Instead of entertaining thoughts of roasted turkey and bowls of cranberries this past Thanksgiving weekend, Andrew and I hopped in the car and road-tripped away from Montreal, dipping into Ontario and parts of New York.

Driving through the Adirondacks

Metropolitain Brasserie (700 Sussex Dr, Ottawa): First up was Ottawa, where we had spent the night so that I could relive high school nostalgia and watch Eric’s Trip rock out at Barrymore’s. Friday was an abnormally warm day – we were walking around the city in short sleeves – but by Saturday it was rainy and chilly.

One of my co-workers had recommended The Metropolitain to me, a cute French brasserie on Sussex, and it was a cozy place to drink coffee and eat in. I ordered a French toast sandwich stuffed with cheese and ham, served with a side of cranberry compote and fresh fruit. It was the same kind of thing I had ordered at Dame Tartine the week before, but this version was a revelation: sweet from the French toast and (free, real) syrup, salty from the cheese and ham. Smeared with the compote was even more heavenly. Andrew had an equally swoon-worthy open-faced omelet.

Putnam Market (435 Broadway, Saratoga Springs): We randomly chose Lake George, New York as a destination without realizing that it was one of the tackiest towns in the Adirondacks. I like tacky, but food-wise the place wasn’t very promising, and that night’s dinner was takeout Domino’s pizza and Adirondack Ale. Instead of attempting breakfast, we shopped at the outlet mall, and then headed east, ending up in Saratoga Springs. We were running a little later than expected and grabbed sandwiches from Putnam Market, a bustling gourmet store and deli, to sustain us. The sandwich selections were amazing. I had a roast beef + mango chutney while Andrew had roast turkey and bacon. I also picked up a bottle of sparkling Saratoga Springs water and a few chocolates from Burlington, Vermont. With the strong Canadian dollar I also took the opportunity to buy a nice pouch of Maldon sea salt and a box of Café du Monde beignet mix.

Hot Dog Heaven (216 Lark Street, Albany) and Daily Grind (234 Lark Street, Albany): Albany is eerily deserted on the weekends, and as we strolled through the large empty streets surrounded by a blend of ornately architectured state buildings, abandoned hotels and churches, and monolith structures, we wondered if something had happened to the rest of the world while we had been outlet shopping in the Adirondacks. When it came time for dinner, the only place we could find open and relatively busy was Jack’s Oyster House (42 State Street, Albany), a little fancier than what we had been planning. We accepted the situation and happily slurped down some oysters, but our waiter, who recognized that we didn’t quite fit into the average Jack’s customer, told us to check out Lark Street. Breakfast the next day was a combination of coffee from Daily Grind (there is no need for Starbucks when you can get a pumpkin spice latte from them) and cheap, greasy sandwiches from Hot Dog Heaven, which we went to mostly for the name.

The sandwiches were satisfying – big and eggy on soft, toasted rolls – and paired with the fresh coffee made for a good breakfast.

A few weeks ago in the midst of a heatwave, Molly and Mike brought us over to Mister Spicee (6889 Victoria, Montreal), a tiny Trinidadian fast food place that specializes in doubles (two pieces of yellow, fried flatbread stuffed with things like chickpeas and goat meat). We picked up a few, along with an order of pholourie (savoury deep fried dough!), and ate the greasy, spicy, delicious mess in a nearby park. When we were done, we ducked into a small Trinidadian market where Molly was in search of a particular masala blend she could use for an attempt at pickled scotch bonnet peppers. While we poked around the store, I found a package of "Tea Chocolate". The small package contained two ping pong sized balls of chocolate, a single nutmeg nut, a few cinnamon sticks and leaves. I bought it.

After some Internet research I discovered that I had purchased Jamaican hot chocolate, a common breakfast drink in Jamaica. The chocolate balls are made of roasted cocoa seeds that have been pounded to a pulp and then rolled into balls. A few days later, I got an email from Molly asking me how the chocolate tea had turned out. At the time it was too hot to even think about drinking hot chocolate, so I waited until now, mid-September, when the air has taken on that early autumn biting chill. I invited Molly over to try it out with me. We skipped ahead and drank the sweet hot chocolate with desert instead of breakfast: my end-of-summer plum crumble, her homemade pistachio ice cream.

(Directions are based on this excellent write-up.)

1 Jamaican chocolate ball
3 tbsp sugar
¼ cup sweetened condensed milk
3 cups water (the recipe suggested a quart, but we found it watered down the chocolate)
A pinch of salt.
Cinnamon leaves
Nutmeg

Grate chocolate ball onto a plate.

Bring the water to boil in the meantime, and then add chocolate and cinnamon to the pot of boiling water.

Allow the tea to boil for fifteen to twenty minutes. Sweeten to taste. Fish out the assorted cinnamon sticks and leaves. Pour into mugs and grate nutmeg to taste into your drink.

And drink. Just a warning - the oils from the chocolate rise to the top of the mug and create a hot slick that you might want to let cool down before taking that first sip.

The package I bought was fairly old, so the flavours were more muted than what I imagine the real thing to taste like. But the grating of the chocolate and nutmeg, followed by a nice slurp of condensed milk makes for a satisfying ritual. With autumn just around the corner, this might be the kind of beverage you want stocked in your kitchen for those days when you need something a little different to cut through the cold.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

It's been awhile, my friends. But what can I say? It was our first summer in Montreal. I was busy doing things.


I made a few loaves of bread.


Some strawberry rhubarb jam.


Tried pickling.


Baked things like these blueberrry muffins.


And a few pies.


Went to the Jean Talon Market (practically) every weekend, on the lookout for the freshest, sweetest and most interesting fruits and vegetables. Became particularly obsessed with finding heirloom tomatoes like this:


(These were in Toronto, though)


Or this (from Jean Talon)


Had multiple barbecues.


Got breakfast cooked for me by friends.

How can you blame me for not keeping this up-to-date?

More soon.

Polly's Pancake Parlor672 Route 117Sugar Hill, NH 03586: Quebec is spoiled in June with two back to back long weekends (St Jean Baptiste, followed by Canada Day), and despite having just returned from a two week vacation, it seemed a shame to pass up a perfectly good travelling opportunity. So, on Friday night Andrew and I packed up the car and drove through Vermont, slept at a rest stop somewhere in New Hampshire, and then ended up bright and early on Saturday morning in Boston. Most of our time was dedicated to seafood, including the most amazing Island Creek, MA oysters at B&G Oysters, amazingly succulent fried clams from Kelly's Roast Beef on the beach at sundown in Revere, MA and a sampling of chowders at Chowderfest. Note: If you want good chowder, you probably shouldn't go to chowderfest (our pick won, but we've had better). Unfortunately all of these gifts from the sea add up and despite finding ways to save some money (see: slept at a rest stop somewhere in New Hampshire), by Monday we needed to stick to the land.

We took a route home through New Hampshire. Our love of Vermont has caused us to neglect New Hampshire, so we decided to ease up the pace a little. I have always been charmed by their dramatic state slogan: LIVE FREE OR DIE. And there's still something mildly shocking in finding out that the seatbelt law does not apply in New Hampshire. A wild and crazy state, right? Not exactly, but it is beautiful with its forest flanked highways and the gorgeous expanse of the White Mountains. There's even a Shaker village in Canterbury where, if you don't want to pay admission to enter, you can still buy herbs and heirloom tomato plants grown in the Shaker gardens. There is also a town called Sugar Hill, and if you're lucky enough to get there before 3 pm you can stop for pancakes at Polly's Pancake Parlor.

We each ordered a pancake sampler platter where you can order three different types of pancakes with different kinds of "fillings". Cumulatively we had plain blueberry, buttermilk oatmeal walnut, cornmeal coconut, whole wheat chocolate chip and apple cinnamon. They're served in groups of three to make sure the other half is kept warm while you're eating, and all of the maple accoutrements (syrup, spread, sugar), like everything else (i.e. the flour) is produced by Polly's family. It's cozy and friendly, and the pancakes were perfect. Definitely worth a return trip if we're ever in the area again.

In general, most of our mornings in Greece were spent getting from Point A to Point B, whether by ferry or catamaran or metro or tram. With most of our ferries leaving some time between six and nine AM, breakfast wasn't really our priority. Besides, we were saving our appetites for some kind of huge lunch and dinner. But there's something about travelling, the giddy rush of it, that can make almost any meal memorable. Like that morning when we took the 6 AM ferry from Naxos to Santorini? I had stuffed the tickets into my back pocket, thrown on my backpack and walked jauntily to the port before the sun rose, only to realize that somewhere along the way the tickets had flown away and disappeared somewhere into the Grecian ether. Oops. Nothing to do but wait for the boat to arrive, hope that it wouldn't be full, and buy tickets on board. Luckily it was one of those huge, slow, cheap Greek ferries, so there was most definitely room for a non-exorbitant price, and I had remembered to pack the rest of the Papadopoulos "Petit Beurre" cookies coated in chocolate, which are incomprehensibly, but immensely, satisfying to me. So I got over it. Sometimes we'd think in advance and buy a few oranges, eating them on the top level of the ferry, always forgetting napkins to wipe our sticky fingers. The oranges were always good. If we were in Piraeus, we might buy koulouria - the ring-shaped sesame bread sold in stalls all over the city, and if we felt like something more substantial, we might find a crepe place.

But my absolute favourite breakfast item from the trip, which I have brought back to Montreal with me and have been eating most mornings, is Greek yogurt with honey and fruit. Greek yogurt is rich, creamy and silky, with almost double the milk fat you'll find in whole milk yogurt over here. It's traditionally made with sheep's milk, but is also made with cow's milk. You could buy it in stores - the Fage brand is the best you'll find for mass marketed kinds (and they sell it in North America, but I'm not sure where to get it in Montreal yet), but if we were lucky we could also find some local brands in clay pots from the bakery. It comes plain, and topped with a good drizzle of honey and a few spoonfuls of fruit, or even just the honey, is sublime. And I'm not normally a yogurt and fruit kind of girl.

I didn't have much time to look for good Greek yogurt in Montreal, but the morning after we returned we woke up super early (thank you, jetlag) and went to the Jean Talon market where I picked up a tub of Krinos brand sheep's milk yogurt from Qui Lait Cru. It isn't as thick as I'd like it to be, but it has that familiar tang and is wonderful with the blueberry honey I got from the market earlier. Next time I'm going to get some locally made sheep's milk yogurt which I spied on my way out of the market, and I'm curious about how it would taste with a glug of Quebec maple syrup.

Next time you do your yogurt shopping, try it out. It's an excellent foil for any of the fresh fruits which are starting to make their appearance this season (like strawberries!) or eat a glop of it with a rhubarb crisp now that rhubarb is cheap and plentiful.

I am off to Greece for a bit where I will do my best to hunt down the best breakfasts in Athens. This is a challenge given that the kind of eggy-doughy-fruity-syrupy-buttery-potatoey breakfasts I like best are quite rare in Europe. And if I don't find it? Don't worry, I won't be suffering food-wise. Or anything-wise, really.

Sandwich Timatin vs. Egg McMuffin: In the rest of Canada, the breakfast sandwich that Tim Hortons introduced a few months ago is called on the menu, imaginatively, "Hot Breakfast Sandwich". In Quebec it's called a more pun-y "Sandwich Timatin" (C'est fun, non? Oui. Which is why I only refer to Tim Hortons breakfast sandwiches as Timatins). I have already publically proclaimed my love for the classic Egg McMuffin **, but now that I've had a few Timatins to compare it to, let's make it formal:

- Reason why I have had more Timatins than Egg McMuffins in the past few months: Tim Hortons makes their breakfast sandwich available until noon on weekends. McDo stops at eleven. While I can always easily make the noon cutoff for a Timatin, eleven on a precious weekend morning is cutting it close. 1 point for Timatin.
- The Timatin doesn't come with any frills attached - no hash brown, no orange juice. This means you can order decent coffee to go with it. Or a cafe mocha with extra whipped cream. Or a Coke. Or a side order of Timbits. The opportunities are endless! But, do you really want extra whipped cream with your breakfast? Or donuts? Because I don't, really. The hash brown in a paper sleeve + orange "juice" is such a classic, infaillable sidekick. 1 point for Timatin, 2 points for the McMuffin.
- The egg in a Timatin is scrambled. McDonald's is more poach-y. I like the clear distinction between egg white and yolk - it's prettier and somehow feels less greasy. 1 point for McDonalds.
- I was impressed by the little kick in the Tim Hortons sausage. There's like, pepper in it or something. Nice job! 1 point for Timmy.
- The combination of egg+sausage on a biscuit is so heavenly and decadent, but I remember travelling down south in the United States and being vaguely disapointed by the biscuits - they would always disintegrate; their crumb isn't strong enough. But the Tim Hortons biscuit is a solid cake, dry, but it never breaks. How do they do it? In theory, biscuits will always trump English muffins. 1 point for Timmy.
- For a long time I was very against ketchup on any breakfast food other than homefries. But I eventually realized that the ketchup is such an important part of a breakfast sandwich experience - the precarious balancing of the sandwich on my knee as I try to squirt the ketchup on cleanly as Andrew pulls the car back onto the highway so that we can continue on our journey to wheverever we happen to be going. And it tastes good. The Timatin biscuit seems to absorb the ketchup like a sponge - I don't know where it goes. And I don't feel like searching around the paper bag for a fresh packet. So, 1 point for McDo.
- On the whole, the Timatin is much less greasy than the Egg McMuffin. You don't get that slick of oil staining the paper the sandwich is wrapped in the way you do at McDonalds. Comendable. 1 point for Timmy.
- The cheese is gross on both, but necessary. No points each.

Based on that list, Timatins are narrowly beating Egg McMuffins by 1 point. But, on a pure taste basis, it's pretty hard to beat an Egg McMuffin. 2.5 points McDonalds.

Winner: McDonalds!

(Although it should be noted that I've had better, more satisfying egg + sausage + cheese + muffin/biscuit experiences at non-fast foody places. One of my most sublime breakfast experiences, for instance, was just outside of Charleston, North Carolina, eating a sandwich made at a corner store before hanging out at the beach for the rest of the day.)

** Okay, I suppose technically the classic Egg McMuffin has Canadian bacon instead of sausage, but who orders those? In my culinary dictionary, the true classic Egg McMuffin is one made with sausage, or the "sausage Egg McMuffin".

La Belle Province: No, this entry is not about the chain restaurant of the same name, which I have surprisingly (?) not yet visited, but more of a hello again! I think it's time to revive the breakfast blog. I've been to a handful of places since moving to Montreal in September, and I need to start taking notes again. Stay tuned.

I also eat elsewhere: In Niagara Falls it's practically impossible to avoid chain eateries. The night before, for dinner, we walked all over the city trying to find something independent, but found only tattoo parlours and seedy bars. Fun, yes, but not what we were after. We fared a little better at breakfast, and decided to eat at Niagara Falls' famous German restaurant, The Happy Wanderer (6405 Stanley Ave). The restaurant is small, and packed with German folkart, including incredible wooden chandaliers dangling from the ceilings. Jungle-like growth creeps across the walls at the entrance. The waitresses all wear traditional German dress. Awesome. So far it seemed promising. I ordered apple cinnamon pancakes, and they were ok, just a little blah, with big slices of apples cooked in. The biggest disapointment were the potato pancakes which, in print, seemed heavenly. In practice they were greasy and had the oddest consistency: they looked crispy, but were chewy, gelatinous - as if the potatoes had been soaked in water too long before frying. We should've just ordered the $3.99 breakfast special.

This past weekend, I was in Montreal where I had two satisfying egg breakfasts, first at The Toasteur (1310, avenue Laurier Est) and then at Shed Cafe (3515 St Laurent). Shed Cafe has a bit of an edge because I got poached eggs with ham and this interesting maple sauce instead of hollandaise, and I ordered a special blueberry/rasberry juice to wash it down. While I stuck to eggs, Caro had pancakes. At Le Toasteur, nutella and bananas, and at Shed Cafe they came with a generous portion of pecans. And the portion was huge. I am getting excited at the thought of trying out more Montreal breakfast places.

My Diner Criteria: This poorly articulated comment made me want to briefly discuss my criteria for judging these restaurants I frequent.
I like my diners humble and cheap. I expect a bacon and eggs breakfast (with potatoes, toast and coffee) to cost about $6. I expect the food to be greasy and generally bad, but I expect the refills of coffee to be plentiful and for one part of the dining experience (say, the potatoes, the toast options, the mini-jukebox, etc.) to be good enough that I don’t feel completely unsatisfied. As for décor, the diner doesn’t even have to be stereotypically retro, although there is a thrill in eating in a place that hasn’t changed décor or menu or price for the past 20 years. I like cozy booths, yellowed posters of Greek islands on the walls, and random newspaper sections laying around. Basically – I really don’t expect much when I go to a diner. This is why I’m always disapointed by "fake" diners. They just bug me, mostly because the food is usually still at regular diner quality, but with upscale prices. It’s just a waste. There is, however, a difference between "fake" and "fancy". I’m not so bothered by say,the Swan. I like the Swan; I don’t mind its pairing of fancy breakfast food with vintage 1950s diner design (although, "no coffee, just espresso" is still the most annoying thing).
I start getting really bothered when the food doesn’t justify the higher-than-regular-diner prices. Like the Avenue Diner. The food is just whatever, non-descript, but on top of that the atmosphere is all wrong. I could’ve probably tolerated the food otherwise, but sitting in a small room tightly packed with people discussing their hired help or their leather pants did not charm me at all. So unappetizing for a Saturday morning, and I blame it all on their location: too close to Yorkville/Forest Hill. So, I will call the Avenue Diner a "fake" diner no matter how long it’s been open – you can fall from your roots. Not as fake as Celine Dion’s Nickles, but not as good as People’s, which is just down the street. I would be willing to try it again without the morning rush, but I doubt I’ll ever be in that position, so, sorry Avenue Diner. You fail my criteria.

McDonalds (various): Not a very inspired choice, but there are times when there is nothing more satisfying than an Egg McMuffin, a hash brown and a paper cup of orange drink eaten straight off your lap in your car. To eat this breakfast at an actual McDonalds franchise would be depressing, but to eat it as sustenance for a road trip is sublime. Make sure to get extra napkins in case you spill any ketchup, and try to stop as soon as possible to throw out the greasy wrappers - the smell lingers in a bad way. If you're down south you can even get your eggs on a buttery biscuit, which is decadent, but messier. Perhaps the only meal at McDonalds where you believe that the food you're eating is actually real.