I’d like to tell you a bit more about Claire and Alex’s great neighbourhood in Toronto. I feel I got to know it fairly well after staying with them for three weeks and getting out and about quite a bit.
(P.S.- can you believe the Junction was a dry neighbourhood until 2000?? That explains why there are still very few liquor stores…)
I’ve already talked about Crema – a great neighbourhood coffee shop – and the Junction Farmers’ Market. Here are a few other highlights:
A few weeks ago we spent the weekend in Banff with friends. It was a really nice getaway, especially as the birth of our baby gets closer and closer. We hadn't been to the mountains since last summer, and I always feel like I need to take advantage of their proximity while living here in Alberta.
Banff is a very gluten-free friendly town for tourists. Here are a few of the highlights:
We stayed at A Banff Boutique Inn, a B&B on the edge of town. I'd definitely recommend it. We got a deal on our rooms so it was a very reasonable price - not sure we could afford to stay here in the high season. It's an old house built in the 1940s, and the rooms have retained some old-fashioned charm. There are hardwood floors, big windows, and simple, classic furnishings. Our room had a cute little built-in vanity with two closets on either side. The rooms are comfortable but not big, and we were in a wing of the house with a shared shower/sink and shared separate toilet. It worked well since our friends stayed in the other room of the wing.
The breakfast they offered was fantastic. It was continental but quite deluxe: all kinds of breads and bagels, hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, fresh fruit including berries and pineapple, homemade granola bars and banana bread, cereals, nuts and dried fruit, coffee, and a good tea selection. And ... gluten-free bread and cereal! Unfortunately there was only one toaster so I didn't take a chance with the bread, but the cereal (Nature's Path Mesa Sunrise with raisins) was delicious, especially with all the nice toppings. I also enjoyed delicious chocolate mint rooibos tea from the Banff Tea Company.
There's a wonderful bakery in Banff, Wild Flour, that sells many gluten-free baked goods. We went there twice in two days so I could sample their treats. The mint "rawreo" (in second photo above) had a delicious mint flavour, though the texture of the cookie was a bit weird - I guess that's because they're raw. The next day I tried a ginger peach muffin which was a bit dense, but otherwise really good. Sadly I didn’t feel like I could indulge in the Mexican chocolate cookie or the brownie as well. The bakery also makes a delicious cappuccino and a yummy lunch, with lots of GF options for soups and salads. And of course, there are plenty of gluten-filled baked goods and fresh-baked breads.
We went to the Bear Street Tavern for supper because I read online that they have gluten-free pizza. I chose one with wild mushrooms, pine nuts, and pesto, which was just as delicious as it sounds. The crust was thin and crispy, with none of the beautiful puckering and air-filled holes of the gluten version, but still good. J unfortunately was disappointed with his pork belly mac and cheese, since the pork was rubbery and the flavour nothing special. But we all enjoyed the atmosphere of the place – casual and trendy.
We also had a taste of home in Banff at Cows Ice Cream, the company from PEI. We introduced our friends to the joys of 16 percent butterfat and whimsical flavours like Gooey Mooey (burnt sugar with chocolate caramel cups) and Wowie Cowie (vanilla with english toffee swirl, chocolate flakes and Skor bits).
When you enter the store, the intoxicating scent of freshly baked, sugary waffle cones (with just a hint of almond) hits your nose. Sadly, I can't eat the cones anymore, but my cup of Chunky Chocolate Mint was still delicious, and reminded me of summers on PEI.
The next time we visit the mountains it will be with our baby. With our baby! I still can't quite believe it.
It’s so lovely looking at these sunny photos and remembering our wonderful vacation on P.E.I. last summer. What a great time we had.
Leonhard’s opened in downtown Charlottetown in the summer of 2008, right before we moved to Alberta. I know that if we still lived there, it’s a place we would visit frequently.
The cafe is owned by a very friendly German couple who previously had a stand at the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market where they sold their delicious baked goods. I think everyone was happy when they decided to open their own place. It’s a beautiful, European-style cafe that serves specialty coffees and teas, lots of baked goods, and a full menu of sandwiches, soups, salads and hot foods. I’ve never eaten a meal there, but I’ve heard good reports, and it always looks tantalizing. I was very happy to see that all of their soups are gluten-free.
Leonhard’s also makes an effort to source their ingredients locally. They buy a lot of produce and meat from vendors at the farmers’ market. Their coffee comes from a coffee roaster in New Brunswick, and their tea from a Charlottetown tea company. Some of their pastries are made on-site and others are made by a local pastry company. It is great to see this kind of commitment to supporting the local food scene. You can visit their website to learn more.
I was very happy to discover they have a chocolate espresso torte that is gluten-free. I was expecting a dense flourless cake, a popular GF dessert in many restaurants. This was so much more. It’s silky and rich, but not too sweet, with a prominent espresso flavour. Paired with fresh, unsweetened whipped cream, it’s a heavenly dessert I would go back for time after time if I was closer.
J loved his seven-nut pie, similar to a pecan pie with a brown sugar filling. He’s also a big fan of their florentine cookies.
I brought my friend Mackenzie to Leonhard’s when we spent an afternoon together. We each savoured iced coffees, hers a simple cafe-au-lait, mine an iced mocha. I didn’t realize it would come with more of that delicious whipped cream on top, but the whole thing hit the spot.
I love the feeling at Leonhard’s. It’s relaxed but elegant. And it’s always busy, filled with all different groups of people: girlfriends out for lunch, couples, and young families. It’s a cafe with character, and I’d love to see more places like it in Charlottetown.
Leonhard’s Cafe and Restaurant
42 University Avenue
Charlottetown, PEI
www.leonhards.ca
I flew to Toronto a few weeks ago for a conference with my Buddhist group. After the conference I stayed in the city for a short visit with my friend emily. It was my first time there since becoming celiac, so I was eager to try some of the city’s gluten-free offerings.
By a strange coincidence, I ended up eating a lot of vegan food. And of course, a lot of baked goods. Here are a few sh0ts I took and some descriptions. I was pretty lax about photos on this trip because I forgot my camera at home and was relying on the camera on my Blackberry – not the best.
Iced latte and gluten-free dacquoise at L’Espresso Bar Mercurio
The dacquoise felt like a real indulgence, and I ate it all up before I thought to snap a picture. It’s a small, round, layered pastry with thin discs of meringue and espresso cream, very elegant and delicious. The iced latte also hit the spot on that balmy day. I really liked the atmosphere of this place too. Kind of European, very bustling. They have a good selection of GF baked goods, including cookies and cheesecake. I took a few things for the road and the almond cookie was the best. They also offer gluten-free bread for all their sandwiches, so I’ll definitely keep it in mind when I’m back in the city.
Lunch at Rawlicious
No photos. I met my friend Michelle here at the location in Yorkville. It was my first time in a raw restaurant so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I left the meal quite impressed. I appreciated the fact that everything on the menu was gluten-free, and though some things sounded more appetizing than others, there was a lot of choice. I really enjoyed the sprouted buckwheat pizza with a salad. Compared to the many GF pizza crust I’ve tried, this raw one was delicious and had a good texture too. The roasted vegetables on top were also good, and I barely noticed that the “cheese” was actually made a of cashews. The side salad was large and fresh with a great ginger dressing. The whole meal was extremely filling and I felt very virtuous when I finished.
The restaurant is small and cozy and the service was friendly. It was the perfect spot for our lunch date.
Cappuccino at Crema Coffee Co.
emily took me here for a quick coffee. Am I ever glad she did. It was one of the best cappuccinos I’ve had. Ever. Smooth and full of so much flavour I didn’t even know coffee could have. The photo isn’t much, but it was damn good.
Macarons at Nadège
I made the trek up Yonge Street to visit the new location of a pastry shop called Nadège. Wherever I travel I know I can always eat macarons, those tiny sandwich cookies made of almonds and egg whites, and since they’re still a pretty huge trend in many cities it’s fun to find new places to get them. Nadège was number one on a “best macarons in toronto” list I found online, and emily confirmed that they are excellent.
I’m so glad I took the walk. The weather was beautiful and it’s always fun to wander in a city you don’t know. On my walk up Yonge I stumbled upon a beautiful little shop called The Drake Hotel General Store where I coveted virtually everything.
Nadège did not disappoint. It’s a small storefront with a long case full of minimalistic fresh displays and a few shelves of sweet wrapped confections for sale. I was especially impressed with the fantastically coloured basil-strawberry marshmallows (above photo). I chose a few macarons for myself and a small box of chocolates to take home to J. That’s the only unfortunate part about macarons – they’re usually so expensive that I can only afford to try a few. On the other hand, they’re so sweet that a few can easily sate me.
I tried the salted caramel (always a must-try for me), blackberry chocolate and pistachio and ate them next to a nearby fountain/pool.
The salted caramel was a definite standout. I am addicted to that flavour and it was done very well. The perfect balance of salty and sweet. The blackberry chocolate was just okay, since I got absolutely no blackberry flavour from the cookie part, merely a rich chocolate from the filling. The pistachio was good too, but neither of them caressed my taste buds like the salted caramel. I was pleased to realize that the macarons from Duchess Bakeshop in Edmonton are just as good as these.
That’s all for this time, Toronto. Thanks for all the fun.
Fried clams are a PEI summer staple. Not just on PEI, in fact, but all around the Maritimes. There are a couple of legendary clam spots in the small town of Cap Pelé, New Brunswick. My family always went to Camille’s (could have been because my father’s name was also Camille, but I think it was mostly because of how good the food was), and some people are loyal to Fred’s. Cap Pelé is a common stopping place on the highway that takes you through New Brunswick to Quebec.
We had no reason to go to Cap Pelé on this past vacation, but there are lots of good fried clams on the Island too. Unfortunately, I can’t eat them anymore – no one has come up with a gluten-free version that I saw. But J decided to do the work for both of us and have a sort of fried clams taste-off around the Island.
You generally find fried clams at small, roadside restaurants where you order at the counter. I’m pretty sure they sell them at almost every dairy bar on PEI (and there are many – perhaps a subject for another post). They’re also popular at pubs or other restaurants with table service that focus on seafood.
There’s also a fried-clam debate among some people, and right within our marriage. There are two basic versions of fried clams: “whole” and “strips”. Either the whole clam is fried, or just the rubbery part that attaches to the clam shell. Clam strips are often frozen and thus served year-round, but in my experience whole clams are fresh and in-season.
From everything I've heard, most people prefer whole clams, which are more expensive. That's the category I fall into. I love the textural variety of eating a whole fried clam: the crunchy batter, the chewy end, then the juicy, soft burst of the clam body. Plain strips – all chew and no creaminess – just don't compare.
Others love whole clams and clam strips equally, and that's J's camp. (He's always had the ability to appreciate all kinds of foods, whereas I can be guilty of food snobbism.) He says the two versions are completely different, that you can barely even compare them. His exact words were, "it's like comparing fries with mashed potatoes".
I must admit that on this trip even the clam strips looked appealing. I think it was the promise of the batter.
Rick’s Fish ’N’ Chips, St. Peter’s
The drive from Charlottetown to the small town of Souris by way of St. Peter's is one I've taken likely more than a hundred times. My father's family is from Souris and we spent time there every summer of my childhood. One of the most beautiful views along the highway is St. Peter's Bay. You come upon it gradually, the blue water glinting in the sun out of the left-hand window of your car. When you turn the corner at the stop sign, you're in town, and you get a great look at the bay as you drive over the small bridge. It's usually dotted with buoys holding the mussel traps on the bottom.
If you keep going straight you'll end up at Greenwich Beach, part of the PEI National Park. Turn right to continue on to Souris, and if you're craving fresh seafood or ice cream, stop at Rick's.
Rick's is pretty well-known across the Island, but we rarely ate there as kids. I do recall one time when we stopped with my Dad and ordered pizza, of all things. I don't think it was very good. I loved the homey feel of the place, but the fried clams were mediocre. The batter was their downfall. It was a traditional fish and chips batter, and much too thick, so J said the flavour of the clam got lost in all the breading.
Basin Head Beach, Red Point
While spending time with family in Souris, J and I visited one of my favourite spots on earth. Basin Head Beach is popular across the Island, because of the “run”, a river flowing from inland to the sea, with a wharf and a bridge to jump off. As a child I spent many happy hours jumping off and letting the current float me out to the sea. The white-sand beach at Basin Head is also beautiful and endless, typical for the Eastern end of the Island. When I was growing up my family rented a cottage every summer one beach over from Basin Head, where the tourists were less plentiful but the surroundings every bit as beautiful.
J and I were at Basin Head Saturday morning at about 10:30 am. It was deserted, except for the teenage lifeguards on the wharf waiting for kids to show up. The softly lapping water reflected the grey sky, awash with heavy clouds. It was not ideal beach weather, but I’m so glad we went anyway. Just walking along the beach soothed every part of me. The water there is so clear the underwater ridges of sand carved by the surf are visible from the shore. We were determined to go swimming, even when it started to spit rain.
The water was numbingly cold, but diving under felt like going back to the womb. Swimming in salt water is a sensation I’ve known nearly my entire life, but it had been three years since I'd last felt it. The clarity of the water, the way the waves bob at your chest, the slight buoyancy -- there's nothing like it.
A snack of fried clams was just what J wanted after we dried off as best we could and made our way back up the beach. The snack bar offered nothing for me, but J thoroughly enjoyed his clam strips, temptingly presented on top of a lettuce leaf with homemade tartar sauce and a slice of lemon. The batter was dark golden, crunchy, and crumbly, almost like fried chicken. J declared them excellent clam strips, and he was even converted by the tartar sauce, which he has never enjoyed before.
Brits Fish and Chips, Charlottetown
Brits is a chain restaurant with a location in Edmonton too, but I’ve never been to either. The Charlottetown restaurant moved into an old spot downtown on University Avenue that had several previous tenants. I remember going to the same space in high school when it used to be Checker’s Diner and drinking thick chocolate milkshakes.
The reason for our visit to Brits this time was because I found out they have gluten-free fish and chips, fried in a separate GF fryer. This is all too rare, and since I was trying to eat as much fish as possible on our trip, I had to give it a try.
My haddock was delicious, though the batter was nothing fantastic. It definitely didn’t have the delicious golden crunchiness that makes regular fish and chips so good. It was stiff and plasticky and the flavour was missing – I suspect it was made principally with white rice flour and cornstarch.
It can be tough to get your hopes up about special GF foods like this, because often the reality is not the way you imagine. Fish and chips is something I've loved my whole life, but it would be hard for a restaurant to recapture the wheat-filled taste the way I remember it.
J, of course, chose the clam strips, which came with fries (often called a clam platter). He enjoyed the clams, but we both found the fries kind of soggy. He said the strips did not measure up to Basin Head's version.
The Frosty Treat Dairy Bar, Kensington
Our fried clam tour really made its way across the Island. Kensington is in the Western end of PEI, near Summerside, the second-largest city. Frosty Treat is definitely the most well-known spot in town. Its somewhat inane slogan, “Don’t drive by, drive in” has become sort of a joke among our friends.
Again, it’s right on the highway, and it’s the perfect stop for a snack or an ice-cream cone between Summerside and Charlottetown. We've stopped here many times on the way home from concerts at the Indian River Music Festival nearby. On warm summer nights the deck is always alive with people.
Frosty Treat is atypical of most PEI dairy bars, being a larger and flashier affair. Their menu is printed in bright colours, rather than black sliding letters on a white board, and they offer non-traditional treats like deep-fried Mars bars.
J’s favourite dairy bar treat is always a soft-serve combination (chocolate and vanilla) chocolate dip cone with nuts (which he now enjoys much more since he can take lactaid before eating it). This time he went for the fried clams too. The whole clams are served with crinkle-cut fries, and these turned out to be J’s favourite whole clams of the trip. He ate them in the car on the way back to town, and they smelled incredible. The breading was not quite as crunchy as the Basin Head clams, but crispy and thin, just the right amount.
With that, our fried clam tour came to an end. The clam strip winner was the Basin Head canteen, and Frosty Treat took home the whole clam trophy. Though I didn’t get to eat any this time around, I hope I have enough taste memories to rely on for the rest of my life.
We escaped to the mountains last weekend.
It was glorious.
I think growing up in the mountains must be similar to growing up near the ocean. You take it for granted until you leave, and then you miss it like crazy.
Canmore is a beautiful town. The mountains are a constant backdrop, rising up all around you. I had to fight the urge to photograph every scene, even the peaks behind the Starbucks. As it was, I took lots of photos. Especially on our walk to Quarry Lake.
Quarry Lake is a spring-fed lake that used to be a mining area and is over 100 metres deep in some areas. It's a popular place to swim, with a little "beach" (keep in mind I'm from PEI) carved out of the gravel at the edge of the lake. We lay in the grass and watched the sun move in and out of the amazing clouds above the mountains.
I was hoping to go swimming, but the water was some of the coldest I've ever been in. I jumped in and lasted about four seconds before I crawled, shivering, back up onto the shore. The lake, however, is apparently one of the warmest places to swim in Canmore this time of year.
That night we went out for pizza. Thanks to the Celiac Husband, I knew that the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company made gluten-free pizza.
Our 30-minute wait for a table was worth it. Everyone at our table of six loved their pizzas, remarking on the fresh, interesting flavours. The menu is packed with original combinations, such as the Mexicali, with chocolate-chili sauce, corn and jicama root.
The glutenous flatbread crust got good reviews, and it looked delicious. My GF crust was very good as well, ranking above Boston Pizza's version, which I've eaten several times. The menu says it's made with brown rice, buckwheat, and chickpea flour. When J had a taste he found the bean flavour overwhelming, but it didn't bother me.
I chose the Apple Chicken Harvest: free-range spiced chicken, Granny Smith apples, red onions, cherry tomatoes, pesto and cheddar cheese on a tomato sauce base. I'm glad I chose something a bit different, because the sweetness of the apples and juiciness of the chicken with the pesto was fantastic.
J and I also shared a fig and goat's cheese salad which we really enjoyed. It was fresh and tasty, and we especially liked the pea shoots on top. There was plenty of goat cheese, but I couldn't really taste much fig from the dressing.
Our server was excellent, giving us the right amount of attention throughout the evening. She also knew all about the GF options. For dessert, unfortunately, they were all out of the GF creme brulee and cheesecake, so I had to content myself with a scoop of vanilla ice cream while others devoured the brownie with cookies and cream ice cream. It got raves.
I was impressed with the restaurant’s emphasis on the environment and using local products. They buy green electricity from Bullfrog Power and source all of their meats and many of their vegetables from within Alberta. All of their fish and seafood is certified by Ocean Wise, a sustainable fisheries program. Their claim is that every meal is carbon-neutral, due to environmental initiatives in their restaurants, and their use of carbon assets. You can learn more on their website.
We wandered back to our hotel, full of pizza and ice cream and content to gaze on the beautiful scenery and the setting sun. Though I'm heading for the beautiful shores of PEI in a few days, I also can't wait to go back to the mountains. For an Eastern girl like me, they're something special.
Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company
#1 838 10th Street, Canmore
www.rockymountainflatbread.ca
(There are also locations in Vancouver)
