Exploring Halifax at #OpenCity

Last weekend was the second Open City event, put on by I Love Local (HFX). 147 local businesses, restaurants, shops and venues opened their doors, put on specials, handed out samples, had special take-out menus, and encouraged Haligonians to get out and appreciate their city.

147. 

There was no way we could visit them all (or eat all of the back-door takeout options!), so we came up with a game plan to hit the venues the four of us (my parents, Trevor and I) had at the top of our lists. Out we headed, the four of us plus baby J jammed into one car to avoid having to find not just one but two parking spots downtown, on a Saturday, with such an event happening.

First up was Garrison Brewery, for a taste of their specialty craft beers. I tried the Sugar Moon Maple, which tastes like it sounds - it's kind of like shooting maple syrup and chasing it with beer. In other words, DELICIOUS. Also sampled was the One-Hop IPA, which my mother proclaimed to be delicious. I found it interesting - it bit back a bit! Between us we bought enough beer to warrant a quick trip back to the car to deposit our purchases.

Next up, after the beer, we needed some lunch so we headed next door to the Seaport Farmers' Market. Trevor and I headed for our favourite steamed pork buns, while my parents opted for some (spicy!) samosas and spring rolls.

Then we headed over to Laughing Whale Coffee, where they were offering a free cup of coffee with the purchase of a bag. I had a taste of it, and decided that's the closest I've ever come to thinking I might be able to drink coffee sans milk and sugar. It was nice and nutty, and fairly mild. Delicious, especially with some organic sugar stirred in! J thought the bag of coffee beans would make a good toy.

Our next stops were further along the waterfront, so we headed down the boardwalk. I don't get downtown much, living and working on the other side of the Harbour as I do, and when I do, I always am reminded how much I love our waterfront.

Next up was Bishop's Cellar, where they had samples of Nova 7, a delicious local sparkling wine. My mother rather aptly compared it to eating a gravenstein apple - crisp, sharp on the tongue, sweet and a little bit tart - and 100% delicious. After emptying our glasses, we headed for the store's Nova Scotia section to pick out some bottles to bring home with us. Bishop's Cellar was also celebrating their 10th anniversary and were holding an Instagram contest - post a picture of your favourite bottle for your chance to win it. I thought my entry (left) was the cutest, but it sadly didn't win.

More alcohol meant we needed more food in our bellies, of course, so we headed around the corner to Sugah! for some hand paddled ice cream. Their special was a single scoop of ice cream with two add-ins, so that's what we had. Vanilla ice cream with chocolate-peanut butter fudge and Nova Scotia dried cranberries makes for a delicious summer treat! I did make the mistake of letting J have a tiny taste of ice cream on my spoon and then he wanted MORE MORE MORE - oops, I think I created a baby monster! 

After wandering back along the (increasingly chilly) waterfront to the car, we headed up Morris to Atlantic News. Our goal was to pick up a copy of the Chronicle Herald, the front page of which had coverage of the Halifax Mooseheads' big President Cup win the night before. While we were there we also found a great magazine listing the best iPad apps for kids, and a couple of greeting cards with local art. There was a pianist providing live background music, and J found him fascinating. He kept looking at the pianists hands, then his face, then back to his hands, really studying him as he played. 

Our final stop was Freak Lunchbox, for some bulk candy. For that one day, proceeds from bulk candy sales were donated to support the IWK Foundation. Candy for charity has no calories, right? 

It was a great afternoon spent downtown supporting local businesses and getting some great food and drink! And as the good folks at I Love Local (HFX) pointed out after the event, if you enjoyed that, you don't need an event to support local businesses - you can do it every day!

Anniversary Dinner at Baton Rouge

This evening Trevor and I went for dinner to celebrate our final "couple anniversary" before getting married next week (or, as Trevor put it, his final anniversary with his soon to be ex-fiancee). We decided to check out the new Baton Rouge downtown. And, inspired by the lovely and talented Kristen Pickett of With Bite (www.withbite.ca), I decided to write about it!

The first this that impressed me about the restaurant was how much of the old building (the Morse's Tea building) they kept and used in the decor. Exposed brick walls and old, rugged beams blend seamlessly with crisp white crown moulding and the signature dark-wood-and-red-leather decor of the chain. Old black and white pictures of Halifax grace the walls.

Also impressive is the fact that a whole page of Nova Scotia wines are highlighted in the menu, as a separate list from the usual California imports and so on. I ordered a glass of the Rose from Domain de Grand Pre - yum! (That's as technical on the wine descriptions as I get...)

I had perused the menu online before heading out, and Trevor knew he wanted to try the ribs prominently and tantalizingly advertised on billboards around the city, so we ordered pretty quickly. We started with the Cheddar Dip, which came with warm tortilla chips, and was pretty much what it sounds like - melted cheese with chips to dip in it. I'm sure it wasn't exactly low-cal, but man was it yummy! I also got an order of grilled calamari, which came in big spirals with half a grilled lemon, tomatoes, capers, and olives (which, yes, I left on the plate).

I had the steak salad, which is meant to come with blue cheese but the waitress very helpfully offered goat cheese as an alternative when I declined the blue. She was also willing to suggest her favourite dressing for the salad. The steak was tasty as were the other toppings - walnuts, sweet grilled zucchini and red peppers, and of course the cheese. The lettuce mix was a little heavy on the white, rib part of the lettuce, but the salad was big enough to discard those pieces and still be filled up.

Trevor wanted chicken + ribs, but wasn't sure whether to go with the breast or the tenders. Again, the waitress was very helpful and showed her knowledge of the menu. She recommended the tenders, with their crunchy tempura-like batter, as a nice contrast to the ribs, whereas the breast comes with the same sauce as the ribs and could be BBQ overload.

I tried one of the ribs, which were so tender they came apart with a fork - and even though I'm not a big fan of BBQ sauce, these, with their in-house sauce, were pretty darn tasty. I also snagged one or two of the accompanying fries, which were hot,fresh, crispy and lightly seasoned - I'm not a huge fry lover, but these were delish!

Our only complaint was that we had to ask three or four times for a refill of our water glasses, while my wine refill came right away!

We decided to forgo dessert in favour of a visit to one of our fave spots, Freak Lunchbox. A light walk up the hill would be good for us, we thought... until it started pouring while we were inside the store!

All in all it was a great first visit to Baton Rouge and a great last anniversary!

A Mother's Day Brunch Feast!

First, an apology. For a while I had decided that I would only post when something was new, different, "newsworthy." That led to not posting for way, way too long. I have now decided that I will post about interesting, creative, me things (while still avoiding the annoying stream-of-consciousness blog that was my original intention to not write).

So. Cooking, while never on my I-could-do-this-for-a-living list, has always been a definite interest of mine and something I (almost) always find enjoyable, relaxing, and a chance to express my creativity. My fiancé's summary of dinner is often something on the lines of "weird... but good!"

This past weekend my sister was in town (to go wedding dress shopping with me, as it happens) - and we realized that this meant she would be home for Mother's Day for the first time in about 8 years. We decided that of course we should do something to celebrate.

We briefly considered our options for a dine-out brunch, but decided that a) any good local brunch spots would be packed that day, and b) it would be more fun to do it ourselves! So, with some mad cross-country emailing and some across-the-cubicle advice from my coworker and the lovely writer of With Bite, we came up with a scrumptious brunch menu:

• Lattes (although I have been informed they are more of a cafe au lait since they aren't actually made with espresso): I made a pot of coffee so my Dad could have his black, then nuked half-mugs of skim milk, frothed them up with this great battery-operated frother my best friend gave me for Christmas, added vanilla syrup and topped with coffee, then sprinkled the foam with a little bit of cocoa. In deep blue mugs it had a very dramatic effect. (Perhaps a career as a barista is in my future?)
  
  
• Smoked salmon: I couldn't decide on hot or cold smoked salmon so I got some of both, from Willy Krauch's Nova Scotia smokehouse. Yum!
  
  
• Fruit salad: We combined strawberries and mango with cucumber to compliment the salmon, then added fresh mint leaves. We poured a bit of champagne and orange juice over the top to let all the flavours blend, and garnished with a sprig of mint. It was beautiful!
  
  
• Chocolate crescents: A sweet garnish for the plate, we only made enough of these for each person to have a taste. A roll of frozen multigrain pastry dough was improved immeasurably by the addition, in the middle of each crescent roll, of a square of Just Us! fair trade milk chocolate.
  
  
• Scones: At my sister's insistence our main carb for the meal was scones, made by her from our mother's go-to recipe. One half of the recipe was mixed with frozen raspberries for a delicious purply treat. The other half was up in the air until I looked in the fridge and caught sight of a bag of shredded Italian cheeses: cheese scones it was! Brushed with garlic butter before baking, they made a great compliment to the cold smoked salmon.
  
  
• Heart-shaped eggs: This started out as a bit of a joke by my sister but I thought, why not? I bought a large heart-shaped cookie cutter (with a "comfort edge" on the top which gave me something cool to grab onto) and placed that in the frying pan as I cooked the eggs one at a time. The eggs were from a local "hobby" farmer in my hometown, and have delicious bright yellow yolks! I had gone with my mother the previous weekend to the farm to pick some up and had seen the happy chickens pecking away in their run in the yard. Things always taste better when you can see where they come from! A dab of Nova Scotia-made pepper herb jelly was the finishing touch.
  
  
• Mimosas: What fancy brunch would be complete without some champagne and orange juice? Ours were served in fancy flutes and garnished with a frozen strawberry and some leftover mint leaves from the salad! One of the funnier moments of the morning was when our mother, drinking her latte and waiting for the food to be ready, called innocently from the other room to ask where the champagne was for her orange juice! Little did she know...

Brunch was delicious and the company was grand. To top it all off, there was a cheeky card (from papyrus, referencing how only such a fabulous mother could have daughters as fabulous as us), a mini rose bush (a throwback to the years when we gave her a real rosebush each year) and a one-of-a-kind Creations by Jennifer necklace. Needless to say, we were pretty proud of ourselves!

Foodie for a Day

On the weekend I had a chance to check out the Catch Seafood Festival - because I wasn't about to say no to a whole festival about seafood! I met up with my foodie coworker Kristen, the lovely and talented writer of With Bite for a morning or fishy yumminess. I have never seen anyone get quite excited about food, and Food Network stars, ass Kristen, and I must admit some of the excitement rubbed off on me. The first thing I checked out, before Kristen arrived, was a talk by Dr. Alex Richardson of Food and Behaviour Research in the UK. She, aside from being quite funny, gave a fascinating talk about why fish is good for the brain. Among the tidbits she shared were some stats about maximum-security young offenders in the UK who showed significant reduction in antisocial behaviour JUST from being given a multivitamin and essential fatty acid supplement, and stats showing that the children of women who ignored the "for heavens' sake don't eat more than 2 servings of fish a week while pregnant or your kid will have mercury poisoning" recommendations and ate as much as they wanted had a significantly lower chance of having suboptimal IQ. Really interesting stuff - check out the website - with the moral of the story being, eat fish! So I did.

They had this weird system set up where you bought 10 tasting tickets for $10 and then used 1 or 2 tasting tickets to buy samples at each booth. Some booths gave you lots for your 1 ticket - like the booth where I got to try smoked shrimp (yum!), crab leg, crab dip, and two flavours of smoked salmon, all for 1 ticket - but the amount you got for each ticket varied hugely from booth to booth. That aside, I did try lots more yummy stuff, including a delicious chowder from the Annapolis Basin Conference Centre, complete with whole mussels and big chunks of scallops. I also tried lots of different smoked fish, including both hot smoked (Cajun flavoured) salmon and cold smoked salmon rolled with salmon cream cheese; cold mussels in blueberry maple sauce; a delicious mini lobster sandwich on a squishy white roll; some hand-churned fresh butter; a quahog (did you know they harvested them in St. Margaret's Bay?); and some sea cucumber - which I expected to be mushy, but apparently that's just the outside, and the inside is orangey-pink and has a smiliar texture to squid! For dessert I had a delicious maple cream. Once I had had my fill, I went back to the main stage to watch the famous Anna Olsen of the Food Network. She prepared a delicious-looking salad with scallop skewers and fresh local strawberries, and then some lobster tacos which looked delicious. 4 lucky people got to try all this out on stage with her. She chatted the whole time she was cooking, which would cause me to mess something in my recipe up but which of course she is paid to not do - the point being she gave some interesting tips along the way. Including, she always adds garlic LAST, which is the opposite of what I always do which is to add it as soon as the oil is hot.... hmm.

Once Anna was done, and Kristen had run home to charge her camera battery, I decided I was full of enough fish and I headed home. Then, later that night, I went to another coworker's house for a BBQ and was treated to.... mussels! Made from a recipe from the Food Network, no less. So, I got enough Omega-3's for a whole week, but had a delicious fishy day!

Look for Kristen's post about the festival, which I am sure will be full of much more technical foodie terms than mine, as well as, I hope photos which I do not have, coming soon on With Bite I am sure!

... but not fine arts.

And now, a post about things I am NOT good at.

Tonight I went to a junior high fine arts cabaret. Aside from once again being in the school environment, which I really enjoy, the kids were AMAZING! I felt so inferior watching a 13-year-old girl who has been invited to the National Ballet School summer camp doing a ballet piece, listening to a girl play guitar and sing a beautiful practically radio-worthy love song, listening to a very accomplished grade 7 flautist, and more and more and more! The kids were fabulous. (And Trevor's improv team did a great job too...). It makes me wish I had had the opportunity to explore music, dance and art in junior high but then I think, I already have too many interests - I don't need any more! Plus, I tried to learn to play the guitar once and discovered that my fingers and especially left wrist do NOT bend that way. So, I guess I will stick to marveling at talented teenagers.

Being at the school tonight also made me excited to start volunteering with Junior Achievement, facilitating the "Our Business World" seminar with a group of grade 6 students. It should be very interesting to see what they come up with when asked questions like "where do you get the money to start a business?"

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Amazing Race Party!

Last week was the season finale of one of my favourite shows, The Amazing Race. When I was in England a group of us would get together in my dorm room every week to watch the show. Two of the girls live in the city so I invited them and their boys over to watch together. Which, of course, gave me a ready-made excuse to indulge my creativity. I bought some bright red and yellow felt and made replica Race route marker flags to hang on the outside of my house, to mark important areas like the tv room and the bathroom, and to hang on the tv for decoration. I also made a trip to the Freak Lunchbox, an awesome candy store, and bought some “creepy crawlies” to imitate some nasty food the racers had to eat during a previous leg. Some chocolate covered ju jubes served as larvae, served up on a skewer. Gummy spiders, also on skewers, were in place of the crickets and scorpions the racers had been asked to eat. Next door at Pete’s Frootique I bought some cheddar Babybel and a wheel of brie, to serve as miniatures of the huge wheels of cheese the racers had to carry on their backs in the first leg of the race. Along with Cindy’s “Happy Amazing Race Day” cake, it made for quite a feast!