hitting the road ...

There hasn't been much cooking or baking in my world over the past month.

Instead, I ate many snacks of roasted hazelnuts (a tiny Tupperware container easily fits in my fancy purse) and was lucky to try tacos in Vancouver, dumplings in Toronto and burgers in Calgary.

During the day, I've been putting on a suit and going to business meetings —just call me Corporate Stephanie. During the evening, I've been catching up with my good friends who are sprinkled across Canada. All in all, a pretty great month.

Now that it's December, I'm happy to be back in Edmonton, plotting the German cookies I'll bake for my Christmas cookie plate and settling into the routine of reading Christmas cards after dinner.

But! I thought you might like to know about the restaurants I discovered, so I've updated Hop & Go Fetch It with eight new spots from my travels.

Check it out for that taco bar in Vancouver, not to mention sushi like butter and a hippie lunch spot. For Toronto, look for my new favourite neighbourhood coffee shop and a fancy, independent coffee shop in the heart of all those shiny office towers downtown.

one year ago: wish list
two years ago: shortbread peppermint pattie cookies
three years ago: annie's sun-dried tomatoes

hop & go fetch it: pacific rim edition

See that?

That is a perfect lunch-time dessert. It's sticky jasmine rice with mango and coconut cream and it's divine. We ate it at the über-lovely Café Julia in Honolulu (where I freely admit we ate five meals over the course of our nine-day stay).

I have been travelling and it's now time for the Pacific Rim edition of hop & go fetch it: Hawaii, Vancouver, Victoria and Nanaimo. The restaurants include the exotic influences of Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, French and Scottish food . . . but they're all located in places that actually sit on the Pacific Ocean.

Now, you might not think little Nanaimo is exciting enough to be included in these Pacific Rim hotspots, but I beg to differ. If you eat a Nanaimo bar at McLean's, I think you'll agree.

So there you go: if you're travelling somewhere on the Pacific, here are my favourite places to eat. Enjoy!

That Hawaiian wind helped us work up a healthy appetite . . .
and created unusual hair styles.