A good scoff, cod tongues, toutons and tea on The Rock aka Newfoundland

[ElsieD]

Good morning!

 

We are about to begin our travels in earnest today.   Sue and Gary are already here and ready to roll.   We are off shortly to Bay Bulls where we will be taking a boat tour to the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve.  Newfoundland has a lot of quaint place names.  We will see a huge Atlantic Puffin colony, apparently 1/2 million of them, Humpback Whales and hopefully some icebergs.  The day is overcast but no rain is called for.  Later this afternoon we will be going to "tea in a crypt", again something we did last year that we enjoyed.  

 

We actually did have a breakfast supplied hotel breakfast this morning but I didn't take any pictures because it was just the usual scrambled eggs and sausage.  Nothing exciting.

 

I have been told it is time to go.  More later.

[ElsieD]

Oh, one more thing.  They take moose accidents and sightings seriously here.

[rotuts]

after you call in, what does 89 MOOSE do ?

[ElainaA]

9 hours ago, Okanagancook said:

Oh, thank goodness I am not the only one!

anyone else?

Evidently quite a few people in my area.  A Tim Horton opened up here (in Cortland - the nearest small city to Virgil) about 3 years ago - it lasted less than a year. I've never been in one so i have no personal opinion.

Edited August 26, 2016 by ElainaA (log)

[rotuts]

TH I guess is moving up   ....   bought or combined with BurgerKing !

 

PS  od its so hard to find a good old fashioned donut these days.

 

cake version , chocolate dipped or maybe maple icing dip.

[Beebs]

Puffins & moose!  I hope they'll show up for you - I've always wanted to see one in real life! 

 

Timmy's - I like their brekky sandwiches (better than McD's, I think), sour cream glazed donut, honey cruller, maple pecan danish. And Timbits.  Everything else - meh.

[Ashen]

14 hours ago, Okanagancook said:

Oh, thank goodness I am not the only one!

anyone else?

 

 

 

I can't even drink their Coffee anymore, I threw the last desperation one I bought there out after two sips.   I am not 100 % positive they are doing this but to me it seems like they are  roasting darker and overextracting to save money on coffee grounds cost.   Over the past 10 yrs or so their quality across the board  has dropped remarkably, and they were only ever  middle of the road to begin with. 

 

McDonald's is my go to drive thru coffee now, in Canada,  sorry to say but any coffee I have had from them in the USA sucks worse than Timmies. 

 

For decent donuts around here, you are left with a few independant bakeries that still do them and there are still some grocery stores that do them fresh  in store every day. 

[ElsieD]

8 hours ago, rotuts said:

after you call in, what does 89 MOOSE do ?

Great question.  I have no idea, but I'll try to find out.

 

[robirdstx]

8 hours ago, rotuts said:

after you call in, what does 89 MOOSE do ?

 

The third paragraph on the second photo of the flyer says they contact their media partners who broadcast the info in a timely manner.

[ElsieD]

We boarded the sightseeing boat at Bay Bulls at 11:00 and off we went to the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve.  The reserve is made up of several islands.   We did see thousands of puffins but they are very small birds, only 6" to 7" and since tour boats are not permitted to land on the island we only saw them from a distance.  I have included a couple of pictures of them mainly so you can see their habitat.  Sadly, it was hard to see their colouring which was a disappointment as I really wanted to have a close up look.   A few interesting facts about puffins are that they mate for life,  they can dive to a depth of 300 feet, the babies are called pufflings.  

 

Another bird we saw was the murre.   The murres breed in colonies so close together that they can touch their neighbours and the female lays one egg per season.  All the eggs have different markings and the adult recognizes their egg by the markings on it.  They can dive to a depth of 600 feet.

 

We did not see any whales.  

 

Other than that, the excursion was interesting.  When we started out it was a bakmy day.  The farther out from shore we got, the colder it got.  I was happy to be wearing both a light fleece and a jacket.  The boat rocked and rolled quite a bit which made it hard to take pictures.  I was using a tablet and it doesn't lend itself too well to taking pictures with one hand.

 

One other thing I learned was how one fishes for cod.  They are bottom dwellers and you catch them with a lure which has a weight in the middle and a hook on each side. Bait is not used.  You lower this down until it hits bottom and then bring it up a couple of feet.  Then you lower it again, raise it, and repeat.   You snag them on the side with said hook.  Jigging is the process of raising and lowering the lure.

 

The attached pictures are of the dock in Bay Bulls, the nesting spots of the puffins and murres and a bald eagle whose picture I barely managed to snap.

 

 

 

[ElsieD]

After our boat trip we went to the Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in St. John's. There we had "tea in the crypt".  The place was packed and since the place is run by volunteers, service was a bit slow, but very friendly.  Even the priest was in attendance making small talk at every table and welcoming everyone. This is not a formal English tea.  It is mostly sweet except for a couple of scones.  Altogether a splendid way to spend an hour, and a bargain at $10 per person.  Missing from the last picture are a couple of scones.  Someone had scoffed them before I had a chance to take the picture.

[chromedome]

Murres are commonly eaten in Newfoundland, at least in the northern areas where I lived. They're known colloquially as "terrs," for reasons I've never known. They have dark, oily flesh and a strong gamy flavor, but they're pleasant enough. 

 

If you're ever in a private home in the evening, you might be served what Newfoundlanders call "lunch." This isn't a light mid-day meal, but rather something served between dinner and bedtime to stave off any late pangs of hunger. It's a small repast, consisting of two or three kinds of leftover fresh or cured meats, ditto fish, a loaf or two of bread, three or four kinds of jam, a couple of different kinds of cake, three or four kinds of cookies, a few jars of pickles, perhaps some potato salad, and maybe a bowl of Jello as well. As I said, just a nibble.

 

For anyone who works on the water, breakfast might be a half-dozen homemade fishcakes (the size of a large hamburger patty) served with baked beans, lots of bread, and a pot or two of tea. Fishing is hard work, and requires a fair bit of fueling-up. 

[ElsieD]

For dinner we went to a local institution that had been recommended to us last night by a local and Gary, John's BIL recommended it as well.  So the four of us traipsed over.  As you can see, it doesn't look like much and inside the place, well, you don't go for the armosphere.  But if fish and chips are your thing, this is where it's at.  Sue and I had the small which was one piece of fish, Gary and John had the medium, 2 pieces of fish.  You can also get the three piece one called - you guessed it, the large!  The dinner comes with Newfoundland dressing over the chips and gravy is poured over both.  I believe chromedome can confirm that it is very common here to have dressing and gravy on the chips.  (Last year we found that if you ordered a turkey sandwich, it too came with dressing and cranberry sauce as part of the sandwich.)  Not being a lover of soggy anything, I got my gravy on the side.  But then I tried the gravy over some of the fries and dressing, found out that I liked it and finished eating it that way.  The gravy was good too,  they make beef gravy from scratch.

 

We are on our own now which means I have better control over when I can post.  So, rather than getting everything at once as you are getting it tonight, I will post throughout the day, whenever I have something I think might appeal to you.

 

The first picture is the two piece fish and chips, the one next to it is the one piece with gravy on the side.  Oh, and the fish was cod.

[Kerry Beal]

1 hour ago, ElsieD said:

After our boat trip we went to the Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in St. John's. There we had "tea in the crypt".  The place was packed and since the place is run by volunteers, service was a bit slow, but very friendly.  Even the priest was in attendance making small talk at every table and welcoming everyone. This is not a formal English tea.  It is mostly sweet except for a couple of scones.  Altogether a splendid way to spend an hour, and a bargain at $10 per person.  Missing from the last picture are a couple of scones.  Someone had scoffed them before I had a chance to take the picture.

 

 

Hey - I see Cape Breton Pork Pies there don't I?

Edited August 26, 2016 by Kerry Beal (log)

[ElsieD]

Kerry, those are partridge berry tarts.

[Kerry Beal]

Ah - suppose it would be silly if fresh berries are available!

 

 

[Smithy]

Sorry, did you explain what "Newfoundland dressing" is and I missed it? I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around dressing and gravy together.  The fish and chips look tasty.  Those tarts look a treat!

[Ashen]

not salad dressing, but the seasoned breadcrumbs you see on top of EliseD's picture of fries.  If packed in a bird it would be called stuffing, but if cooked separately in a dish is often called dressing. 

[liuzhou]

52 minutes ago, Ashen said:

not salad dressing, but the seasoned breadcrumbs you see on top of EliseD's picture of fries.  If packed in a bird it would be called stuffing, but if cooked separately in a dish is often called dressing. 

 

I'd forgotten the old dressing confusion. We haven't had it for a while.

 

Yes, it has two meanings.

For many people, including me, a dressing is something largely mainly liquid or semi-liquid applied to salads etc. A sauce, perhaps, A vinaigrette.

But for others, it can be a stuffing, as @Ashen says. Particularly when said stuffing is not actually stuffed into anything, but served separately.

I vaguely recall a long discussion about this somewhere here, but may be mistaken. I certainly can't find it now.

As I said on another thread, it's a miracle we manage to communicate at all despite supposedly talking the same language.

[ElsieD]

Today we are travelling down the Avalon Peninsulasula,  going south from St. John's.  The route we are travelling is called the Irish Loop, presumably because it was settled by the Irish.  We plan on seeing a few things along the way and will end up in St.  Mary's for the night, a metropolis of around 440 people.  We are staying at a place called the Claddagh Inn and had thought to go for dinner somewhere, then figured in a place that small, there wouldn't be a lot, if any, choice.  So we will eat at the Inn, andto be able to do so, we had to pre-order our main course, which we did last night.  We passed another piece of road art this morning, this one was at the end of someone's driveway.

 

 

 

[ElsieD]

A couple of pictures of something John spotted from the highway outside of any town.  A miniature fishing village.  You can see an oil rig, as they have the Hibernia rigs, a light house and various boats.   The other shot shows a fishing stage and flake.  The detail is incredible.

[ElsieD]

A couple of random shots of the scenery on the Irish Loop.  We have stopped for lunch and are waiting for our food.

[ElsieD]

We have just had lunch at In Da Loop, a restaurant  in Fermeuse.  We both had an outstanding fish chowder made with  crab, shrimp, scallops and cod.  It was all seafood, no spuds or any other filler.  I decided to get an appetizer serving of scallops.   Their idea of an appetizer was 8 large sea scallops which cost a measly $7.50.  I was expecting maybe 3.  God thing John was up to the task of finishing mine off.  And for you, Rotuts, he had cod tongues.  He enjoyed them but said he doesn't think he would get them again.  He said he felt like he was eating chewy cod.  Back on the road we go. 

[blue_dolphin]

That looks like a fabulous lunch!  

 

27 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

Back on the road we go

I'm afraid I'd need a bit of a nap before getting back on the road!

[rotuts]

so wonderful !

 

I love scallops.  they re pricey in my area and most other peoples.   I can afford them from time to time

 

but they are never fresh enough.

 

what the last pic ?  scallops II ?

 

Ive never had cod tongues,   just the cheeks.

 

they have those up there ?

 

I wish I were up there enjoying the views from 

 

in da loop.

 

yum

 

ps   were the scallops  baked ?  pan sauté ?

Edited August 27, 2016 by rotuts (log)