Yogurtsoda

Posted on October 14, 2013

After two straight days of dog sledding and mountaineering, we were due for a lazy day. Nishan and I began our fourth day in Calgary at Phil & Sebastian, a minimalist-meets-hipster-in-a-good-way coffee shop in the Marda Loop neighborhood. Protip: get their pain au chocolat; it’s the best I’ve ever had. Their coffee is pretty solid, too.

Afterwards, we headed to the Calgary Farmers Market, which was a bit bare bones in the produce department (it was February, after all) but more than made up for it with meats and cheeses. Want bison? Check. Meat pies? Check. Venison? Check. Kale? Not so much.

I picked up some maple black tea at TotaliTea, then grabbed a few bison sausages at Olson’s High Country. The real treat was picking up a dozen meat pies at Simple Simon Pies. We ate a couple of their Jamaican beef curry pies for lunch at the farmers market and took the rest home to enjoy later.

We spent the rest of the day in downtown Calgary, where I learned what the +15 is (a massive indoor pedestrian skywalk system connecting downtown buildings because, well, it’s so cold in the winter) and also learned that butter chicken poutine exists. Sadly, it’s not as delicious as you might think. What good is butter chicken poutine if the butter chicken isn’t freshly cooked?

For dinner, we put the bison sausage to good use: I cooked up a sauce while Nishan cranked out some freshly-made egg pasta. The result? Tagliatelle with bison sausage and broccoli rabe.

My fifth and last day in Calgary was another happily lazy excursion to Phil and Sebastian, followed by sampling an infamous Montreal smoked meat sandwich. I probably should have tried one of these while I was in Montreal last year, but hey, better late than never.

Avenue Deli serves up Montreal-style smoked meat sandwiches and they’re not exactly light eating. These come with a side of chips, and speaking of chips, did you know that ketchup chips are a thing in Canada? They’re every bit as delicious as you imagine they are.

For dinner, we had one last pasta-esque hurrah. Nishan handmade some saffron pasta while I cooked up a sauce of wild mushrooms and lobster. You can’t really go wrong with any of these ingredients.

I woke up the next morning to a city freshly blanketed in a layer of snow. I had an early flight to catch back to SFO, and left feeling like I’d only scratched the surface of Alberta. Oh, Calgary. Who knew?

Posted on October 9, 2013

By my third day in Calgary, I still hadn’t acclimated to the cold and settled on wearing nearly all my layers of clothing before heading out with Nishan for a day at Banff National Park in the Rocky Mountains. But first we stopped at Tim Hortons for a coffee, because Canada.

The highway to Banff is fraught with elk crossing signs, a novelty for this California girl. It was beautiful here and well, California “mountains” basically look like hills to me now.

We headed to Sulphur Mountain, where a gondola took us to the Summit Upper Terminal at over 7,000 feet. I’d never seen so much snow…or mysterious animal paw prints at that. I’m not sure these were exactly Fido’s steps, if you know what I mean.

Once at the top, Nishan and I set to hiking the impeccably well-kept pathways to the historic Sanson’s Peak Meteorological Station, named after Norman Bethune Sanson. Sanson first climbed the mountain on snowshoes in 1896 in order to record weather observations for the Banff area. Kind of like broadcast television meteorologists, amirite?

It was around this time that I started to feel woozy and light-headed (think of it as a wimp’s version of high altitude sickness combined with possible hypothermia), so we took the gondola back down and headed into the super idyllic Banff town. After stopping at a cafe to warm ourselves up, we got back on the road towards Calgary, where we gorged ourselves on sushi for dinner, Alberta style. (Hint: everything is deep-fried and covered in sauce, yet strangely satisfying.)

Oh, Canada.

Posted on September 30, 2013

If you told me a couple years ago that I’d be dog sledding and rodeo-ing and poutine-ing in Canada, I wouldn’t have believed it. Sure, Canada is beautiful, but dog sledding? I’d never even experienced snowfall outside of a couple trips to Lake Tahoe.

But lo and behold, I found myself in Calgary this past February, and I was smitten. Nishan picked me up at the airport and whisked us off to the downtown core, where we had dinner reservations at Calgary Tower.

Replete with a 360-degree view of the city, we watched the sun set over the Rocky Mountains over a flight of Canadian wine, wild mushroom soup, and orecchiette with beef short rib.

We woke up bright and early the next morning and headed to Canmore, about an hour west of Calgary, to Snowy Owl Dog Tours to get fitted in our Gore-Tex outfits and help us brave the cold. I’m not sure there’s any amount of Gore-Tex or winter gear that would have prepared me for an Albertan winter, though. Despite two pairs of layered pants, North Face boots, two layers of wool sweater and a jacket, toque, and gloves, I was freezing. But hey, we were already there and there were beautiful, majestic huskies to meet.

After our orientation, we departed from the trail head in Spray Lakes and began our two-hour expedition through the mountains, stopping at a mid-point on a frozen lake to catch our breath. Now, I’m not sure about you, but as a born-and-bred Californian, I was positively freaked out by the idea that we were standing over a frozen lake. Water! Frozen water! You crazy for this one, Canada.

By the time we were done and back and the trail head, my fingers felt numb and my nose frozen from the biting wind. But there were warm cookies and hot cider to be had, and the best part of all: meeting a husky puppy-in-training.

I still can’t believe I went dog sledding, but I do know it ranks as one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had. I’d go again in a heartbeat.

Afterwards, we stopped at the beautiful ski resort town of Banff (seriously, this place gives Switzerland a run for its money) for a buffalo burger before getting on the road to Calgary. Back in Calgary, we warmed up over drinks and poutine from the Big Cheese because hey, all that dog sledding makes a girl hungry.