Today’s the last day of the Ecology and Evolution meetings. Here’s breakfast at the conference. First, sunrise (from my window):
Breakfast is “all you care to eat”, and it’s good. I eschew the “cooked British breakfast”, which includes baked beans (something that always amazes Americans) in favor of waffles or pancakes with homemade blueberry topping, perhaps a morsel of ham, and a bowl of fruit.
Last night was dinner with fellow speakers at the Balkan Restaurant, a Greek place on Banff Avenue. It’s gotten good reviews, but I found it adequate and not outstanding. The company, however, was good. And a few doors down is the awesome Welch’s Candy Store, into which I made a preliminary foray.
Look at all that candy! Today I’ll return with some loonies, and am contemplating purchase of horehound drops, which I haven’t seen since I was a kid, a stick of Brighton Rock, and perhaps a few chocolate bars for the road.
You are in Canada aren’t you?
Do they ship the rock in from Brighton, or are they selling fake Brighton Rock?
Why Brighton Rock, why not Blackpool Rock (or any of the other towns/cities selling rock)? What’s so special about Brighton?
Graham Greene.
Or Queen (Sheer Heart Attack).
Depending on your age or tastes.
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I don’t think I’ve had any Blackpool Rock for – oh, 13 years – but that was in Blackpool and we watched it being made before we bought some.
Blackpool Rock has a musical connection, too: George Formby!
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Nyum.
My favourite candy is Atomic Fireballs. Warning: not so much jawbreakers as tooth-disintegrators .
Loved those when I was a kid, along with Red Hots. I still love ’em, I guess–I just don’t eat them anymore.
Now, it’s all about the Hot Tamales and the Red Vines (none of those nasty Twizzlers, thanks very much.) Bit O’Honeys are pretty good. And Heath bars. Also those Werther things. And anything at all that’s a caramel-chocolate concoction.
I love candy stores and have many good memories of them.
I get a Heath Bar *every* time I go home, without fail. What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to… rot our teeth with Heath Bars? 😉
I still love horehound, but you can only find them in tourist-type old-fashioned candy stores.
And, yet again, a Greek restaurant? Two words: Halsted & Jackson.
In case anyone’s interested in a specific US old-timey tourist trap where horehound candy is available, the ubiquitous Cracker Barrel chain of highway restaurants sells it in their gift shops. I’m hardly a horehound connoisseur, but it seemed pretty good to me.
I think there’s only 1 flavor. (We don’t have Cracker Barrels in Chicago. I wonder why…)
Ah, the cooked breakfast. I pigged out at breakfast all last week while out fell walking, but now I’m back home and back to porridge (oatmeal) only. (I gain weight if I eat like that every day.)
The views from your conference site are amazing.
So are your pics of bluebells.
Ah, the all you care to eat breakfast. I’m getting tearily nostalgic for the one at the Lydmar Hotel in Stockholm…
Lox; sausage; blueberry smoothies; the most spectacularly good muesli I’ve ever eaten – I think they must make it fresh every morning; pastries; and much much more.
I cared to eat quite a lot.
The thing I recall most about Swedish cuisine is that it’s fish with everything. Only the Swedes can ruin a potato. They boil them with fish.
Hey, I like Swedish food. But then I like most food.
Um, was I married to you once? All the potatoes I ever had in Sweden were boiled with dill, not fish.
In the US, the choice is basically between Baking and General Purpose, with Red or New a subcategory of the latter. In Sweden potatoes are like apples and have names like King Edward, Magnum Bonum, Mandelpotatis, and too many others I’ve forgotten.
And then, if dill is the Swedish National herb, cardemom is the National spice. Kaffebröd med kardmumma! Yum!!
Potatoes with dill, good. Potatoes with fish, not good.
My Swedish aunt in Stockholm boiled the potatoes with fish. Quite horrible, really.
My condolences! But if you haven’t been there in a long while, the cuisine keeps getting better. The most memorable meal I’ve ever had (reindeer medallions) was @ Restaurang Byn: Torsgatan x Rödabergsgatan, walking distance from Karolinska.
No fish in the muesli though, thank goodness.
I have no issues with the “Full English Breakfast”, which we’ve had numerous times throughout England and Scotland.
This is the only website (not a blog, definately not a blog) that I visit that often makes me ravenous. I love waffles but prefer my homemade syrup to any other topping. Mind you, there is not a thing special about it, except it is very sweet. My love of sweets is the one thing about me that is southern to the core.
I’m glad you are enjoying yourself and the view is lovely.
“(not a blog, definately not a blog)”
Yeah, ’cause that that would be like a journal (or “log”) that you put up on the interwebs (or “web”), resulting in a “weblog” or somesuch nonsense…
Make sure you get some Bear Claw chocolates from The Fudgery in Sundance Mall, 215 Banff Avenue
Why is it such a shock to find baked beans at breakfast? Baked beans on toast is a rather downmarket but not unheard of breakfast dish in Australia.
I was going to chip and defend baked beans with a good fry-up. Once every couple of weeks or so I eschew the standard breakfast to gorge on a fry up with the works, egg, bacon, suasage, black pudding, chips and baked beans, at an Italian greasy spoon near work. You need to really soak the chips in the secret sauce to get the full effect and then finish off with the baked beans on thick buttered bread but it works a treat every time.
No fried tomatoes? Or fried mushrooms?
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Sweet Lord Antallan you mean there’s a food group that isn’t meat, starch, secret sauce or pot noodle? My confirmed bachelor brain just went into meltdown!
Because it’s disgusting! Canned beans in tomato sauce (not baked at all) is a disgusting dish.
Murkans come up with disgusting dishes too – like pizza with pineapple for instance.
The two together would make one nasty meal.
You could just sit and stare at the mountains alllll day…
sigh…
Beaver Tails. You didn’t mention Beaver Tails.
Not sure that they have made it to Banff yet, but I have had them on the frozen Rideau Canal in Ottawa and while skiing at Grouse Mountain in Vancouver, so you might find them there.
I await with interest the comments our ‘Merkin friends may have on this Canadian delicacy.