baker_kitty | Festival 500 part 6

So I've talked (at length!!!) about the festival. Yes, it was the primary reason we were here. No, it did not occupy every waking minute. :P Food and activities.

Okay, festival again - briefly! I got the brown bag lunch option - easier than trying to find food, eat it, and get to the next event in half an hour! Very simple - sandwich, juice box, piece of cheese and an extra. The extras, though were fun!!! One day it was granola bars, another day little chocolate bars, another day a bag of cookies. :) I looked forward to opening my bag and seeing what I got!

Food around here is generally very good (at least where we've eaten), but veggies and fruit seem to be foreign concepts. If I didn't make an effort to find fruit/veg, I could wind up having none at all in a given day. !!! Everything has to be transported in (not much by way of local farming - fairly marginal farmland). Fortunately for my sanity, two places (one quite new) offer healthy, excellent food. :) The Rocket and The Sprout. :) The Rocket has the best quinoa salad ever - with lemon juice, sweet potatoes and I'm not sure what else. Also really good coffee and tea. :) And their bakery… Basically, they've got a savoury side (with sandwiches, salads, chili, etc.) and a sweet side (with cakes, cookies, pies, bread of all descriptions, brioche, etc.), with a little coffee booth manned by coffee fanatics at the back. :) I had their partridgeberry (also known as lingonberry, for Ikea fans :) clafoutis, and ooooohhh… Also their chocolate caramel tart. Ganache with really good caramel, in a shortcrust pastry shell. *drooooool*

The Sprout is St. John's vegetarian restaurant. Maybe not the only one, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was. :P Fairly cheap ($8-13 entrées) and fantastic food. :) I've so far had their chickpea burger and their lentil burger. Both are delicious, intensely flavourful, and very filling - and they come with a great heap of fresh mixed salad on the side! Tiny little restaurant, so go early or late because it fills up very quickly during meal hours!

Everything up to now was written in the hotel room in the last couple of days of the trip. I'm now in the St. John's airport. *sigh* A very good trip, and I'm so glad we came. Kind of melancholy, though.

Trying now to remember the food experiences we've had. Ate a fair bit at The Guv'nor, of course. Excellent English-style pub food - fish and chips, turkey pot pie (I'm told their steak and kidney pie is authentic and delicious, but I hate kidney…), stuffed Yorkshire pudding. :) They even do a decent veggie stirfry - about the only real veggie on their menu! :P

We went to Mass on Saturday night. Interesting church layout! Clearly at some point the sanctuary had been divisible - the larger sanctuary for regular Mass, and the smaller for weekday Mass. The divider has been taken out entirely now, so it's just one giant circular sanctuary. So strange sitting behind the priest…

Sunday was a free day in the Festival, so we spent the day wandering downtown St. John's and eating. Had lunch at the Gypsy Tea Room. (brunch menu - same menu but more expensive!) Fantastic food!!!! I had truly amazing seafood chowder, and Rob had delicious vegetarian pesto penne. Because of that, decided to go back for another day, when they had the lunch menu. (very expensive dinner menu) Again, excellent food - Rob had blackened salmon (melting!) and I had seafood medley alfredo. Thing is, they added SO much cheese to the alfredo that the richness of it made me ill. :( A pity, given the quality of the seafood on the pasta. I regretted that meal for the rest of the day. :(

On one of the other days, we went to Sun Sushi (came to us highly recommended). Very good, very fresh sushi. Also very expensive. Preparation was excellent. I can't find it, but I was reminded of the study done using ~~X-rays~~ MRI (link) to see what the difference is between good sushi and really expertly prepared sushi. Rather than spending enough to buy a filling meal, we split three rolls (same number of pieces as in Edmonton, and similar prices, but much smaller pieces so much less filling) and wandered down the street to the Yellow Belly Brewery and Public House. :) They brew their own there, and Rob says their stout is fantastic. :) :) :) Their steamed mussels certainly are, and they made better poutine than we ever had in Montreal. :P We went back there another day for a snack. They also make quite a respectable seafood chowder, though not as nice as the one at the Gypsy Tea Room. A note: it's a traditional style of pub, in the British sense. Whole families go there! We saw a decent number of kids in the earlier evening. :) This could segue into a discussion of how making something forbidden doesn't necessarily do anything to curb underage use and actually can cause more problems, but I shall resist. ;)

On an unrelated note, they put out their used mash for the pigeons. :) Results in some very happy pigeons. *g*

More shortly.