Beans, Peppers and Elvis.

I’m slowly starting to get back in my cooking groove...

Everyone goes in stages. All winter I was in a stage of stir-fries, pasta, and the barbecue. I’m a student, however a slightly mature one, but I’m still supposed to be able to take care of myself right? I’ve been cooking for myself for getting close to ten years and I’m good at it. But I dropped the ball a tiny bit.

And then the Olympics came and I got two weeks off school! I went into downtown Vancouver a few times, and it’s everything you could expect and more. Crazytown. I saw the cauldron with the flame and the athlete’s village and the controversial boxing kangaroo flag and a lot of drunk Canadians. I waited in some lines, got straight into the Quebec pavilion to buy trés expensive beer and yummy maple syrup candy...Went to the Lamplighter Pub four and half hours before the Canada vs. USA hockey game started to beat the $20 cover and get a table. Incidentally, I also had the privilege of eating the BEST hamburger ever (guaranteed. Try it.).

So it was Olympic fever, and I had two weeks off school...back to that. I had to work a bit on the ski hill, but since there wasn’t a whole lot of snow (read: none, rock skiing) it didn’t last long for me. So I could think more about cooking.
I will share a few of my favourite things.

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It all starts with breakfast... This is my favourite breakfast. I would put it on the menu of my dream restaurant. I used to make this for my old terrific roommate Jenny and then we would sit on the floor at the coffee table in the sunshine, drink English Breakfast tea, listen to Santogold, and eat. It’s yummy.
It’s beans with coconut milk and poached eggs on top covered with ‘Valentina’ Mexican hot sauce.
So here’s how you’re gonna do it:
Start by sautéing some onions and garlic. Get them soft then in goes a can of rinsed and drained canned black beans. It’s all going to start frying, then add around ½ to ¾ of a can of coconut milk (or all of it, because what are you going do with ¼ a can of the stuff??) and let it cook. It’s going to start bubbling and I want you to mash up the beans a bit. Over time (maybe 10-15 minutes?) it’s going to start resembling refried beans, but more creamy. Season it (I like to use a good amount of salt), and you’re golden.
While your beans are cooking, put on a shallow pan of boiling water with a glug of white vinegar in it. I am going to teach you how to poach eggs.
I have taught a lot of people how to poach eggs. A lot of them had tried loads of ways in their past, and they never quite worked. I used to try too, stirring the eggs to make them stay in a ball, cracking them straight into the water... Please never use those ‘poaching’ cups that go in the microwave! Then I got lucky with an ex-boyfriend who taught me the secret.
I believe it’s the vinegar.
So you’ve got your pan of water boiling. It’s a rolling boil on medium heat, not some crazy fast boil from having your stove as hot as she’ll go. I’m a bit crazy about the boil. Once it’s rolling, crack an egg into a smallish mug and begin to lower that into the water. Allow a bit of the water to get in and cook the egg a tiny bit and then pour it all into the water. It’s going to stay together! Use a spoon to give it a nudge to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom and then just let the egg cook. Now, this whole time you want to maintain the rolling boil. I am constantly adjusting the heat to keep it around that mark, but again - I might be a bit crazy. When the yolk is cooked to whatever point you like (I prefer soft for this meal), pull it out with a slotted spoon and put it on a smooth tea towel to dry off, careful not to break the yolk. Then do some more!
There you go. Beans and poached eggs. I put a big spoonful of beans on a nice plate, two poached eggs on top; cover it with pepper, then the hot sauce all over it. My favourite is Valentina, which I brought back from Mexico. But anything will work, just not too spicy because you want to eat a lot of it.

Oddly enough, I found this picture on Ryan Seacrest’s blog. Go figure.

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Next: lunch. Go to Celia’s house. That’s what I did. Or maybe go to one of your favourite friend’s house where they will feed you delicious healthy food.

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And then I made dinner – inspiration from Celia’s house.
And I made stuffed peppers! I once had stuffed peppers at Celia’s mom’s house...
Here’s how I made them. Clean the peppers. Wash them, then neatly slice the tops off and clean out the white pith and all the seeds from the centre. Then put a bit of olive oil on the outside and in, then roast for let’s say, 15 minutes at 350F, to get a bit soft. Meanwhile, cook some quinoa (Do it just like rice. One part quinoa to two parts water into a pot, put on high heat and the second it starts to boil change to very very low, pop a lid on and wait for the water to be absorbed). In another pan, put some whole mushrooms that you scrubbed the dirt off in with some oil and butter and let them cook. I learned from Julia Child that to cook (and brown) mushrooms perfectly you must watch them closely and stir a lot. All that oil and butter will quickly absorb, but do not add more (I used to...). Slowly, the mushrooms will begin to release all that liquid as they cook and begin to brown - they will turn into the moistest mushrooms you have ever tasted.
In yet another pan, sauté onions and garlic till soft and then turn off the heat and grate a whole zucchini in there – you don’t want to cook it at all. Then mix it with the quinoa and mushrooms and some feta and lots of salt and pepper, pull the peppers out of the oven and stuff them with your mixture. Pop back into the oven for another ten minutes and then eat it all up!
*A note: I’ve always found vegetarian stuffed vegetables to be kind of bland, so I added the feta and a good deal of salt. I would suggest maybe adding some olives or even capers? Or anything else you can dream up to give it zing?
This is total comfort food.

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Lastly... Dessert. It was Kris’ birthday, and I made him cupcakes. Banana cake, peanut butter frosting and covered with chocolate on top: the Elvis Cupcake.

BANANA CUPCAKES*

Preheat oven to 350F
Line your cupcake tin – this will make 12 cupcakes.

½ cup mashed banana – the darker and browner the better!
Mash it up and set it aside. Maybe use a hand blender, or a fork. Just get it smooooth.

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup granulated sugar
Sift into a big bowl and give it a stir.

1/3 cup canola oil
2/3 cup milk/lactose-free milk
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract (I just upped the vanilla to 2 tsp.)
Add to banana, then whisk until smooth.

Add wet to dry ingredients, and fold in slowly. Mix until just combine, but don’t over-mix (small lumps are ok).

Fill cupcake liners two-thirds full and bake for 20-22 minutes (until a fork stuck into the centre comes out clean). Let cool, then ice and decorate!

PEANUT BUTTERCREAM*

½ cup butter (or non-dairy margarine/shortening mix)
Soften with your mixer of choice (fork works as well).

½ cup creamy peanut butter
1 tablespoon molasses
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Mix into the butter until smooth.

1 ½ cups icing sugar
Add, beat until very smooth.
Will get a bit stiff, in which case add:
1 to 2 teaspoons whatever kind of milk you are using
And beat continuously until pale tan and very fluffy.

Then top your now cool cakes, and drizzle with some melted dark chocolate and cover with sprinkles.
Happy Birthday Kristopher!

*From “Vegan Cupcakes take over the world”, but I didn’t have soy milk of Earth Balance margarine in the fridge so it got switch to omnivore cupcakes (opposed to vegan...bad comparison?). These are the adapted recipes.

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So. What do you think? Did it give you some ideas to make for dinner?? Breakfast? Where to go for lunch?

Happy February!

Oh yeah. You see that? A little something to pique your memory...

I made apple cake tonight. For the first time in just under a year. I love it so much. I really really do. It's so easy to make, and then it tastes so ridiculously amazing.

I've been busy these days. I came home early from school today - it was raining out and my group (a guy and then a wacko who drives me nuts) and I had finished our Soils lab and all I wanted to do was go home and get my shit done. Full time school and two jobs doesn't leave any time for getting shit done, stuff like baking, re-potting plants and laundry (that's what I did today). As I drove home I contemplated what I could make this afternoon. Lentils with lotsa herbs and yoghurt crossed my mind (I had just filled my backpack with dill and flat leaf parsley, as well as swiss chard and cucumbers, from the greenhouse at school) but I was in the mood for lots of butter and sugar, finally settling on apple cake. Thats just what you do on a rainy day.

It also involved a walk to the grocery store for apples and then the movie store because on top of cake, I had a weird craving to watch The Devil Wears Prada. Unexplainable.

So I made it, and then I ate it. Only one piece so far, but I will have another for dessert. It's light and the sugar is super caramelized along the bottom but still not too sweet. Yummm...

Refresher? The recipe is here.

Over Christmas my sister asked me how come I haven't been writing on here anymore. No answer comes to me, just the lame-o excuse of "I'm busy". That's not gonna change, but I'm going to try and put more on here.

What have I done in the last few months...

Moved to North Van (away from the hipsters and in with the greatest guy), learned lots about plants, made lots of tomato soup and roasted vegetables, got lots of new knives for Christmas (!!), acquired a dog named Molly Ringwald, bought some new red shoes, snowboarded even though there was no snow, and found a Pho restaurant that has cheap Mondays - bowls of pho fo' only $4. It's been good.

Okaay...I have to make dinner. I still have left over Boursin cheese so I think I need to barbeque zucchini and peppers and broccoli and sprinkle the cheese on them all. And the swiss chard.

Worms, Storms, and The Best Muesli In The World.

It’s been forever!
Why haven’t I written in one month and two days? Because it has been a lovely summer and it has been really hot and I, admittedly, have been having too much fun to write. Decent excuse I think...


A few weeks ago I went to worm class with my good friend Kimmi at the CityFarm (Maple and 6th in Kits – go check it out!). I have watched people compost with worms for ages, but I just never got around to finding my own worms. Lucky for me, Kimmi was super keen and did her research ages ago. Back in February she got her name on a waiting list for worm class back – for a class in July. They are that in demand apparently. Me being the ultimate last-minute-kinda-girl, I called up the CityFarmer (unsure of what to call them exactly..) on the Thursday before the Saturday class and learned there was one cancellation. Perfect!

First off, I learned that for $25 I was receiving: a pound of red wiggler worms, a great box made just for worms (complete with air holes!), a bag of straw and newspaper, a book called Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof, and one full hour of instruction. Apparently this would normally go for over a hundred bucks but the City of Vancouver was being kind enough to subsidize the majority of it for us because it is one of the cheapest ways for them to reduce the amount of garbage coming out of the city, our very nice instructor told us.

Two things amazed me in this class: the wide array of people, and their reactions to the worms. The people: all sorts...there was a little old Asian lady, a bald gay guy with great posture, a girl with really fancy sunglasses and long fingernails, a lady who laughed at all of my and Kimmi’s jokes (that’s normal..) and that was only four out of about thirty. And then there were their reactions: one guy (shocking how many straight guys were there!) wouldn’t stop asking if he could use the worms for fishing, one woman was afraid to touch the worms, people who were pissed that the worms wouldn’t be able to eat every scrap of their organic garbage, people who hung on the instructors every word and took notes the entire hour... Now I’m being hard on them.

This is my fresh worm box, before I fed them anything:



I left mine out on the patio for about twenty minutes after I got them home. It was about 35 degrees out there, but I figured they would be fine if they were in the shade... Wrong. They will die. I got them out just in time and they are now flourishing in a closet.


I also learned that if you tell someone "I got worms today" they will be a tad weirded out. I was just really excited about it!

So with the worms, you feed them your vegetable scraps (one big yoghurt container full) once a week and they eat it to make a compost you can feed your plants. Awesome, but I am still paranoid about killing them. Or their possible escape...

Want to try it now?

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A few photos of that awesome rain/thunder/lightning storm a few weeks back. We just happened to be at the Virgin Music Festival where we had been happily watching the lightning - which was still a few kilometres away - when the rain hit and things were swiftly cancelled seconds before The Roots came onto the stage. Devastating. However, it did make for a beautiful sky.

I have never seen the Vancouver sky like that.

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Lastly, I want to share a muesli recipe that I find to be one of my most favourite things in the entire world. It was perfected by the one and only Jane Goodrum and I have waited about a year and a half only for it to make it to the other side of the world into my hands, yes, a few weeks ago. She makes a batch of it once a week, distributes it to her kids and their families and they all eat it every single morning for breakfast. My first attempt wasn’t exactly like Jane’s so it’s going to take me some time to get it just right, but I am happy to keep trying and definitely ready to get back in the habit of eating it every day.

JANE'S MUESLI (exactly as I received it)
4 cup rolled oats

1 cup all bran

1/2 cup low fat powdered milk (just powder)

2 tbsp wheat germ

2 tbsp linseed

1 cup of raw nuts (whatever you have in the kitchen, all good)

1 cup shredded coconut

~All these ingredients can be combined in a baking dish, and mixed.

1/4 cup of oil

1/4 cup of honey

~Melt together and pour over the dry mixture.

~Then bake in a moderate oven for 30 mins (pulling out and stirring roughly every 10mins)
~When cooked, allow it to cool then add a cup of dried fruit and stir through (anything you have: apples, apricots, sultanas, cranberries, etc).

~ You are then ready to get involved and chef it up. Yum yum!

*Linseed is just flaxseed, sultanas are raisins, a moderate oven would be around 350F and “chef it up” would involve serving it with whatever you feel like – come summer go wild with any berry you can get your hands on, a bit later move onto apples, then into the winter it’s perfect with yoghurt and canned fruit.

*Try and do it in a big baking dish as opposed to a baking sheet as it won’t turn as dark brown (Jane’s is a super light color; the ingredients are just toasted).

*Many thanks and love to the Goodrum family for sharing!

Seven simple ingredients.

Whenever I go up north to visit my family we always end up going out to eat at some point, always at the same restaurant. Everyone knows what it is, it has been around forever. They used to have parrots and chocolate mousse and gigantic orders of nachos when I was a kid but now the waitresses just look like they are going to a club right after their lunch shift but the food is [usually] still good. This has nothing to do with the restaurant though; this has to do with how my dad orders his meal there. Always, always, he orders “the lowly chicken”, despite the fact that the chicken special changes regularly and there is always a fancy little title for it.
I love this.
“The chicken, please”. Perhaps this reminds me of my love of the simple?
It makes me think about when we didn’t have cell phones that could also take pictures and an Ipod that could find out the address of the restaurant – we used the yellow pages instead. Even if the menu says ‘Mediterranean chicken with a garlic and thyme white wine reduction’ there is no need to recite that. The waitress knows what you are talking about.
Comparatively, in discussions of your own food at home there is no need to divulge everything in your dish.
“What are we having for dinner?”
“Chicken”.
It leaves a bit of mystery to your meal and the diners will obviously discover upon their first bite that it tastes like white wine and garlic. And perhaps a bit like it came from the Mediterranean? I love a bit of mystery, and I love eating well... And I feel strongly about minimalism with our food.
Way cool, dad!

So feeding off the homage to simple, I’m going to talk about pesto again.
The other day I woke up late to a sunny morning and wandered onto the patio to inspect our plants. It was burning hot outside already and while I had a chat with some flowers, I noticed that the basil was growing like gangbusters*. The only thing I know to do with heap loads of fresh basil is make pesto. So that’s what I did. Right after I called my friend Kim to come over for breakfast.
A quick trip to the grocery store provided eggs, pine nuts and parmesan cheese (as well as a quick chat with the cute guy who lives two floors below us – poor guy was only buying grapefruit for breakfast).
I put the kettle on and went out to pick all the basil.

After I marvelled at its color and how much I had grown, I stuffed it all into the blender. I have given a pesto recipe before, but here's a refresher on how you do it:
Three cloves of garlic, peeled (I usually overdose a tad - I love the buzz)
As much fresh basil you can get your hands on
Around a third of a cup of pine nuts (toasted will bring out their flavour**)
The same amount of freshly grated parmesan cheese
Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
Start whizzing it all up (with a hand blender, mortar and pestle - whichever you choose) and slowly pour olive oil in until it slowly becomes the consistency of pesto.
Voila.
~A side note – I made some for Kim without cheese as she’s a lactose free kinda gal and it was incredible. The green was that much richer and the flavour of the spicy basil wasn’t mellowed at all by the cheese. It was awesome.

One taste of the bright green pesto made you stop in your tracks and savour the taste. The garlic was softened by the oil and the cheese, the nuttiness was there from the pine nuts, and then the basil was an explosion. I attributed all the flavour to the freshness of the basil. That, and the simplicity of the recipe. Seven ingredients, all stuff that tastes great on its own - no way can you go wrong. Complexity will only muck things up. If you want pesto, this is the pesto you want.

By this time Kim was in the kitchen with me eating it by the spoonful, so I called an end to that and stirred some into the scrambled eggs while they cooked, made some toast, poured the (iced) tea and we ate breakfast on the couch by the fan (it was way too hot to be on the patio!). Best breakfast ever!

*My secret to success? Plant the basil with tomato plants, it truly does the trick. I started some basil seeds way back when and they really took their time taking off. They spent months on my bedroom windowsill, baking in the springtime sun, and once they were outside still dragged their heels a bit. But when a neighbour who was going away for the summer gave me some of her tomatoes to look after, I popped them all into some pots together and it’s been true love ever since.

**How do you toast pine nuts (and all other nuts while you are at it)? Two ways:
1. Put them in a frying pan over low/med heat, give them lots of attention by swirling them and tossing them around almost constantly and slowly let them brown.
2. Put them on a baking sheet on low heat in the oven (200F or so), again, give them lots of attention, and let them brown.
~They burn ridiculously easily!!~
Both ways will bring out the nutty flavour and make anything you use them in taste even better.

The moral of my story? Simplify your ingredients and spend time with those ingredients to make them the best they possibly can be and the taste of your food will be out of this world.

What did Kim and I do after breakfast? We shook up a thermos full of watermelon mojitos (watermelon left over from Canada Day and oodles of fresh mint from the garden!) and headed to Jericho Beach for the rest of the day.

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Lastly, I wrote this while listening to The Lost Fingers . Check them out!

I'll have the house salad, please.

It’s funny. When you love to cook people naturally ask you why you haven’t become a ‘chef’. I almost went to full-on cooking school right out of high school. Even though it never ended up happening for me – I went to UVIC for two semesters instead – my grandmother still asks when I’m going to become a cook. After working in the front of restaurants for years, I have an idea of what it’s like in the kitchen. And it’s not for me. Imagine making massive quantities of the same stuff everyday, and then spending the night grilling a hundred steaks. Or making a hundred salads. I think most restaurant cooks just love the repetition. And maybe the weird hours and parties?

So cooking behind a line isn’t for me. But I do daydream about opening my own restaurant. It would be ridiculously casual with good coffee... I like to entertain ideas of having a place that’s a cross between the Whistle Stop Cafe from Fried Green Tomatoes and The Foundation in Vancouver (Main and 7th – if you’ve never been, go). Just on a smaller scale.

I read in a book written by one of those famous chefs that we all love that he judges the quality of a restaurant by its house salad. He loved some nice greens with a good vinaigrette, while I like something a bit more substantial – not just a green salad but more of a meal. An old boyfriend’s sister-in-law would make incredible salads. Every vegetable from her fridge would go in and then just lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pepper on it for a dressing. She knew what was up.

The trick with salads is you just have to put stuff you love into it. And have lots of variation – when I was a kid our green salad was lettuce, celery, carrots, toms and cucumbers. And ranch dressing. I have nothing against this, its vegetables and that’s all you need. But why not go a bit above and beyond...

My House Salad
*the usual suspects:
-Lettuces
-Grated Beets and Grated Carrots (shout out to the Naam, in my mind they did it first!)
-Broccoli
-Almonds
-Sultanas/dried cranberries
-HERBS! My fave: dill. But I use whatever’s in the garden – mint, thyme, chives, flat leaf parsley, cilantro.

And thats just me. You could try:
-fennel
-green beans
-zucchini
-mushrooms
-tomatoes
-jicama
-roasted yams
-cheese
-roasted tofu
~absolutely anything else that you feel like!

Dressing:
-try making your own following the basic principle of 2/3 oil (I’m sure you’ve got some good olive oil), 1/3 acid (lemon juice or any sort of vinegar), and a few tablespoons of mustard. Mustard is magic, it creates an emulsion (the oil and vinegar sticks together). Try dijon or grainy mustard just because it tastes better than that bright yellow shit - I don’t really believe that stuff is actually mustard. You can also add some herbs, salt and pepper, maybe some honey or chilli. It goes on and on.

-My current favourite dressing goes against the norm a little bit by skipping the mustard and using tahini. Give it a go. It’s a good dressing for anything really, try a shot of it on top of something steamed like kale.
I got this from Vegan with a Venegance. Great book.

Tahini Dressing
Into a blender goes:
-A good amount of olive oil
-3 cloves of garlic
-2 or 3 good spoon fulls of tahini
-A glug of balsamic
-Pinch of salt
-Juice of 1 lemon
-A squeeze of something spicy like Sriracha or even paprika
Blend all of that up until it’s smooth after which add:
-whatever herbs you can find in your garden/grocery store that are beautiful and fresh.
Again, blend but let a few green bits hang around. Put in the fridge for a half hour or so after which you may have to add some cold water to thin it out (the tahini sometimes like to get pretty thick).
Enjoy!

There you are, that would the basics for the house salad in my very first restaurant, soon to be opened one day.
Soon.
In the far away future.
*I tried taking a picture of a salad but it didn’t look pretty. I need more practice.

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In my last post I talked about my strawberries. They just might be the best producers on the patio right now, while the zucchini is growing lots of blossoms but not fruit (I have been trying to hand pollinate (a hilarious term!) them with no success) and the beans are just going a bit slower.
A few days ago I made strawberry shortcake on some scones from the bakery around the corner.
Sooo sweet!
Sooo yummy and summery!

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On another note... Are you going to a party and need something new to take with you? I recently took these three dips to both a camping trip and a house warming party – great reception at both!
*You need a serious respect for your blending appliances for this to go smoothly. They will work hard for you.

These are my favourite dips to make:
Humous
Chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, tahini, salt and pepper, olive oil, maybe some chillies.
My secret: if it’s too thick and chunky, try adding some hot water to smooth it out. Tahini will also help things be smoooth.

Roasted Yams
Simple: peel and chop some yams, put them in a roasting dish with some olive oil and salt and pepper and roast them. When they are soft, blend them up with cumin and some spice. Done.

Beet Dip
A few more steps in this one:
-Roast your beets by wrapping them individually in tin foil and putting them in a super high oven for quite a while – sometimes over an hour. They need to be soft even in the middle, and it’s virtually impossible to burn them so leave them for a bit.
-Pull them out after a while and let them cool so you don’t burn your finger prints right off (which will probably happen no matter what). Then peel them with a paring knife by slicing the stem end off then you should be able to scrape the skin of like buttah’.
-Cut them into rough chunks then into a bowl they go with a handful of feta cheese and maybe half a cup of plain yoghurt, the good stuff (this is already going to be healthy, no need for fat-free!). Blend it up, add some salt and pepper to taste, and then you have a dip to take anywhere that is pretty much fuschia in color – beautiful!
*If you haven’t roasted your beets until they are fully soft they won’t blend very nicely and it may make your kitchen look like the scene of a bloody crime.

There’s the humous and yam dip on the right making a great showing at dinner with the ladies on Pitt Lake.

Also, breakfast. Girls eat so well when they are camping without the boys!

My first strawberry.

Fancy that - my camera wasn't dead at all, it just needed to be charged! I seem to be finding drama for myself involving this camera...

So after a few weeks of super hot weather in here in Vancouver, my cute little patio pots have decided to really starting pumping. Things are starting to shoot up and turn colors and flower and I couldn't be happier. I took out my newly revived camera this afternoon and took some quick pictures.

The very first strawberry of the summer:
I sliced it in half and shared it with my roommate. Picked (in excitement) a tad too early but wonderful all the same!

The lettuce (remember the picture from a few months ago when it was just tiny!?):

Beans:

The zucchini blossoms:

How's your garden?

Coast to coast delicious-ness.

I just went on another trip. It was the cheapest cross country trip I could manage, via greyhound, cheap flights, and Craigslist rideshares; staying on couches and in hostels. My best good friend from high school, Tiffiny, was getting married in Denver and my sister was graduating from university a few weeks later in Montreal so I figured why go home in between?? I went to some amazing cities and met some wonderful new friends. Being the girl that I am I bypassed most of the fabulous museums that I could have visited and my trip centred mostly around food.

Here's the backbone of it all:
A zippy bus ride from Vancouver to Seattle where we (the other best good friend from highschool) had a short stopover to investigate the Pike Place market and witness the men throwing fish. A few hours later we were on the wrong city bus out to the airport which came very close to making us miss our flight to Denver. We caught it, which got us into the city just in time for the bachelorette party.
After the wedding and a few more days in Denver I went to explore Boulder, just north. In a nutshell: not the quant little hippy town I expected but beautiful none the less. And it has a million little places to get a good meal.
Boulder to Denver one early morning to catch another flight to Newark, New Jersey. Train ride into New York where I met up with my sister, then on to three days with not enough sleep, lots of lemonade and the discovery of the city's great parks and fun restaurants.
Next, we found a ride on craigslist to Montreal with two guys who appeared to be transporting basketball shoes over the border so they could sell them. Legit? I'll never know, but they drove fast and got us home quickly.
Montreal: ate lots of food, proudly watched my sister graduate from architecture, and went to the Cirque du Soleil (!!).
Finally, last night, I boarded a flight back to Vancouver. Phew...

Also - a continuation of my camera saga - it died the day of the wedding (two days into the trip) so I have no photos. Use your imagination.

So with no photos I figured I would give the details of a few of my most favourite meals of the past two and a half weeks. Pretty basic stuff, no five course restaurants or fancy wine, just food. And drinks. Great fun!

-Westside East in the lower east side of New York City. After a big night I told Jeff, the guy my sister and I were staying with, that we needed to eat a big plate of vegetables for breakfast. He sent us a few blocks up from his place on Avenue B to this little place. After a short wait we sat at the bar (which was tended by two extremely cute boys) and were presented with menus that, on top of the usual brunch items, had a special sheet that was all vegetables. Great choice, Jeff! Four choices cost $15 and we got tomato and basil salad, asparagus with lemon and almonds, soy glazed green beans, and sweet potato fries. The choices change daily and the staff handwrite the menu with big, slightly unreadable cursive. With a big glass of lemonade (which became my new infatuation in New York), I felt re-energized enough to wander over to Union Square to take a nap.

-The best sandwich of my life. Somewhere in Chelsea (again, New York), I was lead there by my sister. It doesn’t have a sign and I don’t know it’s name so it‘s kind of like a myth. Or a fable. Olive bread, fresh mozzarella, spinach and home cured prosciutto. And ginger-mint-lemonade. Eaten in a park. I’ll let you dream…

- Picnic in a park across Parc from Mount Royal, Montreal, Quebec. Myself, my parents and my sister lying on the grass in the first sunshine after five days of rain. We bought a Portuguese chicken (lots of spices and when you buy it, they put it in a bag and pour what looks like half a cup of butter over it. Mmm…) from a shop on St. Laurent and the ingredients for potato salad. Also, a bottle of wine, some cheese, bread, grapes and Peak Frean cookies (which are a necessity on my family picnics). We laid on the grass for hours, basking in the sunset. The week I was in Montreal we went to a lot of wonderful meals in some great restaurants, but this was by far my favourite.

-The Rio Grande in Denver, Colorado. To start with, a direct quote: “credit cards, speed limits, and Rio Grande’s margaritas: all things that should have limits”. One margarita at this mexican place has something like three shots of tequila and they will only allow you to drink three. However, if your thing is breaking rules, you can push the limit and move from the patio to upstairs and maybe the new waitress will bring you three more. There is a reason they have a limit, because too many might make you decide it’s a great idea to drive to Tiajuana to see if the margaritas are just as good there…
Our dinner was homemade tortilla chips and salsa. Tasty, complimentary, and just enough to keep us from doing things we weren’t proud of.

Other places I went that I loved:
-Illegal Pete’s, Denver, Colorado. Awesome, cheap mexican food with cute boys.
-Sunflower Grill, Boulder, Colorado. You will want everything on the menu and it’s all organic, some vegan, and mostly local.
-Golden City Brewery, Golden, Colorado. Some guy decided to brew some beer in his garage and let people drink it in his backyard at picnic tables.
-The Library, Avenue A, New York City. Excellent place to celebrate a random guy’s 30th birthday party. The books and the bathroom are covered in graffiti and the drinks are cheap. Perfect.
-Wilensky’s, Montreal, Quebec. You go and order “the special with cheese” and you get a toasted boloney sandwich with heaps of mustard and a dill pickle. Cherry coke - optional.
-Aux Vivres, Montreal, Quebec. A vegan’s paradise filled with healthy looking people and the best breakfasts.
-The Khyber Pass, Montreal, Quebec. Afghani food in a below street level cave on Duluth Street. Biryani and rose water pudding were my highlights.


My Potato Salad - best eaten outside.
7-8 red potatoes, cubed and boiled until they are just tender
3-4 hard boiled eggs
3-4 celery stalks, sliced
Handful of radishes, sliced
A pickle, finely chopped
Red onion, finely chopped

Dressing:
Mayonnaise, lets say ¾ cup
Grainy Dijon mustard, about 2 or 3 tablespoons
Apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon
Salt and pepper
A little dash of pickle juice

Mix up the dressing in the bowl you will be using, then stir in all the other ingredients. I am not against a warm potato salad in the least, although if you let it sit in the fridge for a few hours or even overnight the vinegars will soak into the potatoes and make your salad taste that much better. Cooling is just a side effect…

*The trick to perfect hard boiled eggs: put your eggs in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover them, then onto the stove, uncovered. Turn on the heat and leave it for around twelve minutes. Use a timer! The water should be softly boiling within the first five minutes and then just let it go. At the end of twelve minutes, I put the pan into the sink and let cold water run over it. Peel them and the yolk should be just cooked, not fully solid but not runny either. The perfect hard boiled egg!