Pages

Wednesday 1 June 2011

A note from Canada

We’ve been whisked around Vancouver and some of BC over the last week, north of Whistler to Mt Currie, Lillooet and on to Kamloops. In other words, through banks of snow on the mountains to rolling wild west horse land around Kamloops, complete with tumbleweeds. This country is huge! and spectacular! It was a great week, and we were lucky enough to  be served wild salmon, caught and cooked for us by First Nations people at Mt Currie – such a different flavour from farmed salmon, and it was served with a sweet/sour sauce along with rice and lots of veges and salads. I wanted to try some of their wind-dried salmon, too, (sts’wan)  but in the end didn’t have time to track some down. Long days and lots of kilometres, but fascinating.  We really needed the weekend in Vancouver to catch up though!

I do find that trying to get a quick bite that’s savoury is problematic, both in Canada and the US – even a savoury muffin! So much fast food is sweet or fat-laden, and servings are BIG. Coffee with cream is the default setting, and cream doesn't taste good in a cup of tea if you can find one. It is good to see sushi restaurants springing up, however, they're ubiquitous these days, cheap and savoury!

Really healthy food is available - at a price, though, which is more than a little ironic. By healthy in this context I mean unprocessed, organic, and with no additives. At a very popular vegan restaurant/cafe in Vancouver I was fascinated to find that all food there is served raw, or at least produced at temperatures low enough not to destroy vitamins. Intriguing! My friend and someone eating a pizza, so ordered one too, so half each. This came with a two small caesar salads, and a vegetable smoothy each (beetroot, carrot, ginger and orange - delicious). The 'pizza' base was produced by dehydrating vegetables into a pizza shape - a thin, crisp base onto which was piled a tempting array of chopped and sliced vegetables such as capsicums, shredded carrots, celery etc in a tasty dressing. It was a lunch that made you feel as if you'd had a vitamin shot, a set- up for the day (we won't mention the self-righteous bit). It was good, but the surprise for me was the cost - $33.00 Canadian, which is about $42.00 NZ. It seems to me that it's ironic that you have to be well off to eat healthily these days - we could have bought enough fast food to feed a whole family for that!

On a totally different note, Viji's Indian restaurant has won an award for the best curry house in the world, and I loved it - you can't book, you have to queue up, and people do, every night at least 30 minutes before it opens.

3 comments:

Norma Bennett said...

A busy but rewarding time by the sound of it. How wonderful to have the chance to try the wild salmon even if you missed out on the wind-dried delicacy.

lamina @ do a bit said...

Sounds absolutely amazing!! Thank goodness for Japanese/sishi resaurants :)

Natasha (Australia) said...

UPsizing the nation, it seems to be spreading globally...
Now... What of the wildlife? Was there any to be seen in all this snow?