23/365

Sadly I think that today may be the last time I visit my favourite produce market, Aria. Aria Market is at Bidwell and Robson St, and without a doubt has the cheapest produce in the area. We have been shopping here for a good year or so, since we discovered it. I have no doubt that it has saved us hundreds of dollars on our weekly shopping bills. I love the way they lay out all the produce in front of the store as is shown in the photo. It looks like a proper market stall, and is super cramped, rickety and cluttered; just as you'd expect a market stall to be.
Today I made the trip to Aria even though I didn't really need anything, but I took the opportunity to grab some produce for lunch, then head to Coal Harbour and eat lunch overlooking the moored yachts, basking up the glorious sun.
Fir $2.08 I got 4 Californian Navel Oranges, 1 Fuji Apple and 1 Orange Capsicum. Not bad I thought!
After lunch I strolled back through Stanley Park and the West End. What a beautiful day!

13/365

The coming week is all about health and fitness for me. After a few weeks of indulgence, it's time to get back on track with healthy eating and a good fitness regime.
I will be joining Y Yoga for a few weeks and geting in as much swimming and running as possible. It should be a great way to spend my last few weeks in Vancouver.
This is a delicious simple salad that I often make. A mix of various leafy greens, grated carrot and beetroot, raw cauliflower, dulse, hemp seeds, nutritional yeast and a tahini and mustard dressing. You can bulk this up as you wish, mix and match different vegetables. I often like to add chick peas and some raisins and seeds.

Rocanini Coffee Roasters

This is hands down my favourite coffee in Vancouver! They have a lot of different varietals, and roast right there in the shop, so when you buy a bag of coffee it is so fresh. The guys that work there are also super helpful and are so particular about how they make coffee - you can tell they have a passion for it - and thats why I have never had a bad coffee there. They are also super happy to talk coffee and impart some knowledge about the world of coffee! I have been loving their recent Rawandan and Panama coffees, brewing them at home with a simple pour over setup. I wanted to take some pics of Rocaninis as it is a place that I will miss when I leave Vancouver, I will be taking a few bags with me for sure.

Green Smoothie

I made an epic green smoothie this morning. After an hour of core and leg work, and a hour long run, I felt like making something super healthy and nourishing. The following resulted:
                             

Jacobs Bucks Show @ Bitter Tasting Room

Last night was Jacobs bucks show at Bitter Tasting Room. What an awesome night, nice and chilled, great group of people and Jacob was well and truly sloshed in his pretty pink princess crown and bachelorette sash!
The server at Bitter was a gun dealing with all our orders, and the food was wicked - we ate a lot of scotch and deviled eggs! There is loads of beer to choose from there and a great range of draught beer as well as bottled.
No pics this time, but good memories.

Thanksgiving Bread

Yesterday was a day of baking. Doing two different loaves in one day takes a bit of management with different rising, folding, shaping and baking times. The two different breads I made were a Pain au Levain, a classic French Levain white loaf, made using a stiff levain sourdough as the basis. The second loaf I baked was a Hazelnut, Fig and Fennel seed loaf, also baked using a stiff levain sourdough.
It was a bit of a nightmare as I ran out of white flour right at the crucial time of shaping, so the dough was fairly sticky and it became a nightmare to control so some of my loaves don't look as nice as I hoped, but I guess you can say I was going for the rough and rustic look. But all in all, I think they turned out pretty well, the scoring could have been better though.
As of now I haven't tasted them, but will post back once I have news to report on the crumb and flavour.

Building a Stiff Levain

Up until this point in time I have only been working with a liquid levain sourdough when baking. This weekend however, the bread I'm baking requires a stiff levain. To fast track this I converted a postion of my liquid levain into a stiff levain by calculating the correct amount of flour I needed to add to bring the ratios from 100% hydration, down to 60%. Initially I was super dubious as to whether this would actually work. 60% hydration felt really dry and I wondered whether the levain would have enough "breathing room" to actually live. It proved me wrong and went mad. It has been growing way more actively than the liquid levain, it's quite exciting. Last night I fed it again, and this morning it was bursting at the glad wrap seams, so I broke some off to store in the fridge for next time, and fed it up again to incorporate into my build tonight for my Fig and Hazlenut Sourdough for thanksgiving.

Countdown Stop # 7 - Forage

Today is another day for a conut down stop. We have wanted to check out Forage for some time now and decided that it would be a great breakfast stop. Forage is a really nice looking restaurant, albeit a little cliched in terms of it's decor choices. First up we got some coffee, Kate got filter and I got an espresso. The espresso sucked. The guy couldn't make a good coffee to save himself. Seriosly why offer to do espresso if you cant make a good one. So immediately this got me off to a bad start as for me, when I'm going out for breakfast, the coffee is as important as the food. The espresso shot was watery and astringent. Not the thick sweet espresso shot with rich crema that you should get. Anyways, I got over this and moved onto the food.
The food was great, and fairly generous. Everything appeared to have been made / baked fresh right then and there which was nice. I got hot steel cut oat porridge with foamed milk and cinnamon, blueberries and apples. Kate got eggs benedict and a honey butter scone, which was nice and fresh. The steel cut oats was a very generous serve, the fruit was nice and over all it was exactly what I was after. Kates benny looked amazing and was cooked perfectly, from the reports the hollandaise sauce was bang on, and the scone was amazing and fresh.
It's amazing that this is the only place that we could find to go out for a breakfast other than a shitty diner. I wish more cafes would open early for those of us that like to get the day underway nice and early. This was a thoroughly enjoyable morning watching the city awake and the traffic on Robson St. We had to take a nice stroll through the West End to get to and from Forage, which made for such a enjoyable start to the day with Kate.

Christmas Pudding

My Christmas pudding project is coming along nicely, and I figured it was time to cook one of the mini puddings up so that I could check that they were working correctly. ie not going mouldy or tasting terrible. However I couldn't just cook the pudding, I had to do the whole setup with custard, and not having brandy I made a bourbon custard, and it was amazing.
The pudding turned out so well, the home dried variety of oranges and tangerines made such a broad citrus flavour, an then all the extra fruit and nuts just made it so Christmassy. I was totally stoked at how well it turned out. Big reps to the Maggie Beer recipe.

Sourdough

Yay. It was finally time to bake some more bread. A friend was having us over for dinner so I wanted to cook an epic loaf of bread. I made another sourdough using my three month old culture. I matured the culture over 3 days, mixed the dough with the levain culture on Saturday morning, folded and fermented for 2.5 hrs, then shaped and let rise for a final fermentation of 2.5 hours and then baked the whole dough as one massive loaf.
This was a big loaf as it was meant to be shaped into two loaves, but like I said, I wanted to make an epic loaf. Unfortunately this huge loaf extended cooking time, and I ended up with a slightly too hard of a crust. I'll know for next time. However, there was a beautiful sourdough flavour and it raised really nicely, with some beautiful little air holes and a really nicely textured crumb. The crust was nicely coloured and the score marks worked really well, creating a very nice looking loaf of bread.
Next weekend I'm excited as I'm going to be baking a fig and hazlenut levain.

Countdown Stop # 6 - Vij's Rangoli

We have wanted to Vij's Rangoli this place for a while, and were craving Indian as we haven't had it for a long time. We headed here with our friend Fred, who has spent some time living inn India so is a good critique.
So the menu wasn't traditional by any means. I had been craving Palak Paneer, which they had, but called slightly differently, and tandoori chicken, which they didn't have, which I was a bit bummed out about. You also couldn't order sides of rice or Naam bread which was a bit strange, and I would have really appreciated this to just pad the meal out a bit. The staff were also useless, and it was obvious that they had some feud going on cos the tension between some staff was totally noticeable.
This aside, the food was really great, a nice modern interpretation of Indian food. A classic situation of the wait staff totally letting the kitchen down. The chai tea was also delicious.
Overall, I wouldn't go back. I am a sucker for the traditional dishes, and the large servings that come with the traditional dishes. THis experience was tasty, but small and expensive, and just not quite Indian enough for me.

New Coffee - Rwandan roasted by Rocanini

Rocanini has got a bunch of new coffee in recently, and I just picked up a bag of their new Rwandan varietal. It is delicious. We first brewed it this morning, using a pour over setup, and wow, so good. I found it to not be a very fruity coffee. It's what I would call a classic coffee. Milk chocolate, caramel and toffee flavours. No bitterness, a nice lingering sweet finish. Needless to say I hope Rocanini keeps this one on the menu for a while!

Countdown Stop # 5 - Naam

We were cheeky this weekend and took the opportunity to get a few of our countdown restaurants off our list. It was also a good opportunity to catch up with our good buddy Ed. This time we headed to the Naam, well and truly a staple in Vancouver food culture, as well as being one of my favorite restaurants hands down. The Naam would be my most visited restaurant in Vancouver, it is always delicious and healthy if you choose the right thing :-) For me, a wicked Mexican Dragon Bowl. Pretty much rice, vegan cheese, steamed veg and fresh grated veg with guacamole, salsa and miso gravy with a side of tempeh. YES! So amazing. Then to top of this feast I got a little Vegan date slice for take out, so we could eat it down at Kits Beach as we watched the sun set and the city lights turn on. As always the Naam rocked and served up some delicious massive servings :-) !

Countdown Stop # 4 - Meat & Bread

So time is flying, and we are at countdown stop #4. Next on the list was Meat and Bread in Gastown. Pretty much it is just amazingly roasted meat, on bread. The best pork crackling since getting to Vancouver. The only disappointment is that they don't bake their own bread? What, you don't bake your own bread but it is a main part of your name? Anyways, super tasty lunch treat, and although it was super crowded they had a great way to deal with everyone very quickly and everyone got a seat easily :-) Another one off the list.

Countdown Stop # 3 - Fable

Wow, the weeks are flying by. We are already at countdown eatery # 3. We headed to Fable because of amazing reviews, and they did not disappoint. As I'm eating healthily at the moment I got a beet salad, and their take on falafels. Both were amazing, and the salad was the most interesting thoughtfully pieced together salad I've ever bought out! A complex mix if different delicious sauces, rocket, perfectly cooked beetroot and some popped wild rice which added an amazing texture comparison. The falafels were amazing. A great mix of blended chick peas and whole chick peas for texture, some nice greens on top and an amazing sauce.

Baking

Wow! It has been quite a weekend of baking. I must have felt like I needed some carbs after my 3km swim this morning! Anyways I baked two sourdough loaves, 2 Country loaves, one free form and one in a bread tin.We are also having friends over and I have made pizza dough - which is going bonkers! The two sourdough loaves were a bit of an experiment. So they both started from a 16hr levain build, I then mixed the final dough and let ferment for 2.5 hrs, folding twice. After this I shaped out two round loaves and these went two ways. Loaf A had a final fermentation for another 2hrs and then was baked. Loaf B was retarded overnight in the fridge, so that fermented for another 12hrs or so.
The results of this in terms of visibility are obvious. The one that spent some time in the fridge didn't rise as much, the one that was baked straight away is by far the best sourdough loaf I've done in terms of crust texture and rise, however the sourdough flavour is more subtle. I am yet to taste loaf B, but will review more when I do.
The second bread I made was the country loaf. This loaf comprises of a poolish, built 16hrs before the final build, and utilises 50% of the final flour so you have a high percentage of pre-fermented dough - giving a stronger flavour in the final bread. This loaf was amazing. The crumb is really light and spongy, a total delight to eat, it almost feels like you aren't eating anything, but you get this delicious yeasty flavour, and could quite easily demolish a whole loaf in one sitting. The crust was super light and crispy, and just crunched when cut, sounding similar to deep fried tempura batter. This was one of the nicest loaves I've made and it will definitely become a staple loaf in my repertoire.

Countdown Stop # 2 - Twisted Fork

Tonight marks out second countdown restaurant and we decided to go to Twisted Fork - we had only heard good things. It was a great night and the food was pretty good. I got mushroom risotto and a Chorizo, goats cheese and spaghetti squash salad. Kate got the mushroom risotto and a goats cheese tart. We shared a pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. Over all it was a pretty good place to eat. Minor niggling complaints, risotto was a bit on the under cooked side and Kates tart was a bit lame for $9 when compared to my salad. But it was still a really nice night out with Kate.

Countdown Stop # 1 - Cafe Medina

We had brunch out at our first countdown cafe. In the days leading up to our departure from Vancouver we are aiming to mark each 10 days by eating out at one of our favorite restaurants, or a restaurant that we really want to go to, but haven't yet. Restaurant # 1 was brunch at Cafe Medina. Why, because of their amazing coffee and the waffles. Me being healthy, I had a latte, a macchiatto and the muesli with almond milk. Kate went for the poached egg with toast, two waffles with chocolate lavender sauce and a white chocolate rosewater mocha. Next stop, Twisted Fork.

Date Breakfast!

So we are trying to make breakfast out each Friday morning as a little "date" breakfast before work once a week. This week we headed to Whole Foods Breakfast Buffet.

Thanksgiving Dinner

In Victoria for Thanksgiving, Kate and I treated ourselves to an amazing Thanksgiving dinner at Joes Place. Nothing like a good homely meal at a classic looking diner to celebrate finishing a marathon.