One of the hardest parts of traveling to remote countries is that it is not always easy to find some of the foods you enjoy the most back home. That in itself presents a great opportunity for exploring new foods, but let’s face it: sometimes it’s nice to have some tried and true comfort food. Homemade Salsa A good example of that for me is mexican food. It’s probably my favourite cuisine, and it was pretty rare that we didn’t have tacos at least weekly in my household growing up. Unfortunately in many parts of the world I’ve been in, finding mexican salsa can be a real pain. Even if ...

So last night I was really craving a kick ass steak dinner. I generally eat pretty healthy during the week, which means I look forward to indulging a bit more on the weekends. I did a quick Google search and ended up deciding that I wanted to visit La Cabrera, which is a very well known steak house and also the #3 restaurant (out of about 770 or so) in all of Buenos Aires on TripAdvisor. So I was definitely looking forward to it. Jump ahead about 15 minutes and I found myself outside of the restaurant, just south of Plaza Serrano. It looks like a nice enough place, and there are a few people ...

As the title says, I’ve been in Buenos Aires now for 37 days. After next week, I will have officially crossed the half-way mark here, at which point I’ll be winding down and starting to get in my last sight seeing before leaving. I still have almost seven weeks here though, which is still quite a bit of time. This last week was mostly uneventful, other than a very late night out at the pub last Saturday night. Unlike North America, most people don’t even go out on the weekends here until midnight, and often later. I was in a little pub at around 5am and they were still serving drinks to ...

I’ve managed to do a weekly update on the past two Fridays of the month, so I think going forward that’s going to by my goal for the rest of the trip. First off, I’ve been here a little over two weeks now. The total length of my time in Buenos Aires is about 12 weeks, so that means I have around 10 left I think. My first week here was a bit challenging, mostly for the language barrier. I spent a bit of time brushing up on my spanish, and week 2 definitely was a bit easier. Spanish This week I finally found a private spanish teacher and have been meeting her for two hours a night on Monday, ...

Given that I’m hitting the open skies in a matter of months, I’ve been trying to spend more time with the family. For easter of this year I went out and bought a pretty nice organic turkey from JD Farms in Langley, but never got around to cooking it. Since I’ve always been an eater of turkey and never a cooker of it, I offered to do thanksgiving dinner for my mom’s side of the family this year. I have to say, I can cook a pretty mean chicken these days. So I’m hoping I can pull off a turkey. If anyone has any suggestions, then by all means, drop them here. I’m hoping to turn the awesome ...

For those people that know me, I’m pretty serious about nachos. I’m the only person I know with a complete lack of a sweet tooth. Chocolate, pies, cakes, candy, gummy bears, sugar — you could starve me for a week and put that stuff in front of me and I wouldn’t crave it at all. But put a plate of gooey, cheesy nachos in front of me and that’s a different story. I’ve slowly honed my nacho-making ability over the years to the point where I’m pretty much a nacho snob now. When I was down in Portland I went out of my way to find some nachos, only to be served a batch where the cheese ...

A while ago I was approached by a Vancouver public relations company and asked if I wanted to be a guest of the Delta Grand Okanagan hotel in Kelowna for a weekend. The offer came right at a period of time where I was feeling a bit burnt out, so I gladly accepted and started packing my bags. The route from Chilliwack to Kelowna involves taking a highway through the mountains. Depending on the weather conditions, often you’ll find snowy conditions near the summit. Just in case I encountered those types of conditions I packed my chains for the car and also left early in the afternoon so I’d ...

I bought a new BBQ a few weeks ago, and have pretty much used it everyday since. My favourite food to cook on the BBQ are peppers roasted in a bit of olive oil. Second favourite thing would be a good steak. I don’t eat a lot of potatoes, but I’m thinking about doing up some nice little potatoes in some type of dill sauce or something. Anyways, I’m looking for awesome new BBQ recipes. So, please drop a comment with your favourite thing to cook on the BBQ, and possible include some information on how to make it! Thanks. ...

When I moved back to Chilliwack, one of the first things that changed was my diet. I typically worked long hours in Vancouver, and that naturally led to me eating a lot of restaurant food. I’d normally want to sleep in as long as possible in the mornings, so I usually skipped breakfast in exchange for a few more minutes of zzzz’s. Lunch was normally something I’d eat down in the Food Court in the Bentall Center. There weren’t a lot of food options, but I’d typically switch between Subway or sushi. Dinners were a bit more varied — a lot of times I went out with friends after work, and ...

One of the major initiatives I’ve taken upon myself since moving back home is to actually eat at home for all of my meals. The last time I think I consistently ate three meals a day that I actually made for myself was probably back in high school. Since moving out here, I’m happy to say that I’ve been fairly successful eating at home. It does take a lot of effort though, and I find I have to hit a grocery store every second day or so just to top up produce and what-not. The nice thing about being out here though is that it’s easy to bounce between various specialty stores in the same trip. In ...

My birthday is fast approaching, and the only real event I’m looking forward to is having a plate of nachos somewhere in the city with a friend or two. So, my question to all of you is: where are the best nachos in this city? My favourites so far are probably the ones down at Smiley O’Neils on Pender, but I’m open to suggestions. Drop a comment if you’ve had nachos somewhere in the city and let everyone know how they were (if they sucked, say so). I had nachos last night down at the Atlantic Trap and Gill, and the beef on them was actually a cut-up hamburger patty — not cool people. ...

I eat subway pretty much an average of one time per day. In the little food court where I work it is the lesser of many evils, including A & W, some Pizza place and a greasy chinese food place. For the most part, I always order a little wrap, either filled with chicken or like this morning filled with ham and egg. It’s not a hard thing to make really. You take some egg, put it in a wrap, but some ham and cheese on it and call it a sandwich. However, it doesn’t matter how many times I order a wrap, EVERY SINGLE TIME I DO it’s like watching some huge elaborate machine grind to a freaking ...

Ok, this is a quick entry on something I’ve been meaning to write about for some time – tipping. For some reason, it seems like more and more places I visit now are introducing “tipping” into the system. In particular, a lot of interact machines I encounter are starting to show “please enter tip amount.” In the old days, you’d usually encountered a “Tip: Yes/No” question first, but I’ve seen the former more and more lately, and it’s starting to piss me off. You see, I don’t think you should tip if you’re buying something across the counter. A good example is Fritz on ...