Amy Jo Ehman and her husband recently spent a whole year eating nothing but Saskatchewan-produced foods. Her year-long experiment is over but she's continued to buy (mostly) from local suppliers. She recently posted a list of where she gets her food from these days.
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Wednesday, March 19
Home For Dinner: A Saskatchewan Shopping List
by
Jason
on Wed 19 Mar 2008 09:11 PM CST
Friday, February 29
This is the best invention in the history of the world...
by
Jason
on Fri 29 Feb 2008 05:18 PM CST
Wednesday, February 20
Friday, February 1
Saturday, April 28
Eating Regina
by
Jason
on Sat 28 Apr 2007 04:36 PM CST
I posted an anecdote about Kurt Vonnegut from author Dave Margoshes a couple entries back. In the course of writing to ask permission to do this, I also took the opportunity to ask Dave, who also acts as the food critic with the local Prairie Dog weekly newspaper, if he'd be willing to give me a list of his favourite Regina restaurants. This is what he sent me:
* Thai Garden, on Albert St., my default comfort food place. * Four Seas on Rose Street downtown - this Taiwanese place has the best ginger beef I've ever had. * Angkor, on Quance Street in the east side jungle. My favourite all-around Oriental restaurant... except for... * Nit's in Moose Jaw, best Thai food, bar none. * Smokin' Oakies, a few doors down from Angkor - terrific barbeque * Gaslight Saloon on Broad, for burgers and Mexican * Italian Star Deli - great sandwiches * Nicky's Cafe - terrific ribs, burgers, turkey, breakfasts...probably the restaurant I've been to to most often. I was thinking about doing a list of my own favourite restaurants having been away for a year and seeing the landscape of Regina's culinary culture grow by leaps and bounds in that time. So for comparison sake, here's my own list. 1. Bushwakkers - in the city with the highest per capita ratio of brew pubs to population in Canada (if not North America), Bushwakkers is head and shoulders above the rest. That's not just me - it was cited as one of Canada's best brew pubs by the Globe & Mail a few years back. On my old home page, I used to have links to sites to illustrate what I considered my "Home", "Former Location" and "Current Location". The "Home" link led to the Bushwakkers web site! 2. Lang's - if Thai Garden is Dave's default comfort food place, Lang's Vietnamese is mine. As with brew pubs, Regina has an abnormally high number of Vietnamese places but Lang's is my personal favourite with Viet-Thai on Albert St. as a close second and Ankor which Dave mentions as an even closer third. (Urban legend has it that all the Vietnamese places in Regina with "Garden" in their name are owned by the same family. Not sure if it's true.) 3. Copper Kettle - the only homemade pizza I've had in my life that competes (and if I'm honest, exceeds the Copper Kettle was at the Hop 'N' Brew in Calgary). But the Copper Kettle is renowed for their unique, delicious pizzas including their speciality - spinach and feta (which I like to add garlic and chicken to.) They have a newspaper clipping up (or they did - haven't looked recently) relating the story of someone who ordered pizzas when he was in Regina on business which he took as a carry-on when flying back to his home in another province! 4. Cathedral Village Free House - my cousin came to visit from New York so I took her and her boyfriend here. She said "This place would fit perfectly in Greenwich Village" which I took as a pretty high compliment. (Here's a more detailed review on another site.) 5. Smokin' Oakies - I'm with Dave on this one. Regina's first barbeque place sets the bar pretty high. 6. Mongolie Grille - I was extremely sad (probably inordinately so when I look back on it) knowing I would no longer have a Mongolian Grille in my city when we moved back to Regina from Calgary. Then, not soon after we got back, a franchise of the Calgary outfit opened here. I know Dave's review said the food tends to all end up tasting the same no matter what combination of meat, vegetables and sauces you use (and I agree). But it's still a damn fine tasting mess, no matter what! 7. Wasabi - There are a few sushi restaurants in Regina (especially compared to ten years ago) but this one is a personal favourite - very affordable yet tasty sushi. The Korean rolls are delicious! 8. Alfredo's There used to be an Italian place called Presutti's that was by far, my favourite place for that type of cuisine (especially their lunch buffet which gave you a taste of everything - pasta, pizza, salad, bread and more!) It's gone out of business (sadly) but there is another place that's almost as good - the longtime Regina institution known as Alfredo's. 9. 100 Kings - a Korean restaurant where you barbecue your own food right at your table. Sometimes I'm lazy and wish we had a Korean place that would cook it in the back and bring it out to you but otherwise, I love Korean food and this fits the bill! 10. Prairie Pita - another absence I was concerned about when we moved back from Calgary in 2004 was the lack of any restaurant selling schwarmas. Regina didn't get a place right after we got back like with the Mongolie Grille. But when we got back from London, a couple years later, I was happy to find that this had changed. Not the best I've had in my life (another Calgary spot - the Falafel King downtown takes it) but at least it's possible to get a decent chicken schwarma here now! Bonus: Five Long-Gone Regina Restaurants I Miss (Inspired By #8 Above) 1. Presutti's 2. Blarney Stone Irish Pub 3. California Subs 4. Orleans Lousiana Cuisine 5. PJ Mellon's Pub (it still exists - it just got moved from outside the University to the east side of Regina and was rechristened The Creekside Pub. It's the same but different and gave me a weird deja vu of my undergrad days when I went in there after it re-opened. I haven't been back - too disconcerting.) There are probably a dozen other great restaurants I could mention but these are some of my favourites. I should also note that there are a lot of new restaurants I still haven't gotten around to trying. For instance, Regina has at least three East Indian restaurants now when it only used to have one (India House) which always seemed in danger of going under due to lack of support (not sure if this was true or not, just the impression I got for some reason.) The other thing - I don't get to Regina's high end restaurants very often if at all so my list focuses on places that would mostly be considered casual dining. But there are a number of high-end restaurants in Regina that can compete with the best in Canada's much larger cities. Zest at the Science Centre is one that's supposed to be excellent which I haven't had occasion to try yet (waiting for a birthday or anniversary where parents or others are willing to treat!  ) I have been to the Willows on Wascana (and they catered an event we did in 2005.) Both times, their food was unbelievable! One of those places where your mouth goes "Wow. What is this? It's not even food, it's so good. You're eating art, aren't you?"Monday, March 26
Buffalo Burgers - Shea's Recipe
by
Jason
on Mon 26 Mar 2007 04:07 PM CST
Buffalo was rare to non-existent from what we could tell in Ontario. One of the specialty meat vendors in the Covent Market Garden told us that this was because Ontario didn't have the land to raise them like we did out west.
Made sense to us but if you don't eat a lot of buffalo (yes, I know - properly bison in North America) you are missing out. It's the best tasting meat and on top of that, healthier than pretty much any other meat including chicken, pork and fish (scroll down for the chart.) It's low fat, low cholesterol and low calories. Most bison meat on the market is raised in the wild and organically grown because if there are two things buffalo don't like, it's pens and needles. <groan> I'm very lucky that Shea's family are part-owners of a herd of about twenty buffalo so we get a regular supply (although our last supply had to be stolen right out of her brother's freezer when he wasn't home - don't tell!) Any cut is good - roasts, steaks, etc. - but I have a special fondness for the plain old burgers because Shea makes them so that they're amazing. Her recipe is flexible but here's the gist of it: BUFFALO BURGS 1 lb ground bison meat 10 soda crackers made into fine crumbs 1 egg 1 TBSP Montreal Steak Spice Rub (my mother-in-law taught me to put Tablespoon in capitals in recipes so it's obvious. Great tip!) 1 TBSP Bullseye BBQ Sauce Minced red onion to taste (a thick slice or two for us) A few shakes of Worchestire sauce A good few shakes of hot sauce (we're partial to Cholula Mexican hot sauce) Salt and coarse ground pepper The hardest part is getting the ingredients in proportion so the meat sticks well and doesn't fall apart on the grill but isn't too dry either. Cook on a barbeque and prepare to be amazed. Seriously, when Shea made them the other night, I wolfed down one then another two without even using a bun or condiments. (Er, I shouldn't admit that in public.)   Monday, May 29
Recipe - Spicy Potatoes
by
Jason
on Mon 29 May 2006 11:33 PM EDT
Went over to David & Sabina's on Saturday for a wicked supper. Shea took one of her specialties, I took some Bushwakker beer I'd been saving since mom and dad were here. Here's the recipe for Shea's (I don't have the recipe for the beer but wish I did!)
Spicy Potatoes 4 cups of small baby potatoes, cut in half 1/2 cup grainy Dijon mustard 3 cloves garlic, minced 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar 1 tbsp water (1 tsp paprika - we rarely put this but the original recipe called for it) 1 tsp hot sauce or to taste Mix all ingredients in a bowl then mix in potatoes. Put sauced potatoes in a deep-dish tinfoil pan coated with butter. Cook on barbeque for ~45 minutes. (They could probably be cooked in the oven as well but what fun is that?) Next time Shea makes them, I'll try to remember to take a picture and put it with this entry. (She's looking over my shoulder so I hope she takes the hint and makes them soon! [2006-07-06 - here's a photo. Forgot to take a picture when they came off the bbq so these are the leftovers...]  |
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