Archives for September 2020

Country Challenge: Chile

September 24, 2020 | Leave a Comment

Join twowildtides on the country challenge. Each week, we’re going to be heading to a new country (in spirit). Primarily, we’ll be cooking a meal from each country; but we’ll also be watching travel documentaries, reading travel blogs, and listening to music. During the global pandemic, travel is largely inaccessible. We want to reignite our wanderlust, satisfy our travel bug as much as we can, and learn some new things along the way. I have a feeling our bucket list will have a number of items added to it through this experience as well. We created a simple alphabetical spreadsheet with all the countries of the world, and each week we will draw a random number that corresponds with a country on the spreadsheet.

This week, we found ourselves on the West Coast of South America, in Chile. I have a few friends from Chile and have learned lots from them about the landscape and culture of their vibrant country. My understanding of Chile is that there is something for everyone: mountains, deserts, sea, and sky. I’d also argue that it is the country with the coolest shape. Check it out on the map below if you’re unfamiliar.

Santiago

Instead of researching a national/popular dish for Chile, I decided to ask one of my friends from there. They suggested ‘Completo Italiano’, which I also spotted on some of the ‘top foods’ articles I came across on Google:

17 of the Tastiest Traditional Chilean Dishes

10 Traditional Chilean Dishes You Need to Try

10 Popular Chilean Dishes Worth Trying

But, this is the recipe we chose to follow:

Completo Italiano (Chilean Italian-Style Hot Dog)

We used regular hotdog buns but more ‘gourmet’ sausages, instead of plain old wieners 🙂

This meal was far more refreshing than your classic hotdog. The avocado and tomato added a fresh, bright flavour while the mayo maintained its comfort food status. Completo Italiano really hit the spot.

On the other hand, I learned that I am not a fan of sauerkraut. Not. One. Bit.

Although we don’t often hotdogs, from now on I’ll always be dressing mine with tomato and avocado. I think pickles/relish would be the ultimate addition to this dish too.

While we ate, we watched this fun travel vlog:

Have you been to Chile? Have you tried Completo Italiano? Stay tuned for our next country!

A Land Before Time: Exploring Drumheller, Alberta

September 21, 2020 | Leave a Comment

It’s the year of the staycation– this is nothing new to us at twowildtides. We love being tourists in our own province, and now that I am living in a new province, I have lots more to explore.

Drumheller is a fascinating place. It’s a town in the Canadian badlands, located in east-central Alberta, only about an hour outside Calgary. As you drive across what seems like neverending prairies along Highway 56 South, the land suddenly gives way and you find yourself with high cliffs on either side of you. The change in terrain happens so quickly, it’s almost disorienting. It’s like you’re on Mars.

We decided to camp out for the weekend and visited two different campsites with our small, 2-person tent. The first night, we stayed at Hoodoos RV Park and Campground. While the grounds were tidy and the stay went smoothly, it offers zero privacy and not much to look at. It’d be a great campsite for many tourists as it is affordable and close to many landmarks, but it just wasn’t our style. On the second night, we stayed at River Grove Campground, right in the middle of town. This site was much nicer, offered more privacy, had excellent washrooms, and had a prime location, but you’ll pay a slightly higher price. I recommend River Grove over Hoodoos.

We arrived late Friday night, so we were up bright and early Saturday morning anticipating a jam-packed day. We started off with coffee and a satisfyingly greasy breakfast at WHIFS Flapjack House. Then we headed to Horseshoe Canyon just outside of town.

Horseshoe Canyon was so fun to hike as there are no barricades and visitors are free to roam off the trails. We were fascinated by the desert landscape and spent almost two hours in the blistering sun climbing over boulders and hills, admiring the wildflowers, and spotting rock stacks created by past hikers.

The coolest part about Horseshoe Canyon? Cacti! It’s a pretty stark difference from the evergreen forests we’re used to in Canada.

After we left Horseshoe Canyon, we stopped by our campsite to rehydrate and eat a packed lunch, then we headed about 15-minutes outside of town to Hoodoos Provincial Park. What’s a hoodoo, you ask? It’s a natural rock formation, but I’ll let the pictures explain the rest.

Saturday night, we strolled from our campground to Valley Brewing and enjoyed some flights of beers then grabbed a pizza at a small joint in Drumheller’s cute downtown area. I definitely suggest you pop in some of the little shops and boutiques downtown, there are lots of sweet finds! It’s also worth your time to do the most mega-touristy experience the town has to offer– climb into the mouth of the World’s Tallest Dinosaur. (You can catch me doing this in our Alberta Video Diary from four years ago! I also visited the Royal Tyrell Museum in this video, an experience we couldn’t enjoy during our recent trip due to the Covid-19 pandemic).

Although these days the main industry is likely tourism, Drumheller was a coal-mining boomtown. So before we hit the highway on Sunday, we visited the Atlas Coal Mine– the last mine of it’s kind in the world.

The coal mine was a fascinating experience especially for a history buff. For true crime/disaster story fanatics (what’s up Murderinos?) there are really interesting story boards to read. In normal times (i.e. pre-Covid) you can even climb the tipple and venture inside the mine.

Have you been to Drumheller? What did you do there? Comment below!

Country Challenge: North Korea

September 17, 2020 | Leave a Comment

Last week, we took on a Caribbean destination: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This week, our spreadsheet and random number generator offered us an interesting choice. North Korea.

We all have our ideas and opinions about North Korea. And because the country is so often surrounded by a cloud of controversy, uncertainty, and secrecy, we forget that it is a real place with real citizens and a unique culture. We were intrigued to learn more about their cuisine.

North Korea

It was difficult to uncover what the popular dishes in North Korea are. From my understanding, the national dish is Kimchi, which I cannot buy locally and did not have time this week to make from scratch. Through a little research, I learned that the average citizen in North Korea likely cannot afford to dine out and often solely consumes basic staples, such as kimchi and rice. I checked out a few blog posts, and across the lists of popular foods in the country, one dish prevailed: Naengmyeon.

We learned about Naengmyeon from this article by Young Pioneer Tours as well as this Vice.com article and this Taste Atlas article.

Disclaimer: there were a lot of authentic ingredients we could not get in our rural Alberta community, so we made some swaps. This is the recipe we followed:

Because I couldn’t buy pickled radishes locally, I started this recipe by making some the night before. They turned out super yummy and the colour was so pretty! I just thinly sliced fresh radish and added them to a jar with equal parts vinegar and water as well as some sugar and peppercorns.

I prepared the simple broth and placed it in the fridge to chill. I cooked the medium-boiled eggs and beef and set it to one side while we chopped some cucumber and pear.

I bought pre-cooked oat-fibre spaghetti noodles as I could not find anything remotely close to myun, buckwheat, or soba noodles at our local supermarket. Plating (or bowling?) the dish was really fun as we could get creative with our presentation. I think it was a very visually appealing dish.

Honestly, I did not like the broth that much. I think it was the beef broth that threw it off, I might have liked it better if the chicken to beef broth ratio was 2:1. What was surprising, though, was how much I enjoyed a cold noodle/soup dish. It was actually pretty refreshing! Mack ended up throwing his in the microwave though!

While we ate, we watched a few YouTube videos about tourism in North Korea:

While North Korea might not be at the top of our travel bucket list and naengmyeon may not be our meal of a lifetime, this was certainly a really unique learning experience for us. Have you had anything like it before? Stay tuned for next week’s country!

Adventures in the Rocky Mountains: A Weekend in Jasper National Park

September 14, 2020 | Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, my partner and I headed out to Jasper National Park for an impromptu weekend in the mountains. I had been to the Rockies once before (Banff, 4 years ago), but Mack had never been. We stayed at an Airbnb in Hinton, about 45 minutes east of the town of Jasper, because it is much more affordable. Hinton is actually a really nice community, so I would recommend staying there if you’re okay with the drive into Jasper.

We didn’t do much planning for this trip, mostly because we just wanted to soak in the sights at this legendary place, rather than be exhausted from a jam-packed schedule.

In the age of Covid-19, there are restrictions and closures to be aware of. As of July 1st 2020, the Miette hot springs were closed. We wanted to hike the Sulphur Skyline Trail, however, the trailhead is 16 km up the same road as the hot springs and the whole road is closed to prevent tourists from getting near the pools. So, this hike is inaccessible unless you want to walk 16 km for an 8 km hike.

We did some strolling around on easy walking/hiking trails; mainly just staring in awe at the jutting and breathtaking skyline. One underrated area for viewpoints/photo-ops, right off the main highway, is called Jasper House. It’s a short walk from the road to the banks of the Athabasca River. This would make a good picnic spot. Punchbowl Falls, right at the base of the road to the Miette hot springs, is another good picnic/lookout spot that we found.

On Saturday evening, we had a delicious meal and some refreshing beers at the Jasper Brewing Company, right on main street Jasper. I tried elk meatloaf– I’m drooling just thinking about it. We spent the rest of the evening popping in and out of some touristy gift shops and eating ice cream cones.

Sunday morning, we ‘stumbled’ on the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge (we knew it existed but had no idea where we were when we first pulled up). The lake at the Lodge is STUNNING. It is one of your classic, electric blue, picture-perfect Rocky Mountain lakes. I was bubbling with excitement from being there. We decided last-minute (as we did with everything that weekend) to pop inside for brunch. I had one of the best caesars of my life and the fish tacos were so tasty. I will be going back there, without a doubt.

Our impromptu weekend in Jasper couldn’t have been better and I can’t wait to explore there some more so I can write about it here on the blog for you folks.

That smile is genuine, believe me.
xoxo, char

Country Challenge: St. Vincent and the Grenadines

September 10, 2020 | Leave a Comment

Last week, for our first country, we travelled (figuratively, of course) to Uzbekistan. For our second week, we’re moving down south to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. To my disappointment, the sweet and tangy liqueur, grenadine, does not come from the Grenadines. So that dream was squashed pretty quickly. What we did make, however, was pretty great.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are an archipelago (we discussed that term in our article about St. Pierre and Miquelon) in the southeast Caribbean, just north of South America. While Saint Vincent is the main island and the largest, the Grenadines are made up of 32 smaller islands. Reading about this place made me crave a Caribbean vacation.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Compared to last week, it was tougher to determine what dish best represented Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The country’s national dish is roasted breadfruit and fried jackfish, but in my small northern Alberta community, fresh breadfruit was near impossible to find. I could have opted for a dried version that could be ordered online, but that didn’t feel nearly as authentic. I found two bloggers that cooked Cod Blaff to represent this country and a few other articles that confirmed that this type of dish would be commonly served in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, so I was satisfied. I followed this recipe:

Luckily, Mack’s mom had just sent us a special delivery from Newfoundland. Among other treats, she had sent us fresh codfish from home. The timing was perfect.

I knew this meal was going to pack a punch when I read that the fish would marinate in fresh lime juice with onion, garlic, and hot peppers. Marination is a basic process, however, I rarely marinate my food. I was so impressed with the flavours in this meal, I’ll certainly be trying to incorporate marination more often.

I let the fish marinate for 24 hours. I wanted to maximize the flavours in this meal because it was so unlike anything I had tried before. Adding the wine, oil, and spices to the stew created such a strong aroma throughout my house. At first, I thought the allspice and cloves would clash with the limes, but it definitely worked out in the end. The taste was so rich.

While I cooked, I listened to a Saint Vincent and the Grenadines playlist on Spotify. It was essentially music you’d expect to hear on a Caribbean resort–no complaints about that here.

This dish was surprisingly easy to prepare for such an incredible flavour payoff. It is unsurprisingly tangy but I was caught off guard by just how refreshing it was. Despite having an unattractive name, Cod Blaff is such an exciting dish. I can just imagine drinking that broth when I have a cold and immediately feeling better. The rice ensured that the meal was filling, however, I definitely could have eaten the cod on its own.

We’ll definitely be making this meal again. Have you had anything like it before? Have you been to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines? Stay tuned for next week’s country!