Wednesday, 20 May 2015

The Halifax Winter That Was Too Long

Winter is over.  This little guy came up to me and told me so.


So now I can come out of hibernation and talk about winter.  See, if I had blogged about winter during winter, I would have simply annoyed everybody...like rubbing more salt on our collective misery.  Maybe not.  Salt was a precious commodity during those dark months!


In fact, December had been pretty mild. We even had a green Christmas.  Come January, the scales tipped onto the other side and it started to snow.


And it snowed...and snowed...and snowed some more.


We were up to our eyeballs in snow and still it kept on coming.  Here is a picture of our deck.  See the patio furniture? :-)


The city did its best to clear the streets.  But we didn't know where to put the snow that had fallen on our property anymore.  


And the snow that couldn't be completely cleared turned into ice...and you just couldn't get enough salt.  We didn't have a cat in the house but I bought buckets of kitty litter and dumped them on the driveway for whatever traction they could provide.  


Some footpaths were lucky to get sand.


Six-foot high snow banks made driving tricky.  Blind corners on slippery streets everywhere!


The bobcat--our hero!  I would like to give thanks to all the snow plow and bobcat operators who were out there non-stop so that our city could at least have a semblance of mobility.


It was indeed one long nasty winter.  (That's the Halifax Common, by the way.)


Now, it is time to enjoy spring!


Friday, 2 January 2015

Nori-shio Potato Chips In Halifax

This blog post will only be meaningful to people in Nova Scotia who know and like nori-shio (seaweed & salt) flavoured potato chips...which I have found only in Japan...which is my most favourite kind of potato chip...ever!

Screenshot from: http://www.calbee.co.jp/chips/product/potatochips/norishio.html

I found the Fundy Dulse Sea Lettuce Flakes at the local supermarket...and learned a new word.  Dulse = "a dark red edible seaweed with flattened branching fronds".* The Sea Lettuce Flakes greatly resembles the Japanese aonori seaweed flakes, both in taste and texture!  And even better, it's a local Nova Scotia product!

*From the Oxford American Dictionaries.


So, I got a bag of potato chips, dumped a bit together with a handful of Sea Lettuce Flakes in a ziplock bag and shook it up!

 

Et voila...! My very own nori-shio potato chips!


I imagine not too many are as excited about this discovery as I am.  But, next time you make okonomiyaki, you know where to find the "aonori" without having to airlift some from Japan! :-)

Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqpdZaHWkRyoe4ndg1NZu4ap3z9XtfCYT9zyd3wD6Vu0kUC-3MtxancGpnKCxU0QO34v2HxUSJZ_VHgGdbWoYuAnKAKnx3vsmps-LslAOmnlcoTx-JjyuB2hRVpzElCSjzkjqo57-L5KM/s1600/kagura+okonomiyaki.jpg