Happy Canada Day!

It’s now just a decade ago that we returned from a nearly one year stay in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. We arrived the first week of July 2001 and left mid-June the next year. It was an interesting experience for all of us but it definitely left a lasting impression on our Lego Lover. He is obsessed with Canada and has been since we left. For him, it ranks up higher than all other countries aside from Australia. Not even the fact he is also American sways him towards the US. He was only three when we left so it’s a bit of an oddity. During our stay, we lived in a three story townhouse that overlooked Halifax Harbour. I remember the day we arrived as it was drizzly, damp and very foggy. It was so thick that it was a couple days later when we finally saw the view across the harbour. We were lucky to live on the Dartmouth side because there was a lot more to see in Halifax than in Dartmouth. We also had a balcony outside our bedroom upstairs. It was a neat thing when we arrived there in summer but it was mostly ignored once winter set in. From the balcony and the bedroom window, the view was pretty neat, especially for a 2-3 year old obsessed with vehicles. We could see the ships on the harbour, the buses and cars on the road, seaplanes, barges, and also the freight train that passed through several times a day. There was also a bridge connecting the two cities that was visible from our house. In winter, there was the added pleasure of the snow plows going up and down the streets. I think that might have been the clincher for Lego Lover since that was really the only place he got to see them.

We have always done something to celebrate the 4th of July since that’s part of my heritage. It’s not the outdoor event that was always part of my childhood because our winter weather usually isn’t that conducive to such doings. Lego Lover has always taken some interest but last year it reached his sphere of knowledge that Canada has it’s national day on the 1st of July. He was somewhat distressed upon finding this out just a few days after the event. He made it his goal that we would celebrate this year and he has made it his goal to mention Canada and/or something about it daily since then.

At the beginning of the year, he decided he wanted us to make Nanaimo bars for the day. A few weeks ago we started looking at recipes and we did a trial run last week using a recipe from the Canadian Living website. The result was a sickly sweet treat on a base that was overpowered by walnuts. The middle layer was tasted of the pure icing sugar instead of the custard powder. The top was a mess thanks to using the wrong chocolate…it was just a big gunky mess that was hard to spread. We tried the recipe from the website of the city of Nanaimo this time and had far better results. For both recipes we substituted Marie biscuits for graham crackers, which aren’t sold here. We used ground almonds instead of walnuts and shredded coconut instead of flakes for the base and it wasn’t baked this time. None of the ingredients overpowered it in flavor or texture and it came out nicer than the first try. Instead of pure icing sugar, I tried icing mixture for the middle layer and it was smooth and a bit creamy instead of powdery.  I found a proper semisweet chocolate to use for the top layer and it spread properly this time. The result was a very yummy slice that we all enjoyed.

Lego Lover has recently taken to enjoying the meat pies sold locally so thought tourtiére, which  is popular in Quebec at Christmas time, would be just right for us. Most of the recipes I found listed pork as the favorite meat to use so I stuck to that but did make some alterations to the recipe to suit our family. The Canadian version uses a lot of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg but I cut that down and increased the pepper. It was more like a pepper steak pie but still had some of the spiced flavor of the original recipe. Mashed potato is used as a thickener and I was able to cook down the mixture so it wouldn’t make a soggy pie. We used frozen pastry and made mini-pies in our pie maker and they came out quite nicely.

Our third Canadian recipe was for poutine, which essentially french fries (chips) with cheese curds and gravy. Of the three foods we cooked, this was the only one I remember being sold in Nova Scotia while we were there. I remember it was on the menu at the pizza shop we used to like but we never tried it because it didn’t look very appetising. Now I think we should have tried it just to say we had  tasted it once. Our version didn’t have cheese curds since it’s another thing not easily found here. We used the suggested mozzarella and added pre-packaged chips gravy to a batch of chips from our local chip shop. The family consensus was the gravy was good but we probably won’t bother with the cheese again. If I ever happen to run across cheese curds here, I might buy some just so we can try a closer-to-authentic version of poutine. And if we ever happen to be in Canada again, I suppose we might make an effort to try the authentic version.

While the Scientist and Lego Lover put the pies together, we listened to the Canadian national anthem, once in English and one in a bilingual version. Game Fanatic was reminded of how he was forced to sing this daily while at school. It wasn’t a pleasant memory for him and he seems to still hold a grudge that he had to sing when he was not Canadian.  Overall,  Lego Lover seemed quite happy with the day so I imagine we will do something similar next year. Or at least make the nanaimo bars. :D