A Week In the Maritimes
Part One: Dough Canada
Whenever I go to Canada, I’m always surprised at some of the food items they have that can’t be found in America. We’re the fattest country in the world, but somehow our friendly—and decidedly more healthy—neighbors to the North have so many snack options that put ours to shame in terms of variety and deliciousness. And unhealthiness. How do they do it? Chances are, Canadians are much more responsible than Americans; most of us are gluttons with little or no self-control when it comes to eating. Many Americans don’t even know what a normal portion of food is.
But I digress—my intentions were not to talk about how badly America handles its food, but about how well Canada does theirs. There are many food-related reasons I always look forward to going to Canada, and most of them are more “hog” than “healthy.” Just the French fries are enough to draw me back time after time. How poutine has never caught on in the states is beyond me: how can fries covered in cheese curds and gravy possibly be bad?[1] I suppose most people don’t like the term “curd,” but if you can get over that, you’re in for a treat. And one step up from that is Newfie Fries (so named after the Newfoundlanders): fries topped in turkey stuffing and gravy. How is this not the biggest fast food craze in the US? If you called it “Thanksgiving Fries” you’d have a best-seller on your hands. Someone please do this, because it is a true celebration of the taste buds.
And the chips. O, the chips! We love to snack on chips in America, so why don’t we have roasted chicken flavor or sour cream and bacon or hot wing or Zesty Cheese Doritos? Or the amazing All Dressed by Ruffles, a palate-busting combination of three or four different chip flavors all rolled into one. Whenever I go to Canada, or whenever Girlfriend’s parents come to visit the states, there is always a bag of All Dressed involved. I think I would cry if I ever went all the way to Canada and missed out on those tangy, delicious wonders of nature.
Even though I mentioned Donair sauce in a previous article, I would be remiss to ignore it here. We made it a point to order pizza once while we were there (not Sonny’s, unfortunately) just to get the sauce. We had two “combination” pizzas—green peppers and mushrooms—and one large order of garlic sticks with bacon[2]. This time, the pizza was from a place called Fatboy’s (you can tell it’s good by the name) and the donair sauce was even better than I remembered. Though while it seems that most of the other stuff mentioned is available throughout Canada, you’ll probably have to go a little further East to the Maritimes to find the sauce.
Needless to say, the vacation to Canada didn’t do any favors for my healthy eating initiative. It was, of course, constantly justified with the “But it’s vacation!” line. At least, that’s what I was doing because I have no self-control. Girlfriend made sure to keep things reasonable, for the most part, and even kept me reigned in as much as she could[3].
Now, there’s not much I love more than junk food, but we did have much more variety on my food trip through the Maritimes, so check back on Wednesday to learn about the higher quality food we ate.
[1] They can’t.
2 In the Maritimes, “garlic sticks” actually means a pizza crust covered in garlic (and, in this case, bacon), cooked and cut into strips; they’re not the doughy mockeries you get here.
3 As evidenced by the fact that I only ordered fish and chips once and didn’t get poutine at all (I got Newfie fries instead this time around).
