Canadian Eats

Part of the fun of going to new places is trying the local foods. As foreign nations go, Canada’s foods are perhaps the least foreign. In many ways, Canada offers similar choices to the U.S. You can find a great variety of good ethnic foods and barbecue and burgers and all the things you might find at home.

Canada has plenty of fast food options. One difference is that their most frequently encountered fast food chain is Tim Horton’s. Where we are staying, there are two Tim Horton’s so close to us (and by the Triangle Inequality, so close to each other) that I could easily walk to each in ten minutes. Tim Horton’s serves coffee and donuts, but also has grilled sandwiches (like grilled cheese or grilled cheese with some sort of lunch meat included.)

But we have tried two uniquely Canadian foods. The first, and perhaps most well known is poutine. Poutine is a dish originally out of Quebec, but has spread through the rest of the country. It’s french fries with brown gravy on top and then cheese curds atop that. That is the classic poutine québécoise. There are many variations on it. Some use a marinara sauce instead of gravy, or mozzarella instead of cheese curd. Others use different gravies. (I’m not sure I have ever needed to use the plural of gravy before.) Or different cheeses. Some even use some other form of potato.

Poutine (and forks which are not part of the poutine)

 

This really gets us to the philosophical question of the Poutine of Theseus. If Theseus replaces the cheese curd with another cheese, say parmesan, then replaces the gravy with a different sauce, say marinara, and then replaces the french fries with a different potato or a different starch, say pasta, is it really still poutine? Isn’t it now spaghetti? Are spaghetti and poutine just different varieties of one another? And is all of this irrelevant since Theseus wasn’t Canadian?

We tried poutine and found it delicious. I can only imagine how much cholesterol it has. (I could do better than only imagine, I could look it up. But I am happier not knowing the exact amount.) The cheese curd was pleasantly squeaky. The gravy was pleasantly savory. And the fries were pleasantly… um, fry-y is not a word. Let’s just say they were good french fries. As with so many things, when you combine three good ingredients, you get something that transcends the flavor of all three.

Another Canadian victual is beavertails. Before you panic, no beavers were harmed in the making of this blog post. Beavertails are named for their shape, not for having any beaver ingredients.

Picture of a picture of a beavertail

 

A beavertail is deep fried dough that is similar in shape to, you guessed it, the tail of a beaver. The fried dough is similar in crunch and flavor to a funnel cake, but it is flatter and ovaler (again not a word, but neither is ellipser. So I am at a loss as to how to explain that the shape is more ovular or elliptical. I’ll have to think about how that could be expressed.)

You might think that this fried dough would, by itself, be delightful. It probably would, but I wouldn’t know. Because a beavertail is then covered in toppings. You can have savory beavertails or dessert beavertails. The original beavertail was topped with cinnamon and sugar. Very classic. But now you can have all kinds of frostings, candies, jams, and more.

We tried an Avalanche. This had a cheesecake frosting and Skor toffee bits on it. As you can imagine, it was tasty! (Let’s not talk about the cholesterol in this delicacy either. Or maybe we should. How do the Canadians survive if all their foods are deep fried and chock full of unsaturated fats?)

Avalanche! (partially eaten)

 

Here’s something that isn’t exactly a Canadian food but a Canadian flavor. Check out this Ben & Jerry’s. Ah! More empty calories!

My home and native dairy dessert

 

The only way to work off all those calories is to walk. And the walk signals here have a jaunty head-thrown-back, shoulder-lifted attitude, unlike our walk signals with more regular posture. I know that’s not about food, but do you think I could get away with a blog post about walk signals?

I'm walkin' here!

 

Walk this way! Talk this way, ay?

Maybe I could get away with it, because no one could stop me until they had mastered the head-thrown-back, shoulder-lifted walking style of Canada. Of course, I haven’t mastered that yet. Something to work on.