And we're back

Back from Vancouver!!

I know it's been a while since I last posted, but August has been a bit crazy at the best of times. Paris journal is done, internship is done and had a nice vacation to boot. And now for the food!

As soon as we hit Vancouver, after an amazing, well fed train ride from Toronto, my friend and I started scoping out the many food carts that pepper the streets of downtown. Each was awesome.

Kaboom Box!

The first was Kaboom Box, out on Granville street for the weekend pedestrian festivals. This cart focuses on fresh, local fish, sustainable meat and organic veggies for all their menu items. My friend got the kaboom box fish and chips while I had the "world famous hot smoked salmon salmwich."Both were really, really good. My salmwich had home-made maple coleslaw in it, which is normally something I wouldn't go for since I have this condition that makes all coleslaw taste the same: awful, and artificial. This was the cure for that condition, it was so fresh and different, especially with the spicy mayo. The slab of a fish steak certainly helped as well. I also finished my friend's tempura battered fish and chips. Light weight.

 Hot Smoked Salmon Sandwich!!!

Tempura Battered, Kaboom Box Fish & Chips.

Our second visit was to Japadog, and we actually ended up going twice. The first time we split a Negimiso dog, made of Turkey wish miso sauce, green onions and Japanese mayo. It was unbelievably good. I'll leave it at that. The second time we tried their signature dog, the Terimayo which had teriyaki sauce and seaweed. Equally, unbelievably good. They have four carts sprinkled around town right now and are planning to open one in New York City in November of this year. If we go on the school trip again, I know where we're eating!

Japadog's Negimiso dog.


Our third visit was to the Roaming Dragon cart, which sadly wasn't operating on their regular menu since they were at the PNE when we came by. That being said, the Dragon Clubs we had weren't bad, way too much daikon and cilantro though. Lemongrass chicken makes for a great club sandwich!

Beef Dragon Club.

Our final cart was one that was recommended many times to us by Steve, our tour guide for our two Tourguys tours that we took (we didn't have time for the 'eat your cart out' tour, we did the Gastown and downtown tours. Check 'em out, they're awesome too!). A cart originally out of Tofino B.C., the Tacofino truck was by far our favorite. We both got the fish taco, which featured tempura battered cod with chipotle mayo, cabbage and salsa fresca on a flour tortilla. Holy things I shouldn't say in public, it was good. If you do nothing else in Vancouver, go to this cart, and order the fish taco. Preferably lots of them. These guys take locally and recently caught fish directly from the government docks in Vancouver and make these things from scratch, and you can taste the amazingness that goes into them.

Yep, she's holding a taco.

FISH TACOS!!!

Strictly speaking this last one isn't a cart, it's a full blown restaurant, but the lunch we had is very much worthy of written recognition. The Sandbar on Granville Island offers quite the menu, but after splitting a Tuscan flat bread with onions and goat cheese, my friend and I got the same order, the island club. Shrimp and Dungeness Crab salad come together with Bacon and Guacamole to create one hell of a sandwich. The fries were suspiciously like those one can get from a McCains bag, but still good, and the sandwich more than made up for it. It was one of the last things we did on the tip, and now that I'm back home, broke and about to start school again, it was good way to end the summer. Let fall begin with food!

The Island Club of Amazing!

As a side note to this post, the first three carts have had their photographs taken by my good friend Rob. I was too busy eating to bother, so I stole his photos for here. I am crediting him of course, so check out his Flickr feed: infectedroot
Tacofino and Sandbar are my photos, I finally remembered to take the pictures before eating the food.

A variety of things

Happy Civic Holiday! or Simcoe Day! or BC day! and a variety of other names this August long weekend seems to have. It's Simcoe Day where we are. So far as I'm concerned, it's a day to clean this place up.

My apartment's a bit of a disaster. Not even close to one by other people's standards, but both my roommate and I are working long, 9-5 days at the moment, so we haven't swept, vacuumed or put things away with any enthusiasm in a long time. We did get a start on that yesterday, since while I was at a baseball game, she was at ikea with a friend and got some great shelving units for our kitchen and linen closet for more space and organization. Pictures to come.

I've been doing some cooking lately, nothing too exciting though. This week has been very repetitive and boring by way of cuisine. That being said, I have discovered an amazingly easy recipe for dumplings, something I have never made before. This is another Kitchn find, and is so quick and easy to make. I may have to start keeping ricotta in my fridge on a regular basis, since it makes a good quick dinner. It's always a little different each time since I vary the herbs each time too!

Original recipe here.

Ricotta Dumplings with Chèvre and Herbs!

serves 2 generously as a main dish, or 4 as a side dish

Ingredients:
1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons of water, as needed
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Handful fresh herbs (rosemary, flat-leaf parsley, sorrel, mint, thyme, or combination thereof)
2 ounces fresh chèvre

Place a 3-quart (or larger) saucepan of water over high heat. Salt generously and bring to a boil.
While waiting for the water to boil, whisk together the ricotta and eggs. Add the flour, salt, and a sprinkle of fresh black pepper. Mix together quickly and lightly with a spoon. If the dough is too thick and floury, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water. 

Turn the dough out onto a floured countertop and quickly pat it out. (Don't add too much flour; these will be just slightly sticky.) Pat the dough out until it is about 1/2-inch thick, and cut into 1-inch squares. Using a pizza cutter that had been dipped in flour every couple of cuts works really well.

Drop these little squares into the boiling water and cook for 2 to 4 minutes, or until they float to the top and are fully cooked inside. Remove them from the water with a slotted spoon. 

Pour the water out of the pan and place back over medium heat. Melt the butter in the pan. While the butter is melting, chop the herbs roughly. When the butter has melted, add the herbs and cook for just a few seconds, stirring them until fragrant. Turn off the heat and add the cooked dumplings back to the pan. Toss with the herbed butter. Add the goat cheese in small dollops and toss.
Serve immediately. 

 Makes for some great leftover lunch the next day too!

In other news, vacation update! My friend and I were up late a few nights ago and found a great travel deal that was hard to pass up, 75% off is hard to argue with. So, as a result, we're going from Toronto to Vancouver by Train!!!

See that big, long red line? That's us for four days!!

We each got a one-person room which included all of our meals on the trip for a fraction of what the room would normally cost. We're also spending a few days in Vancouver upon arrival and the flying back to Toronto. Back to the homeland I go!

Corn Bake and Cottages

So I'm still working on this regular posting idea. We'll get there.

In other news, we had a fabulous time at the cottage this past weekend. The weather couldn't have held out better for us and the food was plentiful. $240 for five people's worth to be slightly more exact. And don't think we wasted any of it. All that's left that didn't come home with us is a box of fudgecicles that we left as a gift to the next occupants. They certainly weren't going to make the car trip back home, so in the freezer they stayed.


The above is about all the digital photos I took over the weekend. I brought my film camera and used that for most of the trip. Once all the rolls are developed, I may scan some of the pictures and put them up here, depending on how they turn out.

Once I got back I had a quick look at the finances and re-discovered that I'm still broke. Time to get creative with the menu again. I happened to have had two cans of corn in the pantry for a long time (do they expire? It doesn't say anywhere on the can...), and found this fabulous recipe for a cheesy corn bake on The Kitchn website! Works for me. I used half of the red pepper since I discovered part of the one I had was a bit funky on the inside. I then substituted the rest of it with some chopped mushrooms I had lying around, throwing them in with the peppers.


Cheesy Corn Bake

Serves 4 - 6

1 red bell pepper, diced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk 

1 cup freshly grated cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons cream cheese
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Pinch of cayenne pepper
4 cups corn, fresh or frozen*

1-2 green onions (I sprinkled them on before serving as a garnish and a hint of the crisp, as the cooking reality shows are saying these days)

Preheat oven to 375°.

Sauté bell pepper in a little bit of olive oil over medium to medium high heat. Set aside. 

In a heavy sauce pan, melt butter on medium-low to medium heat. Add flour and whisk until smooth (and the flour taste is cooked out), about three minutes. Pour in the milk and cook, constantly stirring, until very thick. Mix in cheddar and cream cheese and stir until melted and creamy. Remove from the heat and season with salt and cayenne. 

Combine the cheese sauce, red pepper, and corn in a large bowl. Taste and add more salt and pepper, if desired. Pour into a baking dish, cover and bake until hot and bubbly, about 35 minutes. You can remove the cover for the last 10-15 minutes to bubble it a bit more.

*If using frozen corn, steam and drain it before adding it to the recipe.

 Oh yes. So much cheese. So good.

I'm Back!!!

I am back from Paris! The jet lag is over with, most of the pictures are on my computer and the suitcase has been more or less unpacked. My friends and family tell me that they did get their postcards, so most of them arrived before I actually came home! Also, one of the girls on the trip sent me one, so I had a lovely, vintage reminder about my trip waiting for me a few days after I got back.

Now all I have to do is go through the 2000+ photos and notes to write my journal for my final project!
*sigh

It's a lot of porn/art to sift through, but somebody has to do it. Here's a small selection for the great wide web.

This is a wonderful place called the Albert Khan Museum and Gardens. He was a pretty cool (and rich) guy that wanted a record of the world. As a result, he commissioned a little over 72,000 autochromes to be taken of people, places and things. Autochromes are some of the first colour photographs, and are unbelievably stunning to see in the flesh. They are also fairly hard to get a hold of in North America, so seeing as many as we did here, and at other collections is pretty insane.
The gardens at the museum are really beautiful, they're filled with ponds and little waterfalls that block out the noise and smell of downtown Paris.

These autochromes are from the Société Française de Photographie's collection. Note the early, colour "art" (ie porn) on the left. They've held up beautifully, especially being about 100 years old.

We lucked out while we were there, since not only was it International Museum Day, Paris was having a "Night at the Museum" evening, where admission was free to several museums and galleries! Most were also open later than usual, closer to midnight. The Paris Museum of Natural History was the one my buddy and I went to. They like their bugs and lack of decent lighting on their exhibit cases. Despite that, it was really cool!

This is the minor issue with glass plates, occasionally they don't make it from one place to the other very well.

Don't think we didn't go flea marketing! This is one of the many, many flea markets in the larger area of Saint-Ouen. We got some amazing photographs, including autochromes, and spent well too much money. So far as souvenirs go, they're pretty awesome. I have some great cabinet cards of the Arc de Triomphe and the Saint-Michel fountain.

We spent many an evening and afternoon picnicking on the Pont des Arts. Nice view eh? We had a picnic dinner on the lawn outside the Eiffel Tower one evening. As the evening goes along, the tower starts lighting up, and than at 10pm, the sparkly, twinkling lights turn on. A very nice backdrop for some cheap wine, smoked salmon and a lot of cheese and baguettes.

I have a lot of photos to go through, and I have every intention of posting some of the food pictures  I have of the picnics and escargots.

Back home and some eggs.

So New York was amazing!!

The bus rides sucked quite a bit, but the weather held out and we had a fabulous time.  A lot of food was had and I think I walked off everything I ate. The feet were slightly ruined by the time we came back to Toronto.

We hit all the regulars, 30 Rock, the MoMA, International Center of Photography, Times Square and we happened to be living in Upper Manhattan, so it worked out well I think. We found some great restaurants along the way, although bar food had to be avoided for the most part, there not being too much by way of Vegetarian for one of our traveling companions. However, we were able to placate ourselves with "Wine product" that was $6 at the local 24 hour convenience store. We enjoyed it just for the fun of not having to go to the LCBO during strict business hours.

We found a great sushi an seafood restaurant called Ichiumi on our last day and I wish this was in Toronto! It was like an awesome Mandarin, with MUCH better quality and variety. And Sushi up the wazoo, so much sushi. We didn't have breakfast that day, had this at about noon and we were set for the next 8 hours. Soooo good.

I didn't really get any photos of the food we ate over the weekend since I was kinda busy eating it. I'm not very good at this whole taking pictures for my blog, thing. My buddy Rob (who was also, incidentally, the gentleman who took pictures of the Christmas party, and hasn't posted them yet) took about 400 pictures over the weekend a lot of the food as well. So I've stolen one of his to show off this restaurant. His name is Rob, and he's on the Flickr. Check him out.

Dessert bits. Mango, blueberries and apple tarts, oh my! (Photo by Rob.)

This was one of the two photos of food I took while on the trip, or I guess technically in this case, what was left of the food. We had our first breakfast at a place called Metro Diner on Broadway. Each of us would have paid about $7 for a full plate of food and tea, but the waiter kind of cornered Rob into paying for the ladies.

Dude at diner: "So, are you going to buy these lovely ladies lunch then?"

Rob: "... I guess I am now!"

This is the other photo. Leo's Scrambled eggs with Nova lox and onions with fries at Artie's Deli. Good, greasy dinner for the 12 hour bus ride home.

I did fairly well money wise on the trip. We lucked out with the price of the trip to begin with, it was only $165 for the bus and hostel, and the Canadian dollar is doing phenomenally against the US dollar at the moment. We didn't do as much shopping as we had intended, but we still did the museums, gift shops and a trip to B&H, where I geeked out thoroughly and got a whole bunch of archival materials for my photo collections. Despite that, I'm trying to be frugal for the rest of the month to even things out a bit in the finances. So eggs, pasta and campbell's soup for the next full weeks. That can work though, just have to get creative. Hence, deviled eggs with dill and crab.

 

Back to class, so back to infrequent blog posts... sorry.