep eating them until they just seem to have vanished out of the bowl.

Robin and I enjoyed them so much, we actually bought some out east to cook them for ourselves. Of course they were much cheaper out there than back home ($4.00 for 2 pounds out east... and the $11 back home! And on sale!) so we took advantage of that.


Steamed Mussels

Mussels - 2 Pounds Fresh
Garlic - 1-2 Cloves diced
Butter - 1 tbsp
Water - Between 1-2 cups
*You can also substitute white wine for the water

Butter - Melted for dipping

Place the mussels in a large pot. Add the butter, garlic and water and cover. Cook for about 5 minutes or until the shells have opened and revealed their goods. When serving, don't eat the ones that are not open or have a different shade than the others.

Serve with hot butter and dig in! It's a great appetizer or a mid-afternoon snack!

Ahh Montreal, Food Capital of Canada

As we traveled across Canada, I always knew that Montreal was going to be different than the rest of Canada. Just the changing to French was confusing enough! I found it so disappointing to be walking down the streets and glancing to see what was on various menus and not being able to decipher the words! It was like a strange new world, but one that has been next door to you the whole time. 

I found it oddly sad that the rest of Canada does not undertake speaking French. New Brunswick is the only province in Canada that is bilingual. Maybe it's just sad to be because I want to be able to read the menu's, but I almost felt as if I was missing out on something great. 

My girlfriend and I decided to keep a list of various 'awards' that provinces could win as we went on our journey. Nova Scotia won the "most roadkill" award, Manitoba had the best gas station washroom, but Montreal won the prestigious awards of "city of food" and "best dish". I easily gained weight in this one city as it seemed that every corner held a new delicacy that was a must. The friend we were staying with insisted that everything was "the best ________ in the entire world." A phrase that quickly won me over. 

Unlike the other major cities, Montreal seemed to lack a lot of the major food establishments. The usual sightings of Boston Pizza, Moxies, even fast food locations like McDonald's, Arby's and A&W, were lacking. Instead, there were most independent restaurants, bistros and diners that all seemed to cry out to be visited. The originality of the food simply won me over, and I couldnt help trying out as many things as I could get my hands on. 

We were staying in a pretty hip neighborhood where everyone just wandered the streets. Driving was fairly hazardous and confusing (Montreal ties Winnipeg for Canada's "Worst Drivers") so everyone strolled around for their evening dinners. We had a whole chicken from the Portuguese district, just dripping with oil and spices. Delicious, and although unhealthy, it was worth getting! We couldnt live without getting a poutine of course, which cannot seem to be duplicated anywhere else in the world. Our friends also took us out for burgers and pizza, and while they weren't necessarily unique to Montreal, were simply delicious. 

We also got a Montreal Smoked Meat Sandwich from a little deli called Schwartz's, a place that has been around since 1928!! The place is so popular that people line up down the street for it. They had to expand into another building next door to satisfy the masses! And while I miss cheese, and would normally prefer a little less meat, it was delicious. 

However, the highlight of our trip, and the winner of the "best dish" award, goes to an amazing breakfast of Eggs Benedict. Served on English Muffins with goat cheese and mushrooms, this dish knocked our socks off. I had ordered what our friends had called 'The world's best Belgium waffle', but I couldnt keep my eyes off of my girlfriends food. Even as I ate the waffle, which was darn good on it's own, all I could think about was what her dish tasted like. It was served in a nearby restaurant, which was called Universel. Unbelievable meal. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it. The picture that we took of it does not even do this dish justice!! 

It is no wonder that this dish won the award, even over the famed lobster dinners of the East Coast! If you are in Montreal, it's a must!!!! Im already re-planning my next visit!

Cooking by Campfire

The first part of our travels across Canada were through the good old prairie provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Both were not quite what I expected them to be. Prairie provinces are supposed to be just everlasting fields of grain, far as the eye can see, wide open skies, and are supposed to be extremely boring. And while they  did have the fields and open skies, I found them to be anything but boring. I suppose that may have been because it was my first time travelling across them. If I had to continuously travel across them, I would probably have found it fairly boring as well.

The prairies had more trees and more hills than one should expect. We stayed with some family friends in Saskatchewan, but we had to camp in Manitoba. Of course as we were starting our summer vacation, we assumed that the campsites would be open to us... but that wasn't to be the case. Why was this the one thought that hadn't crossed our minds? Campsites weren't set to be open until at least the May long weekend. And while we had planned for some colder days, we had brought more shorts along than winter wear.

Our first planned campsite was at Gimli Manitoba. Home of the world's largest Viking statue! All the plausible campgrounds were blocked by thick iron gates, but we found an area reserved for cross country skiers in the winter, so we lucked out with a picnic table and the vastly more important firepit. The following night we pressed on our journey and stayed at a campsite in southern Manitoba near Falcon Beach.

Now the culinary exploration that stood out for me on this journey was the cooking over a campfire. Some people prepare well ahead of time for short camping stints, bringing along steaks, lobsters and other fancy meals just as they would eat at home. However, cooking over a campfire is delicious in its simplicity as everything cooking on a campfire tastes delicious. It's something about being outdoors, being hungry and being a bit chilled that just always makes campfire food taste amazing. As we were travelling, we couldn't take fancy foods with us, but only what we could pack in a small cooler.

We made sweet potato, onion and carrots, wrapped up in tinfoil with a little butter. Placed among the coals and left to be for awhile and you have a great campfire dish. Grilled cheese in a sandwich maker always makes for a great lunch, especially with a bowl of soup. And nothing, nothing, beats a hot drink during any meal while in the great outdoors. Probably the highlight of our camp creations was the chili. Simply hamburger meat, celery, carrots, onion, tomato sauce and some seasoning, place in a large pot and you have a great meal that will warm you straight to your core. We made too much for the two of us, but packed it in some Tupperware for a quick lunch we could microwave at a gas station.

I think that campfire cooking, is a whole separate genre of food that people should pay more attention to. What a joy!

Homecoming

For those that may still stop by and see if I have updated the blog at all, I have survived the trip and made it back to Lethbridge safe and sound! As this is a food blog, and food is a passion in my life, most of the writings that I will convey about the trip will be focused on the various foods tried and sampled.

Writing on the various food experiences across Canada is far too much for one blog entry. I will have to spread it out across several entries to summarize the various culinary adventures that my girlfriend and I have had. 

For those that are interested, the trip was amazing! We had such a great time travelling, although it certainly was a lot of time in a car. The weather sure could have been better, as we had several days that were cloudy and with some scattered showers. However, we decided that those days would be better spent on the road. What a great country we have! And I was constantly amazed with just how nice people were on the road. 

The food was amazing, so many great taste sensations that are so unique to their individual reasons. A lobster fresh out of the ocean is a completely different food than those found in grocery stores or in a restaurant. Sometimes the best foods that you find are those hole-in-the-wall kinds of places that have existed in a city for years, and truly define the food culture of that region. 

I am really excited to start writing (and downloading the multitudes of pictures) about our holiday, but im afraid the time differences, the long travel times, the hours spent in a car, they have all left me drained and exhausted and with no scope of imagination left. I need a good sleep in my own bed and then I shall be good again! How I have missed cooking, but soon I shall be able to concoct new recipes! 

Check back soon!