New York - GF vegie burgers....

In New York, GF or vego and feel like a burger? Go to Bareburger in East Village. Best GF vegie burger I have ever had in my life! I had a California burger with yummy coleslaw on the side. The bread was amazing and all the ingredients were so fresh. Was particularly great after 5 weeks of watching Jay enjoy the most amazing gluten-full vegie burgers (standard veg option for Anerican pubs it seems).

New York - the food - part 1

New York is going to take more than one entry in this blog as if its one thing that is good here. Its the food.

Most people seem to either love or hate New York. Me being me and being difficult, I don't think I really fell into either categories - though at times I explored the extremes of both emotions. It is certainly a remarkable place, but perhaps a little less remarkable than I had been led to believe. There are some amazing things to see and do there, but for a claustrophobic girl who likes here green trees and space, and hates lifts, its a bit of a nightmare (except for the absolutely beautiful central park). 40 degree heat certainly didn't help either. But I did love the different character of the many parts of New York (when I was starting to feel like US cities were built a bit like franchises - Ionic Columns plus liberty). I loved East Village and Greenwich Village, the Flatiron building, the Empire State Building, and had some amazing experiences. And then of course there was the food.... 

First, one must record that below is a picture of lemonade, brilliant fresh raspberry lemonade at the MoMA to be exact. If Jay had a jug of this waiting for me after work, I really could give up wine (well perhaps...). Sprite is not lemonade in North America.

Below is an artistic salmon sandwich that Jay had for lunch near the Rockerfeller centre...and my fresh and very delicate heirloom tomato salad.

Second lesson - this one for the Americans. Plastic food should be used to tempt the customer into the restaurant, not make them run away...

Third lesson - Canberra needs to stop opening more cocktail bars than there are public servants, and open a proper wine and cheese bar (and not burn it down). The photos below are from Casellula in New York. They made up a platter of cheese for us to taste, and it was just scrumptious. And I must work out to make those caramlised pine nuts. Wow.

Fourth lesson -  even crappy take away in NY is amazing.

Fifth lesson - vegan food can be elegant, tasty and beautiful. Not that I needed to be convinced of this, but you meat eaters should try Candle 79 in New York. As you see below, the food is amazing (all GF too!), remarkably they also seem to have hired some of the old Lithium DJs to pick their songs for the evening...and yes the dessert was orgasmic.

Sixth lesson - don't eat a knish from a street vendor. Yuk.

Seventh lesson - art galleries have good food, museums bad food (yes I mean you the MET cafe). We had a fabulous indulgent lunch at the Guggenheim. The restaurant felt like part of the artwork.

Eighth NY lesson, before I give up until later - you don't need to go to snooty Michelin starred restaurants to get great food in NY. A friend of a friend had given me a list of her favourites, but I decided that I would rather go to restaurants which are harder to find in Australia and reflected the multicultural heritage of new york. Yes I know fancy modern Australian restaurants are not the same thing as a michelin starred restaruant in new york - but really when you a GF vegetarian, often you get a much better meal elsewhere. So anyway, one of my first choices was a Swedish restaurant given Jay's scanidnavian obsession. So we went to Smorgas in West Village, and it was just gorgeous. As it was restaurant week, they also had a brilliant 3 course set meal with matching wines. The food was also so fresh...they have their own farm in New York state and grow all their own vegetables. Yum. I also had one of only two panna cotta's for this whole trip so far (I know what is wrong with me!).

Boston - the food

Time to catch up on some food blogging while waiting in the tremendously exiting Moncton train station for our train to Montreal...

Boston was probably my favourite city in the USA. I loved the sense of history, the space, the gardens, the gorgeous leafy streets and magnificent houses and the fact that people here actually seemed happy (contrary to New York) and relaxed (contrary to New York).

Boston certainly has its share of rather disconcerting food experiences as indicated below. The fried dough I didn't try as given my gluten allergy, I may have died. And for some reason Jay couldn't be tempted to try it as a scientific experiment on my behalf. I did, however, try the fried corn thing below as I was thinking about Diane and apparently they were Mexian/South American. I wish I hadn't. They may have been gluten free, but certainly made up for it with the strongest taste of something fried in oil I though possible.

But then we found the Clover food truck...oh my god. Vegetarian heaven. Jay had a vegan BLT sandwich and I had rosemary and potato fries and an amazing spicy brocoli salad. Its odd because everyone talks about NY's food trucks, maybe I was just never in the right place at the right time but Seattle and Boston see to have much more interesting ones.

And next door were pickles for me!!!! Pickles any Russian would be proud of :)

Apart from that... I must record Jay's beer at Cheers for his dad :)

and our meal at a Tex-Mexican restaurant in Cambridge. Fantastic margaritas and great vegie jambalaya....but I really was concerned that Jay might have a coronary at the table eating his dinner. Can you see how much cheese is on that eggplant!!!! yes there is a vegetable under there somewhere. Perhaps Jay knew what was to come in the photo below...

Prince Edward Island - respect the trees.

We arrived on Prince Edward Island (or, as the locals call it, PEI) late yesterday afternoon, after a punishing 5 hour drive from Halifax through pissing Atlantic rain. Well, when I say ‘punishing’, I mean punishing for the driver, which was not me. Drove across a 14 km bridge from New Brunswick into PEI, then a 50k drive into Charlottetown, the main city on the island. Thanks to the GPS, we found the B&B and settled in, then walked through the rain (which was thankfully now only a persistent drizzle) for an early dinner at an Irish microbrewery. Again, Canada seems to be all about the microbrewery (not that I’m complaining). The pub we ate at was having an IPA festival later on that night, where 6 regional microbreweries were bringing their IPAs for a horizontal tasting. Sounded great, but we were tired. Retired to the room to watch ‘The Muppets’ on the television, then a nice sleep. 

Today has been a strange day. It was to be a day of driving, so we drove to the nearest petrol station where the guy who owned the station filled up the tank for us, and wiped the front and back windows. A lovely throwback to the pre self-serve days, which I’d only ever seen represented in movies. This place is different to the rest of Canada. Saw many, many beautiful scenes of harbours and beaches while driving, and we stopped for photos at some, and Cathy dipped her feet in the Atlantic Ocean (which she adds to her collection of Pacific, Indian and Arctic). At one of the harbours, you could literally see the tide going out, and it looked quite turbulent and strong. Not the sort of thing that comes across well in a photograph, but I tried. Speaking of which, I need to put some photographs up, this blog post probably isn’t doing it justice.

We then drove to Green Gables, of ‘Anne of Green Gables’. Apparently this is de rigueur in PEI, and is something Cathy really wanted to do (she started re-reading the book last night, and is reading it next to me right now). I know nothing of the book, but Cathy does, and I suspect my mum does too. Anyway, the house and the garden were magnificent. I think Cathy was worried that I was bored because I don’t know the book, but the garden was really pretty. We saw some chipmunks scurrying around hither and thither (sorry, some of the literariness must have rubbed off) – I’d never seen one before.

Stopped for lunch at a place near Kensington where we had a lovely lunch, but were served by a robot. In response to every single question, we got ‘you’re very welcome!’, in the same tone each time. We struggled not to laugh – if we did, that would have been most rude, but we’ve certainly been taking the piss for the rest of the afternoon. We made our leisurely way back into town via a place called Victoria, which is on the southern coast of PEI, and is no more than four blocks big, but the houses (not to mention their view over the water) are beautiful. Most are for sale, which says a lot about the economics of the region, but I nonetheless took a photograph of Cathy in front of the house she wants us to buy.

Came back to Charlottetown where we went to the location where the first meaningful discussions towards Canadian federation took place. I’m a bit of a junkie for that sort of stuff, and I found it most illuminating. Many of the things I thought I knew about Canadian history and geography were plainly wrong. I thought it ironic that the conference was held on PEI because nobody here wanted to join (they couldn’t be bothered travelling to talk about something they didn’t want to do, but seemed happy enough to host others) and then eventually stayed out of the federation because they didn’t want to contribute to a railway system on the mainland which they wouldn’t be able to use. The irony was that PEI built their own railroad which quickly went broke, which forced them to beg to Canada to be let into the Federation and to take over their debt. What I want to know (and what wasn’t explained at the museum) is why Canada agreed. I wasn’t surprised to find that British Columbia only agreed to join on condition that they get connected to the eastern provinces through a railroad: the parallels with WA are obvious. Anyway, I have my Penguin History of Canada to read now – have to say I was disappointed that I couldn’t buy a copy of the Canadian constitution at the gift shop.

PEI is truly beautiful and is well worth the $45 toll they will charge us tomorrow to leave the island – no, I am not kidding. The scenery is marvellous, the food is fresh, and it’s nice to drive around in (when it’s not raining). If I had one complaint, it would be that it’s all so white. There’s hardly any ethnic or cultural diversity to be seen anywhere, apart from food. The other is that it’s almost impossible to find bottleshops. Cathy had the bright idea that we get some takeaway and a bottle of wine and come back to the room to sit on the balcony, and it took us 75 minutes to achieve this goal. Bottleshops here are provincial monopolies, but whereas in some provinces you’d never know this was the case (we never had issues in Vancouver), in Charlottetown, there are *none* in the main part of town. At all. We drove around for quite some time looking for one, while I nursed my can of the national ginger ale – ‘Canada Dry’ seemed quite a fitting name, for I’d felt Prohibition had returned. We could have gone to the PEI counterpart to Fyshwick if we’d chosen to, but couldn’t find bubbles for love nor money. Seriously, PEI, you make Iceland look good. By the time we found a bottleshop, I was fully prepared to buy a nice expensive bottle for Cathy, but they only had one type of champagne in the fridge. I reiterate my earlier remarks vis-à-vis Iceland (like the way I stuck a French word in there – formidable!).

So we’re back at the room; tomorrow we rise early to drop the car off at Moncton before getting the overnight train to Montreal.

Halifax - the Canberra of the north?

I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re in remotest Canada – there are places much, *much* more remote than this – but we’re away from the border, which is where most of the Canadian population live. To be precise, we’re in Halifax, the capital (I think) of Nova Scotia, which is a city of size similar to Canberra. So hard to believe that a little over a week ago we were in Manhattan, where there are a billion people per square foot, and the contrast here (where the airport is a leisurely $60 taxi ride from the town, and you don’t see anything but trees, lakes and other cars on the way in) is astounding.

We haven’t done much so far, and don’t really plan to do so either. We arrived the day before yesterday following a 2 hour flight from Toronto airport. The plane wasn’t late, but we got to the airport early, and we easily spent more time waiting for the plane than actually on it. Arrived in Halifax in bright sunshine, checked in (Oscar Wilde stayed at this hotel, apparently, but I’m not feeling the literary inspiration), then had dinner at a lovely little pub just up the road. Food and drink seems to be the food and drink of the Halifax economy.

Yesterday we visited the Canadian immigration museum – Halifax was the main port of arrival for immigration up until 1971 and was also the port where boats left for Europe during WW2. While there would have been less traffic in Halifax than at the US facility at Ellis Island, the Canadian museum seems to have more heart and compassion, for some reason. But this could be a function of the way the two countries choose to tell their immigration stories. Cathy nailed it for me when she said the American one was more about ‘we’ve done you a great favour by rescuing you, so now, you can repay the favour: what can you do for us?’ whereas the Canadian one was more about ‘we rescued you because we see it as our humanitarian duty to, so now, go and have a good life, and feel part of and enrich the country’. Having said that, neither country has a perfect and unblemished record, and the boat referred to in Anna Funder's 'All That I Am' also came to Halifax and was rejected by Canada. Then again, Canada actually owned up to it in their museum, which is how we know the boat was there. The Americans didn't. The difference between the two museums was real and was big enough for us to pick up on, especially having visited both museums within the space of a week and a half.

We walked along the harbour foreshore – apparently it never freezes over in winter, which is probably why it handled so much sea traffic – and Cathy bought a dress before we stopped for lunch. The sun is very bright up here, and it seems SE Australia is still struggling through a cold winter. We got a bit burnt. Continued walking along the foreshore after lunch – more slowly, due to lunchtime cocktails in the sun – then walked the long way back to the hotel. Cathy had a snooze and I did some study. This is very much a ‘take time out and regroup’ kind of place. And we slept in this morning. The contrast to the hectic pace of NYC is remarkable … which is why I choose to remark upon it.

I spoke far too soon about the bright sunshine we had yesterday. We’ve been so lucky with good weather that the thought didn’t cross my mind that it would shortly end. Woke up this morning – late – to find the skies grey and the roads wet. Probably a bit like Canberra. Given it’s a cold and windy day today in Halifax, we walked around the town before having lunch at a nice Italian restaurant. Wasn't in the mood for wine until I saw a Greg Norman chardonnay from Australia. I've been avoiding Aus/NZ wines, but given I'd never had the opportunity to laugh sneeringly at a bottle of Norman vintage in Australia - clearly, it's export-only - I just *had* to try it. Let's just say it's rough. Cathy's considered view was that it was 'cat's piss'; I thought it was definitely in the same ballpark, but wondered if it might have even been the great man's own. He's known as being one of Australia's greatest ever world-class chokers, and, rather uncannily, drinking his wine conveys a similar sensation. To recover, we walked around the main street a bit more, then ducked into a cinema to watch ‘Ted’. Right up my street; some very funny bits. We would have watched the new Woody Allen film instead, but it had just started, and I need to watch a picture from beginning to end, even if the titles are in Swedish.

We’re now back at the hotel where we’re escaping the rain: I looked at the weather map and there seem to be far too many big Ls across Canada and far too few big Hs, so this isn't a good sign for the next few days. Cathy is in the room reading, and I’m in the lobby about to do some study. I imagine the remainder of today will be taken up with unremarkables: a visit to the pub up the road, then dinner, then sleep. Tomorrow we hire a car (or, as the Canadians pronounce it, ‘crrr’ - or, if at the end of a sentence, 'crrrrr aayy') and drive to Prince Edward Island. I keep forgetting which Prince’s island we’re going to, as there are so many. Canadians must have run out of inspiration somewhere along the line, but I cut them some slack given they had thousands of islands to name. It's a big country.

synchronised travelling

States of the Union visited, traversed or travelled in: Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Massachusetts (that's 20 of the 50), plus DC.

And in Canada so far: British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, with 3 more (I think) still to come.

It's not so bad once you get used to it.

I misjudged earlier. Truth is, we’re in a crappy part of Toronto, but it’s unfair to impugn the entire city based on one small local area. Once we flag down a taxi (not difficult) and escape into the CBD, it’s actually quite nice.

Yesterday we had a late breakkie (which was really lunch, because we went out the night before) at the St Lawrence Market. Following breakkie we thought it’d be a good idea to get the ferry across to Toronto Island, which is just off the coast, but given it was a sunny Sunday, everyone else in the city had exactly the same idea and we didn’t have the stamina for a gruelling queue. So after taking a few photographs of the lakefront (really quite pretty), we walked back into town, past the railway station, and up towards the main shopping precinct. We caught some Games footage at the shopping centre: Canadians seem to be really quite chuffed with their bronze medal in synchronised diving (textbook stuff), then bought a couple of books (a history of Canada for me, and some ‘refresh your French’ books for Cathy – I’ll be relying on her when we get to the French-speaking parts because my French is almost non-existent, apart from some handy phrases handed to me by some helpful others).

We then headed out to the Distillery part of town, which apparently used to be a large brewery/distillery serving the town (not sure how long ago this was), and the buildings and streets have been preserved but the interiors are now mostly swanky galleries etc; but this is also where the Mill St microbrewery lives, so we dropped in for a couple of drinks. They were serving a seasonal raspberry beer which was nice, but not quite as good (or refreshing) as the Wig & Pen version. Then back to the room for an early night; it feels like things are slowly returning to a more moderate pace following my two-week burst of energy in the north east US. Off to Halifax today, where the pace will probably slow even more considerably.