While the fresh slices of sweet mango have to be the best part about the taste, I think that it’s the look of the cake (covered in the bright yellowy-orange slices) that makes up for a good deal of the visual appeal.

I usually don’t like any type of cake that’s much too sweet and on that point, their mango cake doesn’t disappoint. The cake is composed of layers of moist white cake in conjunction with whipping cream and more mango slices. The whipping cream is perfectly made and not the overly sweet pre-made type that comes in a spray can or tub.

Maxim’s also carries a variety of Chinese buns which I also love and the best part is that pretty much everything in their stores is priced extremely well.

Maxim’s has five locations in the Lower Mainland and if you stop by the nearest location to you, I gaurantee that you won’t be disappointed.

Baden

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Maxim’s Bakery
5613 Victoria Drive, Vancouver
604-323-1551

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The first thing that we discovered is that there are Circle Farm Tours for 6 of the districts in the Fraser Valley and not just Abbotsford. This seems to make sense as Abbotsford is hardly the only place in the Fraser Valley that has an abundance of farming communities.

The Abbotsford Circle Farm tour is comprised of 12 designated destinations and we had all decided to try and do only 6 of them in the Saturday afternoon that we had set aside for it. In the end, one of the sites (the Abbotsford Farm & Country Market) was closed before we got there so we only ended up seeing 5 which was just about right given that we ended up spending about 7-8 hours on the tour with just the five.

Abbotsford is about 75 km away from Vancouver but the drive out there with our friends from their house was quite pleasant traveling along mostly quiet country roads for the most part.

The first place that we stopped was at a winery called Lotusland Vineyards. Lotusland Vineyards is one of about 11 wineries in the Lower Mainland / Fraser Valley region. In addition to the many wineries in the Okanagan region of BC, the overall quality of wines produced in this province has definitely reached world class levels.

When we first arrived at the Lotusland Vineyards we thought that maybe it was closed give the lack of any human inhabitants but we eventually found a small radio button at the door to the store which we were able use to summon some help. We both ended up buying a bottle of organic red wine – ours a 2001 pinot noir.

With wine bottles under our arms, we departed the Lotusland Vineyards and headed off to out next destination called The Fruit Basket.

As we were driving into the Fruit Basket, we saw signs of a wedding that was to take place that day and as a result much of the activity on the sprawling property seemed to be focused on sitting things up for the ceremony.

The main focus of the Fruit Basket seemed to be blueberries – tons of blueberries. Knowing how Barb and I love our blueberries and now that they were fresh in season, we bought a nice large 4.5 kg box of berries from the Fruit Basket’s on site store. Between the two of us, I estimate that this box will easily be finished within 10 days.

The gardens on the Fruit Basket’s properties contains a huge grassy area as well as a fountain and lily pond – complete with the requisite bull frogs floating in the water. Overall, it was an impressive site and a picturesque tranquil location so we could see the appeal for wanting to have weddings held there.

Around this time we were all getting pretty hungry so we made our next stop for lunch the Clayburn Village Store & Teashop. The Tea Shop building is about 100 years old and the has the restaurant on one side and an old fashioned “general store” on the other – complete with an extremely well stocked candy bar with dozens of large glass containers selling loose candy by weight.

While in the planning stages of this tour, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from a teashop as I assumed that it was all about, well, tea. As it turned out, tea was only one of the things on the menu and they served all kind of other food and drinks suitable for a pleasant afternoon lunch with friends.

The Tea Shop was pretty crowded by the time we got there and we surmised that the Circle Farm Tour was either hugely popular or else the Tea Shop was a well known local hangout for the Saturday afternoon lunch crowd. Maybe a bit of both.

After we had finished lunch at the Tea Shop, we were on our way to the destination that, in my opinion, was the highlight of our Circle Farm Tour: the Birchwood Dairy.

The Birchwood Dairy is a real live functional dairy (yes, those cows in the barn aren’t actors and that smell is all real too) and it produces a number of different dairy product which they sell on site in their farmer’s market store. In addition to a variety of different types of milk and cheeses, they offer an assortment of yogurts as well. However, ignore all of those things because the real reason why you’ve come here is to get ice cream. Birchwood makes their own ice cream and let me tell you, this is the real thing.

A word to the wise: if you visit the Birchwood Dairy, bring along a picnic cooler filled with ice as you’re going to want to bring home a lot of ice cream and the last thing that you want is to have this stuff melting in your car before you can eat it.

Barb and I bought only a litre of the Coffee Crunch flavour ice cream and this was only because we knew that we couldn’t fit the 4 litre size carton on our freezer at home. Learn from our mistake and make sure that you have lots of freezer space before visiting Birchwood.

After a short detour to bring our frozen dairy products home to temporarily sit in Tony and Anna’s freezer, we went to our final destination for the day which was to the place called Restaurant 62 where went for an early dinner.

When I say early, I mean that we were the only ones in the restaurant for at least an hour.

A lot of people that I work with live in Abbotsford and many of them knew of Restaurant 62 as one of the few fine dining places to go in the area. The restaurant was definitely not the typical kind of place that I normally associate with Abbotsford as it had a modern, trendy look about it which wouldn’t be out of place in downtown Vancouver.

The food that we ordered was generally good and Tony and I both had the Bison which I found to be quite well prepared.

At the end of the day, the generally consensus was that the dining experience at Restaurant 62 was good, but fell short of being great. I don’t see myself going back there but that’s mostly because of geographical reasons more than anything else.

We relaxed for a while before heading back home after our long day in the country. Being the consummate city boy, it’s a nice change to experience the rural aspects of our area which is really just an hour or less drive away from where we live in Vancouver. More than anything else, the memories of the Birchwood Dairy ice cream still stand out and we will be able to reminisce about this with the frozen bounty stored in our freezer.

No doubt I see ourselves making some additional trips out the the Birchwood Dairy for some refills some time in the near future.

Baden

Keep in mind that as far as I can tell, there are actually no fruit flies/fleas inside of this banana bread but who can tell?

I actually don’t make this recipe of banana bread as it is Barb’s thing to do this. It’s not that I don’t like banana bread but I don’t like it enough to actually want to make it and if I did, I would probably want to use a different recipe.

The recipe that Barb uses is a no-fat recipe found on the web site cooks.com here and it’s the words “no fat” that would immediately turn me off to making this or any other similar recipe.

My personal philosophy in cooking is that flavour rules.

What I mean by that is that there can be (with some few exceptions) no shortcuts taken in the kitchen that will sacrifice flavour. As such, a recipe with the words no fat, low fat, fat free, heart smart and so on must immediately be dismissed, if not outright scorned. In my view, food should relished. It should be savoured. It should be cooked in at least 4 tablespoons of butter.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t suggest that every single meal that one makes or eats must be high in fat and calories. I like to have those special meals a few times a week that remind you about what life is all about: food is life.

Oh, and by the way, Barb’s flea loaf is pretty good so give the recipe a try (even without the butter).

Baden

It has been my observation that most people perceive that Germany and Bavaria to be the same thing. By that, I mean that many of the most common things that people think about Germany are typically Bavarian in origin (Eg: Oktoberfest, beer gardens, Oompah Pah music, etc). Of course, any German will tell you that there is much more to Germany than those Bavarian things.

Barb and I have been to the Old Bavarian Haus restaurant many times and continue to enjoy it each time as we get our fill of German food. The restaurant is a fairly casual place with typically Bavarian decor (lots of dark wood and exposed beams).

When we went there on Friday night, we had Barb’s mother and father with us and we ended up ordering a selection of different dishes although Barb and her mother both ordering schnitzel. Schnitzel, of course, is a fairly common Bavarian dish and the Bavarian Haus had no fewer than two pages of various schnitzel dishes on their menu.

One of the things that we all commented on while we were enjoying our dinner was how well the side vegetables were done. Admittedly a small thing but we have often found how many restaurants (especially European ones) will overcook the vegetables to the point of them being completely devoid of any flavour. Ours were all perfectly done.

We’ll continue to keep the Old Bavarian Haus Restaurant in our favourite restaurant mix and if you’re looking for a great German meal in an unassumingly casual environment, give this restaurant a try.

Baden

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The Old Bavarian Haus Restaurant
233 6th St., New Westminster
604-524-5824

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About a 30 minute drive from downtown Vancouver, the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal is one of the two main terminals for points headed west or north. Just a short 40 minute ferry ride north from Horseshoe Bay ends at the start of the Sunshine Coast. We exited Highway 101 right after our arrival at the Langdale ferry terminal and headed west towards the small town of Gibsons.

Perhaps best known as the place where the CBC television show The Beachcombers was filmed, the site of the Molly’s Reach restaurant (originally a sound stage for the show and now a real restaurant) is perhaps the single most famous location on the entire Sunshine Coast.

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Sidebar: Entire volumes can be written on the cultural impact of the Beachcombers onto Canadian television. The Beachcombers was on for 19 years between 1972 and 1991 and was virtually an institution on Canadian television during that time. Quoted from the Internet Movie Database on the plot outline for the Beachcombers: “The adventures of a professional lumber salvager and his friends in Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada.“. The fact that they could create 19 years worth of TV on this one sentence makes me proud to be a Canadian.

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We only stayed in Gibsons long enough for Barb and her mother to shop at every clothing and shoe store in town (which was a surprisingly high number given the population of Gibsons) before we headed down highway 101 towards the town of Sechelt where we stopped for lunch. We walked around the town for a few minutes before deciding on a place called the Old Boot Eatery (located at 5530 Wharf Street in Sechelt).

The Old Boot Eatery appeared to be a nice casual place to get some lunch and we weren’t disappointed. Many of the menu items in this Italian restaurant were either pasta dishes or as I ordered, toasted sandwiches. What all of the dishes had in common were the huge portions and , without exception, delicious taste. I ordered the “meat-a-ball” sandwich which came with a small side salad. As you can see from the picture, the dish was pretty big and it was all I could do just to finish eating the sandwich alone, never mind the salad.

Interestingly, while sitting at our table at the Old Boot Eatery, we noticed this old bottle of Chianti wine sitting on the shelf behind out table – the kind of bottle that had the straw “basket” weave around the bottom. What drew our attention was the maker of the wine: Melini. This happened to be the name of the vineyard just down the road from the villa that we stayed at in Tuscany last year. We happened to stop at the Melini vineyard and did some wine tasting there and also bought some of our wine from their shop.

We continued our day trip along the Sunshine Coast and stopped at our final destination of Pender Harbour where we took some time out for a coffee and pastry. They had just pulled some huge, delicious chocolate chip cookies out of the oven and those became part of our snack as well.

After catching our breath from our short rest, we returned back down highway 101 towards the ferry terminal before finally making it home for the day. While the weather today wasn’t the best for mid-July (it was cloudy and in the low 20′s) I couldn’t help but think that it would be nice to return to the Sunshine Coast and do a bike trip up the highway for a day or two. As we noticed countless Bed and Breakfasts along the highway to stay in, it would be a unique way to leisurely explore the small towns along the coast instead of by car. Maybe next time.

Baden

If you have ever been along Commercial Drive during any other part of the week, Friday and Saturday nights are the most lively and if you’re into an eclectic mix of different types of people, restaurants, cafes and music, there’s something here for everyone.

Commercial Drive historically has been mostly known for it’s Italian influences but over the years this has changed to include many other ethic flavours. Nonetheless, we were concerned about the extra crowds that might be celebrating that evening as the Italian football team had won their World Cup match just hours before were were supposed to go down there. We had seen on the news that there were cars driving up and down the streets in the area with people hanging out of them waving their Italian flags.

By the time we got down to the Latin Quarter restaurant, we had no problems with any exuberant football fans and were able to park just a block or so away (not always such an easy feat on a busy Friday night). We had made reservations for 7:30 and hoped that we would be be able to stay long enough for the live music that the restaurant advertised on Friday and Saturday nights.

The Latin Quarter offers a predominantly Spanish menu with an assortment of tapas and other dishes available. I ordered a gazpacho soup to start which was a perfect start on a warm evening. Gazpacho is a cold soup made from tomatoes, cucumbers and garlic and Barb and I were fortunate to be introduced to it on our Adventure to Spain in 2003.

For our main course, Barb and I shared a delicious paella (pronounced pie-ay-ah) dish. Virtually the national dish of Spain, paella is a rice dish with various combinations of seafood and shellfish baked in the oven in a shallow pan known (coincidentally) as a paella pan. We first tasted paella in Barcelona on the same trip to Spain and ended up having it at least 3-4 more times over the subsequent 3 weeks.

We ended up leaving the Latin Quarter Restaurant before the music started. It turned out to be less of a disappointment than we thought as when we were walking back to our car after stopping for a dolce at Cafe Calabria, we noticed that the music was only taped and not a live band. Maybe it was the band’s night off.

It was about 10 or 10:30 by the time we were walking back to our car and we had all enjoyed ourselves with the food and atmosphere at the Latin Quarter. We had promised to return to sample the tapas at Latin Quarter and no doubt come on other occasions to enjoy the endless selections of other restaurants on The Drive.

Baden

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Latin Quarter Restaurant
1305 Commercial Drive, Vancouver
604-251-1144

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