Plane Crash

You have probably heard about the plane crash in Vancouver last Tuesday night; it has been all over the news here. As far as I have heard they do not know yet the exact cause of the crash, but I suspect the foul weather we were having was a contributing factor. A domestic passenger aircraft crashed on Locarno Beach not far from my house, killing all 75 people on board.
If you have ever been to Vancouver then you will understand how surprising it was that the plane should crash where it did, as the airport is quite a bit further south so the plane was well off course.


Being so close to my house, today I decided to take a walk down to the beach to see if the aircraft was still there. As it turns out it was still there although it was roped off so I couldn't get terribly close to it. It was a pretty sobering scene, and it was clear that there would have been very little chance of survivors. The main body of the plane was broken shattered with only the nose and tail left intact. The passenger compartment had been totally gutted by fire. Scattered on the ground around the surrounding area where random items of luggage, thrown from the plane during the crash.

More tasty things

Last weekend I decided that I had not been making anything very interesting for a while, mainly due to working too late to stop at the market on my way home and not being organised enough to plan my meals during the weekend. So I decided to spoil myself a little and buy a lobster. I figured that the total cost would still only be equivalent to going to a restaurant and having a nice steak, so once I thought of it that way it seemed a pretty reasonably priced meal. So I went for yet another trip to Granville island to get the necessary ingredients.


While at the island I decided to take a few photos so you all can see what this market I keep talking about is like. I thought it would be more arty or something if I took them in black and white. The market was very busy, being Saturday afternoon, so it was difficult to get any good shots without getting people mad at me so these are the best I could do.


Now back to the lobster. I have a few different recipes for lobster in my cookbooks, but decided that the picture of the angry lobster looked better than the other ones and the recipe looked tasty too. Basically you cut the lobster in to pieces and coat in a seasoned flour mixture then pan fry then in some chili infused oil. Then you add cherry tomatoes and basil with a spot of butter at the end. Very simple and oh so tasty. It was rather messy to eat though.


On Wednesday evening I went back to school for the first time in 7 years. This time however it was a very different kind of school than I had been to before, it was a cooking school. Vanya (cousin Ryan's wife) had a voucher for this cooking school at a local cooking shop and asked if I would like to come along. The class we went to was a new French cooking class where you get to participate in the cooking too. There were 5 different recipes that we were taught, with each group getting to prepare one of them. The recipes were all very tasty, starting with a smoked salmon soup followed by a chicken breast with Madeira sauce that was accompanied by a Swiss chard gratin. Then there was lamb medallions with cilantro sauce. And for dessert we had a rather unusual sounding basil ice cream. Vanya and I were given the task of preparing the Swiss chard gratin, which was probably the least interesting of the dishes but tasted quite good. For those of you unacquainted with the North American names for vegetables, Swiss chard is what we would call silver beet in New Zealand. The basil ice cream was the big surprise of the evening, it was actually a remarkably nice dessert and one that I will be sure to attempt to make at home some time.


I didn't have my camera the cooking school so have no photos to show, however I had a shot at making a variation on the lamb dish last night. I didn't fancy spending large amounts of money on lamb fillets so I used a lamb leg steak instead. It worked pretty well but didn't look quite as good on the plate. Also I felt the sauce needed a bit more to it so added some chopped up prunes just before serving. It all tasted amazing

A brief update

Well it has been 10 days since my last posting so I guess it is about time I add some fresh content to this ever so dynamic blog. I haven't really done much of great interest lately, hence the delay in posting.

Last Thursday evening I went up to Grouse Mountain again with Ryan and Andrew my flatmate. It had been raining in the morning so the snow was pretty soft and wet and very bumpy. I think the snow has been completely different every time I have gone up to Grouse. Apparently it is like this more in Spring so I guess I will get plenty more wet snow experiences later in the season. With the snow being so soft I thought it would be a great opportunity to improve my jumping skills. After the first unsuccessful run I asked Ryan and Andrew for a few pointers, and sure enough there were a number of things I was doing wrong that could explain the lack of success I was seeing. On getting some tips I found the whole jumping thing to be much easier than I had expected it to be, and by the end of the evening I was landing most of my jumps and even braved the terrain park a couple of times (sticking to the easiest jumps still though).

On a slightly sadder note, one of my bass guitars was stolen back in NZ a week ago. It was a very nice bass, probably my second favourite after the MusicMan. On the bright side, my insurance has paid out so I can get myself a new acoustic guitar when I get back to New Zealand in June. I was planning on getting one on my way home in San Francisco but the insurance company paid out in credit at the rock shop so I guess that is one less item of luggage to cart back on the plane.

In other breaking news, I have decided to go to Papua New Guinea for 5 months or so in July to help out with some software development with Wycliffe Bible Translators. They have already sent me an official invitation so now I am starting to get my visa application other paperwork sorted out. Apparently getting the visa can take a while so I need to get on to it pretty promptly.

My meals over the last week have been a bit more simple than they were last month. Work has got a bit busier so I am not taking so many trips to the market on my way home. Tonight's pasta dish was pretty tasty though, I made a simple tomato based sauce with a bit of sausage and a few mystery spices to add a bit of a kick. It didn't look too flash so I didn't bother taking any snapshots of it.

Whistler and Harrison Hot Springs

Last week Roz and Reuben had the week off so we all decided to take a trip up to Whistler for a few days of midweek snowboarding action. So on Wednesday afternoon we went to Enterprise car rentals to pick up our compact class car. The car they gave us was a Toyota Yaris, a very small car. After driving 15 minutes to my house to pick up some stuff I forgot, we decided that this car was really not going to work for us, as it would have been a very uncomfortable trip with 2 snowboards and a set of skis. So we gave the rental company a ring an organised to pick up a larger car a Chevrolet Malibu. This car was much nicer and fit us in very comfortably. So of we went for the 1 3/4 hour trip north to Whistler.

It was my first time driving any significant distance or in any traffic in a left hand drive, and at for the first little while it took a bit of adjusting to. Reuben was very helpful in pointing out that I was very close to the right hand side of the lane, I guess I wasn't used to having that much car to my right. The sea to sky highway from Vancouver to Whistler is a notoriously dangerous road, but after driving it I fail to see why. Compared to roads in New Zealand it was a very easy drive. I guess if it had been snowing or if the roads were icy it could have been a little scarier, but in the fine conditions we had it was quite a pleasant drive.

On arrival we checked in to our hotel then went out for a bite to eat. The restaurant was having an open mic night as the entertainment, but not many people took up the invitation to join the band and sing, so we were stuck listening to some band obsessed with reggae music. We didn't stick around long after our meal.

In the morning we got up nice and early to get our free breakfast before hitting the slopes. The weather was very nice with barely a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately it had been that way for quite a while prior to our trip, so there was no fresh snow around and some places were a bit icy. I decided that given the hardness of the ground, this was not going to be a good week to practice any jumps, so contented myself with just improving my turning and general control. I also decided to retry the run that I got very stuck on last time I was at Whistler. Last time there was over a foot of powder on that run and I had an awful time trying to get up each time I fell over. This time there was not much powder at all and I found the run to be much easier and great fun.

On the second day Roz and I spent most of the day going down the intermediate runs at Blackcomb, where the snow was a bit better. On one run Roz got a little over confident and went for a jump off a little drop off. Unfortunately for Roz she hadn't checked out what was below the drop off and she ended up bailing pretty badly as she landed amongst a bunch of moguls (big bumps in the snow). I was following a little behind her and decided to stop at the top of the drop off. When I looked down, there was Roz lying in the snow with her poles and hat 15 metres up the slope. The fall hurt her knee a bit, but she was able to keep on skiing, although her confidence was a little damaged for a while.

After our 2 days at Whistler we made our way back to Vancouver, then on Saturday seeing as we still had the rental car, we decided to take a trip to Harrison Hot Springs for a nice soothing soak. Harrison Hot Springs is about 1 1/2 hours east of Vancouver, just past Chilliwack. After driving for an hour on highway 1 I was beginning to see why people think the sea to sky highway is so dangerous. Highway 1 is really straight, for miles and miles.

When we arrived at Harrison Hot Springs we found that the public pool was a little on the disappointing side, it was pretty small and patroned by mainly old fat people. We decided to pass on the pool and just had lunch at a local restaurant that we had a discount voucher for instead. The food was decidedly average, or maybe even a little below average, except for the seafood chowder that Roz and Reuben shared, apparently that was quite nice. I had some scallops and shrimp with some kind of risotto. The sauce that accompanied the shrimps and scallops was very bland, in fact I can't even recall it having any flavour at all. The risotto was actually difficult to cut on one side, making me think it had perhaps been sitting under some warming lights a little long. The lake at Harrison was very pretty though, so the trip wasn't a complete waste of time. Unfortunately I didn't take my camera with me, so you will just have to take my word for it that it was a nice lake.

Coffee Cupping

Not long after arriving in Vancouver I signed up to the coffeegeek Vancouver event mailing list. From time to time Mark Prince, the founder of coffeegeek.com organises some kind of get together for coffeegeeks in the Vancouver area. Last Sunday afternoon was the first such event that I have been invited to, and hopefully it won't be the last. This particular event was a cupping of several of the cup of excellence winners from Brazil. Cup of Excellence is a competition that selects the very best coffee produced in that country for that particular year. The winners are auctioned off to the highest bidder.

The cupping that I went to was a cupping of the 5 winning coffees from Brazil. The whole cupping thing was a new experience to me, but one I had read a bit about in the past and had always wanted to try it, so this was a great opportunity. Basically cupping involves brewing several different coffees in separate cups at the same time, keeping as many of the variables constant as possible (ie grind size, roast level, roast date, brew time etc) then taking a spoon and slurping spoonfuls of coffee and comparing them to each other. You repeat this several times as the coffees cool to see how the flavours change as the temperature drops. Of the five coffees only one of them tasted significantly different to me at first, and I found that the one that tasted different was my least favourite of the five (although still very nice). It was pretty interesting hearing some of the others describing what they were tasting, although I couldn't taste any fruit punch in cup E, it just tasted like very nice coffee to me. In one of the coffees I did start to detect what could be described as a citrus kind of taste but only very slightly. When it came time to pick our favourite Reuben was the only one there that identified the number 1 bean as being his favourite. The rest of us all chose number 5 and I actually thought bean number 1 was the worst one there, I guess taste is a very subjective thing.

After the cupping we got to sample three very special coffees as a french press. The first one was a Panama something, and roasted it retails at around US$110 a pound. By far the most expensive coffee I have ever tried. It was also the nicest french press I have had too. A very unique taste that we all agreed was exceptionally pleasing.

The second bean was the pick of the crop from the Skybury Farms in Australia. It also retailed at a pretty high price, though not nearly as high as the Panama. I didn't really like it much, actually none of us thought it was anything special. Sure it was better than your typical supermarket coffee but for the price I certainly wouldn't say it was value for money.

The third bean was a very rare Kona Peaberry. Very little of this bean is made available each year as the farmers keep the peaberry for themselves because it is so good and also because only a very small percentage of beans are peaberry beans. The coffee came from Smiths Farms a coffee farmer in Kona that sells direct to the public (well at least to US and Canada anyway). I am still deciding whether I will order any to take back to NZ, it was a very nice french press but I have been told it doesn't work so well as an espresso.

Before we left Mark Prince's house (where the cupping took place) we each got to choose 1 of the beans we sampled to take home with us. This was a very generous thing for Mark to do as some of the beans were not cheap. The only ones we were not allowed were the Panama beans (not surprising given the cost of them) and one of the Brazilians because Mark really liked them. I chose the Kona Peaberry and have been enjoying them over the last couple of days. Unfortunately as I have been typing this I have also been drinking my last cup of the Kona, but boy was it good. Reuben selected one of the Brazilian beans and seeing as he doesn't have a grinder he kindly gave them to me, so I will be able to have another very nice coffee for breakfast in the morning. Yummy.

I am going to be away for the next few days so I might have to have a couple of cups because I don't want the beans to go stale while I am gone. I am going to Whistler with Roz and Reuben for a couple of days to get a bit of snowboarding action in. The weather has been fantastic over the last week with hardly a cloud in the sky, not great in terms of fresh snow I guess but if the weather holds out it should still be pretty nice. We are renting a car, so it will be my first time driving any significant distance in a left hand drive car, should be interesting. I have been considering taking my grinder away with me, but it may be a bit of a pain carrying on the bus on my way to work in the morning.

Sorry no pictures today. I have a couple on my camera of a few meals I had last week but can't be bothered getting them off the camera at the moment.

Another week gone

Yep it is now Sunday afternoon and time to review the past week.
The week started off well with yet another trip to Granville Island for the week's fruit and veges and a few cuts of meat. I was very organised this week and had an entire week's menu planned out. There was going to be an stuffed artichoke salad, loosely based on a Waldorf salad, a curried broccoli soup, an avocado orange and fennel salad, swordfish with roast fennel, and a pork tenderloin stuffed with pork sausage meat and apricot. As it turned out I only had half of those dishes and had the pork tenderloin twice after discovering that I rather liked it.

After returning home I made myself a quick and easy salad with avocado orange and fennel. The fennel was shaved from the fennel bulb with a vege peeler then soaked in balsamic vinegar. Unfortunately the avocado was not the best with lots of brown pathes through it so the presentation did not look too flash hence the absence of a photo, sorry about that.


Monday was the first night that I had the pork tenderloin. I was in a bit of a rush that night as I only had 1 1/4 hours to cook and eat before heading out to my bible study. I did however find enough time to take a quick snapshot of the dish. I had some roasted pear and roasted fennel bulb as an accompaniment. The pear was particularly tasty, it was simply brushed with a little melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon then roasted for 25 minutes. The roast fennel however was not a winning side dish, it was definitely better in the salad on Sunday.

Tuesday was originally going to be the artichoke day, but in the end I was out at Roz and Reuben's for dinner so the artichoke day was missed. Reuben cooked a lovely pasta dish with eggplant, tomato, cheese and I'm sure some other ingredients that I forget at the moment.

Wednesday was soup day. The recipe book didn't have any photo of this recipe, and after making it I understand why. It looked kind of like sick. The soup was a curried broccoli soup with a cucumber-mint raita, which is a yogurt based dip sort of thing. It went very well with the spicy soup, adding a nice cooling element to thd dish.

Thursday I had Roz and Reuben over for dinner so decided to try the pork tenderloin again seeing I enjoyed it so much on Monday. This time I left out the roasted fennel and replaced it with roast broccoli and some 'steamed' asparagus. My Tyler Florence cookbook had this interesting looking way of cooking asparagus by throwing it in a paper bag with some salt, lemon slices and a drizzle of olive oil then putting it in the oven for 20 minutes. I guess my lemon must have had more juice than his one though, because when I pulled them out of the oven they were kind of soggy. I very nearly threw them away I was so disappointed, but after tasting one found it was not too bad after all.


I had a leftover pork tenderloin as I wasn't sure if Andrew my flatmate was going to be home on Thursday. So on Friday I decided to make a Thai style pork and coconut salad. The basic ingredients were pork, toasted coconut, coconut milk, Thai bird chili, coriander (cilantro for any North Americans reading this), mint, tomato and red onion. This is another recipe that I will have to put on my must make again list, it was scrummy.

On Saturday I finally went up Grouse mountain with Roz and Reuben for a day of snowboarding and skiing. There had been a good 50 cm of new snow in the 3 days prior, with 8 cm overnight. I guess that we were not the only people who thought that it would be a good time to head up the mountain as we spent far longer waiting in queues for the chairlifts than we did snowboarding. The snow was pretty good most of the day though, so it was an enjoyable day. There are far more runs you can do during the day as apposed to the runs open for night skiing, so it was fun finding areas I had not been on yet. I managed to land a couple of jumps, and also didn't manage to land a few jumps too. I think it was the first time that my helmet has saved me from a headache.

After snowboarding we went back to Roz and Reuben's apartment for a soak in the hot tub. A very nice way of relaxing after a day on the slopes. Later on we went out for dinner at a very nice restaurant. Each year a number of restaurants in Vancouver participate in the Dine Out Vancouver program, where you get a 3 course meal at significantly reduced prices, either $15, $25 or $35 depending on the class of restaurant. We went to a place called Joe Fortes, a seafood and chophouse. For starters I had four oysters on the half shell. Now in the past I have never really been a big oyster fan finding them a little slimy and generally just not very nice. These were fantastic though and the sauce that they came with was superb. For the main (or entree as they call it over here) I had grilled sockeye salmon with truffle risotto. The salmon was cooked just right and the risotto was very tasty indeed. If truffles weren't so expensive I would try and make it at home some time. Dessert was a New York cheesecake, yet again a very nice dish. All in all I think it was exceptional value. To give you some idea what their regular prices are, a 1/2 dozen oysters sell for $20 at Joe Fortes so $35 was a steal.

More snow and more home cooking

Well it has been a rather chilly week here in Vancouver. On Tuesday evening it started to snow again and continued off and on until Wednesday evening. Fortunately it has not resulted in nearly as many traffic problems as the snow in November caused, so getting around has not been much of an issue this week.


I quite often catch a bus home from work that runs parallel to my street but 9 blocks away. This gives me a little bit of exercise on my way home which doesn't do me any harm. Occasionally I walk the 1 1/2 without any buses but not when I have my business shoes on as they would kill my feet walking that kind of distance. But I digress, why I brought up the bus route in the first place was to illustrate in a round about kind of way how cold it was this last week. So I got off the bus 9 blocks away and started walking home, thinking it was a little nippy but not too bad. However by the time I got home my hands were numb as was my chin and nose. The numb fingers made it quite tricky getting my keys out of my bag but I managed. I checked the temperature when I got inside and found it was -7 degrees at the time plus with the wind chill I think it was around -15. Hmm, that wasn't really a very interesting story but oh well it is written now.


I went for another trip to the Granville Island public market this afternoon and happened to have my camera with me. As I was walking over the causeway that takes you to the island I noticed that the water in to my right was frozen, and not just a thin layer on top but quite a significant amount of ice. Some people had thrown rather sizable rocks at the ice to try and break it, probably to go ice fishing I expect, but the ice only showed a bit of cracking.


The main reason for today's trip to Granville Island was to buy some shrimp and vegetables for tonights meal. This was a recipe from the cookbook Roz and Reuben gave me for Christmas. It was poached salmon with fennel and hand-peeled shrimp (fortunately someone else had the job of hand peeling them). Boy oh boy this was a tasty we dish, and one I will definitely try again some time. I think I may have slightly overdone the salmon but it was still delicious. I had never cooked fennel before and was pleasantly surprised at how tasty it is. I will have to look out for other recipes with fennel in them.