finding jim mitchell lake

James Scott Mitchell was a 20-year-old "six-foot youngster of quiet habits and a good bushman" when he died mysteriously in the bush of Vancouver Island in the summer of 1937.

Jim was a packer for a survey party and was going in alone to meet the survey party. He would relieve another young fellow who was coming out to go to school. On a Tuesday in late August, he began following a marked trail that faded to just notched trees along Upper Thelwood Creek.

He had been over the trail 11 times before, and knew it well. At some point, he set down his pack, maybe to find the best way to cross the creek.

On Friday, D. S. Harris, another packer, found Jim's body washed up onto a sandbar.

After a team came in to pack the body out and brought it to the coroner in Campbell River, it was determined that Jim had died from a blow to the head, just behind his right ear. The coroner thought he had died by slipping on the rocks or falling over a log as he was crossing the creek.

At the time, Jim Mitchell was one of the most promising pupils who had ever passed through Tsolum School. Everyone thought he should go to university, and that's what he was planning to do.

Jim Mitchell was my grandfather's older brother. His death came as a shock to the family, settlers who'd come out from Scotland when Jim was just a baby.

His father farmed a piece of land in Merville that had been rainforest before the lumber barons came through in 1910 and logged it all and burned it. Andy and Henrietta Mitchell arrived in 1920 to 80 acres of flat land where, legend has it, my great-grandmother had to walk a mile to the creek to get any shade. The farming wasn't great, and Andy also had to take up a job at a nursery in town.

Andy and Henrietta lost two of their four children young, but my granddad made it to 74. Their land is still in our family and I love exploring it, walking under towering second and third-growth Douglas firs and red cedars and hunting for huckleberries, while brambles actively try to trip me as they twine across my feet.

Merville, where the Mitchells settled, is near Courtenay, on the east coast of Vancouver Island. Jim Mitchell's body was found dead in the centre of the island, several mountain ranges and almost one hundred kilometres away, near a lake.

The lake used to be called Crystal Lake, but was re-named Jim Mitchell Lake about ten years after his death.

Scott, dad and I have always wanted to hike in there some day. We thought it would be days of rough hiking into uncharted territory.

That is, until I found a path to the lake listed in an Island hiking book. Then Scott found a site that said we could drive right up to it on logging roads and paddle round the lake in a canoe.

Suddenly, our gigantic adventure turned into a very do-able weekend trip. We set a date with my dad to make it happen.

On the last Saturday morning in July, Scott was itching to get driving, but both dad and I wanted to load up with picnic supplies at the Courtenay farmers' market. We tried to limit ourselves to 30 minutes, but were fairly pleased to get out in just over an hour. Amongst other goodies, we found fresh raspberries, bread baked in a wood-fired oven and garlic and chive verdelait cheese.

On the road, we ate warm cinnamon buns and chocolate ginger cookies from the market, and listened to my favourite radio show (which has great satirical lines like: "Canada: America's hair").

The drive down Buttle Lake was gorgeous and – as a bonus – paved. Once the lake ended, we turned on to a winding gravel logging road . . . but we knew we were on the right path because it was actually called Jim Mitchell Lake Road.

It took us almost an hour to drive six kilometres down that road, but then, all at once, remarkably, we were there.

Mountains and rocky cliffs rose almost straight out of the lake, and we could see higher mountains capped in snow and fog just behind them.

We sat on a log and ate our picnic lunch looking out over the lake.

Then we unloaded the canoe and paddled all along the rocky shoreline.

It was dammed years ago, but we think the water level only went up about a metre or so. We could see old tree stumps with their twisted root systems tangling over the rocks under water.

We saw patches of loose rock and little waterfalls where we could imagine Jim Mitchell putting down his 50-pound pack, looking for the best way to cross, and losing his balance. 

 

We inspected the creeping dogwood, copperbush and penstemon that wound its way over the rocks to the lake. We paddled in and out of shaded little coves and looked down into the clear water. We found a rock for dad to take home for his garden.

We were alone on the lake with our canoe. It was a time of peace and stillness that we will always remember. This is our last summer on Vancouver Island, and I think this was a parting gift for us.

After we'd made our way around the lake – staying well away from where the water suddenly fell over the edge of the dam – we pulled the canoe back onto the shore.

We found our picnic log and sat down again, this time to eat raspberries and drink tea and look out over Jim Mitchell Lake one more time.

last summer: sun tea
two summers ago: rote grütze on ice cream and hop & go fetch it: new restaurants on Salt Spring Island, Vancouver Island and Vancouver

eton mess

On Friday night, I looked at the weather forecast for Saturday and was delighted by what I saw: rain.

My little kitchen faces west and has great big windows (painted shut), which let in lots of light – and heat. There is no playing around in the kitchen in July and August; it's more a matter of getting in and out before you get heat stroke.

So back to Saturday. Scott had to work and I didn't mind at all, because it meant I could play and create as many dishes as I wanted without him interrupting and asking why I always like to make so many dishes.

The day dawned cloudy and I felt luxurious. I knew I could make all kinds of things in my cool kitchen. I fished a piece of paper out of the recycling and wrote down my plan.

Here's what I made, in order: meringues for Eton mess, gluten-free pizza dough, coffee ice cream with cacao nibs, pesto, and, finally, whipped cream for Eton mess. Oh yes, and I tarted up some loganberries and raspberries with kirsch and sugar for the Eton mess.

I did three loads of dishes at my own pace and listened to a lot of good radio.

Then I looked out the window. It still wasn't raining. The clouds seemed to be parting and I caught a glimpse of – gasp! – sunshine.

I was not impressed.

However, as an eternal optimist, I knew this would at least be good light for photographing the Eton mess, so I got down to work.

 

My good friend Andrea introduced me to Eton mess a couple of years ago on a hot summer day when we visited them in Kelowna. It is one of those perfect summertime desserts – cool, creamy and mostly made ahead of time. Think layers of crispy meringue, whipped cream and berries.

You only have to turn your oven on to bake the meringues, but you could do that in the morning or the late evening when your kitchen couldn't already be mistaken for a sauna. Then the whipped cream and boozy berries are a snap. Also, it's pretty fun to break up the meringues and you'll kindly remember that "fun" is a prerequisite for recipes to appear on this site.

As you see above, assembling is fun, too, and if you have guests, they'd probably enjoy being involved at this point. Pop a few meringue pieces into the bowl, add a dollop of cream, pour on some boozy berries, repeat if desired. (That last bit sounds like a shampoo bottle. Do not panic. This does not taste like shampoo.)

And there you go. My Saturday morning in the kitchen: satisfying times baking and cooking, lots of dishes, and unfortunately good weather.

After photographing in our sunny back room, I left the fourth load of dishes for Scott to enjoy later and went for a swim.

Too hot to stay inside any longer.

P.S. Do you have ripe cherries in your neck of the woods? If you pit them and freeze a few cups now, I'll give you a recipe for cherry peach jam in August.


one year ago: German zucchini soup
two years ago: ministrone with summer herbs and chocolate raspberry horse turds

eton mess
serves about 4 adults with extra meringues to use as you please

meringue shells
from my mom
bakes 12

3 egg whites, at room temperature
1/8 – 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
2/3 c. granulated sugar
1/8 tsp. almond extract or 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Line two pans with parchment paper.

Beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar, one tablespoon at a time, until stiff peaks form. Add the almond or vanilla extract.

Spoon the meringue into 12 nests on the prepared pans. Bake for about 2 hours, or until they are crisp but not too brown. (If you check a meringue and it sticks to the paper as you lift it up, it needs to keep baking.) Cool on a rack. Once they are cool, break into smaller pieces.


whipped cream

2 c. whipping cream
2 tbsp. granulated sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Beat the whip cream until it starts to thicken. Add the sugar and continue to beat until it's whipped. Beat in the vanilla.


boozy berries
from The Essential New York Times Cookbook 

2 c. berries (raspberries, loganberries, blackberries or strawberries) fresh or defrosted
1/4 c. sugar
1 tbsp. kirsch or framboise liquer

Put the berries, sugar and kirsch together in a bowl. Stir until the sugar dissolves.


assembling your eton mess

In little bowls or fancy parfait cups, make layers of meringue, whipped cream and berries. Repeat if desired. Eat!

balancing tofino and the plane

On Tuesday, we made an epic trek to find the wreck of a lost plane.

First of all, I should tell you it was actually a gloriously sunny holiday. Six days of sun, sun and more sun.

Except – except!– on the very west coast of Vancouver Island in a little surfing town called Tofino. We had just finished lunch at Shelter (pinot gris and local shrimp sandwich, very nice) where we had to move from a sunny table to a shady table because we were too hot. Ten minutes down the road, we parked at Long Beach and found this . . .

But it was warm(ish) and children were building sand castles and people were surfing and it was a lovely walk along Long Beach before we got back in the car for the tortuous drive home.

Now, let me tell you what we were doing around Tofino.

It has always been family legend that my husband's grandfather Jack Campbell was lucky to make it through the Second World War – even though he never left Canada.

You see, he was one of seven crew members who were on a plane loaded with bombs, flying out of Tofino in 1945. Almost as soon as they lifted off, an engine gave out. The pilot quickly dropped the bombs over a bog and soon crashed into the side of a hill.

 But – and this is the good part – everyone survived.

That was all we knew.

Then, a couple of years ago, we were out hiking with a new friend when he starting telling us about this great hike he'd gone on in Tofino, to this old plane from World War II that had crashed into the side of a hill. The hike was unauthorized, but there was a trail through a swamp and a bog and up to the old wreck.

The light bulb went off pretty quick and Scott looked it up as soon as we got home. Sure enough, it was his grandfather's plane. It soon became our mission to take his parents to it.

This was a serious hike. Scott printed out instructions from various websites. I borrowed a GPS. His mother bought rubber boots.

We found the trail head along the road and headed in. The first part was an easy path through the bush. Then we got to this sign:

Yay! We were definitely going the right way.

We went through a creepy abandoned factory and out the other side. That's when the trail started getting iffy, as we scrambled down the side of a hill and learned how handy it is to hold on to trees.

In fact, that was nothing. The real fun was getting through the swamp. The mud would suddenly be up to our knees, so we followed a rope and skirted tree roots to stay above it (somewhat successfully).

Someone fell three times and another person fell once. I'm not naming names.

Once we were finally out of the swamp – which did bring back memories of the fire swamp in the Princess Bride (only without the fire) – we came out on a flatland of bog that looked like a veritable bonsai forest.

Just another kilometre or so across the bog . . . and we were there.

Sure enough, the plane was pushed into the hillside and we could hardly believe that everyone had survived.

It took our breath away.

Sixty-seven years later, the aluminum frame had hardly rusted, although there were tatters of some lighter metal fluttering off the wings.

I am not telling you how many times we fell on the trail heading home, but I will say I'm glad I borrowed these gaiters (not to mention they make me look like a very serious hiker in this glamour shot).

And getting back to the theme of this website – that would be food – we definitely worked up a good appetite for dinner here, which included a Dungeness crab and lemon risotto that I definitely earned.

You see, a girl can wear gaiters, be spattered in mud and still enjoy fine dining. It's all about balance.

salmon with warm tomato basil oil

Last week, I mentioned my love affair with Ricardo videos. (Luckily, Scott also loves the videos, so it's all above board.)

This week, I'd like to tell you about the other chef I let pop into my world on a regular basis: Laura Calder.

There are many reasons I love Laura. Let me count them for you.

1. She always wears dresses.
2. When she says "just a little bit of butter," she puts a huge bit of butter into the pan.
3. She has a somewhat similar background to me: languages, journalism, public relations, appreciation of bacon . . .

Laura has also worked on food in France, as a cookbook writer and helping to run a cooking school. She is a genius with meat and has taught me how to sear and brown and braise.

(My mother is also very good at cooking meat, but I completely threw away my chance to learn from her, since I was a vegetarian during my teenage years at home. Alas. She teaches me things now when I visit.)

Anyway, I bet you're wondering about this fish and these tomatoes and that basil?

Turns out, tomatoes and basil aren't just for pasta! Or bread!

Nope, they're also for salmon. Just take a bit of olive oil, warm it gently, throw in the tomatoes and basil and you have a lovely treat for your salmon, which has been baking in the oven for a few minutes.

We also tried this with a very light salmon that was almost a trout and it was a very happy fish indeed with its slick of tomatoes and basil. (Trout: so close to salmon and yet so different. How does that work? Are they related?)

What to serve it with? I'd suggest new potatoes and a simple green salad with loganberry vinaigrette. Your plate may look like it came from the cafeteria at IKEA, but it will taste a lot fresher. (Don't new boiled potatoes rolling around your plate and bumping into a piece of salmon make you think of IKEA?)

One year ago: Kristina's nuss kuchen (cherry hazelnut cake)
Two years ago: honey orange cream

salmon with warm tomato basil oil
slightly adapted from Laura Calder
serves 4 – 6

a filet of salmon or trout to serve 4 – 6 people (about 600 – 800 g.)
salt and pepper
1/3 – 1/2 c. virgin olive oil
2 tomatoes, seeded* and finely diced
1 handful basil leaves, cut in fine strips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit (160 degrees Celcius).

Rub a good amount of salt and pepper into the salmon. Bake until it's just cooked through. It should take about 15 minutes; start checking on it after 12.

In the meantime, set a small pot with a heavy bottom over medium-low heat. Pour in the olive oil and warm it. This will happen quickly, possibly in 1 – 2 minutes. Whatever you do, err on the side of not overheating the oil. Remove it from the heat.

Check that you haven't heated the oil too hot. Standing as far away as you can, drop a piece of tomato into it and step back. If it fizzes and suddenly deep-fries, the oil is too hot. Give it a few minutes to cool down. If the tomato just sits happily in the oil, you may carry on.

Stir the tomato and basil into the oil. Taste and season with salt and pepper, keeping in mind that you've already put salt and pepper on the salmon.

Once the fish is done and out of the oven, move it to a serving platter. Spoon the warm tomato and basil oil over. Serve.


*Here's an easy way to seed a tomato. Cut it into wedges. Use a sharp paring knife to scrape out the seeds. Done.

penne with sausage and greens

This was the winter of kale.

This was the spring of kale.

This is the early summer of kale.

We have learned how to make kale chips and we have learned the secret to enjoying kale: chop it into very small, tiny, miniature pieces. Chopped like that, we ate it almost every week and hardly noticed.

See those fine bits of kale and chard?

You may be a kale fan.

You may enjoy eating tough pieces of the same green leaf over and over again.

We're not and don't.

But we do, of course, want to eat local vegetables in season, which is why we're still eating kale six months after we learned to chop it very finely. (When does the season end???) And now Swiss chard is joining the kale ranks.

We've also sought out new recipes to use this everlasting vegetable, which leads me to today's offering: penne with sausage and greens.

Dear Ricardo calls for arugula, but I knew kale would work. Turns out, so does Swiss chard. All these green options make it a very flexible recipe for the whole year long. I like that, since it also comes together quickly – 35 minutes or so – so it's easy to make after work.

I seem to be using "fun" as a prerequisite for recipes these days – remember the potato chips in the lettuce wraps? – and this one definitely measures up. Because you actually get to snip open your raw sausages and squeeze that tasty meat right out! How fun is that? Let me tell you, it's pretty darn satisfying.

Using sausage meat like this is brilliant, really, since the meat is already seasoned and ready to make me a quick dinner. No fuss, no muss (except for the fun squeezing).

What more can I tell you?

Oh, right, about Ricardo. Do you know this dear man? We haven't actually met him, but we are addicted to his cooking videos.

Apparently, he's quite famous in his native Québec. A little while ago, he started recording "Ricardo and Friends" in English. Every episode, he has people come over and he cooks for them with great enthusiasm in his big Montreal kitchen. Sometimes, he cooks for the workers re-paving his street, sometimes he cooks for his friends' kids, but usually, he cooks for two or three good-looking Montréalais friends. (Why are French Canadians always so much more chic than English Canadians?)

The friends all ooh and ahh over the meal and we invariably wish he would invite us over.

Sometimes, we watch him in French to practise our French, but he seems to speak a lot more quickly in French. It's like his whole personality changes, which is fascinating in itself.

But anyway, back to this recipe. It works! It makes a great dinner! Don't worry about that whole cup of red wine – it cooks right in and helps finish the sausage-y sauce.

Bon appétit!

One year ago: Kathleen Claiborne's hot cakes
Two years ago: Chili pasta

penne with sausage and greens
adapted from Ricardo Larrivée
serves 4 – 5 

 


375 g. (3/4 lb.) penne pasta
30 ml (2 tbsp.) olive oil
450 g. (1 lb.) good sausage meat, pork or turkey, squeezed out of the casing
5 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 tsp. Korean red pepper flakes or hot pepper flakes
4 plum (or any) tomatoes, diced
500 ml (2 c.) Swiss chard, kale or baby arugula, chopped finely
250 ml (1 c.) red wine
250 – 500 ml (1 – 2 c.) Asiago cheese, grated

Boil the pasta in salted water until it's al dente. Drain and toss with 1 tbsp. olive oil. Set aside.

In the mean time, heat a heavy-bottomed skillet or Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add the other 1 tbsp. of oil. Brown the sausage meat, garlic and pepper flakes, breaking up the meat into small pieces as you please. This will take about 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes. If you're using chard or kale, add it now. Stir often until the liquid has evaporated, about 7 minutes. Pour the wine in and try not to panic about the amount of liquid you now have in your pan. Cook for about 3 minutes. Add the pasta and stir until everything is hot. Taste for seasonings and add salt and pepper if necessary. If you're using arugula, stir it in now.

Serve in wide, shallow bowls with lots of Asiago cheese.

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.

loganberry vinegar

Did you look carefully at those berries?

They're actually frozen loganberries because loganberry season doesn't start for another three weeks or so. (Yes, I am counting.)

A few weeks ago, I bought these berries at our favourite farm in Deep Cove, Smyth's. We'd just gotten back from Hawaii and I was desperate for interesting fruit – so far, rhubarb is the only ripe fruit on Vancouver Island.

Seeing as our freezer is roughly the size of a very small shoebox, it was quite the commitment to buy a big bag of frozen loganberries. But, oh, what fun they are! Definitely worth carving out a space in the miniature freezer for them.

So far, I've used them for waffle and ice cream toppings, deep-dish apple-loganberry pie, rhubarb-apple-loganberry crisp and now, loganberry vinegar.

This vinegar is easy as pie (actually, speaking from recent experience, easier). Just purée the logans with simple white vinegar, leave them to join forces in a cool, dark place – with a daily shake, for fun – strain, and voilà: loganberry vinegar at your service.

I know you might not have logans in your part of the world and I am genuinely sorry for you if you don't. (If you've never heard of a loganberry, it's a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry and it is, hands down, the most scrumptious berry in the world.)

However, I do believe this vinegar would work for most summer berries: strawberries, raspberries, blackberries . . . What kind of berry will you have growing near you?

In any case, with this little labour and the dirt-cheap price of white vinegar, what have you got to lose?

What to do with your loganberry vinegar? Tonight, I made a simple salad dressing with it – loganberry vinegar, walnut oil, honey, mustard, salt and pepper – and besides being a lovely pinky-red colour, it really did taste like loganberries.

I envision a summer of logan-y salads and marinades to come.

one year ago: tomato cheddar soufflé with asparagus
two years ago: chili pasta


loganberry vinegar
slightly adapted from Sherri Brooks Vinton via Brett Smyth

glass jar that holds 4 cups
2 c. berries
2 c. white vinegar

First, sterilize your jar. Boil water in the kettle. Fill the jar and let it sit. After 10 minutes, pour out the water.

Use a blender or immersion blender to purée the berries and vinegar together. Pour into the jar.

Let it sit in a cool, dark place for 5 to 7 days (or longer, if you're away). Shake every day to blend the flavours.

Strain it through either a double cheesecloth or a very fine sieve (not both, or nothing happens). You might need to use a spoon to stir it and encourage the liquid to fall through.

Pour the strained vinegar into a sterilized jar or bottle. Keeps at room temperature for up to 1 year. (Please note that I haven't tested whether it keeps at room temperature for a year or not yet. If you're a nervous type, keep it in the fridge.)

 

chinese-canadian lettuce wraps

Lettuce wraps with ground pork and potato chips spilling out of them are not exactly romantic things to photograph. It's hard to get any light into the pork, the lettuce looks whiter than it actually is and the chips make it look like some kind of sea creature from outer space.

Oh, well. They fulfill two of my major requirements for making it to this blog, so I present them to you with pride. (Those two requirements are tasty and fun to eat.)

I have actually been working on Chinese-Canadian lettuce wraps about seven years now.

My friend Virginia, who is from Hong Kong, made these for me just after I'd moved to Vancouver. I remember being quite suspicious when she put out a bowl of potato chips and said we should put them in the wraps. Suspicious, but willing. (Virginia is a very good cook. Her hot pot is the hot pot to beat all hot pots.)

With a salty-peppery crunch and bits of tasty ground meat attempting to escape, I bit into my lettuce wrap.

I was – immediately, irrevocably – converted to putting potato chips in my lettuce wraps.

And that is how we've eaten them ever since.

I do believe Virginia used ground chicken or pork (considering I didn't eat red meat at the time). But we've now settled on ground pork mostly because eating ground pork reminds me of the Chinese pork and chive dumplings that I LOVE so much I put the word in all-caps. In fact, the ground pork marinade here was inspired by the excellent Mark Bittman's recipe for pork pot stickers.

Dress the pork a bit and fry it, then fry up some carrot and celery. Throw it all in a lettuce wrap. Use your artistic talent to wedge in some curly potato chips. Eat.

And now for some exclamation marks: I can make these in 35 minutes! Alone! Without a sous-chef! So can you! Eating potato chips for the main part of your meal is fun!

You might be thinking: don't we need some sauce here? In fact, that is what the ever-suspicious Scott thought at first. (I think I will be telling him to trust me for the rest of our lives.)

One bite and I proved him wrong. This pork is so moist and well-seasoned with a kick of pepper and sesame oil (not to mention the pepper on the potato chip), that you really don't need any extra sauce. Which is awesome. Because it means less mess and less dishes and in case you didn't hear me the first time, you don't need sauce.

I call these Chinese-Canadian lettuce wraps because I checked and Virginia didn't put potato chips in them in Hong Kong. Instead, she used deep-fried mong bean noodles for crunch (which also sounds pretty fantastic). So this is Vancouver Chinese fusion food at its best. Yum.

Thank you, Virginia!

one year ago: blueberry rhubarb rum jam
two years ago: chocolate peanut butter oatcakes (the most popular recipe ever on dollop!)

chinese-canadian lettuce wraps
wraps inspired by Virginia
pork inspired by Mark Bittman's recipe for pork pot stickers in How to Cook Everything

2 tsp. fresh ginger, minced
1 tbsp. rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. sesame oil
2 tsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. ground pepper
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. salt
454 g. (1 lb.) lean ground pork
3 ribs celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1/2 c. chopped green onion
1 iceberg lettuce, washed, dried and separated into whole leaves 
220 g. (1/2 lb.) chips, preferably salt and pepper or lime and pepper

In a medium bowl, mix ginger, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, pepper and salt together. Stir in the pork; try to coat it as best you can.

Heat a heavy-bottomed frying pan or Dutch oven over medium heat. Fry the pork, stirring often and breaking up larger chunks, until it's cooked through, about 8 minutes. With a slotted spoon, put the pork in a bowl, leaving whatever small bit of liquid is left in the pan.

Turn the heat down to medium-low. In the pork pan, fry the celery and carrots until they have slightly softened, but are still tender-crisp, about 8 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat.

Stir the pork into the celery and carrots and mix well. Stir in the green onion.

Serve pork mixture with lettuce leaves and potato chips so that everyone can make their own.