Fish House Farewell

A bittersweet affair, I'm afraid. A farewell to a few of my fellow foodhandlers from the Fish House. The time had come for me to swim against the current, toward greener waters, and it was my pleasure to host a few of my favorite ladies to commemorate the occasion. We began with twilight bellinis, made simply of prosecco and Okanagan white peach puree in syrup.


When everybody had arrived, I set out our homemade antipasto platter as we opened the Chianti. Grilled ciabatta accompanied our roasted BC Hothouse peppers, Quebecois bocconcini, Spanish olives and artichokes, and my own pickled local green beans and eggplant. Served with olive oil, reduced balsamic, and my homemade BC Hothouse marinara. The roasted organic garlic spread proved itself a shining star.


As crustini consumption casually came to a close, we began work on the first seated course. My homemade, organic crimini mushroom ravioli was laid on a bed of unbelievable organic cauliflower puree, and crowned with Parmesano Reggiano. Sauteed wax beans provided a bit of crunch, and organic chicken demi adds the ultimate in savory depth. Well-oaked yet crisp, my CedarCreek Reserve Chardonnay was very nice with this dish... I will definitely do this again.

One of my favorite dishes at the Fish House is the Pad Thai, but since I learned about the implications of supporting South Asian tiger prawn farming, I haven't been able to order it. Agro-colonial subjugation and ecological devastation are just too heavy a price to pay for cheap seafood. Fortunately, Safeway is now offering organic tiger prawns -- I'm sure they're still ethically flawed, but I will always support a step in the right direction. Thus, I offered my organic take on the Fish House Pad Thai. It was well received by my co-workers. Robin was very wise to pair this with Mt. Boucherie Ehrenfelser. Sweet and aromatic, balanced with plenty of citrus acidity... just like Thai food.

Finally, 'tis the season for blackberry pie. And like a good little ant, I'd spurned the grasshopper's summer tomfoolery and elected to pick about 20lbs of the succulent fruit from my neighborhood hedges. Served with homemade vanilla bean ice cream, I presented Mount Piesuvius.

Goodbye, my fishy friends. You will all be sorely missed... but always welcome over for dinner.

Island Coast Centurion

My long shadow in the waning twilight suddenly reminds me that I'm lugging 50lbs of cargo on my back wheel. I can't tell if I'm going uphill or down, I only know what gear I'm in. Propelled only by my focused breath and the fantasy of destination, I'd finished the last of my energy bars at Bowser (unicorporated), and quaffed the last of my liquids overlooking Fanny Bay. Night is falling, I'm running on fumes, and I'm so low on electrolytes that I can barely move my fingers

About 5km outside of Courtenay, I can start to smell the wood fires of what folks up here consider civilzation. And then, like an aromatic quasar, the most pungent barbecue fills my lungs and opens my eyes. As my breath deepens, hoping to find some energy in the airborne chicken molecules, my focus and determination are renewed, the light at the end of this long tunnel is brightened, and an old man pulls up along side me on his bike. Apparently I'm just crawling down the highway.

From what I can tell in the twilight, he's wearing jeans and a mackinaw, has no helmet but a handlebar mustache. He's friendly, though. “Hey feller! How's the pushing?” I struggle to make sense of his words as I pull my consciousness back into the realm of language, until I realise that he's on an electric bike. And I'm pretty sure he's drunk. “Where ya headed?” He reasserts himself.

“The next pub, brother. Where can I get a beer?” I knew he'd have an answer near at hand for questions regarding beer, and didn't have the energy to articulate my overwhelming need for fish & chips. As it turns out, he was headed to the Whistlestop Pub, about a kilometer away just inside the Courtenay city limits. We ride together, united in our urgent quests – mine to re-feul, and his to re-up. We make pleasant, folksy small-talk for the last few blocks along the seawalk before reaching the pub. His name is Gary Smith, and in the fluorescent glow of the liquor store parking lot, he is every bit the redneck I'd expected. But on an electric bicycle. Only on the Island.

Hobbling inside the pub in my cycling tights and race jersey, I only get a few funny looks before I collapse into the padded leather booth in the corner. It doesn't take me long to order a french onion soup and oysters & fries. Nor does it take me long to realize that I'm borderline hypothermic, my right knee doesn't want to bear my weight anymore, and my cramped ass isn't interested in helping. I turn on my cell phone just in time to answer a call from my mom and dad. They'd started to worry about me as night fell, so they'd left Campbell River to scan the road for me and were presently about a block away from the very pub I was sitting in.

I can't accurately express to you my overwhelming sense of relief at this synchronous situation. My wonderful parents bought my meal and drove me, and my bike, and my cargo, the remaining 40km of cold, dark highway up to Campbell River. And now I am drinking a beer and watching CBC in a La-Z-Boy before bed, ready to prepare for salmon fishing tomorrow. What a great way to start my vacation.

Food Storage

Eating locally seems like a great idea, and I'm so into this idea for such a vast array of reasons that it tires me to even think about outlining them yet again. You should know by now, eating local just makes sense on a number of levels. The thing that makes it hard, though, is the seasonality of our beautiful northern climes. When I first gained awareness of the importance of everyday food choices, it was the dead of winter, and it really forced my tastebuds into a certain degree of asceticism. Beets and potatoes are delicious, not to be misunderstood, but the wonderful selection of root vegetables stands in stark contrast to the summer's strawberries, the variety of stonefruit from the okanagan, the fresh hothouse tomatoes and cucumbers, and the sweet, wild things that grow in my very neighborhood.
And so it came to be that we gained access to a large chest freezer. Immediately, it found itself stuffed with organic chicken and locally finished natural beef... but it felt empty. It was missing a certain variety. It was missing blueberries! And blackberries! And corn, and beans! So I began to fill bags... so many bags... and then I discovered jars! The things you can put in jars! Peaches, apricots, cherries, blueberries, blackberries, beans, pickles, eggplants, tomatoes... all of the things that we are so blessed with in this time of abundance can be frozen in time, preserved for the long winter ahead! Such discoveries have opened a whole new world of local gastronomy.
I feel much like those first homesteaders to discover canning must have felt (minus the many botulism deaths they must have initially endured). The excitement of expanded winter eating, followed by the realisation of the responsibility to engage in the work of food storage, and the feeling like I could never possible squirrel away enough for the winter. The mad rush to pickle everything, everything, everything I can. I'm now sitting on about 6 dozen jars of preserves and 30lbs of frozen berries... never enough... never enough.
If you want the crib notes of actually how to get this canning done, send me an email. It's actually quite easy, if you are aware of a couple lynchpin concepts. But I think I'll save the mass-publishing of the mechanics for my book.

Neufeld Farms blueberries in 1lb bags for freezing

Cherries and peach halves in syrup

So many pickles! Beautiful pickles!

Pickled beans, dill cucumbers, and Ashcroft eggplant

Pickled eggplant antipasto