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.