crazy white girl with a kitchen

Credit: Rob LaRosa

I’m gone to Las Vegas until Friday. With so much going on at work (Olympics! Bacon stories! Photo contests!) and in my personal life (gown fittings! menu planning! not to mention Heavy Rain coming out on the PS3!) this trip kind of snuck up on me.

I’ve left the laptop behind, but I’ll try Tweeting from my cell when possible. I would leave a list of planned restaurant visits, but to be honest: I have no idea what lies ahead. Normally I have a list of restaurants longer than my arm to bring with me, but this time it’s all in my head. We’ll see what I get to. (Hoping for Sage at Aria, high tea at the Mandarin Oriental and late night snacks at Raku, though.)

Our second night in Calgary, we visited Janice Beaton’s FARM. FARM is a casual restaurant serving mostly local meats and cheeses. The food is simple, but also simply well done. The decision on where to eat was easily made when we saw it was free corkage Mondays. We just so happened to have a bottle of champagne to drink.

FARM is cozy, outfitted with chandeliers and tea-cupped candles, rustic sideboards and tables, and mismatched, yet quaint cutlery. It’s farm-chic, I suppose. It’s kind of like eating at a friend’s house.

We started with a charcuterie board of three meats and three cheeses. They sell many of the cheese at their on site deli, but unfortunately they do not sell their housemade pâté. We would have purchased some of their rillettes which were meaty and tender. The mousse-like liverwurst from Old Country Sausage was very good as well.

Grilled cheese with tomato relish, pickles and slaw.

We each ordered a main dish, with a small dish of macaroni and cheese to share. The housemade pickles were crisp, but a little sweet for my tastes. I found the macaroni and cheese slightly thin in the sauce, but I couldn’t stop eating it.

Although comparable in flavour to Salt Tasting Room in Vancouver, prices were slightly higher, and portions slightly smaller. Such is Calgary! However, I will definitely return to FARM…especially for their brunch.

Dave & Jenn were commissioned to create the Christmas vignette at Livingstone & Cavell Extraordinary Toys in Kensington. They made this large poster on vellum, featuring some of the wind-up toys for sale in the shop. They had just picked the poster up when we arrived in Calgary, so we did not get to see the final Christmas display.

I managed to stop in at the new Holt Renfrew in downtown Calgary. Three floors of madness! I was really digging the Yves Saint Laurent shoes on the right.

The store reminds me of Barney’s, actually. There are many displays and curious to peer at all over if you are just a tourist like me.

Before we left, we ate at Delicious Thai in Kensington. They had Chang beer!

The dishes were well spiced and comforting on a cold night. The duck curry we got had rambutan floating around in it, cutting through the heat of the chilis. This restaurant was excellent, and is a definite eat again on the next visit.

Although it may be a bit of time before we are able to see Dave & Jenn again (they are busy folks!) I look forward to it.

It has been far too long since I visited Calgary. Nearly a year, in fact.

I’m a big fan of the city. Friends Dave + Jenn live in a great area, Kensington, and love to indulge my eating out when we visit, although we do stay in and cook from time to time. Last visit, Jenn made the richest, most savoury oxtail soup. Bravo!

This trip, they made their famous decadent, super-deluxe flourless chocolate cake for me. Three ingredients: butter, chocolate and eggs. Also, embracing a trend appearing in cakes at the moment: monograms! (They ARE artists, after all) It was a weekend of cakes, as I also brought some miniatures from Duchess Bake Shop.

We returned to Las Tortillas, where I bought four kilos of tortillas. They also offer tacos now, three kinds on weekdays (after noon) and four on weekends. At $3 a pop, they weren’t inexpensive, but they were delicious. Pork, beef and chicken were sampled, and the men liked the beef best. Jenn and I just got pork, but also curious Inca Kola. It’s produced by Coca Cola, but is very different. It’s a yellowish colour and tastes of cream soda. Very strange indeed. The grocery is also better stocked now, with selections of masa flour and various canned beans and chiles.

In Inglewood, the snow started to fall. We visited Savour, a small gourmet food and kitchenware shop.

Pollens, sugars and salts. There were lots of speciality items, including several kinds of popcorn.

Bonus: next door is Choklat. They’re a tiny chocolate purveyor who make their own chocolate. This may seem odd, but consider that many large chocolatiers import their cocoa. At Choklat, they select the cocoa beans and make everything themselves. I grabbed a few bars of chocolate, including the rare Porcelana. They also make boxed truffles to order, while you wait.

Six kinds of drinking chocolate? I had to indulge. The snow was coming down, and although the chocolate river smell of Choklat kind of turned my stomach. Seriously, it smelled like this looked:

The drinking chocolate was spicy, smooth and rich. It was almost syrupy it was so thick. I got the Orient Express with six spices, topped with a swirl of whipped cream and sprinkle of cinnamon.

The spoon comes in handy!

The last stop was The Cookbook Company. This speciality food store offers a wide selection of cookbooks, ingredients and wine but also arrange food tours, catering and cooking classes at their on site kitchen. I’d only been at their small outpost at the Currie Barracks Farmers Market, and was overwhelmed with their store.

Not enough chocolate at Choklat? There’s more at Cookbook Co., including Prestat, Vosges, and Valrhona.

Many kinds of olive oils and vinegars.

The prices were extremely high ($3-5 higher on similar products at grocery stores or even the Italian Centre), but I found many things that have been hard to find in Alberta thus far. Not a place to do your everyday shopping, but an easy one stop shop for special things.

Up next, FARM, Thai food and shopping downtown Calgary.

Banff and Canmore are stuffed with restaurants that are Canadian influenced, featuring many regionally sourced ingredients. I’m not sure if this is a boom of sorts, as I do not recall this trend of awesome restaurants on previous trips, but maybe I just didn’t have the interest (or bank account…) at the time.

What can I say, I ate a lot of Wendy’s in both Las Vegas’ Fashion Show Mall and in Banff on ski trips early in my travel career. (The Tex-Mex restaurant in Banff called The Magpie and Stump was a favourite of my 20 year old self, though!)

Either way, if you haven’t been to the Albertan Rockies in some time, there are many new restaurants to check out.

After much consideration, Mike and I finally decided to eat at The Bison. There are so many great sounding restaurants, it was hard to decide. What really sucked me in were the miniature lamb corn dogs and lavender S’more on the menu, and the promise of smoked meats and housemade condiments.

The Bison is a casual two floor restaurant, with a deli and shopfront on the first floor, and a patio, bar and restaurant up top. The deli sells sandwiches, as well as their condiments. It is very casual (is any place in Banff or Canmore truly fancy?) but the prices are a bit high. So, pretty standard for Banff.

We were quickly seated and started with beer and bread. They have Okanagan Spring beer on tap, and the bread (from the bakery next door, served in a rustic tree bark bowl) came with softened fleur de sel topped butter.

Naturally, I had to get the lamb corn dogs (adorable, but delicious as well) and a main of wild mushroom tagliatelle with leek and plump fresh peas, under an avalanche of goat cheese. It was super creamy, and my only small issue was that there may have not been enough noodles to support the sauce.

Lamb corndogs came with house made mayo and grainy mustard. I could have eaten an entire serving platter of these.

Pasta main

Mike got the daily soup (squash with smoked bacon and peaches) and the venison feature plate. The Bison does game meat like I have not had it before, and I have sampled widely from Alberta’s large mammals, such as calf moose and deer, hunted by my mate. Wild is pretty different from ranched.

Turns out in the end, there was no room for the lavender S’more though.

the bison restaurant and lounge
211 bear street
banff, alberta
(one block off the main drag, behind sundance mall)

So, if you live in Alberta, you know we’re in a full blown Indian summer, with very hot days, which is unusual. The day we chose to go up and through Cory Pass, it was over 30 degrees Celsius. Insane for September, but I’m so happy about it. It provided two weeks of outdoor opportunity, extended my summer which was very busy otherwise.

Cory Pass trail is a real challenge, and it was not easy getting up and over. But, I feel really accomplished, and happy that my summer included some hiking. I hope to do more next year.

Up early on Wednesday. Too early; the sky was still mauve and pink like it gets on early mornings in the mountains.

Mike, Connor and Madlen cruise up the mountain. I was dying back behind! I kept making excuses about “taking photos.” Somewhat comically, because of the bright and harsh sun, I did not take many photos.

Connor and his huge sausage.

No, seriously. We got him a kilo of Hungarian sausage from a new favourite deli in Edmonton: Budapest Deli. They also sell at the downtown City Center farmer’s market on Saturdays. We stopped and had a light lunch at midday in the middle of the pass. I was feeling nauseous from the heat, so I didn’t eat much.

Through the pass! Looking back: we came through the middle part. Mount Louis is looming above.  Maybe one day I’ll return to rock climb it.

We saw some neat things this trip, a white-tailed deer, pika, a lynx hunting beside the highway, and a half eaten rabbit. It’s head and forelegs were gone!

Okay, that was wasn’t really neat. Mostly creepy.

Read more about Cory Pass.

Suckers for punishment, Mike and I again headed to the mountains to hike last week. This time, one of the more challenging hikes in the area: Cory Pass, and with two friends, Connor and Madlen (they live in Lake Louise). Add to that some amazing (but brutal) hot weather, and it was a tiring but exhilarating day.

From start to finish, through the 6 hour, 14 km hike with 980m of elevation all we were talking about were beers at The Grizzly Paw at the end of the day. Okay, we talked about sausages too. Don’t judge us!

We made our way over, and immediately ordered beers, which are brewed on the property. It’s the only brewery in the Rockies, I believe.

I got the eight-glass sampler tray, and ordered a few full-sized favourites later. Even if you have gotten the sampler before, it’s fun to drink and features seasonal brews. Highly recommended.

You work your way from light to dark, ending with the really hoppy Indian Pale Ale in the centre.

I think the 3 oz samples were of Powder Hound Pilsner, Grumpy Bear honey wheat, Beaver Tail raspberry, Big Head nut brown, Rutting Elk red, India pale ale (indra island), Moose Knuckle stout (made with locally roasted and ground coffee, Beamers) and one I can’t recall.

The stout and raspberry were particularly good, and normally I wrinkle my nose at both. The tray was $12 or so.

Beer Board

Collectively, I think we tried every beer on the menu, except for the Wit and Oak Aged Barley Wine.

My Baja burger, with guacamole and salsa. Salsa was woefully under represented, but the mountain of fries soothed my anger. The burger was chunky, meaty, but could have been a tad bit juicier, if you ask me.

The Paw features a wonderful patio with mountain views, microbrews and in house brewed sodas. There is also a wide range of pub food. It’s a relaxed place that’s pretty much Canmore in a nutshell. Great for post-skiing or hiking relaxation.

Beer float

Something you MUST get if you are adventurous (and have room) is the signature Moose Knuckle Stout float. I know, beer and ice cream, what the hell? Trust me, this is a great combination. Coffee flavoured hearty stout, with just enough carbonation to ignite the chocolate ice cream into foaming. It’s rich, decadent and just a little bit strange. Our server was really excited when we ordered it. She said not many people go for it.

The Grizzly Paw also has an on-site store that sells merchandise, their beer and sodas as well as hot sauces from the restaurant. It’s a great place to stop on your trip through the Rockies.

The Grizzly Paw Brewery and Restaurant
622 Main Street
Canmore, Alberta

Mike: “Hey, want to go camping next week?”
Me: “Sure, weather looks good. Let’s try to keep it easy though, it’s been a while.”
Mike: “Of course.”

And so began our adventure.

As I have mentioned before, Yoho is about six hours drive from Edmonton. It’s a beautiful park, and home to the famous Burgess Shale fossil deposit. There are glaciers, waterfalls, abundant wildlife and stunning mountain ranges. It was a great place to get back into hiking.

Things were a bit chilly at night, but it only rained one day (a wonderful surprise!!) and there was no snow. We made our base camp at Yoho Lake campground, and did two day hikes. One to the valley where Emerald Lake sits, and the other along the Iceline trail. We had planned to do a trail called Whaleback as well, but a late start and my sore feet nixed that. Probably a good decision, actually.

The Iceline is a challenging hike, but I found it incredibly rewarding. I got to see the Emerald glacier up close and personal, passed by many glacial lakes, waterfalls, gorgeous meadows and forest, and we covered many vertical feet. A ten hour day saw us hike 27 kilometres in total. A few days later, I still have some sore spots!

Trailhead sign. It was 4 kilometres on an uphill trail to basecamp our first day.

Setting up our little house.

Snack time!

A Gray Jay as a dining companion.

Emerald Lake.

Checking out the map on a break.

Next time, Burgess Shale, next time. (You can only enter with a guide.)

Dehydrated zucchini “lasagne” for dinner one night. (more like soup!)

So cold at night! I wore gloves, long underwear, pants, two tops and two jackets as well as a toque to sleep.

Mount Wapta was veiled in clouds and rain when we went to bed…

Magically sunny and warm the next fair morn!

So amazing to watch Yoho Lake steam in the morning. A moose came by for a very quick dip, but then took off. I was SO excited!

Oatmeal for breakfast.

Just getting above the tree line.

Below the the Emerald Glacier on the President’s range. I was SO in love with this area. Geology come to life! There were striations of the receding glacier on the limestone rocks, and running glacier fresh water all over. Across the valley, you can see the Daly Glacier as well, feeding Takakkaw Falls.

Trail mix for a snack.

One of the highest points of the trail, up almost 700 metres. (on a somewhat related note: why do I always raise one of my feet like a pony in shots like these?)

The sun setting over the valley.

From the parking lot below. We were just below that top peak in the back!

The most satisfying moment of finishing a hike: taking your boots and pack off.

You can read more about the Yoho Iceline loop here.

While Mike has gone hiking several times this summer and been able to spend quite a bit of time in the mountains, I have not spent time (save for road trip pee breaks) in the mountains for nearly three years! I really enjoy hiking and back country camping, but a mix of needing new hiking boots, working weird hours and finishing school really disabled me from hiking much the past few years.

That all changed last week, I’m glad to say. Mike and I went on a two night back country hiking trip in Yoho National Park, near Field, B.C. We left early Wednesday morning, and drove about six hours in total to arrive in Field.

On the way there, we stopped at Valbella Gourmet Foods in Canmore. Valbella meats are something I have longed to have access to for a long time. Many stores in Calgary sell their products, but in Edmonton, only Sunterra does. Some downtown, but more at the southside location. Here is a list of all their retail partners.

Valbella does smoked meats well, with a specific interest in game meats and European style dried meats and sausages. We got some landjaeger and pepperoni on the way in, and on the way out, stopped for a snack of pâté.

There are also pre-made sandwiches, deli meats and other snacks available. Valbella is the perfect spot to stop before your Canmore or Banff area dayhike!

Cooler of sausages, bacon and dried meats.

One of our afternoon snacks. The landjaeger on the left. It’s popular with hikers and other outdoors enthusiasts as it does not require refrigeration. It’s got a hearty texture, and is protein rich. Both sausages were great picks. We ate them with aged cheddar and crackers.

Crackers and the gourmet variety of pâté. Valbella has some picnic tables near to their store which we ate under. You can smell the smokehouse, and see the mountains. Great combo!

On the way home, we also stopped at the legendary Donut Mill on Gasoline Alley in Red Deer. You can’t miss it; it’s the huge windmill next to the huge teapot. For years I wrongly thought this might be a cheesily themed low rent diner with sad donuts. So wrong!

Sour cream glazed, foreground. Background, Venetian Cream and Vanilla Lemon, both filled donuts.

The Donut Mill makes dozens of interesting filled and classic donuts, all fresh. Sadly, many of their most popular selections are often out of stock. It’s a busy place, popular with tour buses and families. A dozen runs $7.50, and a half dozen $5.50. They have special deals on 5 dozen or more. There are also delicious sandwiches and soups, stews and chilis.

Valbella Gourmet Foods
104 Elk Run Boulevard
Canmore, Alberta
Mon – Fri 8am – 6pm, Sat 9am – 5pm. Closed Sundays.

Donut Mill
Highway 2 South (Gasoline Alley exit)
Red Deer, Alberta
5am – 11pm daily

If you have ever been to downtown Seattle you know two things about parking: there isn’t very much of it, and it’s expensive when you find it. We hit pay dirt when we found a parking spot centered squarely in front of the world famous Pike Place market, steps from the first Starbucks and the waterfront. We sat in the car for several minutes, dissecting the directions on the signs, determining if it was alright to park where we were.

After finding out we had an entire HOUR of free, prime spot parking, we rushed out to run our various errands. I wanted to visit some spice merchants, and my mom wanted to visit the first Sur La Table store. It focuses on high quality, unusual kitchen items.

The only problem was, we had just an hour. Add to that the insane numbers of tourists, complicated alleys and aisles in a cramped market, very hot weather and unclear directions, and I wasn’t sure I’d make it back to the car alive.

I was looking for a speciality spice store somewhere in or near the market, but I had neglected to look up exactly where. Without an iPhone or any directions to guide me (stupid!) I went up to a lady working at an information booth.

Me: “Excuse me, do you know where World Spice is?”

Her: “You mean Market Spice?”

Me: “Uh,” (consults map) “…sure.”

Five steps away was indeed a spice store called Market Spice. I fought the crowds and pulled up to the counter in the tiny, hot store and started asking for spices. The clerk told me they had some of the items, but not all of them.

Fine, I said. Then I asked “So do you not carry everything on your website in store?”

She gives me a blank look and said “We don’t have a website.”

That’s when I knew I was in the wrong spot.

She had already bagged up several spices, so I took what I had, paid, and left. Market Spice had some of the more common spices on my list, but I was missing a huge component of the very special spices I had come all this way for.

Market Spice had many special sugars and a lot of tea, but was not the place I meant to go!

I knew something wasn’t right, so I headed to the place I knew could help: Sur La Table. In there, two employees helped direct me to World Spice Merchants.

“Oh, it’s on Western!” (he made it sound so easy!) “Go down the stairs by the big steel pig, under the construction, and follow your nose. You won’t miss it.” a guy told me. His coworker said “While you are down there, you should go to Spanish Table. It’s amazing!”

I thanked them both heartily, and rushed off. With about 25 minutes to go before I had to meet my brother and mom back at the car, I whipped into World Spice. A very helpful mustachioed man helped me with my list, and I was out and running. I even had time to spare to visit The Spanish Table, a store specializing in Spanish and Portugese products and wines. They had the most amazing cheese section…

World Spice Merchants. I really could smell it wafting down the street. Those boxes were full of spices. They seemed to have have huge turnover there, so I’m hoping everything is super fresh and flavourful.

No time to stop for dim sum pastries.

Naturally; a photo of the first Starbucks.

I saw these two cafes beside each other and wondered how my boyfriend Mike would ever decide between the two.

Drinking a Fukola Cola right infront of the market at our incredible parking spot. You can read my review of Fukola on my blog in development, Supper With Friends. (more on that a bit later)

Naturally we went to Whole Foods as well, in Bellevue. Look at their freaking beer section.

THIS WHOLE COOLER WAS BEER.

Here’s my haul from the trip. I used to go crazy over the clothes shopping in the States. I guess you can tell I’m aging because now I spend more money on food and beer.

But what was in the bags?

Two kinds of olive oil, spices from all over the globe including Ethiopian berbere, stinky asafoetida and true cinnamon, more masa harina, Fat Tire and Mirror Pond beer, Virgil’s root beer, two kinds of fresh marshmallows, chocolate, jam, tea, lentils and three kinds of popcorn.

Overkill? Maybe, especially considering when I got back I found out Calgary has a new spice store, Silk Road Spices. I can’t wait to visit it.

It has been a while since I took a road trip to the States, and it makes a huge difference in what you can bring back, weight wise. I’m shocked the CR-V made it over the mountains back home again, actually. Thanks for driving, Mom!

In Soviet Russia, vodka drinks YOU!

I saw this at the Edmonton airport. The 1.5L Grey Goose looks positively miniscule next to the 3 and 6L Belvedere bottles. I though the sixer might be good for use at a wedding.

It was really cloudy as my plane descended into Kelowna.  It’s a one hour flight, but a 9 hour drive from Edmonton to Kelowna.

My brother and his partner live a few blocks from one of the greatest things in Kelowna, the B.C. Fruit Packers. This is the plant where a lot of the fruit gets shipped and processed for Sun-Rype. So in addition to fruits of many varieties, there are new kinds of juices you don’t see on supermarket shelves and fruit bars, etc.

We loaded up on inexpensive peaches, apples, nectarines and carrots.

The fruit is packed in these huge bins stamped with the variety of fruit and the packer’s name. We saw them all through BC and Washington state. I was kind of sad to see many packers are switching to plastic, however.

A flat of 35 peaches was under $40.

One of the best things about my brother’s place is his great patio. It’s got lots of seating, plants and a fountain.

It also has Bruce and his amazing Weber BBQ. Kelowna has this great mini-chain of fresh markets called T’Bones. They do fresh by the piece meats, but also pre-prepared, ready for the grill veggies of every variety. It’s like M&M Meats, only fresh, and on steroids (in a good way.)

Tory and my mom made mini apple pies one night. My brother is trying to master the art of pie dough making, so he was learning from a pro. Like me and my tamales, he had also watching videos on YouTube, but it just wasn’t the same as hands-on instruction.

While the pies baked, we drank cider and opened up the new toy we got for the three cats. Jacob really liked it.

Finished!

I visited my brother last week, where my mom had been visiting him for a week. He lives in Kelowna, in the interior of British Columbia. It’s a really beautiful area, with a lot of water and hot sunny days. It is known for it’s wine and fruit. When we all met up again, we drove down to Seattle, traveling through the interior of northern Washington state instead of the much busier route on the Coquihalla highway.

Northern Washington had an abundance of fruit, wine and antique markets. It was really quaint, but not artificial or overdone. It was a great drive, and although it is about six hours to get to Seattle, we took quite a bit longer with many (cherry) pit stops along the way.

As soon as we crossed the border, I was jonesing for some cherries. We stopped at damn near every fruit stand south of Oroville. Sometimes we didn’t even get out of the car. We’d pull up, scout from the vehicle and then peel off in a cloud of dust and dirt. Serves them for not having cherries.

One of the stands we stopped at had no cherries, but a lot of garlic. How could I ever pick? I ended up getting some “Metchi” garlic. It’s considered a sweet but spicy garlic that is purpley in colour. I look forward to doing something interesting with it.

Finally, we reached the Wenatchee area, where we were told there would be a high abundance of cherries. PAY DIRT. 99 cents a pound for Rainier cherries at some road side fruit stand/overprice antiques and wine store.

I got two pounds. They lasted me about 30 miles, and we had to stop for more. My mom got a much more substantial four pounds at a bit higher a price, $2.99 a pound. They were gone two days later.

Oh god, the things I wanted to do in that Rainier cherry orchard…

We went to a few insanely awesome antique markets in northern Washington state, in this town called Cashmere.  My xexperience with small town antique stores is normally terrible. I find them highly repetitive and over priced. Apple Annies and Antique Mall were huge halls full of well organized, clean and orderly antiques.

There were a lot of kitchen antiques, including these fabulous old school fridge ads. They would look GREAT as art in a kitchen, I thought.

Japanese crab bisque bowls. At $10 a pop I couldn’t rationalize buying the whole set of four, and just buying one seemed lonely.

Old recipe card indices.

Wooden rolling pins, but no glass ones. I like to collect glass ones.

Apple box labels.

Another seafood themed ceramic piece.

I really enjoyed this part of the state. Good photo ops and cherries; what more could a girl want?

For dinner one night, my brother and mom and I went to a place called Zoopa! for dinner. If you have ever had the pleasure of eating at Sweet Tomatoes, this place is a low rent, mid-level quality version of it.

Both are buffet style healthy eating. They are driven by salad heavy buffets, many soup selections, with some health(ier) pasta and bread options, as well as dessert. I personally prefer Sweet Tomatoes, but Zoopa! did the trick.

I spotted a guy that may or may not have been Arrested Development’s Jeffrey Tambor (GOB Sr.) That is, if Tambor lived in Seattle, had an Asian wife and looked like he just came from hiking.

Also nearby, a new contender for best (worst?) pho restaurant name: