I should be embarrassed but won’t be until later.

Twenty-nine.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

I usually don’t do this, but Ethel the Dean is a good friend and when she suggests something, I go along with it. Also it’s my birthday so I’m feeling indulgent, so indulge me, won’t you? Even though I have to wonder who would want to know seven things about me – are there even that many that are interesting? My list of phobias is longer than that and I’ll bet no one wants to know the details about my self-destructive lavatory-specific neuroses. Suffice it to say I am very uncomfortable with camping. So instead, let’s talk dishes.

Seven dishes that I have enjoyed and hope you will enjoy too.

1. Momofuku Bo Ssam

I’ll admit to having what started as a culinary crush on David Chang … let’s just say that it has evolved with each Momofuku recipe I’ve made. This pork cooks so long and so low that when it comes out of the oven, it has the structural integrity of room-temperature butter. And that is such a good thing.

2. Pok Pok’s fish sauce chicken wings

You like honey garlic wings? Never make them again. Make these instead.

3. Martin Picard’s duck fat pancakes

There is really no excuse for these except that I sometimes have duck fat left over from roasting a bird and tend to feel extremely decadent on those Sundays we don’t go to my or Nick’s parents’. If you have leftover pork (see Bo Ssam, above), layer it between these pancakes and drizzle too much Canadian maple syrup over top. You will probably feel the heaviness of each beat of your heart for two to three days after, but it will be worth it, and you will feel alive, even if your lifespan is now three years shorter.

4. Vanilla roasted berries

I make these over and over again all winter long. Have you ever tried that coconut milk ice cream? It’s vegan and probably better for you than most of the things on this list; roast strawberries, and put them on that. Luscious.

5. Francis Lam’s ratatouille

This is probably the best ratatouille I have ever made. I make huge batches in September and early October and freeze it, and it reheats beautifully. It takes forever, but it is absolutely worth it. In the dark days of February, this dish thawed and reheated and served over cheesy polenta with crusty bread is one of the best things you can do for your mental health.

6. Pork meatball bahn mi

Nick prefers sandwiches to just about every other category of food. His favourite are pork bahn mi, which we get from Ba Le on Fraser and Kingsway, where they cost $3.75 and come served on fresh-made baguettes. At home, this is his favourite version of a Vietnamese sandwich. We eat these while watching No Reservations and imagining a life of leisure on the shore of some Southeast Asian country we can’t afford to fly to.

7. Scallion pancakes

I just really like pancakes, you guys. These are good.

Unrelated self-promotion.

For an ongoing list of stuff I want to make or eat or buy, you can follow my ish on Pinterest. Also I have a Facebook page now too. You know. In case you’re over there and want to hang out or whatever. And as always, there is Twitter, which is where I forget myself and Tweet whatever pops into my head regardless of how embarrassing it is.

Twenty-nine. Weird.

Fried potatoes. Mostly.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

Pan-frying is the second best thing you can do to potatoes, so it’s frustrating to get all worked up and excited about them only to discover that the cook has done it all wrong – and it happens more than you’d think.

Frying potatoes is so easy, but like anything worth fussing over, there are steps one must take to do it properly. There’s this place near where I lived when I first moved to the city that does a $2.95 breakfast that will cure any ill you’ve managed to bring on yourself, but nostalgia has me remembering it better than it was. You get fried potatoes with the breakfast, and I remember dousing them in ketchup and being so happy to shovel them into my mouth with a breakfast beer and a pair of runny eggs.

But you see, there’s the first problem. Good fried potatoes don’t need ketchup. Ketchup is the saving grace of sub-par food; if something’s really good, it doesn’t need it.

To properly fry potatoes, you have to take the French fry approach and cook them twice. In the morning, chop your potatoes to a uniform size. I like to be able to eat mine in two bites, for reasons that are complicated but which I cannot tell you about without coming across unstable in the worst case, or anal-retentive in the least.

The little yellow new potatoes are best, but little red ones will work too. If all you’ve got are russets you can still make fried potatoes, but they aren’t going to be as lovely. A slightly waxy potato will hold together more nicely in the pot and in the pan.

Boil your potatoes in salted water until fork-tender. Drain, do not rinse, and then lay them out on a plate or baking sheet. Leave them on the counter or kitchen table for a few hours, preferably all day. You want them to dry out a bit. The second problem with a lot of fried potatoes is that they’re plopped into a hot pan still wet. Moisture is the enemy of frying. I like to boil my potatoes in the morning, go about my day, and then come back around dinner time; the edges get rough and dry, which is perfect for a hot pan – you won’t find yourself splattered with smoldering grease.

And you’ll need duck fat. Or bacon fat. Butter or olive oil or whatever oil you have will work fine too, but if you have duck fat, this is its best application. Use a fat you like the flavour of. And use a lot of it – a tablespoon of fat per person should do it, but use your best judgment. For four servings of potatoes, I used three tablespoons. I might have used more if I wasn’t being stingy with my duck fat reserves.

You’ll also need time. Heat the fat until melted and hot over medium heat in a large pan. Add your potatoes, and cook for 20 to 30 minutes, turning occasionally. Cooking these over medium heat for a long time will mean that your potatoes will crisp up and turn golden and lovely. Don’t rush this. Add salt and pepper, and if you’re feeling fancy, lemon zest or fresh herbs are also nice.

If you’re attempting to seduce someone with roast chicken, these potatoes will seal the deal. And they’re infinitely variable, so long as you pre-cook, dry, and cook low and slow.

There’s room for creativity. Dress them with vinaigrette and scallions for a warm potato salad, or cut into wedges before boiling to make jojo fries. If you’re all by yourself, make just a few and squish a bit of fresh lemon juice over top and eat them in front of the TV with a dollop of mayonnaise for dipping. But no ketchup. You won’t need ketchup for these.

Unrelated to potatoes, my friend Tracy has been actively campaigning on my behalf, as this blog was nominated in a couple of categories in the Canadian Food Blog Awards. I find the attention both extremely flattering and slightly embarrassing, as to be honest I am more comfortable being in trouble than being recognized – at least when I’m in trouble I know for certain I’ve done something to deserve it. One of the conditions of Tracy doing my dirty work is that I am supposed to be more active and shameless with my self-promotion. I’ve mentioned that you can vote for Well fed, flat broke in the People’s Choice category a few times in recent posts, but never so blatantly as this.

http://www.beerandbuttertarts.com/cfba/nominations/voting-form/I realized after a whole bunch of people on Facebook made profile pictures of this that I look like the hungry version of Simon’s Cat. Also, I think the tiny URL is dead. Please don’t let any of that stop you from voting. Also, when you’re done, go look at the list of other blogs nominated in a range of edible, drinkable categories – they’re all Canadian and really very good. At this point if we were chatting in person, I’d lower my head and try to scurry out of the conversation or make an awkwardly “hilarious” joke to distract us both so we could move on. Imagine that happening right about here.

How is it New Year’s Eve again?

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

It’s December 31 again, and I distinctly remember digging through my photo archives this same time last year to find a photo where we looked cool and I didn’t look fat, and I spent most of the day fretting over what I was going to wear because we were going to a bar with a dress code and it was cold and all my dresses make me look slutty. It was a fretful day, and at the end we did our best to hold on until midnight and left immediately after, rushing the hell out of that downtown club because what each of us really wanted all along was to be comfortable, to be able to talk to each other, and to not have to pay inflated bar prices for cheap rum and watery Coke.

Tonight we’re going to a smaller party, at our friend Paul’s apartment. Paul is getting oysters and carving some of the salmon he caught this year into thin strips of perfect sashimi. Grace will be there, and Laraine – the whole team from our clam-digging expedition this past September. Paul’s girlfriend will be there, and who knows who else. It will be small, relatively quiet, and there will be so much food. And wine, which we’ve already paid for, and which we can drink without first buying over-priced tickets. And I won’t have to wait all night long to hear that one song I like, only to have the fifteen-year-old DJ mash it up lamely with that one song I really don’t like.

I’m glad that we get to celebrate the new year with the people we spent the best parts of the past year with. It will be an appropriate conclusion to 2010, which was notable because largely absent from it was the tumult of previous years, which for the past many have been filled with hasty moves to new apartments, panicking over debt and employment and graduation, and getting engaged and then married and then adjusting to being married so quickly. We hit our stride this year, both finding ourselves in jobs we really like, going on vacation, paying down that always present debt, and settling into an apartment that is mostly pretty awesome. And we got Molly Waffles, who we treat like a child, which we do not feel the least bit weird about.

It’s been a good year, and I have no complaints. And I am looking forward to this evening, and to the food. And to tomorrow, and all the days after it, and all the meals that will go with them. The photos in this post are from a party Grace hosted a few weeks ago, an oyster feast filled with lusty foods and sparkling wines and Rhianna songs; I expect this evening will proceed in much the same way, with sharp implements and soft shellfish and sriracha and dancing in slipper-socks on a makeshift dance floor in the living room and too much wine (and too many incriminating photos).

Happy New Year. I hope that the next 365 days are filled with wonder and opportunity and quiet moments in amidst the madness, and that you get to do something you really love. Writing here is the thing that I really love, and I hope you’ll continue to visit, and to every so often say hello. I wish you all the best in 2011!

Garden report: A shaky little tour.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

A wet and rainy weekend used to mean whining. Now, it means big, bushy green leaves, my favourite galoshes, and mucking about in the mud. An improvement, for sure! And because I wanted to show you all of the things, here’s a tour instead of a write-up. Sorry about the shakiness, blurriness, and the grammatical inconsistency of my spoken words (the plants are doing well, not “good” … ugh).

Also, as a bonus, here’s a falcon. He lives in the garden and is majestic.

Agriculture: I’m doing it!

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

When I was sixteen I wanted to be a hippie like Jenny from Forrest Gump except without the domestic violence and heroin later on. Mostly I wanted her outfits, and to move to San Francisco and write poetry and wear flowers in my hair. It was all very awkward and embarrassing and I discovered that I need to actually brush my hair for it to not look like a nest for many small rodents, I don’t like Birkenstocks, and meat can be really, really tasty.

The hangover from that badly dressed time is a fantasy in which I am able to live in a cozy little house on a large plot of land (overlooking the ocean and not far from the water slides) and all my friends are there and we have goats and kittens and grow our own tomatoes and make cheese and bake bread and do artistic things in the sunshine. There is a permanent rainbow. And we never have to buy anything.

So when Nick’s friend from work, Kerri, offered us a plot in her garden, I imagined us becoming completely self-sufficient, most likely by September. In my mind, we were sitting in dirt, eating perfect vegetables fresh from the ground, and singing something by, like, Jefferson Airplane or Iron and Wine or something. In the background, the kittens and baby goats were frolicking, and the escalating chords of a movie soundtrack were bringing us to that revelatory moment, the climax of our entire lives, and it was carrots.

I went to the garden shop and bought seven kinds of seeds, and then we went to Kerri’s house and she showed us to our plot, which was bigger than I anticipated. She said it would take us a little over an hour, but thanks to Nick and my two to three hilarious jokes about Nick’s instincts for gardening stemming from his Dutch heritage, we had the whole thing weeded and turned and hoed in under an hour. We made a path of bricks, and then laid what was probably too many seeds in tidy little rows marked with popsicle sticks.

A great day. And my shrieking and enthusiasm didn’t even ruin it, for once.

So, please think happy thoughts for me. We planted late, and lack experience. I see no reason why we still shouldn’t end up with so many veggies.

I am such a creepy, creepy weirdo.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

As long as my real-life friends continue to not disown me/answer my calls and occasionally succumb to my edible whims, I’ll continue to think that I am a normal, healthy, well-functioning member of society. The Internet was made for harmless stalkery, and what better insight into the humans behind the blog posts than a glimpse into their fridges? A glance into mine reveals a sordid sort of laziness, pots with lids containing contents I was too distracted to scrape into containers, too many cartons of eggs, and condiments I like to pull out and admire more than I pull out to cook with. The idea comes from @kickpleat, via her post at ReadyMade, and it piqued a curiosity I hope you’ll indulge.

Fridge voyeurism. It’s getting to know you, in a peaking-through-your-underwear-drawer kind of way, but with food. Won’t you peak into my drawers doors?

A lot of children, none of whom are mine.
Those stupid bagels are always moldy. Even when the spot is occupied by brand-new bagels.
Fancy a bit of syrup? This is usually where we keep the wine, but we sort of ran out.
Nick organized the freezer, and I haven't had a chance to mess it all up.

Why don’t you share your fridgey little secret, and post it over at ReadyMade? I don’t think you’re allowed to self-edit, but isn’t that part of the fun? I think being honest about how many eggs and cheeses you eat or those food stains on the bottom shelf you were hoping someone else would deal with is kind of the point, right? Anyway. I’d love to snoop on you next.

Bread pudding with spinach, feta, and ham.

~ wellfedemily ~ 5 Comments

Well, it’s official. This past weekend has been the laziest on record, with no signs so far of an upswing toward productivity or wise time-use. I blame the fort, which we have only just dismantled because I was beginning to worry that at a certain point, my trajectory toward the hobo lifestyle would be irreversible, and I was dangerously close to packing my crap in a bindle, crafting a few sturdy shivs, and finding a van to live in, down by the river. (You can build excellent forts around vans.)

Here’s my fort.

On Thursday night, Corinne came over in her pajamas and we sat in the fort, eating homemade pizza and watching many episodes of The Muppet Show on DVD. The cat was there, and made things difficult, so we had to lock her in the bathroom.

By Friday morning, the roof was gone (the cat also thinks forts are super fun, especially jumping on them), so we ended up enjoying an open-air fort, the kind of fort kids in more temperate climates probably build.

We came to love the fort, and even considered making it a permanent fixture; is anything more fun than doing stuff in a fort? The correct answer is no. The problem is, it was beginning to function as a vortex into which all of my motivation (and Nick’s, which has always been perilously low anyway) was completely sucked. If I hadn’t needed to go downtown in the middle of the day on Friday, I might still be in those same, smelly pajama pants, hair not brushed, and covered in food because you cannot eat sitting upright in a fort.

So we agreed that today we’d get rid of the thing, put our furniture back up like how grown-ups have their furniture, and do the dishes because a lot of mess accumulates when you’re spending all your time horizontal on a pile of cushions but still eating the same amount (if not more). We did take it down, but not before playing in it most of the day.

We spent the morning in the fort, napping and brunching. Last night I assembled a bit of bread pudding, and put out some sausages to defrost, so that breakfast could be in the oven by the time we were ready to move from bed to fort floor. It’s a recipe that I’ve played with a bit, and it comes from the December 2008 issue of Gourmet (see the original recipe on Epicurious, here). The two best things about this recipe are that it’s best if you assemble it the night before you want to bake it, and also that it’s very versatile. I’ve made it vegetarian with basil leaves, sundried tomatoes, and pine nuts, and I’ve used sausage and cheddar when I had leftover sausage and no Gruyere. Here’s my Greek-inspired adaptation, which is quite delightful and I insist you make it as soon as you can. If you end up with leftover Easter ham, well, then you’ve no excuse not to. It’s also good as a side-dish with dinner, so you could even make it for your next family feast.

Bread pudding with spinach, feta, and ham

(Adapted from a recipe from Gourmet, December 2008. Serves four, or six as a side-dish.)

  • 1 1/2 cups whole milk
  • 1/2 cup cream
  • 5 large eggs
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 tsp. ground black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp. dried oregano
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/2 lb. ham, cubed
  • 5 cups roughly chopped spinach
  • 6 cups cubed stale bread
  • 1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
  • 1 cup crumbled feta cheese
  • Good-quality extra virgin olive oil

Night before:

Butter two-quart shallow baking dish.

Whisk together milk, cream, eggs, garlic, pepper, oregano, and nutmeg in a large bowl.

In another large bowl, toss ham, spinach, bread, mozzarella, and feta. Transfer to baking dish and pour liquid mixture over top. Cover, and refrigerate over night.

Next morning:

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Remove the dish from the refrigerator, and drizzle olive oil over top the uncooked bread pudding. Cover with foil, and bake for 30 minutes. Then remove foil and bake until golden in spots, about 10 minutes more.

Serve as part of a completely delicious brunch, or alongside a fancy dinner. Serve hot, so cheese is at its melty best. And, if desired, eat in a fort. In your pajamas.

Buttermilk apple fritters: Breakfast of big-boned champions.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

I kind of felt bad, a little, because it seems as though I am mainlining fat these days, which is not usually a big deal to me because on the one hand, obesity is a serious illness and bad things happen to you and you can’t buy clothes at regular stores and diabetes and blah blah blah.  But on the other hand, if I get super fat, maybe I’ll qualify for disability benefits and then I won’t have to go to work or worry about clothes – I’ll get to sit around eating deep-fried stuff all day while wearing a muu muu and completing that novel I keep pretending I’ll ever finish, and maybe the government will even pay for cable. If I get Nick super fat too then I won’t even have to worry about him leaving me for someone with a neck.

These were my thoughts this morning as I pondered the last of the buttermilk that I inherited from my neighbour and Grace’s friend, Ayesha, who is heading to Kenya suddenly and needed help emptying her fridge.

I started a little batch of crème fraîche on my kitchen counter (one cup heavy cream to two tablespoons of buttermilk, left to sit in a jar at room temperature for 18 to 36 hours until thickened), and then there were leftovers. And I have two apples, which I was going to eat the way one normally eats apples, but then I realized, I’m on vacation and we’re moving in two weeks so any time I am not spending feeding us or checking the mail or procrastinating should be spent packing and that’s when I got out the grater and started heating the oil.

I can justify pretty much anything, by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed. Anything.

Buttermilk Apple Fritters

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp. maple syrup
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/3 cup buttermilk
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup grated Granny Smith apple

Topping:

  • 2 tbsp. confectioner’s sugar
  • 1 tbsp. cinnamon

Mix together all ingredients except for the apple until well combined. Fold in the apple, and let rest for ten minutes.

In the meantime, in a heavy-bottomed pot, heat about two quarts of oil to 350°F, or until a little splotch of batter dropped into the oil fizzles immediately and rises to the top.

Now you get to decide how big you want these things to be. I used a spatula to awkwardly ladle these out, but you can make them as big or as little as you want. My way made eight. Keep in mind that the cook time will vary, but I fried my fritters for about two minutes per side, until they were deeply golden and crunchy-looking.

Once the fritters are fried, cool on a few sheets of paper towel. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar mixture over top of hot fritters, and serve immediately. If you are also on holidays, feel free to crack open a chilled bottle of Gewurztraminer as well. Maybe don’t eat them all in one sitting. This kind of thing is good for sharing, which is great, because it’s the kind of thing that people will love you for sharing with them. They’re crispy, spicy, appley, and wonderful – better than store-bought, and they’ll be gone almost as soon as you put out the plate.

Eating in Portland: Touristing for the Gluttonous.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

And this post isn’t about recipes, because I am currently in the process of inventing one, although maybe it’s already been invented but I’m not going to search online for it and then once I post it, if I Google search for it, then my post will come up first and it will validate me AND the creative process. Tomorrow: Recipe. Today: Portland Love Fest.

With the exception of a few racist billboards, America proved to be pretty awesome. And not to be totally unpatriotic, but I think Canada has something of an inferiority complex as far as the US is concerned. I think it’s because we don’t have Happy Hour here. Or Crunchberries. It’s like America is Canada’s cool older stepbrother – we don’t really get some of the things he does, and sometimes he’s an asshole, but mostly we wish we could be as cool as him. Unless he’s Republican that year.

In America, they have a special line of Doritos just for stoners.

"Tacos at Midnight," anyone?
"Tacos at Midnight," anyone?

It was a hot one, registering 103°F, or 40°C, so we were parched the whole time. We got some lemonade, which I was totally going to make fun of until @katarnett posted her discovery that blue dye is actually good for you now, so now I guess I’m jealous that in America, raspberries come in blue.

It was freakishly good!
It was freakishly good!

Although it’s only a five-hour trip to Portland from the Canadian border, it took us closer to nine hours to get there, because of all the stops. Theresa’s dad’s truck, which we borrowed, had air conditioning, but old cheapness habits die hard for Theresa, who couldn’t bring herself to turn it on because of the chance that using the air conditioning might eat up all the gas in the truck, which might mean we’d have to get more gas, which was expensive. So we drove fast with the windows down, and stopped a fair bit for cool drinks and swims in lakes.

When we got to Portland, we refreshed ourselves with some deliciously cold, enviably cheap pints of good microbrew.

Theresa

Vincente's

Rogue Dead Guy Ale

Beautiful.

We stayed in a hostel called McMenamins White Eagle Saloon, and even though it didn’t have air conditioning and we were sweltering, it was a pretty awesome place to sleep for $50 (total, not each). Except that sometime after we returned to the room from the bar downstairs, I remembered that I once heard that there have historically been more serial killers per capita in the Pacific Northwest than anywhere else in the world, so then I couldn’t sleep in case one lept out of the closet or climbed through the open window to serial kill one of us. I never think of these things at home, which is also Pacific Northwesterly. It could be time to get serious about medication.

At the bar, we ate and drank for cheaper than we may ever have done either before.

Delish.And we learned about this amazing beer called “Ruby,” which is the most perfect girl-beer ever invented. It tasted like raspberries (the red kind), and it was magical and cold and everything great about the world in a single pint glass.

And we drank and drank and laughed and laughed and The Exhasperated Ex-Ex-Patriot came from across town to join us, and a marvellous time was had until I dumped too much dijon onto my $3.00 burger and then I felt sad but then more beer came and life was good again.

The next morning, after several cold showers and night terrors over serial killers, we went for breakfast at Voodoo Doughnuts. Prior to the trip, my two goals for my time in Oregon were simple: eat a foie gras jelly doughnut, and also eat a maple bacon doughnut. Turns out, the foie gras doughnut is sold somewhere else, and the maple bacon doughnut sells out like crazy at Voodoo, so much so that when we got there around 9:00 am, they were completely out of stock. I settled for a PB&J doughnut, which was a delicious combination of peanuts, peanut butter, deep fried dough, and raspberry jam. Manna.

Voodoo Doughnuts.

SDC11190

Voodoo Doll doughnut

PB&J

Oozing.

And so we took to the road again, sad to be leaving so quickly, but delighted at ourselves for all the gluttony. And I shall return to Portland very soon, as it turns out I am madly in love with it for the same reasons I am in love with Vancouver but somehow Portland managed to out-doughnut Canada and also the drinks are very cheap there.

Also, in America, they still have POG. No. Fair.
I hog POG too.So, I guess what I mean to say is that you should come back tomorrow, because I mean to tell you all about brandied apricot cobbler with ginger, and it will be all kinds of delicious and completely new because I will have invented it. I think. It’s very warm out still and that could be why I’m finding it very hard to have coherent thoughts, never mind the struggle it’s been to try and write them out.

This whole post is little more than me bragging about my day off. Which was awesome. I crave your envy.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

Long before Nick, there was the city. Having grown up outside of it, and just out of its reach, I was determined to someday get here and renounce my suburban roots. Vancouver to me is like Paris to people who’ve been there and loved it – it occupies my imagination as much as my reality, and it’s wonderful. The water! The buildings! The markets! The wine! I smugly wonder why anyone would ever live anywhere else but here (the cost of housing? The long stretches of grey weather? No! That could not be). I do this mostly on bicycle.

Peppers!

Last night, Paul, Nick, and I went to Granville Island for the opening night of the Altar Boyz, a tremendously raucous bit of blasphemy that had my face cramped with laughter and my mascara running all the way down my cheeks. Before that, we sat on the patio at the Backstage Lounge, which is fantastic not for its food, which costs more than it’s worth and is generally subpar, but for its patio, with water views and generous sunbeams. The cheap beer also helps.

Tard!

Bridge!

Moules!I had mussels, which were not memorable, but they were pretty, and they reminded me that I love shellfish and had not had it in nearly long enough. With the promise of a busy Nick this evening, I knew that this was my chance: Clams! I would alert Grace of my desire to feast, and we would eat bread and clams and drink refreshing summer wines. So I returned to Granville Island today, because The Lobster Man just beyond the public market is my favourite place to buy shellfish. Oh, the adventure!

Strawberries!

And along the way, I became distracted, as always, by Oyama Sausage, which is the most wonderful place in the world. Fact. I decided, having just purchased a short, me-size baguette and sweet little local/overpriced strawberries, that in addition to the clams, I would also buy lunch.

SDC10667

There’s a large Frenchman there who gave me his name but it was jumbled, the way French is, and I could not piece it together in any logical way. He asked for my order in French (I don’t know why), and in order to not seem like a jerk, I responded in High School French, what little I recall of it. (Although, if he’d asked me to sing a song about Les Pompiers, I would have been able to. That stupid song – about firemen – is etched into the recesses of my brain. Thanks, Grade 8. THANKS.) He laughed, apparently tickled by my efforts. What wonderful samples I was handed as a result!

I ordered Delice de Bourgogne, which is possibly the most delicious cheese in the world except for all the other ones, and decadent, oily duck prosciutto. Then I wandered into Liberty, intent on picking out a wine that Grace would surely enjoy, and then discovered cherry wine, which I couldn’t not buy – I had to consider lunch! I wonder how long it takes to get gout. Note to self: look into that.

Sixty dollars later, I finally made it to Lobster Man, the entire purpose of my trip. Mindful that everything I had purchased would have to fit into my backpack, I resisted the urge to buy every kind of oyster, sticking with my original clam plan. Cramming my day’s purchases into my pack, I raced home, in part to get the clams into the fridge as quickly as possible. But mostly to get to the sandwich, which by that point was actually shrieking my name. Here it is:

Lunch!

SDC10672I’ve now discovered that everything tastes better when you order it in French. (Be warned, favourite restaurants, most of which are not French.) And the strawberries were fantastic – little bombs of sweet red glory! How perfect with just a touch of balsamic vinegar and a sprinkling of basil and black pepper. I don’t care how much cheaper it is to buy a townhouse in Surrey: I’m never living any farther than a bikeride away from duck prosciutto and still-breathing shellfish and cheeses with names I can barely pronounce and wonderful, obnoxious French men. Vancouver: Nevermind how often I whine about your weather – I love you!

Tomorrow will be less a love-fest and more an actual, respectable post about clams, a recipe for clams, and strawberries in honeyed whipped cream. Stay tuned?