Random thoughts of restaurants and food in Vancouver, BC!
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It might seem like a déjà vu but, last year, around this time, I wrote a blog post about my mom’s cooking. Since I was in Panama a couple of weeks ago, I thought it might be suitable to write about it again. So, to my mom and all mothers, Happy Mother’s Day!
Would you believe I tweet about this?
To those who have read this blog for some time, to those who know me, specially those whom I have broken the bread with, know I am quite adamant about attending open houses, receiving “freebies” and similar situations. It is because I am an average person who just happens to write a blog which tries to describe experiences average consumer would have. However, you can’t deny that, despite my public notes about what to expect from this blog, once in a while, people in charge of PR have tried to contact me (the most hilarous one being one from a local restaurant – which shall remain unnamed – asking me to wear my stilettos and attend an event). So far, I have chosen not to attended any events from places restaurants in Vancouver but, I was quite puzzled when I received this email:
Hi! I have a review offer for you from President’s Choice. President’s Choice is celebrating Canada’s culinary cultural mosaic
with 1000 Tastes of Canada.Would you like to sample some of these products? We’d like to send you:
- PC Indian Butter Chicken Cooking Sauce
- PC Blood Orange Italian Soda
- PC Tzatziki Yogurt Dressing
- PC Memories Of Mexico Fajita Cooking Sauce
- PC The Decadent Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies
- PC Barbeque Baby Back Ribs Rippled Potato Chips
I’ve also got a release, backgrounders and images I can send. You can also learn more at www.presidentschoice.ca.
Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll have the samples shipped to you. Thanks so much for your time!
Rather than say yes or no outright, I checked with some other local food bloggers because, while I had some thoughts, I wanted to hear their thoughts too. In general, they were quite enthusiastic about it. However, I still had to ask one question in mind:
Dear ************,
Thanks for your email.
I will safely assume you sent me the email because I write a food related blog. But, before I answer your question, can you, please, tell me the expectations from your side if I choose to accept the samples? I.e., Do you expect I will blog it after I have sampled them? Will I have an independent opinion of the products? Please advise.
Now, before anybody tells me I might be making up this email, let me assure you, others were BCCed on this email… And, here is the response I got:
I was looking through Vancouver-based blogs when I found I’m Only Here for the Food. I saw that you write about a diverse range of foods (as you said Vancouver has a wide variety of offerings), and thought this 1000 Tastes of Canada campaign would be perfect for you. We would like to send you the sample products and hear your honest opinion. If you hate the food and don’t want to post about it, that’s perfectly fine. If you hate the food and want to write about how much you hated it, that’s your right, also. You are not entering any kind of agreement with us by accepting these products for review.
I hope this answers your questions, but feel free to get back to me with any other concerns.
Let me translate that just in case: Although I received these free samples, I have total editorial control over this post. No $$$ was provided in exchange for writing this post. In fact, rather than me keeping them for myself, I had a really good idea (something echoed by the people I BCCed): Do a mini-gathering and cook with these products!
Note: For a larger version, please, click on the image – it will open in a new window.
Note 2: To readers outside of Canada, President’s Choice is a private label brand of Loblaws, who operates different supermarkets in Canada, the best known being Superstore and the recently purchased T&T.
Oh, boy. This post is long overdue. I originally took all the pictures, made the recipe, had some guinea pigs, I mean, “volunteers” test it (Hi Helen!), make another “improved” version based on their feedback (no pictures of this one, though), had another set of guinea pigs eat it and still no blog post. Can I say I am procrastinating? Of course not! I mean, there were all these festivals/celebrations going on in the last couple of weekends (Taste of the City, Caribbean Days, Powell Street Festival and Pride Parade)! And, although there is a festival this weekend too (the Vancouver Chinatown Festival – thanks to Jenny of My Secret Eden for telling me this one), I think I will take a break. After all, I already blogged about the Chinatown Night Market this year and I don’t expect the food offerings to be that different…
So now, back to this post… In early July, a colleague sent us an email: 5 pounds of blueberries for $10. His family, it seems, operates a blueberry farm and I just seized the opportunity. (On that note, BC is a large blueberry producer). How much? How about… 10 pounds!!! Now, now, I did not eat all of it, instead, I gave 5 pounds to a friend of mine and I kept the remaining half. However, still the question: What do you do with 5 pounds of blueberries? I was nibbling them until I said to myself: Hey, how about blueberry pie? Hmmmmm… Blueberry pie!
It is almost that time of the year… When you start seeing more fruits and vegetables and don’t have to rely on frozen versions – which, depending on which fruit/vegetable we are talking about, they can be quite good in its own ways. One of the fruits that I was awaiting for was cherries. Although I won’t say I am crazy about them, there was something I wanted to make with cherries (but not with the frozen variety): Clafoutis. What is that? Actually, until last year, if I heard that word, it might have sounded like something you would get in a pharmacy with a prescription. No, I learned about this in an episode of Good Eats (one of my favourite cooking shows – the episode in particular was Going Dutch, which also feature another recipe that I like but I have extremely time consuming: No Knead Bread). And what is clafoutis? Check this picture below…
I have mentioned in several other places grain legumes are a personal favourite. I can’t think of a variety of it I won’t eat: Chickpeas, black-eye, lentils, kidney beans, peanuts, etc. etc. While I was living in Panama, it was something I could find easily in any restaurant, as it was a staple. Sometimes it might be cooked together (arroz con guandu – rice with pigeon pea) or cooked separately and served together (red kidney beans and rice). When I moved to Vancouver, thanks to the multi-cultural society, I could still find some of them in some restaurants, though not to the same extent as in Panama. So, in the end, I had to go back to basics and, well, cook them myself! Here is my interpretation of red kidney beans, which is usually served with rice but I like to eat them standalone…
First, a picture of the end result…
That’s macaroni and cheese, steamed broccoli and roasted chicken. And now, the story of how I ended up cooking this. Or to be more precise, blame this to…
Maize is an ingredient that puzzles in a funny way. While I will eat it without any problem, when it comes to cooking, aside from corn cob, well, I just draw blank. It is not that I don’t know what to do with it; rather, just boiling/broiling it is great. However, in winter, fresh corn is not available and, as a result, we look for alternatives such as canned, frozen or, the topic of this post, ground – as in cornmeal.
But what can I do with cornmeal? My first thought was… masa! In fact, I was thinking of tamal, the maize dought dish. But, wrapping them would have a time consuming task. Tamal de olla (the pot version of tamal) was option #2. But no, I wanted something simple; something like cornbread.
