New Brunswick

I asked a colleague from New Brunswick for some advice on places to visit while in the province.  Her husband (from another province) said, "Nova Scotia" (which is a neighbouring province).  It's not true!  There are some cool things to see in New Brunswick.  Here are a few of them from our trip this past August and a previous trip from 2010.

For starters, after our visit to Quebec City (read my first post about our trip here), we continued on to a mid-way point between Ottawa and PEI, Grand Falls.  I could only vaguely recall visiting the fall on our first trip.  

It is probably because this is what they looked like at the time:

They were more memorable this time (and have added cables for zip lining) :

In 2010, we spent time in southern New Brunswick, camping at Fundy National Park.  The park has some great programming, including local musicians who come down and play in their amphitheatre at night.  There are also a lot of artisans in the area, making it a nice place to explore by day.

This area is known for having some of the highest tides in the world.  Here are some pictures of low tide.

One of the biggest tourist attractions in the province is Hopewell Rocks.  At low tide, you can walk along some really cool shaped rocks that have been eroded by the water.  But, you have to be very careful about going at low tide and giving yourself enough time to get out of there before the tide comes in.

 

This trip, we decided to visit Kings Landing Historical Settlement, which recreates life in New Brunswick in the 1800s.  I love going to these kind of villages and interacting with the actors who teach you about the era.  

I thought the actors did a really good job of staying in character and living life as they would have in the 1800s.  Many of them were working making good the way it would have been made in the 1800 (e.g., carpenter, wood worker, spinning wool, blacksmith, etc.).  One guy was making a wooden butter bowl by hand that would take him about 6 weeks to make.  

Aside from a fair bit of highway time, that's most of what we saw in New Brunswick, which is by no means a good representation of the province since we spent fairly little time in the cities (e.g., Fredricton, Moncton, St. John, etc.) and other areas of interest (St. Andrews by the Sea, Acadian Coast, etc.).

Montreal & Quebec City

About 5 years ago, we took a road trip to the Maritimes and I never blogged about it.  I love reading my old travel posts just to reminisce.  So, the fact that I hadn't blogged about the Maritimes has been bugging me for years now.

I have a renewed motivation to cross this off my mental list since we just recently came back from a second road trip to the Maritimes.  So, what you'll see in these travel posts is a combination of our trip pre-kids to Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI and a trip with an 10 month old and a 3 year old to Quebec, New Brunswick and PEI.  

This trip, our ultimate destination was a cottage in PEI.  But, I wanted this trip to be about the journey as much as the destination.  So, we weren't in a rush to get to PEI.  Our general plan was to stop mid-day on each travel day to let everyone get out of the car, eat and burn some energy so that (hopefully) a good length nap would follow.

We decided to spend our first night in Montreal in a Airbnb apartment to take the kids to the Biodome.  It is near several other tourist attractions in Montreal that we've previously visited.  But, having never gone to the Biodome, we wanted to check it out and thought the kids would enjoy it too.  

Overall, I'd say the Biodome was pretty good.  You go through four ecosystems and see plants and wildlife that would be native to those habitats.  We got through it pretty quickly and found it to be smaller than we expected.  

Here are a few pictures from Olympic Stadium and the Botanical Gardens, from a previous trip to Montreal.

Football game at the McGill stadium (Stade Memorial Percival-Molson) 

Since I'm showing previous trips, I might as well throw in some pictures from another trip where we went to the Just For Laughs festival (digging these ones out was a trip down "pre-kids" memory lane).

Schwartz's Deli -- A Montreal (smoked meat) institution:

Marina

Back to this year's trip...

The next day, we continued east, with a stopover in Quebec City.  The old town in a fair ways off the Transcanada Highway, so the visit  got us into our next stop (Grand Falls) later than planned.  But, we enjoyed walking around the cobble stone streets.  It was a very busy day with lots of tourists.  I preferred past visits that avoided peek season.

Unfortunately, even after going through my three external hard drives, I couldn't find any of my old pictures from Quebec City.  So, I'm thinking my previous trips pre-date owning a digital camera.  

Jeanne's Cake

Google Reader is shutting down this weekend. I've decided to move over to Bloglovin. You can follow me through Bloglovin here.

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It's funny how our tastes can be influenced by what we grew up with.  You may recall me mentioning Jeanne's Bakery in the past.  It's a well-known bakery in Winnipeg that makes a distinctive cake with a cookie bottom and chocolate shavings on the side.  For many Winnipegers, Jeanne's is a staple for any celebration.  

The thing about Jeanne's cakes is that most people, who try it for the first time as an adult, are pretty unimpressed with the cake.  The cake itself is pretty dry.  It gets worse if you put it in the fridge (freezer or counter storage only).

The flavour isn't particularly strong.  It's not even that nice to go to the bakery itself.  It doesn't have that typical bakery smell that entices you to add a couple of treats to your order.

Despite all of this, it's a hugely popular cake and is one of the few food items I will add to the request list when family is coming to Ottawa for a visit.

Recently, my dad and stepmom came to visit to celebrate Father's Day and my dad's birthday. Somehow bringing a Jeanne's cake wasn't added to the "bring to Ottawa" list.  So, my stepmom and I decided to take matters into our own hands.

Jeannie's Cake

Base
1/3 cup shortening
1/4 cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 teaspoon baking powder
Cake
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
Frosting
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup icing sugar
1 dash salt
Directions:

To prepare base, cut shortening into dry ingredients, mix well.

Pat firmly and evenly into an 8 inch square pan and bake at 350 deg. F. for 10-12 minutes. Cool. 
Note: the base and cake are baked separately.

For cake: cream shortening, and sugar; add eggs and vanilla, beating well until fluffy. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk.

Pour batter into a greased and floured 8 inch square pan. Bake at 350 deg. F for 25 - 40 minutes.

Frosting: in small saucepan, stir tog. milk and flour. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixute is thickened and smooth. Cool.

On highest speed of mixer, beat cooled flour mixture with butter, shortening and vanilla until smooth and fluffy.

Blend in icing sugar and salt; continue beating until frosting is very fluffy. This will take at least 15 minutes.

To assemble cake: place shortbread base on serving plate; spread with small amount of frosting. Place cake on base. (you can split the cake for layers).

Cover top and sides of cake with remaining frosting. If desired, garnish sides of cake with shaved semi-sweet chocolate. Note: If you are decorating your cake, it is best to add the shaved chocolate beforehand.

Note: we found that the chocolate was easiest to shave when it warmed up a bit.  Next time, I'd probably try freezing it after shaving so that it doesn't melt in my hands when pressing it onto the cake quite so much.  Any advice on how best to do this is welcome!





Verdict: Well...it's the closest thing to a Jeanne's cake I've tasted that wasn't from Jeanne's Bakery.  But, that isn't really a huge feat.  I found the cookie crumb to taste more like shortbread than Jeanne's.  Also, I tasted the shortening in the icing more than I'd like.  The cake itself wasn't as fluffy.  Everyone liked the cake, but I wasn't crazy about it.  I forgot to put icing between the cookie crumb and the cake.  I'd definitely recommend doing this...maybe even a layer mid-cake.  

Sucrerie de la Montagne

Plus 25 Celcius in March?  This does not happen in Canada and is not good news for maple syrup producers.  Maple sap runs best when the weather is warm during the day, but cool at night.

March and April is maple syrup time around this part of the world. You can read about previous visits to cabines a sucre (sugar shacks) here, here, here and here. If you take a look through these posts, you'll get a sense of the range of sugarshacks, from lame pancakes on a plastic plate to an all you can eat selection of food, sure to make you feel stuffed for the next 2 days.

My last, and probably most intense, sugar shack experience was at Sucrerie de la Montagne.

When you arrive, a horse-drawn carriage will take you the short ride from the parking lot:


You can explore the grounds, seeing several rustic buildings that house cottage-like accommodations, a bakery...

 a general store, a building where maple syrup is processed (during the maple syrup season)

and, of course, the main halls where the food is served.  Sucerie de la Montagne blows other sugar shacks (that we've been to) away in terms of food quantity and quality.  Let's just pretend that everything you see in the rest of this post was stretched out over a week of consumption, rather than one sitting.

Soupe au pois du Montagnard (mountain dweller's pea soup)

Omelette soufflée de la fermière (farm-style omelette soufflé)


Saucisses de campagne (country-style sausages) & Jambon fumé à l'érable (maple-smoked ham)


Tourtière de la beauceronne (meat pie from Québec’s Beauce region)


Traditional sugar pie


Pancakes with maple syrup



On this plate is Ragoût de boulettes (traditional meatball stew, Oreilles de crisse (crispy-fried pork  rinds), Fèves au lard de chantier (wood-fired baked beans), Pommes de terre pilées à l'ancienne (old-style mashed potatoes) and the same omelette, meat pie and sausage that you see, above.

Guests are also offered Coffee and tea, Pain croûté de la paysanne (farm-style crusty bread) and
Homemade fruit ketchup and pickles.

Of course, the star of the show is the maple syrup.


The food is all you can eat and is served family-style.

Once you're done.  If you're not in a coma, you can get up and dance to some traditional music.  Or, at least listen to the music while you rest your head on the table, unbutton your pants and close your eyes.  That's normal sugar shack behaviour, right?

Here's a video that gives you a good idea of what the place looks like.  Skip to 1:47 if you want to see the food insanity!