Home Food Check List - Ice Cream

I missed ice cream! Not only because I'm lactose intolerant, but because there is no such thing as real hard ice cream in Ottawa.

Back home when we want ice cream, we don't run to the freezer or DQ, we drive to the nearest ice cream shack which looks like a backyard shed with a window and a couple kids trapped inside, located on the side of the road (any road), and order up a tasty GIANT scoop of local dairy brand fancy ice cream in a dish (or cone). If you're "in the know", you'll know exactly which shack gives the biggest scoops for the cheapest price (the one near my dad's on Mountain Rd).

I have two convincing arguments for ice cream in the case of ice cream vs. gelato. Not only does milk taste richer, creamier and just better in NB (is it the cows or what we feed them?), but hard ice cream comes in multiple elaborate chunky flavors. Gelato does not.

There are three main dairy farmer brands in NB. While Ottawa has Nelsen and that other brand that starts with an L, NB has Baxter, Scotsburn, and Northumberland Dairy. Both Northumberland and Scotsburn manufacture many ice cream flavors.

If you've live in NB, you've had plenty o' opportunity to test out the dozens of flavors including Hoof Prints, Bubble Gum, Cotton Candy and Death By Chocolate. My personal long time favorite, Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch is manufactured by Scotsburn and features a rich authentic PB ice cream base, ribbons of fudgey hard chocolate sauce, large solid chunks of solid dark chocolate and impossible to locate other than in mysterious taste, graham cracker chunks. The enveloping PB taste is by far the main reason I add this to my eat-while-at-home list.

I could go on with the delicious description, but here's a couple pictures instead. It's too bad we don't yet have taste-o-vision.

Home Food Check List - Pumphouse Brewery

Visiting home wouldn't be complete without my trusty food check list. This list is comprised of foods I often think about when in Ottawa, things I crave and talk about way too much, foods that remind me of being home in Moncton, NB.

First up, our very own micro brewery, the Pumphouse (Brewery). It's central, something you recommend to your visiting friends, and best of all, the beer is good and now sold in stores throughout the province.

The food is mostly infused with or uses beer in some way. I'm a fan of their pizzas, as they're cooked in a wood fire oven which gives 'em a greater bolder bubbly crust. This time, I was so bent on beer +out of town friends + seeing old friends = excitement, that I barely looked over the menu. If I had, I would have surely picked the buffalo burger.

Instead I went with a friend's favorite, the Roasted Veggie Pizza (sans mozzarella).

I like the idea of loads of toppings, but also getting ample tomatoey crust to dip into their tasty flavored olive dipping oils. I'm glad I didn't get mozza. Sure, it would have tasted good, cheese usually does, but it's also lactose overkill for me as the 'za also had feta, which I didn't omit. The pizza was good enough that I completely forgot about my Cadian Ale until I'd finished eating.

On a side note, I think I'm the only one who adds salt & pepper to their pizza..

Often I've been caught ordering the Beer Steamed Mussels. It comes with beer bread, which tastes like normal good multigrain bread to us regular folk.

The size of the mussels left to be desired when I compare it to the Clocktower's even if they were both PEI mussels. The taste was perfectly good if I can give them redemption after I've dissed their size (could have been a one time fluke). The beer broth was soaked up with what bread I had, and if I'd had a spoon, I would have turned it into a soup after that too.

The only question I have left is why I haven't tried their sister restaurant, the Barnyard BBQ. My brother raves about their gumbo. Or was it their chili. Next time, next list, I'll have both.

How many substitutions is too many?

I realize that the higher the amount of subs I make, the more likely things are going to go horribly wrong. At what point will the waitstaff start to get really irritated with my substitutions list?

I know just how I like my Grilled Fajita Steak salad at Local Heroe's (essentially a taco salad), and I was pretty baffled at how well they handled my multiple requests. Taco Salad sans fromage, in a bowl instead of the deep fried taco shell, and with salsa as the salad dressing. "Salsa?" Uh. Yes. Salsa. Tacos are eaten with salsa (or taco sauce), right? Doesn't it make sense to have it as a dressing?

Team Blackhawks (it was Stanley Cup game day) specified that technically I was only asking for one sub, the dressing. The rest was arguably not a sub since I'd rather have my salad in a real bowl, and was ixnaying the cheese because of the lactose issue.

After about four cups of coffee and waters, the order arrived without a hint of a frown or a shred of cheese. The small cut romaine lettuce was done right (lettuce in a salad should never be bigger than you can fit in your mouth without shoving), tomatoes and veggies were fresh and crisp, but the best parts are the grilled mushrooms and large onion slivers, topped a mound of perfectly cooked fajita steak. And salsa. Blows my soccer socks off everytime.