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Posts tagged ‘canada’

Nov 12

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Prince Edward Island clam dig

We ended up in Prince Edward Island (PEI) at the tail end of their tourist season, a busy clamoring of folks from all over the world filling the island’s beaches and restaurants and historical attractions from late June to mid-September. The tourist information office immediately on the other side of Confederation Bridge, the 8-mile behemoth linking the island with continental New Brunswick, informed us that much of the island’s services and attractions would be shut down by now, with whatever little was left shutting down after Thanksgiving (celebrated in Canada almost 6 weeks before the one in the United States).

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But while we did find an island much quieter than it would have been a month before, we still found ourselves surrounded by the beauty, the bounty, and the culture of Canada’s smallest province.  Eager to engage ourselves in the island’s incredible array of agricultural and culinary activities, we signed up for a clam dig organized by a local tourist group specializing in hands-on culinary and cultural experiences. We were attracted to the idea of harvesting our own meal – an activity that inevitably makes the resulting food far more delicious – but also to learning a new skill, one that has fed PEI residents throughout history. Read more

Oct 23

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Chewy oatmeal cookies with maple sugar and drizzled icing

And, we’re back! I mean that in two ways; we’re physically back in Eugene at Brett’s parents’ house for about a month before we head abroad again, and that means I’m finally back in a place where I can cook and post recipes. Back in two ways, and I couldn’t be happier about both of them. We are exhausted and happy and it absolutely does not feel like three and a half months have passed since we left Claremont, but we certainly feel every single one of those 16,000+ miles we’ve put on our car since July 9. (16,000 miles! That’s more than halfway around the world, you know.) Our last night on the road we stopped in a tiny town in the middle of Idaho – at least I think it was tiny, we arrived and left in darkness – and splurged on a Best Western that had a hot tub. I honestly don’t know that I’ve ever felt anything so wonderful in my life as the 20 minutes I spent there. We had driven 14 hours that day, my head was pounding, and nothing would let me forget that I was only one day away from sleeping in my own bed.

But now we’re here! We’re here for a full month so Brett can do his graduate school applications and so we can prepare for the next four plus months abroad. And I will cook. Oh boy, will I cook. Unpacking my stand mixer today felt almost as good as that hot tub in the middle of Idaho. There are only four days in the last month that we didn’t spend more than 6 hours in the car (think about that for a moment – seriously, think about that), and among the many, many other things I did to pass the time in the car I made a fairly lengthy list of things I want to cook while we’re here in one place and with all of our kitchen belongings.  Hopefully I’ll be sharing a lot of them here, a combination of things I love that I’ve never gotten around to posting (like butternut squash soup with tarragon) and things that have been on my to-do list for a long time (like paté and croissants) and things I dreamed up while we were driving back and forth across a continent.

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Oct 7

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Montreal: The Food

Of all the places we planned to visit on our cross-country road trip across Canada, we looked forward to the food in Montreal more than anywhere else.  Vancouver and Prince Edward Island were also often noted as excellent travel spots as far as food was concerned, and we had amazing food experiences there as well as Quebec City, but we knew Montreal would have the sort of French and French-inspired cuisine we had loved so much on our trip to France a few years ago along with a good selection of hip new restaurants, traditional Canadian food, and markets full of fresh, local, seasonal foods.

montreal

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Unfortunately, our calendar did not match up with our desires to eat as well as it might have. As in France (as in many places in the world), Montreal’s restaurant scene is mostly shut down on Sundays and Mondays, the only two nights we would be in the city. But if anything that actually helped us in making eating choices, since my large, researched list of potential meal sources was shortened to just a few when we figured out what would be open while we were there. Read more