more weather shenanigans: Sunshine Coast

Oh, Christmas. Why must you be so tetchy this year?

As if the weather (and other) related travel shenanigans getting to see Mum and Roy weren't enough, our trip up to see Dad was also fraught with wintry perils. OK, slightly drama queen of me. But still...

We got up to the Sunshine Coast and checked in to the Rockwater Secret Cove Resort without problem. I left Conrad to do work and visited a while up the road with Dad, Bella, and Mark. When I got back, we changed and had a lovely dinner in the hotel dining room, partook of the huge soaker tub, and wound down the night. Got up yesterday morning, drove in to Sechelt, had a swim then breakfast and coffee at Wheatberries Bakery, returned to the hotel before heading up to see Dad for the day.

And then the storm blew through.






It was an impressive affair. We didn't pay it much mind at first, but it was snowing - wet snow - when we got back to the hotel from Sechelt, and an hour later there was a heavy, sticky coat layer on the car. Already there were a few inches on the roof of the vehicle. Hmmmm. The resort, I should add, is accessed by a road up over a small hill. Our vehicle, I should further add, had nothing resembling snow tires. One futile attempt later and we were calling Dad and settling down to lunch in the hotel dining room. Not the worst fate.

Of course it didn't end there. Shortly after we'd eaten - and while we were still in the dining room - the power went out. In fact, swathes of the Sunshine Coast were affected. The heavy snow took its toll on tree branches all around, and we had a dimmer setting to show for it.

Conrad and I ventured out a bit on the hotel grounds while all this was going on. The wind kicked up and sent us scurrying out from among the trees - wet masses of snow were flying from off the branches by that point. We stuck to the room for a while.

As the storm passed, Conrad felt a little cabin-feverish. We tried again in the car, and failing again, he decided to get a shovel and see what he could do. Ah-ha! Success! It took a bit of time, but we made it out of the hotel grounds and on to the highway. No ploughs had yet been through, and as the sun began to show itself, we drove veeeery slowly and carefully to Dad's. The views out to the water at his place belied the storm from earlier that day.



Poor Dad. He got a taste of Mum's disappointment and frustration, I'm sorry to say. We spent only the last hour of daylight at his place. He didn't have power, and we wanted daylight for the treacherous drive home. A short visit later, and we were en route back to the Rock Water, arriving in time to see some interesting skies at sunset.




But no power. No, not for a few hours. By dinner time there were six of us gathered in chairs around a small gas fire in the dining room, drinking wine and enjoying box lunches given to us by the hotel staff. Conrad and I had spent time in our room planning New Zealand travel by candlelight, but we were happier to have ventured out and met others. Once again we found that circumstances were far from ideal but the reality of our situation was, in fact, delightful.

The power did come on, well before bed time. We bid our good nights and headed back to the room. Warmth, the soaker tub again, more travel planning, and a good night of sleep.

The roads were mostly fine this morning, though a few slick bits. We got in a last short visit with Dad (though he and Bella will be down in Vancouver on New Year's Day), headed for a coffee in Sechelt, then caught an afternoon ferry southward again.

We noticed, as we ate dinner at the condo here, that light snow was blowing down once again...

light and clouds

A few shots taken from our condo on Christmas afternoon. The day before we'd had such snow, such a bad blizzard. Before we went to the airport on Christmas afternoon, though, some sun shone through, and the light and cloud effects were entrancing.

Sherri cooks

Actually, Sherri's sister Amrit did most of the cooking. Sherri hosted and did some cooking - multi-tasking!

Conrad and I have a rule: if someone takes the time to cook for us, that is a priority social engagement. Even if we're feeling totally run down and only want to hole up at home, the promise of home cooked food gets us out. Based on that, we were only too glad to show up at Sherri's direct from the airport on our way home from Salmon Arm.

Ah, Facebook. I used to mock it, now I'm bound to it. I use it so much, and it has rewarded me with renewed friendships with people from my past. I knew Sherri way back in the day in Terrace, but hadn't heard from her in years. Now, thanks to Facebook, we're in touch again, and I've had the pleasure of dining out with her in Vancouver and cooking for her here. A few nights ago she returned the favour. Mostly it was her sister Amrit cooking the (forgive spelling errors on these) pork and beef keema, dal, saag paneer, and cumin-scented rice. I can't recall the name of the dessert, but she made that, too, using vermicelli, milk, some pistachios.

How was it? Fantastic! I'm a fan of Mexican food most of all, but I dearly love Indian foods of all sorts, and to watch it being made and enjoy the company (including Amrit's husband Raj and their daughter) and then the food itself (oh, plus a jolly good amount of wine) was a rare treat.

In short, we'll be making sure to keep Sherri well-entertained at our place and elsewhere in hopes of another such evening. A fun night from start to finish, and Conrad and I were in excellent spirits when we left.

best Boxing Day ever!

If I were to recount all the travel hassle we went through to get to Mum and Roy's for Christmas, well, this would be rather a more bitter blog than I ever intend it to be. A little snark is good, and Air Canada and Hertz especially deserve somewhat more than that. But it's over. We made it to Salmon Arm in the end. Let this not be a tale of travel ordeals but of the best Boxing Day EVER!

Skipping over Christmas - because we ultimately did - we made it to Mum's at noon on Boxing Day. For those few of you USians who read this, Boxing Day is a holiday in Canada. Nowadays it's about sales for many people, but when I was young (and when the Lord's Day Act forbade Sunday and holiday shopping), it was the day on which we would go visit people in their homes. I always liked Boxing Day for those visits, the chance to see the other decorations, the goodies that were offered in each house.

Conrad and I had checked into the hotel, unpacked presents, and changed. We regretted not having the planned three nights at the hotel as the room was handsome, and the lake views of the Shuswap were good.

We would have liked an evening or two in the room to sip a bit of wine, read, and relax.

Mum - no surprise - had much food for us. After all, she'd been baking and preparing for three of us (my sister didn't make it in the end) for three nights there. It fell to me and Conrad to eat as much as we could in order to do her honour. We did our best. We'll pay for it for some time to come. Mincemeat tarts, butter tarts, oyster tarts (the little squiggle of almond icing under the lifted top makes them look like oysters - Conrad liked these ones a lot), fruitcake (I HATE that people mock fruitcake - have some as good as my Mum's and you won't disparage it!), shortbreads, cherry loaf, sausage rolls with green tomato chutney on the side, rum balls (boozy!), and an assortment of store-bought things like cheeses, ham, chocolates, pickles, chips and dip. That was lunch.
Oh, and homemade eggnog. Nothing like the odd-tasting stuff you get in the cartons at the store. Oh no. Very rich, also boozy. I think boozy may be a theme to our Christmas eating.

After lunch, and in order not to doze right away, we did stockings and presents. Marie, Conrad, and I had done some presents in Vancouver, and I had made stockings for the two of them there when it became clear we weren't getting out on Christmas Eve. Still, we were in no way short of gifts.




And then the napping instinct kicked in. Big time. And yet, we resisted. Conrad, Mum, and I bundled up and went out for a slow saunter in the neighbourhood. More snow was falling by then; in fact, by the time we left Salmon Arm, we had 15 cm or so (6 or more inches) of new snow. A walk felt good.



Mum had made turkey dinner on Christmas, and she and Roy ate sparingly of it that night after it was clear we wouldn't be there until the next day. That made dinner prep easier on her, I'm happy to say. Mum is the one from whom I learned the technique of draping the turkey with bacon to baste it while cooking. The bonus is bacon to enjoy as part of Christmas dinner. Perfect!





For me, though, the highlight of Christmas dinner is the dessert. Christmas pudding, or plum pudding as it may be known. Mum makes her own, and this one was three years old. Yes, three years. She ages it and douses it with - you got it - booze to keep it going. No, she doesn't set it alight to serve it. Instead, it comes hot out of the steaming process and is served with brandied butter (hard sauce).
I'm happy to report that Conrad enjoyed it too.

We stayed there until 9 or so, hearing about their big cruise they took this past fall, and enjoying the post-dinner wind-down. The next morning Mum and freshly made waffles for us, and that capped the best Boxing Day ever (a day later) before we headed back to Kelowna to catch our return flight to Vancouver.

Christmas brunch

A double challenge today: overcoming the slight dispirited feeling of not having got to where we wanted to go, and finding a breakfast/lunch at a restaurant that was good and NOT offering only a buffet. We didn't need to pay $40-60 for a huge selection of food that has been sitting around, after all. Wow, did I say dispirited? That was outright catty.

Hotels were the likeliest places to go, and after a quick couple of phone calls, we settled on noon at Elixir in the Opus Hotel in Yaletown. The added bonus to it was that we could walk there, and so we did, using the quiet streets in many places to avoid the wet, slushy, icy sidewalks.

Brunch was great. The menu included several appealing egg dishes, which was kind of what we all wanted. Marie (eggs Florentine, not pictured) and Conrad (scrambled eggs with croissant and smoked salmon) went old school basic, but I had to foo-foo it up: warm smoked mackerel with poached egg, piquillo pepper hash, and red pepper hollandaise. Tasty!

A nice stroll on a day that brightens bit by bit found us singing and feeling happy. Ah, but now we face the challenge of flying out if we can. On to YVR for us!

2 Vancouver meals and 1 in Richmond

Well then, until it's time for our brunch reservation at Elixir, I may as well post a bit more. One thing I appreciate about the holidays is the extra time I get to do things like blogging or planning our NZ trip for the spring.

Photos from three meals out to post: lunch in Chinatown, dinner downtown, and lunch at the airport (so Richmond, in other words).

Lunch in Chinatown. Just a couple of blocks up Main Street is a place we've gone to a couple of times now. On a cold day - not just for Vancouver, but plain old cold that anyone would not enjoy - we wandered up to get something hot for nourishment. Soup! Pho, to be precise.

I might have liked more zing to it, but then, I could have added chili paste to it if I weren't so hungry as to scarf it down within minutes.

Dinner. Voya at the Loden Hotel. I'm not sure what to think of the place. I wish the wine list were a little more moderately priced, and the service was very friendly and chatty (maybe too familiar, but ah well, it's Christmastime) but not as polished as many places we've been to in Chicago. What made it hard for us to judge was the table of heavily scented, presumably-gay (Conrad thought so, my gaydar is too pathetic to tell) men who were seated so close by that we couldn't help but smell them and follow much of their conversation. Also, the one guy with the oh-so-cool, hipster glasses and obviously expensive clothing? Wear socks. The Miami Vice look for shoes is not worthy IMHO, not in very snowy conditions in Vancouver. Sorry, do I sound bitter?

Anyway, the food was handsome enough. They brought round an amuse-bouche of white onion veloute. A big amuse, but very tasty. I liked it a lot. Conrad started with the seared scallop with poached pork belly, creamed leeks, and maple bacon froth. The pork belly was especially tasty, and forkful of it with scallop was a felicitous combination. He liked his albacore tuna with cippolini onion, puree of buttered sprouts, and warm sherry jus, though he didn't rave about it. I liked my octopus carpaccio with lentil salad and winter root crisp a great deal - it was a nice light serving and flavourful. I also liked my roasted breast and braised leg of pheasant with cottage pie and roast tomato sauce, but I'll be honest - I don't think what I got was what the menu said. I think it was all breast meat, and the sauce, from what I can recall, just didn't have any tang or fruit of tomato. I did like it, and I thought it was a very good portion - almost more than I could handle - but looking at the menu this morning, I wonder if I'm imagining the differences between concept and execution or what.

Lunch yesterday: the lounge at the Fairmont Airport Hotel. Our flight was canceled, and we had not other plans as yet. So we regrouped to the lounge and ordered a drink (Sumac Ridge Stellar Jay for me)
each along with a light lunch (not photographed). The blizzard moved through the area impressively outside the windows, and we had a nice conversation with the waitress. I hope she's having a good day off today.