Well, hello there. It's been a while. Hard to believe that it's been six months since the last time that I've blogged. What have I been up to? To be honest, a whole lot of nothing. I'm fortunate enough to still be working, but other than my time at the office, I've been staying home as much as I can (like one should during a global pandemic). I was always a homebody to begin with, so the transition hasn't been too difficult. Netflix has been my best friend through all of this and baking projects have kept me (somewhat) sane. I've even picked up embroidery as a hobby! I'm out here, just living my best grandma life.
Since the beginning of the year, I think I've dined in a restaurant a grand total of four times. We've done a lot of takeout, but it's heartbreaking knowing that the restaurant industry has been one of the hardest hit this past year. So if you're in a position to do so, please remember to shop small and support local.
During the summer, when cases were relatively under control, we took a weekend trip out to Calgary and Canmore. Traveling to faraway places doesn't seem at all likely (until 2022 at least) so exploring our own backyard seemed like the next best thing.
Our first stop of the day was M Palace Seafood & Dim Sum along Macleod Trail. T. Pot is our usual go-to for dim sum in Calgary, but we figured it was good to try somewhere new. It was actually my first time dining out since the beginning of 2020 so I did have some anxiety going in. Fortunately, the restaurant is pretty large so they were able to distance the tables quite well. I don't think it's mandatory practice but the restaurant also collected your name and number for contact tracing if necessary.
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We were planning to go hiking right after so we were pretty modest with our order. The dim sum staples, har gao ($6.95) and sui mai ($6.95), were pretty standard. Smaller in size but they did come in baskets of five than the usual portion of four. The deep fried taro balls ($5.95) had a wispy, crunchy shell surrounding mashed taro and a saucy ground pork filling. One of my favourite dim sum dishes, the molten lava egg yolk buns ($6.95) was given a visual upgrade with charcoal-tinted dough and a brush of gold. They certainly delivered on the molten lava promise.
We liked the rice crepe wrapped Chinese dough ($6.95) enough but could have done without the rice crepe with seafood ($7.95). The fried batter surrounding the shrimp was way too greasy and hard to stomach.
After lunch, we were back on the road, headed to Canmore. We planned on hiking Grassi Lakes trail, known for their beautiful turquoise waters. It's a fairly popular hike so it took us a while to get a parking spot.
We also swung by downtown Canmore which was shut down for pedestrian-only traffic. A beavertail was our reward after the hike. We got the avalanche, which had cheesecake spread, Skor bits, and caramel sauce. I've learnt that classic is always best, as this was sweet on sweet on sweet.
- Salmon battera (6 pieces): avocado inside with torched salmon, spicy mayo, unagi sauce, and jalapeno
- Flames special roll (8 pieces): spicy salmon and cucumber inside with torched salmon, avocado, unagi sauce, and bonito
- Signature special roll (8 pieces): deep fried scallop, avocado, and cucumber inside with torched chopped scallop, spicy mayo, spicy sauce, and jalapeno
My favourite ended up being the signature special roll because of the creamy scallops but we pretty much loved everything on the tray. Between the three of us, we managed to finish everything. Guess the hike made us pretty hungry.
Before we dropped SC back home, we grabbed some dessert at XO Ice Cream & Waffles. Calgary is quite known for Made by Marcus and Village Ice Cream already, but XO is another independent ice cream shop churning out their own unique flavours. They're located quite far south so it was never really convenient to try them out until now. As far as COVID protocols go, only one person/family is allowed in the shop at a time, and there are no more samples allowed anymore (understandable, but sad).
$6 gets you one scoop, but you're allowed to choose two flavours. I ended up with two of the seasonal flavours, guava papaya and lime cilantro. The guava papaya was amazing -- slightly tart but sweet and refreshing. The texture was really nice and smooth as well. Usually that isn't the case for sorbets since there's higher water content. Lime cilantro on the other hand... here's where the samples would've come in clutch. I'm actually a huge citrus lover (yellow starbursts > orange > red > pink) and although it's a divisive ingredient, I really don't mind cilantro either. I imagined the combination to be just as good as the lemon basil flavour from Little Bear Gelato. I was sadly mistaken.
If lime cilantro ever comes back, stay away. Far, far away. To me, it tasted like pho condiments that had been regurgitated. Don't get me wrong, the other flavours at XO are lovely. This one just missed the mark.
Well, hopefully it doesn't take me another six months to get the second part of this road trip up. I probably won't be updating my blog as frequently as I have in years past but I promise I'm not abandoning you entirely! Blogging has been a longtime passion project of mine and it's been nice to have memories of food and travel documented. I'm surprised I've lasted as long as I have (5 years!), so thanks (to the two or three of you) for coming along for the ride. I hope 2021 will be a much better year -- it can only go uphill from here!
- CT
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