ElsieD

Ooooh, thanks for this. I have made it myself but it is so nice to know that I can get it at home.

Tonight's dinner was a disappointment. We were back at Dustabella's where we ate last night. I had ordered the pork chop special which was stuffed with a pesto filling with feta and almonds. The plate came, I had ordered garlic mashed potatoes as a side and it also came with vegetables of the day. The veg were cold and the one fork of mashed I ate was overpowered by raw garlic. Back it went. Since I didn't want the mashed spuds anymore, they replaced it with salad. Out came the revised plate. The chop must have been sitting under a heat lamp or something because it was HOT, completely overcooked and dry. The veg had zero seasoning or anything else on them and were lukewarm. The salad was okay. John was satisfied with his fish and chips but his veg were cold too but he didn't care because he wasn't eating them anyway. I'm glad we have that apple tart to look forward to a bit later.

Any guesses as to what this might have been used for?

A similar fireplace was used in the room directly in front of the sleeping quarters. All meals were cooked on it and the smoke escaped through a hole in the roof. If there were more people than beds they slept on the floor. The dishes you see were made out of wood, birch to be exact. Only the rich could afford china. The other picture is of cod drying on a flake. After cleaning the cod, they were layered in salt and a few weeks later were dried on the flake.

Today we did a tour of Cape Random where the mini-series Random Passage was filmed in 2000. We had watched the series at the time and really enjoyed it so decided to buy the DVD and watch it again before we came out here. To have seen the series recently made it that much more interesting to see this set. The series took a year to shoot and was shot at this location except for 1 week in St. John's and three weeks in Ireland. The village, or community as it would have been called was built using materials and methods available in the early 1800's. This meant, for example, that no nails were used in it's construction. The series told of how Random Passage came to be populated and the back stories of the individuals who lived there. They even have a little graveyard showing the "graves" of the people who died in the show. (They are not real graves.) It was fascinating and you really get a sense between the show and actually visiting the site of how hard life was back then

Today we had lunch at the Random Passage Tea House near Old Bonaventure. It was earlyish for lunch so we weren't all that hungry. Turkey soup with vegetables seems to be very popular in Newfoundland so we both had a bowl of that. It was a very big bowl, and more like a stew as it was chock full of vegetables and turkey. John had 2 hot dogs o go with his, I had a very tiny pizza. Thus fueled, we toured the Random Passage site which I will tell you about in my next post. Right now we are in the town of Bonavista having stopped long enough for me to post this. It is the first time today that I have had an Internet connection since we left the hotel this morning. No picture of the hot dogs.

I meant to show you one more picture, and that is of a street in St. Pierre. Cars are driven on the left hand side of the planters and pedestrians walk on the other side. All the streets that we walked on are narrow like this. It reminds me of the old part of Quebec City or even the old city of Montreal. Very quaint if you come from a modern urban centre. Edited to add: they drive the same way they do in North America, on the right. Once students graduate from high school, they go to university in France. Pretty much everything is paid for by the government - tuition, transportation to and from St. Pierre to France and they get a living allowance. Of particular interest to those of us who live in cold weather climates, after a snow storm, they have special equipment that totally clears the snow right down to the pavement within 24 hours of a storm. Also, all hydro and telephone wires are buried, not just in the city but also in the rural areas. Nary a pole to be seen. Specialists are flown in from France as required to perform surgeries.

We did some roaming around St. Pierre after lunch and found a patisserie where we bought the goodies pictured below. During what felt like the never-ending drive to tonight's hotel, the eclair managed to roll over and the chocolate ganache fell off, so I had to sort of piece it together as best I could for the picture. We are having the eclair and the pear tart tonight and will have the apple tart tomorrow. We have a fridge in our room so keeping it cold won't be a problem. To keep from eating it before then might be. We were pretty tired by the time we got to Clarenville and we weren't particularly hungry so decided to go to a place called Dustabella's for quick bite. It is a restaurant attached to a hotel and it actually has pretty good food. We ate there several times last year and were more than satisfied with it. I had the appetizer sized portion of seafood chowder with some garlic bread. This was a good chowder, containing salmon, scallops, cod, shrimp and one mussel. The garlic bread was fresh but not very garlicy and not very well toasted which I didn't mind too much because I'm not big on bread with chowder anyway. John had a turkey soup which he said was very good but could have been a bit hotter temperature wise. He had a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich to go with it that he said could have been better grilled. Overall, not bad. Tiring day, though. The going through customs and getting to the ferry early along with the crossing took 4 hours, we spent 5 hours in St. Pierre and driving time added another for 3 hours and 45 minutes to the day. Tomorrow promises to be much more relaxed. I should have some interesting pictures for you tomorrow.

And did you see le chat on the book shelf?

Lunch today was very good. They had a cod special and the menu listed one of my favourite things and something you see rarely to never on restaurant menus in Canada and that is flammekuchen. I was vacillating between the two then noticed the flammekuchen served two. I ordered the cod and was very happy with it. Beautifully cooked, nice big flakes of moist fish served with a red pepper sauce. It came with rice and a condiment topping of sorts which, when I asked, was told it was a shallots, tomato, white wine and cumin sauce. It was really good and livened up the rice which was a plain white one. John had the pizza and the toppings were hot and sweet peppers, ham, hot chorizo, shitaki mushrooms, and mozzarella cheese, They had cruet of spicy oil on the table which he also put on the pizza. It had a very thin crust and was baked in a gas fired pizza oven. We did not have dessert but visited a patisserie where we bought a couple of delicious looking things for later. The ferry is about to take off which is when I loose my Internet so will post the pictures and try to send before we leave. The connection is not particularly strong. Once again I had poked into my fish and rice before remembering to take a picture. The menu is a list today's specials.

It has been a great day. We had to show our passports to buy the ferry tickets and then to go through customs on the Newfoundland side. We just boarded the ferry for the return trip and they checked our passports again. I'm not sure what happens at the other end. I'll let you know.

Today we are in St. Pierre et Miquelon, which is a French colony off the coast of Newfoundland. We got up with the birds to get to the ferry, which made the crossing in 1 hour, 10 minutes. We took a tour of the island which was very interesting. The fellow doing the driving reminded me of Jaques Pepin with his, "you know?" and it wasn't just the expression, he was a dead ringer with the accent. A couple of pictures for you. One is just of the sign with the town name, the other are a couple of the town itself. The houses are painted different colours, much like St. John's. At the moment we are seated in Le Chat de Luthier, where we are waiting for our lunch. More on that later!

Tonight we were back at The Heritage Cafe for dinner. John wanted toutons so he had 2 toutons less a bite and mac and cheese which he enjoyed. I had pan fried cod with scruncheons, mashed potatoes, mixed carrots and peas a double helping of mustard pickles aND a bit of touton. It was all good. The fish was so fresh, moist and flaky. We did take a bite or two before I remembered to take a picture. For dessert we brought home a lemon square to bring home for later tonight. I spied a date square being delivered to someone's table so I got one to take with me and we will have it in the morning on the way to catch the ferry. I forgot to mention that the apple crumble cheesecake made up for the bad apple pie the day before. This is something I'm going to try to duplicate. I tried to worm the recipe out of them but no dice. The picture of the view is what you see from our table at The Heritage Cafe. Not too shabby. The other is of the food mentioned in this post, with a tea bag on the plate with the date square to give you an idea of the size.

Thank you. She did say to do this but I neglected to put that in my post. I have since corrected it. Yes, they sure are good. We are about to go there for dinner again (outside of the fact the food is good, it's the only decent place here) and I'm trying to think of an excuse for having another one. We leave Burin early in the morning to go to our next spot so won't have another chance. I had one last year that was very heavy and I did not care for it very much. Glad I took a chance and tried them again.

Did my description compare to how you do yours? I like the idea of frying the innards.

Yes, black bears. There may be others but the black bears were the ones specifically mentioned by the biologist at the Salmonier Nature Park.

I asked about making toutons at home. I was told that you use a regular white bread dough, and let it proof once. Then you cut off chunks of dough, 3 to 4 ounces each and gently form them into a ball. The dough will deflate a bit as you do this but you don't want to punch the dough down. You heat some neutral oil in a frying pan and put the dough in that. Fry gently until the underside is crispy then fry the othe side. Total cooking time is about 10 minutes and the dough will rise while it is cooking. The end result will be a very light bread, nice and crispy on the outside and hot all the way though. . Devour while hot.

Suzilightning, this is for you!

Sign along the highway.

Here is today's breakfast. John had the Newfoundland breakfast with an extra touton. Bologna is a staple item here and in the interests of this blog, that is what he had. He enjoyed it very much. I had, as you can see, an egg, a touton and what they call breakfast potatoes, pan fried with onions and red pepper. We ate it all. Those toutons are something else. Crispy exterior, soft, fluffy interior. The fry them up as they get an order. I can't wait to make them at home. Coffee for John, tea for me.

We are about to get started on our day with the first stop being The Heritage Cafe for toutons and, in my case, tea, coffee for John. We are going around "the boot" of the Burin Penninsula today. This is not a great distance which is a good thing as we are getting lots of wind today so want to be safely ensconced in our little efficiency unit when it starts. Wind gusts of 100 to 120 kph are expected and the warning is to watch out for tree limbs being broken off and to watch for loose objects flying through the air. As we were nearing the end of our drive down that barren stretch of highway yesterday, we came across a local craft store called The Tea Rose and stopped in to take a look. They have beautiful handcrafted items, all locally made. Here is a picture of my purchase - a pair of really soft wool (non acrylic) slippers, a snowman and a Christmas ornament of a lighthouse. The snowman is about a foot tall.

We found a nice little place for dinner called The Heritage Cafe. It is at the end of a local road in the outskirts of Burin, outskirts being a relative term. They had on their menu on few typical Newfoundland offerings. I have posted the menu below so you can have a look. I had the molasses baked beans, a fish cake with mustard pickles and a touton with syrup. Most people eat toutons with molasses but you could get syrup instead and since I was having molasses baked beans, I opted for the syrup. John had the turkey dinner. Everything is made from scratch. I sure enjoyed my meal. The fish cake was very light which was nice because they can often be dense. The beans were good too, but the toutons - oh my, that was special. Piping hot, dipped into the syrup, it was delicious. Less successful was John's turkey dinner. He said it was good but nothing special. For dessert, we opted for two pieces of apple crumble cheesecake but when they were brought out and we had a look at them, we decided to share one instead. That was one humongous piece. We got it to take out and will have it later. We both want more of those toutons and we non-breakfast folk are going there tomorrow for breakfast. Below are pictures of my dinner, john's dinner, dessert and the menu. I should also mention that it is the only non-pizza, non-McDonald's place in Burin, population about 2,500.

When I was here the very first time, my friend Wilson, at whose house we were staying, took my friend and I "troutin'" as they call it here. We went to a freshwater stream and there we tried to land something. We were there in the middle of the stream, in our waders. We didn't catch anything, but we sure had a great time. We were fishing for speckled trout. The water is pristine and if you are not looking at the ocean, you are looking at a cape, a pond, a lake or a stream. The Atlantic around here right now is, I'm told, around 5 or 6 degrees celcius.

Perhaps because this stretch of road is so "barren" the authorities saw fit to build a "rest stop" complete with antenna???