This, my friends, is the sunburn I got after six hours of weeding.

James:  We live at altitude honey.

Me: We had snow on the ground two weeks ago!

June 10, 2010

 

Never underestimate the power of the sun.

Last week has not been a good one. My boyfriend injured his back at work and I had to pick up the slack on the homefront. You would think that with only two of us and a few cats there wouldn’t be THAT much work to do, but you’d be wrong. We had oodles of gardening chores planned and the brunt of them fell on me. I promptly did what any person with such options would do, and recruited my currently unemployed brother to do the heavy lifting.

Together we mowed and raked the grass, aerated (the manual way, read HARD), overseeded with Eco-Lawn (a grass that promises to be wonderful, can’t wait to find out), and dug a huge trench. All of the above translated to about six hours of backbreaking labor between the TWO of us. And I work out pretty consistently, people. I pay my dues in countless push-ups, partial chin-ups and many curls, dips and squats. And *I* almost threw my back out after raking for less than an hour.  Yes we have a corner lot, so a bit more square footage to cover, but much of my backyard is also a concrete pad which you’d think would offset the grass a bit. And we’re not even done yet – there’s still weeding to be done, and raspberries to plant, and tomatoes to take outside as they’re ready to be hardened off now, and all of this is suddenly my sole responsibility. Now, if we were talking laundry or vacuuming or something, I’d just do the bare minimum required to keep us afloat and wait for life to settle down before catching up, but gardening waits for nobody, so done it got. Of course the laundry, vacuuming and cooking also didn’t magically take a vacation, and the fact that I can’t handle some plants, cats, and a house is precisely the reason why the thought of having children terrifies me.

Oh and did I mention the BUGS? The first bugs of the season are always a unique and special thrill. I seem to become a bit desensitized by the end of each summer, to the point where seeing the odd wee insect no longer elicits terrified screams that scare the neighborhood children, but the first few times I see a spider, all bets are off. They might be good for my yard, but they’re certainly bad for my adrenal glands and vocal cords. And I have no idea what they’re eating in my organic (read: disorganized with weeds) yard, but whatever it is it’s doing their body good. That sucker below is about the size of my palm.

Work has been its own set of pleasures this week what with the new IT department handily installing some new anti-virus software that’s making all our programs run like a turtle on valium. Again, normally I’d take this with a grain of salt and wait for someone louder than me to complain until it got resolved (the office is FULL of candidates), but wasting half my life waiting for some app to open for a half an hour has been just adding to my joie de vivre. On that note, I keep hearing about all these ‘trends’ in the workplace, like lessee, working from home and getting compensated for the value delivered rather than the hours put in, but do I see any of them here? Nope.  All I see is if I finish my work early, I get more work. Not leaving early, not more money to stay, but more work. Guess what that motivates me to do? If you guessed something along surfing the net, congratulations. I’ll save this rant for another day though, lots more to say on this subject.

Warning: If you’re squeamish, stop reading now….

The only cool thing that’s come out of the last few days involves me spending three hours browsing the Body Worlds Exhibit that’s currently in Calgary at the Science Centre. It was interesting and disturbing in equal measures, and has given me much food for thought.  I’ve always had a strong interest in how our bodies work, but am incredibly not competent at handling actual injury and blood so have never wanted to pursue a medical career. The thought of seeing the inner workings of the body was fascinating to me, and off I went to spend a pleasant afternoon looking at skinned bodies and medical slices of organs.  I have never had any fear of death or dying (provided it’s not cruel and unusual of course), so I didn’t expect the odd mix of reverence and vague disgust I felt while being surrounded by flayed bodies.  I will certainly tell you that a career as a pathologist would be out. (Actually I’ve often wondered about people who work as pathologists. No matter how much you like to solve the mystery of someone’s death it’s a disturbing and often disgusting profession to be in. How do you get the smell out of your skin and hair at the end of the day? But I digress.)

The exhibit is an odd mixture of posed bodies with anatomical diagrams, slices and samples of various organs and their functions and pseudo-philosophical posters on the walls ruminating on everything from consciousness to the existence of a soul.  It definitely has some great points, the crystal clear workings of the organs, muscles, tendons and nerves that make up our bodies, the amazing depictions of what cancer actually looks like, or what smoking does to a lung (not as much as coal mining), and something that I found very impactful – a slice of an obese man. The visual of the layer of fat that surrounds his midsection is vivid enough, but it’s seeing how his internal organs are displaced and overtaken by body fat that was the strong visual to process.  The artistic and voyeuristic aspect of the exhibit is the part that’s harder to swallow. On one hand you have documented, consenting donors that offered their bodies for education. On the other hand you’re looking at human bodies, skinned, whimsically posed, often with odd bits of skin intact – the eyebrows, belly buttons, hair and there is some discomfort with that, no doubt about it.

I was surprised at how many young kids were there with their parents. Of course they handled it better than the adults did, showing true fascination for everything and asking pretty intelligent questions. Still I figured there was a minimum age in most parent’s head below which the exhibit would simply not be productive but tiring, like eight or something. I was wrong. In fact the cross-section of Calgary that made it there was pretty impressive – all ages, all genders, all types of people made their way to check out the workings of our bodies and ponder the contradiction between a dissection and a work of art.  If you think you can handle it – I’d recommend it.

We are wrapped up in some typical spring weather in Calgary, and by typical I mean gale force winds and alternating rain and snow. So while we wait for some sunshine to peek out from behind the clouds I wanted to share my impressions of the organic grocery delivery service that we’ve been using for a couple of years now – SPUD! The name is an acronym for Small Potatoes Urban Delivery and they arrived here from Vancouver in 2005 with current locations in Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and LA.

Running a well designed website they provide an array of organic choices aiming for mainly local producers – from fruit and veggies to bread, milk, meat and prepared foods, to cleaning supplies and personal hygiene items. While they were very fruit and veggie heavy at first, I’ve seen their lineup expand over time to include more and more convenient products. While I generally much prefer to go to a farmers market to stock up on food, there are many a time, especially in winter where such a trip is simply not happening. Left to choose sad looking veggies at the local grocery store (even if they look good I’d rather support local farmers with more sustainable practices), or schlepping across town on slick roads SPUD! Gives me a great alternative to both.

While their prices are fair to farmers, and there’s the convenience of delivery, they are often not cheap. It is not uncommon to see a single bell pepper or a zucchini hover around 2.50, especially out of season. A half pound of salad greens is typically over four dollars and organic, cage-free eggs are around six. Even when I understand deeply that the real cost of food is often not reflected at the grocery stores, sometimes SPUD!’s prices can be hard to swallow. I suppose the cashier till is where most abstract intentions to eat locally and support sustainable food break down in the face of limited budgets. I also reflect on the fact that I’m cooking for two, and our food budget is easily our largest expense outside of the mortgage. Having said that, I think we’ve developed a system that allows us to maximize our food choices for the way that we eat, and it clearly works for us.  For around a hundred dollars a week we get six litres of milk, a couple of great Hoven farm steaks, a loaf of bread, a couple heads of garlic, zucchini and mushrooms for the week, six to twelve apples, a few lemons, two to five tomatoes, sometimes cukes or green onions, whatever seasonal fruit may be on sale, occasional toothpaste or tea, or crackers or burritos or eggs, as well as hazelnuts and mac’n’cheese.  Some combination of those comprises our weekly baskets.

The best way to eat in a manner that does not cause damage to my ethical sensibilities and wallet is to deal with local farmers directly. When you purchase bulk meat from local suppliers, freeze/can seasonal produce, you mainly need milk and bread as well as some fresh stuff throughout the week. Dealing with a delivery service at the very least eliminates the many middlemen that reduce farmers’ earnings to nothing.

I love the fact that they provide pretty detailed info on some of their suppliers and you can find out who grows your food and where. I love the fact that you can buy bulk items in caselots, which is great when it’s say, peach season and they’re affordable and you want to freeze a few bags. I love the fact that they have great info on most of their products, telling you what’s in it, how to store it and how to use it. Their weekly delivery sheet has the bill on one side and a neat newsletter on the other, where they profile green websites, provide a seasonal recipe and share tidbits of news. You can find out exactly why there is a shortage of onions and potatoes – apparently it’s because farmers underplanted due to vast overproduction in previous years, or how the earthquake affected blueberry farmers in Chile. I love the fact that they interact with the community, they are on Twitter with updates and are supporting the Calgary Horticultural Society Fundraiser.  I love their reward points that you can redeem for discounts, and the fact that THEY DELIVER! Their customer service is also pretty good with prompt refunds on bad produce (only happened twice I think), and relatively quick replies to questions.

Here are some features that they don’t have, and I wish they did. Product reviews. This is elementary, and many is the time I took a chance on something and found it too… granola for me. This is especially common with some soy-based, organic, vegan-whatever foods. They are so healthy that the taste is like cardboard. The product reviews would quickly weed out the stuff that consumers actually like and the stuff that is only for the hardcore health warrior. I guess I’m a gourmand first. I also wish they carried small lot seasonal stuff. Like now all the food boards are aflutter over morels, ramps, fiddleheads, etc. Have I seen any in Calgary? Nope. This is not only applicable to SPUD! but also to all the restaurants claiming seasonality on their menus. Yeah? Where? I also wish they carried more local products that I know are good but aren’t partnered up with SPUD! for whatever reason – Lundt carrots, or Hotchkiss tomatoes for instance. I’m sure there are many reasons why certain farmers would not be a part of SPUD, but since *I* don’t know them I can only sigh. Surely there are local greenhouse farmers that grow tomatoes, they can’t all be from Mexico or wherever.

So like every business they have their good side and some room to improve. But they deliver ethically sourced products and the vast convenience of delivery. And I support them for trying for a vision where farmers get paid a living wage so that stories like the plight of these tomato pickers happens less often. Since the government blatantly disregards our votes, voting with our dollars is often the most impactful way we get heard.

WWW.SPUD.CA

I know, I’ll make a YouTube video!  Kidding.

Never did I think that those words would come out of my mouth, but there’s one of life’s surprises for ya. For the record, I can’t stand Ann Coulter, she’s too easy to make fun of on every level – from the superficial to the intellectual, except for there’s nothing intellectual about her, so never mind that. But really, she makes it too easy. And she’s already hated in the blogosphere with the hatred reserved for child molesters, so I won’t be joining their clamor.

But she’s recently been on a tour of Canada, starting in Ontario where she had to cancel an appearance due to ‘security concerns’, and now she’s enroute to my cold fair town of Calgary to give a speech tonight. If there was anyplace in Canada where she would not be tarred and feathered it would be in this bastion of conservatism, and even here she’s polarizing enough to prompt some pretty unflattering comparisons, an outcry on social media sites and a Facebook group dedicated to forming a human wall to prevent her from speaking. TO PREVENT HER FROM SPEAKING! People, this is ludicrous and contrary to the notion of free speech AND common sense.

A part of what constitutes adulthood is the ability to develop discernment and judgment and freedom to make one’s own decisions. To that end we are free to choose what concerts we attend, where we dine and who’s speeches we listen to. If someone wanted to ban a rock concert from coming to town because THEY didn’t agree with the lyrics, we’d be pretty pissed off and say stay home, right? Why would we not extend that courtesy to the people who want to listen to her speech tonight, whether out of curiosity or whatever. (And believe me, the irony of Ann Coulter speaking about free speech should make you laugh, not bother you. ) All I’m saying is that she’s entitled to her opinion, and we are entitled to either listen to it or not, agree with her or not. Nowhere does that include saying ‘you can’t come here and talk’.

All I’m saying is if you don’t want to see her speech – stay home. It’s hard to preach anything to an audience of one, and I’m sure most of her audience will be there either out of morbid curiosity with which we observe train wrecks, or to try and argue with her in person. But to deny her the right to speak – well people need to get over themselves. Until she takes her hate speech to the level of calling for direct action of causing someone harm, she’s entitled to her opinions, no matter how misguided or offensive. So all ya ‘protesters’ need to get over yourselves and your belief that your opinion overrides hers. Stay home. Don’t listen. And if you want something to really get worked up about, sit there and ponder why the government thinks it’s a better steward of your money than you are.

PS – Stay home – is not a ‘tactic’ that you need to exercise to make her go away. It is YOU exercising YOUR rights, without infringing on the rights and freedoms of others.

I’ve been blessed with a new co-worker who loves to eat as much as I do. So three days this week instead of pondering how sad it is to work every day (very sad), we’ve taken the liberty of a long lunch to check out three restaurants that participated in Downtown Dining Week, offering a three course menu for 25.00. The list of participating restaurants was impressive, spanning not only most high-end places downtown, but also Mission, Bridgeland and Kensington. Some restaurants only did an evening menu, while others were a long hike from the office, but in the end we narrowed it down to three: Teatro (because even though it’s a venerable institution, we’ve never been), Saint Germain (because they’re very new), and Rush (because they just got voted Calgary’s best restaurant by Avenue Magazine). 

None of them disappointed, and here’s a quick recap of the three.

 Bread rolls at Teatro

Teatro opened up with a tomato confit with a prosciutto, basil pesto and pecorino pepato. It was a lovely dish and received top marks from my co-worker, and a bit less so from me. The tomatoes were soft and tomatoey, the prosciutto lovely and the cheese sharp, but the room temperature dish could’ve used more pizzazz. Like a garlic oil in the pesto or some garlic chives slivered on top, it seemed to lack an element of spice that would make it great.

The chorizo pappardelle with red peppers, parmesan and green onion was a wonderful dish. Comforting, balanced, the pappardelle was perfectly cooked, the chorizo was sharp, and the sauce was a perfect balance of salty, sweet and sour with none of the excess sourness of lesser tomato sauces. It was a glorious bowl of pasta.

The dessert tasting was a duo of some chocolate concoction and the most amazing chocolate crème brulee I’ve ever had. It was decadent, outstanding and flawless and a perfect end to a great meal. In fact it was so good, I kind of forgot to take the photo before I ate it. It was worth it, trust me.  Overall, Teatro is a restaurant that totally deserves its standing as one of the pillars of fine dining in Calgary, and it’d return here in a heartbeat for a nice dinner.

I’m sorry, I ate it…  : ( It was THAT good.

Saint Germain is the only restaurant that actually offered a choice between two appetizers, entrees and desserts, and my friend and I both wanted the same thing. So in the spirit of enjoying the lunch fully, (who needs variety), we had the same starters and mains and a different dessert each. We had a wonderful smokey lentil soup to start, and it was thick and hearty and good.

The prosaic fish and chips that we chose over merguez sausage and white beans were pretty good, but not original enough to win big points. The fish was flaky soft on the inside,  moist and steamy and enclosed in perfectly crisp batter, and the fries were thin and pretty good, not great. They could’ve used more salt and were a bit on the dry side. The dish came with two dipping sauces – one a tomato based sauce similar in texture to cocktail sauce, and some sort of mayo based concoction that was just addictive. Guess which one was gone first, veg or mayo?

The desserts were a white Provencal cake with lavender honey ice cream and a walnut tarte. The cake left us both indifferent – it was a plain, dryish white disk without much flavor and the ice cream didn’t seem to help, but the walnut tart was fantastic. Crumbly, crunchy, rich and nutty it was a close second to the crème brulee the day before. The prices here were totally affordable with the awesome sounding daily special (something along the lines of lamb and pickled onions and…) falling into the 12-15 dollar range, which makes this the most realistic place for an actual weekday lunch.

Meh

Yum

Rush fully deserves its current standing as the best restaurant in town. I am so often disappointed by newly hyped restaurants that I wasn’t sure I’d be impressed, but I was.

The apple and celery root soup was sublime – a creamy dreamy bowl of goodness with flakes of smoked ham hock that actually made us silent for a moment.

The braised short rib was not only fork tender and possessing a rich savoury flavor, but served over creamy polenta and the best braised greens I’ve ever had, it was a study in umami and comfort. It was a seriously solid dish, so rich and good that it made you reevaluate an ingredient you thought you knew. Dishes that make you do that deserve the highest praise in my books.

The dessert was a letdown, but mainly because I fell victim to my expectations. See when I hear the words lemon tart, my mind trained like Pavlov’s dog, automatically thinks of A Ladybug Bakery’s lemon tart. It’s a reflex that I can’t help, and frankly don’t want to, since it’s the best lemon tart on the planet and probably in the universe. So to get a lemon SQUARE (a very different animal) on my plate trying to sail under false pretenses was cause for intense disappointment and longing for the real deal. See when a town has a lemon tart THAT good, you might as well give up and either serve theirs, or carefully try and skirt the competition altogether.  Anyhow, the lemon square was kind of boring though the raspberry gelato was intensely flavored and sweet. It was the weakest dessert out of the three restaurants, but I’ll totally forgive them due to their mindblowing food.

Square - not tart

If your town has a dining week I totally urge you to partake and experience all those places you’re not sure are worth the money.

I’m going to go bond with P90X DVD now.

It’s no secret that going out to eat is one of my favorite things to do, right up there with skiing and reading, and people, that says a lot. I’m one of those travelers that will have a ‘must eat’ list before going on a trip, although I don’t plan every meal, that would be anal. Just a list of several restaurants that define a city, from big names to hole in the wall gems. Often I came back from those vacations and cried because they reached a level of awesomeness rarely seen in Cowtown. So it was in the spirit of low expectations that I checked out Calgary’s newest restaurant last Thursday, and it was surprisingly awesome.

Having been open for only two days when my friend Vanessa and I descended on it, they were still a bit unprepared in the drinks department, especially when it came to anything other than wine – no beer kegs yet, no hard cider, no soda for a highball, but undeterred we requested a caesar. It was rather serviceable as my friend put  – worse than Spur and better than the Keg. They must have been out of veggies too, as it arrived unadorned with beans, celery or asparagus – namely the best parts of a caesar.  But they were JUST opened, so can’t really complain.

The menu was quirky and fabulous  – bone marrow gratin (in Calgary!), romaine with crispy chicken skin, arugula and tuna conserva with lemon pickled new potatoes and shaved celery, baked raclette… and although it was hard to decide, ya gotta start somewhere, so we went with carnivore’s delight -  the bone marrow gratin, duck fat poutine, and the share burger – a min. 9 oz order of a garlic sausage burger topped with an egg.

This was my friends’ first time with the bone marrow, and luckily she’s an adventurous soul – it consists of two thick rounds of bone, seasoned lightly and broiled, served with flakes of parsley to cut the richness, flakes of sea salt for crunch and to bring out the flavor and thin crostini. The marrow was as divine as expected – warm, rich, beefy and robust. (For the uninitiated souls the texture is similar to soft boiled eggs’ egg yolk and the taste is not unlike bread and drippings, or dragging your bread through the bottom of a roast dish.) The crostini appeared to be buttered though, which is a bit of overkill since beef marrow itself is intensely rich. (Yeah, go ahead and ask for more crostini right away – four is just not enough.)

The duck fat fried poutine was… ducky. A small dish of thick, hand cut fries with a mild duck fat flavor and just a bit less gravy than it should have had. It was well seasoned, and had the fries been crisper and the gravy more bountiful it would have reached greatness.

The burger was not a traditional beef burger, but a sausage burger as stated on the menu. A thick patty charred on the outside and cooked to medium on the inside it was one of the most satisfying burgers I’ve had in a while. Topped with a sunny side up egg which slowly dripped over the meat and served on golden brioche it was just an embarrassment of riches when it comes to flavor. I’m almost reluctant to admit that in the midst of this carnivorous nirvana I actually wouldn’t have minded some tomatoes or pickles on the side – just to cut the richness. But no worries – I ordered a second caesar instead.

The portions are on the small side which led me to wonder at the outset whether we ordered enough food, and I’m happy to say my concerns were unfounded. The three dishes we shared left us very comfortably full, on the verge of stuffed really, and according to all witness accounts we eat like lumberjacks, so believe me when I tell you that three dishes between two people is plenty. Of course we did go all out on the meat front – had we ordered some lighter fare we might have had some room for dessert, which sounded just as original and fun as the menu – Saskatoon berries layered in a jar with cheese cake and graham crackers anyone?  Alas we did not, so it will be with pleasure that I’ll be returning there in the weeks to come to see Charcut come into their own and be an extremely worthy and welcome addition to the Calgary scene.

While people down south have been gleefully shoveling rare snow and building gray snowmen, February has been unseasonably warm on the prairies. Like scary warm, with temperatures barely dipping below zero and daytime highs of 4-8 C.

Instead of snow Calgary has been frequently blanketed by insanely thick fog. The kind that muffles all the sounds and gives a cathedral like hush to the city. The kind that turns the sky dusky white, even in broad daylight. The kind that settles in a kind of beautiful hoar frost all over trees and railings and bushes and mailboxes. The kind that feels like there’s magic in the air and it could swallow you whole.

Most of the time this happens at night lending an otherworldly stillness to the evenings, but the photos below were taken at 2 pm or so on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago. It was enchanting, and I have a feeling we will dearly pay for this with crappy weather in April/May/June/July – take your pick.

Does someone want to tell me why this tree in my front yard never shed its leaves? Thanks.

There are many cons against large cities. From the crawling traffic congestion to urban sprawl, from rising crime rates to choking pollution, living in cities is not for everyone and many people long to escape, which is why vacation properties are so popular. But undeniably there are perks too. And for me one of those perks is discovering new places – new places to eat, shop, browse and in general make life more palatable and entertaining. In the last decade Calgary has reached some magic population density where new stirrings around town outnumber one person’s ability to keep track of them.  More little subcultures are developing, more restaurants opening, more small businesses are finding a niche, all of which makes for much more interesting city life.

Which is how I discovered completely fantastic churros right in Calgary, in a small restaurant in Bridgeland, which has actually been around for a few years but never made it onto my radar. One cold (is it ever anything but in Calgary?) Saturday morning I was at work in my office downtown.  (I normally never work weekends, and in fact have a personal rule to only put in overtime for an exceedingly good cause, so this was an exception). A girlfriend took pity on me and proposed going out for brunch to break up the slog of the workday.  Quickly searching a place that serves late brunch we decided to stick close to the core and ended up at Artisan Bistro in Bridgeland.

Located on a wide quiet street Artisan Bistro is a small restaurant that has managed to get plenty of accolades from the local papers. Inside it was quiet and airy with pale yellow walls, burgundy trim and white linens on all the tables. A single perfect rosebud on the table added a cheerful touch. The menu was two pages long, with brunch stuff on one side and heavier fare on the other.  They have a house granola, crepes, French toast and the usual assortment of omelets and eggs. I was seduced by the sound of El Bistro – an omelet with house chorizo, grape tomatoes, scallions and mahon cheese with pan roasted potatoes and golden grain toast.  My girlfriend was more in the mood for lunch and settled on a bowl of seafood chowder and the  Athena sandwich with grilled lamb, roasted peppers, caramelized onions and herb aioli.

The food was just shy of fantastic, firmly in the Very Good camp. The soup was hearty with real chunks of seafood, perfectly cooked veggies, homemade tasting broth, hot and creamy and utterly satisfying. The sandwich was excellent – tender flavorful lamb offset by caramelized onions and a savoury mayo. The side salad had pretty good house dressing. The omelet was tasty with good house sausage, but lacked the height of greatness that AKA Bistro’s omelet achieves. The potatoes were very good and served with ‘real’ ketchup… couldn’t resist there. The toast was surprisingly a highlight in itself, not a mere afterthought. Warm, buttery, grainy it tasted way better than any toast I’ve had lately.

But on this very momentous day, we somehow overcame our natural resistance of desserts when we saw churros on the menu. Both of us are an anomaly to womanhood in that we don’t have much of a sweet tooth and will gladly skip dessert in favor of a savory appetizer but the stars were aligned just right that day and soon the best dessert I’ve had in some time was placed before us. It’s hard to fault anything deep fried, but these strips of deep fried dough sprinkled with just enough icing sugar to enhance their taste and served with the richest, smoothest, most decadent cup of dark chocolate were a revelation. Crunchy, warm and – this is key – not too sweet they were a perfect dessert.  And now I understand how they’re such a hit in Spain, at a much lower cost than a plane ticket.

Cool walkway in the back

4/5

Artisan Bistro

809 1 Avenue NE
Calgary, AB T2E 0C2
(403) 263-3727 

All Day Bruch:  Wednesday – Sunday 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM

(kitchen closes at  2:30)
Dinner: Friday – Saturday 6 :00PM – 10:00PM

(kitchen closes at  9:30)

Unlike many exotic or unknown cuisines which have gained traction in recent years (Georgian, Turkish or Argentine), Russian cuisine remains in relative obscurity, especially in Canada. Apparently my countrymen despite their increasing numbers are not doing their part in spearheading the effort to introduce the food to our adoptive country. When we first moved to Canada there were very few folk from Russia here, and every time you’d inadvertently overhear someone speak Russian it would be an immediate occasion to introduce oneself and often make a new friend. There was exactly one small store selling Russian food, and people drove from across the city to see and buy familiar ingredients.  

Now it’s heard much more frequently around town, and there are several excellent stores carrying Russian themed items, yet I’ve never seen a native Canadian shop in such a store, even for the sake of curiosity.  The situation is often not helped by the store owner themselves, who sometimes speak poor English and are unable to help a bewildered customer navigate unfamiliar items and wax eloquent about their favorites. Even a local food writer extraordinaire dee Hobsbawn-Smith completely neglected Russian stores in her otherwise excellent book Shop Talk: The Open-All-Hours Insider’s Guide to Finding Great Ingredients in Calgary.  But there are some things which must be shared with the world, so without further ado, here is my tour of a typical Russian store with my highlighted favorites.

As you walk through the door you will see three things common to all Russian stores – tea, jams and canned goods. The teas are mainly imported due to Russian writing on the side of the box, although it comes from London, and can be seen in a few other stores around town, like the small market adjoining Atlas. The jams are rather unique – they are closer to preserves than a traditional jam and are softer and runnier, typically made with just sugar. The labels should help you navigate and some may even contain English labels. The flavors are more common to Russia – cranberry, black currant, red currant, blackberry and cherry are lined up next to the usual flavors of apricot, raspberry and strawberry. In the photo below the first half of the shelves is taken up with sweetened condensed milk and dolce de leche, both ingredients crucial to baking.

Loose tea from London

Next to the tea there are bins and bins of candy – mainly caramel and chocolate. They were rare toward the end of the Soviet era, so many people are quite nostalgic about their flavors. I am not a huge fan of most of them as they consist of a hard caramel shell with a soft fruity filling inside. Meh. The one exception are the candy with a cow on the label – they are fudgy and addictive. There are small bags around if you feel like trying one or a few – it’s candy you can’t go too far wrong.

The canned food section is vast and confusing. If you’re unfamiliar with Russian food, you should stay away from much of it at the beginning. Russian cuisine is not always friendly to untutored exploration and there is too much that will not be a good intro to a western palate. Basically baby steps – try what I’m recommending first before venturing into the murkier depths of traditional soups and spreads. A good place to start though is the vast variety of pickled items. Russia has always had cold and long winters and people had to rely on root cellars and preserving food to make it last through the winter to the harvest ahead. So the food culture evolved around whole grains, root vegetables, fermented foods and meat. On the shelf below you’ll see pickled red peppers, pickled watermelon, pickled cukes, pickled cabbage, pickled tomatoes, pickled zucchini and sauerkraut. You can’t go too far wrong with most of these items, but skip the sauerkraut, it’s made fresh in –house and will be in the fridge. 

Mmmm - pickles

I recommend these tiny crunchy baby cukes: (the label clearly refers to the drinking culture of Russia – it says ‘vodka chaser’ as these items are often consumed while drinking).

And my favorite brand of pickled tomatoes, made in Bulgaria.  Pickled tomatoes are brined without vinegar, just water, sugar, salt and spices. Of course their texture leaves them soft and falling apart, but if you can get past that – the flavor is great. Slightly sweet, rather salty they are an addictive taste and are a popular snack and hangover cure.

Ugly but good

 The sausage counter is just a mix of salted pork belly, lard, salami and ham, sliced to order. Everything is available to sample, and sampling is encouraged. There is no real guide here – the sausage culture is adapted heavily from Germany and Poland and probably other places I don’t know about, but sausage is sausage.

Somewhere near the front counter you’ll see a bread basket. Typically there will be three types of bread inside – a long sliced loaf, similar to the mild German rye that is sold at Superstore at the moment, a square dark rye, almost black, and the loaf you see below.  The square dark rye is perhaps Russia’s most iconic bread – Borodinsky bread. Legend has it that it was developed by nuns who baked loaves studded with coriander around the village of Borodino, famous as a battle site against Napoleon. Sweetened with malt and studded with caraway it is a dark dense loaf, full of flavor that can stand up to the toughest toppings. It’s a noble bread, but my personal favorite happens to be a smaller, even denser loaf with a sweet chewy texture. Even my boyfriend who is rather cautious in his enthusiasm for Russian food happily snacks on it, along with chunks of dry salami and aged cheddar, or dipped in borscht. All the breads can be frozen, so you are under no obligation to eat through a whole loaf, although they keep well on the counter. Very healthy and low calorie they are a filling guilt free snack at our house.

Russian rye - nothing like it

If you were to only purchase one single item as an introduction to Russian food, these would have to be it. Each bags below holds one kilogram of Siberian dumplings – Russia’s answer to wontons in Asia, tortellini in Italy and empanadas in Latin America. They are one of the holy grails of Russian cuisine. When I was a child it was common for the family to get together for a several hour long marathon of pelmeni making. Pork and beef were mixed together in equal quantities, a schwack of onions would be grated in, a good quantity of black pepper and salt would be added and the whole mix would be wrapped up in fresh dough circles, placed on floured trays and frozen. Several thousand would be made at a time and since we lived in Siberia we simply stored them outside.

Try them now!

To prepare pelmeni simply drop them frozen into boiling water seasoned with a bit of seasoning salt and a bay leaf. They will be done about five minutes after they begin floating, or about 10 minutes total. You can serve them in the resulting broth or on their own. Traditionally they are served with melted butter,  mustard, sour cream or vinegar spiked with pepper, but people also love them with ketchup and horseradish. Really you should set out at least three of the above and have a taste test – a clear winner will soon emerge. James loves his mustard (or sometimes Sriracha sauce), and I am a ketchup girl. Although in the winter I’ve been known to dip them into apple cider vinegar and pepper. The world is your oyster. These are amazing and fast treats and THE perfect supper on a chilly weeknight. Ten minute dinner that everyone adores, even if you factor in a salad.

Whew, part 2 coming up on Monday.

The store I took photos in is aptly named Russian Store, and is located at:

523 Woodpark Blvd SW

403-238-4607

But there are several in town, including:

Matryoshka on the corner of 16 Ave and 14 St SW

Slavic Store

17107 James McKevitt Road SW

403-201-0057

Kalinka at 11440 Braeside Dr SW

403-281-6688

Teremok

Avenida Place Shopping Centre

403-873-0962

I may have mentioned once or twice that I’m not a morning person. Sunday was no different, and we arrived at the bistro at the *ahem*early hour of 2 pm, which worked out to a great advantage since we were the only ones there, and they serve brunch till three p.m.

Although it’s not much to look at from the outside, (are they going to finish that?)

The interior is simple and lovely with warm neutral colors and lots of wood. Since we arrived so late we were able to snag a prime seat by the window and watch the world drive by.

After ordering the mandatory, necessary and obligatory elixir of life coffee, which was nice and strong and came with cute wee spoons, we browsed the short and sweet menu. Neither of us have much of a sweet tooth, so waffles and french toast were out, and in the end we chose the filling but comforting eggs benedict for John and truffled omelet for myself.

I gotta tell you right now, the omelet was a revelation. Tender, soft and chock full of goodies it was everything that an omelet tries to be, and in my kitchen fails. I’ve never made an omelet that was much more than scrambled eggs, but this one was divine. Full of mushrooms, green onions, truffles, well seasoned, it was a symphony of flavors on par with the best omelet I’ve ever had. The pork belly, grilled tomato, toast and hash browns were simply gilding the lily. I’m craving that omelet just thinking about it.

John’s eggs benedict were very good, but not as good as my omelet. The eggs were softly poached, but the sauce seemed weaker and blander compared to what great eggs benny achieve. The brioche was a fantastic foil and the pork belly provided a much needed salty note, it was a solid dish, but not achieving full greatness.

The only two minor complaints we had was that the hash browns could’ve used a hint more salt too. Not to sound like a salt fiend, but they were very well cooked, crispy in the corners and soft on the inside, flecked with herbs and looked great, but potatoes take a good deal of salt to bring out their flavor, and these ones just lacked a bit. Salt shakers were not provided at the table, and the ketchup offered was housemade and waaaay too sweet. Breakfast places should not mess with Heinz, it’s a gold standard for a reason, and I’ve only tasted a couple of house ketchups that rivaled it.

Minor quibbles aside, we had a great, filling, satisfying breakfast. The service was great, the coffee was flowing, and all was right with the world.

4.5/5

AKA Winebar
709 Edmonton Trail NE
403-984-7534
Tuesday to Thursday & Sunday 4-11 p.m.
Friday & Saturday 4 p.m.-1 a.m.
Weekend brunch Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m.-3 p.m.