Here is the second part of my list of fun things to do in Edmonton, Canada.

Do a cooking class & market visit at Gail Hall and Seasoned Solutions

“Julia Child is smiling down from heaven about the amount of butter we are using today” says chef Gail Hall as she is standing in her kitchen frying some butter in a pan as it sizzles and hisses in agreement. Today we are having a taste of Edmonton-literally by going to the Edmonton Farmer’s Markets and participating in Gail’s cooking class.

Chef Gail Hall

Before we arrived at Gail’s loft, we spent some time wandering around the Edmonton farmers market. An Edmonton local, Gail is a chef that has previously owned a successful catering company. She is now a radio columnist, president of Cuisine Canada and holds cooking classes in the loft that she shares with her husband. As well as conducting culinary tours around the world and within Canada, she is also an avid supporter championing local produce. At the beginning of our cooking class, she takes us around to four different stands to introduce us to the food of Alberta.

Our first stop is a fruit stand where the fruit comes from the British Columbia region. They practice organic principles in that they don’t use sprays and they rotate the crops but aren’t certified organic. They go around to about 24 markets in the area and this is one of them. And the blueberries are just divine, the sweetest.

Our next stop is the Prairie Bakery where they bake breads and buns using freshly milled flour in their very own flour mill. This makes a difference because freshly milled flour has additional properties that commercially made bulk milled flour doesn’t as this has been removed so that it lasts longer and doesn’t go rancid. As a result, the protein levels with their bread are higher than other breads.

Our third stop is the Sunshine Organic Farm stall where they sell certified organic beef, pork, turkey, chicken and eggs. They also make nitrate free ham and bacon and their beef is all dry aged for a minimum of 21 days. They point out that their ground meat is just meat – no snouts or tails!

Dark purple beans

Red potatoes (creamy underneath the skin)

The last stop is the Dutch family at Riverbend Gardens who have a great range of items including black long beans. They are one of the very own farms within the city limits and their farm has sandy soil that drains well even during wet season.

Dill flower bunches

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Now last time I told you all about the high end of Jasper, Canada. How about the fun and wild side of Jasper? One that has me donning buttless leather chaps (no perhaps not what you were thinking ), eating “evil” food and visiting a brewery for a beer sampler that looks a bit like this?

Papa George’s

I was still jetlagged and with the start of laryngitis, it was a hard night sleeping and the alarm sounds at 6am. Prying open my eyes and getting out bed I get ready for this morning’s breakfast at Papa George’s on one of the two main streets of Jasper called Connaught. Even though it is Summer we should have packed more warm clothes and worn double socks because it is cold! In fact you can tell the native Jasperites or Canadians because they’re the ones wearing shorts and short sleeved tshirts

Papa George’s has a few tempting items and I’m having trouble narrowing it down but thankfully Tina and I have paired up and we share items. I try the Papa Skillet Carnivore and order an orange juice. Service wise, there’s one lovely New Zealand born waitress and a couple not quite as cheerful and we seem more of an annoyance to her than anything else.

Orange juice, small $4

The freshly squeezed (well not to order but freshly squeezed that morning) was wonderfully sweet and I downed every sip.

Papa Skillet Carnivore $13

Well the menu did warn that this dish was mountain sized and it absolutely was. About 20 cm in diameter (silly me, I didn’t bring my ruler along with me) it was piled high with chorizo sausage, bratwurst, capsicum and little hash brown nuggets smothered with cheese, green onions and a scrambled egg omelette as well as a serving of salsa and sour cream. And whilst it may look a bit too much, it was absolutely delicious. It was the undeniable favourite at the table (and at that size I shared it around) and the salsa and sour cream meant that it was a little bit spicy and a little bit creamy. I’m getting hungry thinking about this now and this has got to be the best value breakfast ever.

Breakfast burrito $12

I try some of Tina’s breakfast burrito and the tortillas here are more corn burritos whereas we usually tend to see the softer flour tortillas in Australia. This warm corn tortilla is filled with two scrambled eggs, cheese, green onion and tomato and is also served with the sour cream and salsa. It’s good but when you compare it to the Papa Skillet, size triumphs in all arenas! Like the Papa Skiller it is huge and most can only finish half of their burritos.

Our driver from SunDog, Carolyn with her floppy eared dog hat

Maligne Lake Tours

We are next off to Maligne Lake (pronounced Maleen) for a cruise out to tiny Spirit Island. It’s about an hour’s drive and on the way who better to show up for a curtain call than a black bear (which incidentally can come in all sorts of colours apart from black including white). We are alerted to this as there are cars up ahead that have themselves slowed down for a look. All wildlife, including things like Elk are best left alone and the recommend a distance of at least two buses away when interacting with wildlife (we learned that from a taxi driver ).

We make it to Maligne Lake and wait to board our boat and by now I have lost my voice if not my will to food shop.We spy some Nanaimo bars, that uniquely Canadian bar hailing from Nanaimo in BC.

We board our boat and our guide and driver proceed to entertain us with stories and information. It’s their personalities and the killer view that make this a great trip and the perfectly aqua green water stuns us (although the guide tells us that it is an optical illusion).

We make it to Spirit Island which is a small island actually connected to the land for some photographs before heading back for some BBQ. There are freshly cooked bison and beef burgers with a drink for $10 (or $8 by themselves) and they are self assembly so you can add your cheese (yellow or orange slices), onion, pickles, tomato, lettuce, sauce and mayonnaise. It’s actually very good with a nice moistness and char to the burger and the bun is also toasted.

We were supposed to go for a hike but I needed to see the doctor so Mariam and I went back into town to see a GP and test out the health care system for a complete change in itinerary. I’ve never really gotten to test overseas health care systems so this is a first. At the clinic in Jasper (the only one) they work by appointment only and to see the doctor it was $120CAD plus the cost of the two medicines ($38). Thankfully I have trusty travel insurance!

Jasper Brewing Company

So, what else do I need to show you? Oh that’s right, beer! Lunch is at the Jasper Brewing Company or what they call a “roadhouse” and this is where we are confronted with a beer tasting that would make any beer lover happy. Many order the six beer sampler and expect small glasses of the beers. But no that’s not what they had in mind and six beers are delivered in a wooden carrier.

Mini road side sliders $11.99

The menu, surprisingly, has an Asian influence to it in some of the menu items crossed with roadhouse favourites. I do love a good slider and these are three small cheeseburgers with sauteed onion and “the usual fixings”. The buns are soft and fresh, the patty juicy and sweet with the onions and they are the perfect size for sharing.

Monkey fingers $11.99

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I’m not a naturally early riser. Let me sleep in and I’ll get up around 9 or 10am. Getting up for pastry however is never a problem. Judy from The Fairmont had mentioned the two magic words “double baked croissant” and suddenly I was setting my alarm early for a visit to Vancouver’s Thomas Haas a chocolatier and purveyor of wickedly good croissants. I love a good almond croissant and to me it’s not an almond croissant unless it is baked twice. First to bake the croissant itself after which it is dipped in a sugar syrup, filled with almond frangipane paste, covered in flaked almonds and then baked again to a crunchy goodness. Done well, it can induce a bliss like state of total time and space freeze. Done badly, it’s a waste of calories.

Double baked almond croissant

And I’m holding a double baked croissant in my hot little hand. Before I take a bite I first offer some to Mr NQN who is quite frankly a non pastry lover. He likes juicy things like fruit and pastry is too dry for him. But then I watch him take a bite . And then another. Hmm I’m thinking this might be good. I take a bite and the I can hear the crunchiness in my ears. The sugar syrup and flakey, buttery pastry lulls me into a state of bliss. A car could have crashed into the shop and I would not have known.

Thomas himself is in the corner being interviewed by a local newspaper. The pastries are baked every morning at this location and Thomas’s food philosophy is one which he strictly adheres to. Control over quality and sourcing the best ingredients from anywhere in the world (so really the opposite of the local movement). His vanilla beans are from Tahiti, his chocolate is from Belgium and he buys limes from Brazil.

We also try the macarons with my favourite being the caramel and the coffee which has a whole coffee bean in the centre.

London Fog tea $3.75

I take a sip of my London Fog tea. It’s an Earl Grey tea that has been made with frothed milk and has a shot of vanilla. Oh my, can I set up camp here? And I haven’t even gotten to the chocolates yet. I order a few chocolates to take with me which are the exotic, merlot and caramel fleur de sel which is made with smoked salt and the green cardamom. The individual chocolates are $1.10 each. But with no time and no stomach space we go for a bit more of an adventure around Vancouver. We’re off next to Granville Island!

Just 20 minutes outside of downtown Vancouver, Granville Island has a great market that tourists and locals flock to. We arrived at Granville Market on time but spent the first 30 minutes wandering around trying to find our Edible BC guide. We walked around and it was only when we spotted someone in a chef’s uniform that we realised that our guide was already giving a tour so we quickly joined it. And just in time too as they were handing out blueberry sourdough bread samples. The Granville market are busy this Thursday morning as a cruise ship has just docked and people are busy shopping and sampling.

Golden and regular beetroot

Precious garlic!

Blueberries galore!

We see huge stalks of fresh garlic that was literally picked out f the ground yesterday. Our guide Rohan is one of the chefs at Gotham restaurant in Vancouver and he is proud to show off the local produce and range. One of our fellow tour participants asks him about morels and he explains that they are great here but expensive at $20 a pound ($40) a kilo. He explains that morels are best after a forest fire as they need nitrous and phosphorous to feed them. A few years ago there was a huge forest fire that wiped out one twentieth of British Columbia and the following year they had incredible quality morels.

We enter La Baguette which is owned by French proprietors. It is operational 24 hours 7 days a week as they supply many of the restaurant trade with bread. We try some of their pain au chocolat and I spy macarons in vivid colours for $2. They also offer picnic baskets for $9.95 a person so people can sit on the boardwalk and enjoy their food.

We see an heirloom tomato specialist who grows 21 varieties of heirlooms in their South Langley farm. These tomatoes are grown in soil, not hydroponically and they originally grew about 30 varieties but whittled it own to their current range of 21.

Guess what is under that cover?

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