Eat | Drink | Breathe - Page 37 of 63 - Recipes and Reflections from the Westcoast.

Five More Great Food Podcasts

March 2, 2015March 2, 2015 Shawn 1 Comment

Five More Food Podcasts Scrolling through itunes, I noticed that only one of the food podcasts from my previous list (less than a year ago!) had captured my interest long enough to survive.

Time moves fast in the podcasting world, and the culling can be merciless and swift. Two weeks of un-interesting episodes and my fickle fingers strays toward the “Unsubscribe” button…Don’t judge, I’m not the only one.

Luckily I’m not starved for content. As I said, seasons wax and wain at blinding speed and the fertile fields of itunes, Downcast, Sticher and Google Listen blossom with new food-related podcasts every month. With all the time I spend biking to work (yes, even in February) I got time to kill, and learn. So give me all the content, and then gimmie more! Read More

The Wolf In The Fog (Tofino, BC)

February 15, 2015February 15, 2015 Shawn 3 Comments

The Wolf In The Fog 1 It all happened so fast.

One minute my wife Crystal is explaining what “Family Day” is, and the next she’s outlining her plan; two days off together, score a cheap hotel room over on the Pacific Rim, weekend of adventure with our mutual friends Jen and Sean and the kicker… She already nabbed four seats at The Wolf in The Fog, Canada’s best new restaurant.

“Jen and Sean have already gone over and will text us the road conditions,” she explains whiles stuffing a shopping bag full of toiletries, “They’re predicting a hurricane on Friday, but it should all be cleared up before we get there! Adventure right?”

I’m standing there in my bike pants, still soggy from my ride home from work, face squidged up in shock/concentration/confusion.

“Uhhhhhh, okay… I’m in. But ummm… What’s Family Day again?”

Pickled Red Cabbage

February 8, 2015February 8, 2015 Shawn Leave a comment

Pickled Red Cabbage 5 Walking around the local Megalomart produce section in the depths of a rainy West coast winter is a real lesson in our dependency on other places for our food. Yeah, I’d love to eat strawberries, tomatoes and mangos all year long, but the costs (financially and environmentally) of supporting the industrial mega-greenhouses of Mexico, Argentina and China outweigh my base cravings.

So I obsessively scan the “Product Of…” signs, hoping to hit something Canadian, or better yet, from our own backyard. Drives my wife freakin crazy!

These local eats are often hardier root veggies, or tough fibrous greens that look a bit scrubby next to piles of supermodel red peppers and dragonfruits. The kind of tubers, berries and brassica that need a little bit more processing to be as tender and sexy as the subtropical stuff. Read More

A. A. Milne Quote

January 26, 2015January 31, 2015 Shawn Leave a comment

It is more fun to talk to someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “what about lunch?”

– A. A. Milne

The Sooke Harbour House (Sooke, BC)

January 18, 2015January 18, 2015 Shawn Leave a comment

Sooke Harbour House 1 It’s been 35 years since The Sooke Harbour House opened on the tip of Whiffen Spit overlooking the Juan de Fuca Straights, a mere hour or so from our province’s capital. Owner and slow food proponent Sinclair Philip and celebrity chef Edward Tucson built North America-wide cred by sourcing local, sustainable foods and focusing on clean unobtrusive flavours decades before it became the standard. The Inn has won boatloads of awards (both as a hotel and as a restaurant) and been profiled by every food, drink and travel publication you can think of.

That was then, and this is now. The majority of praise for the South Island institution has grown a tad quiet as of late. Chef Tucson moved onto other projects years ago and according to the spiteful whispers that prickle at the edges of our industry, when he left a lot of the Inn’s hard-won reputation left with him.

Neither Crystal nor I had ever been to the Inn during its halcyon age, but we had always kept it in mind as a sort-of “bucket list” type destination. Someday we’d try it, how could we not?