My wife made this all-fruit “cake” for my birthday. Wow!
Category Archives: Food
Burnaby Mountain Picnic
After stocking up at the Fujiya Japanese supermarket, we dropped by Burnaby Mountain for a picnic. Nothing like a fresh bento, some sushi, and assorted snacks!
Now that’s a view
The Tancho Crane ecosculptures are filling out
The amazing rose garden in full glory
Sapsucker
Fraser River Discovery Centre Hosts Indigenous Salmon Fishing, Drying Tours
The Fraser River Discovery Centre in New Westminster, BC, had several tours today sharing First Nations fishing and fish-preserving techniques.
It was interesting learning about the cleaning, filleting, and wind-drying process to preserve salmon, and we got to try our hands out sharpening Indigenous tools.
An exercise sorting cleaning, filleting and wind drying into proper order.
Wind-dried salmon
Sharpening tools
Checking out the BC watersheds map, with a focus on the mighty Fraser River
The protected White Sturgeon
Yep, these massive, ancient (both in terms of time on Earth, and lifespan) fish come from such tiny eggs. Amazing!
Belcarra Solo Picnic, Invasive Species Presentation in Anmore
The Invasive Species Council of Metro Vancouver was giving a presentation to the Anmore Garden Club, and I thought I’d head out early and spend some time at Belcarra Regional Park.
Cute Canada Goose family:
Sockeye sandwich with mixed vegetables
ISCMV presentation.
25th Anniversary
Thank you to my lovely wife for putting up with me for 25 years.
Sashimi platter and assorted seafood to cook from T&T: prawns, mussels, clams. . . Served on a bed of rice, with grilled mushrooms and Japanese tsukemono pickled vegetables on the side.
That honking huge anniversary candle is a few years behind — it’s down to the point where it’s so thick you can’t burn “a year” in one evening .
Served on late grandmother’s china, with late mother’s silverware.
Then I realized what I was presenting was better accompanied by hashi (chopsticks). . .
East-West fusion.
Gosh, where do the years go?
Paul’s Mish-Mashed Potato Pancakes
Paul’s mish-mashed potato pancakes.
Remember there’s leftover mashed potatoes in the fridge and get a hankering for potato pancakes.
Discover there’s less than half a cup left. Hm. See there’s rice in the rice cooker. Hm. OK, what the heck, about half a cup of potatoes, half a cup of rice, a tablespoon of flour, an egg, salt and pepper, and some sesame seeds. . .
Not bad, not bad at all 
Mixed Fruit Pie for Valentine’s Day
So my wonderful wife said “don’t buy anything” for Valentine’s Day.
But she didn’t say “don’t make anything. . .”
Blueberry, Banana, Pineapple Pie.
Mason Bee Reveal Shows ‘Profit’
We unrolled the paper tubes we’d set out over the summer, and opened the unit with plastic trays.
Excited to not only “preserve our capital” but notch a “profit” of a dozen cocoons. Our location in a townhouse with only a high balcony on which to set out bee houses is not the best, so we were happy with this year’s results!
Paper tubes rolled from the Burnaby Now proved to be much more attractive than plastic trays.
The supervisor was having trouble seeing the action and was meowking indignantly around our feet, so we eventually let her on the table, where she soon fell asleep 
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Leftover Pizza Dough = Butter, Sugar, Walnut Rolls
I often have some dough left over when I use the breadmaker to make pizza dough, as with only two of us in the family, one medium-large pizza at a time is plenty.
So one of my mainstays for using up leftover dough is to simply roll it out very thin, spread some butter or margarine on it, sprinkle lightly with brown sugar and chopped walnuts, roll up, slice into bite sizes, bake and . . . yum!
Nikkei Matsuri 2017
Fun festival at the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre just up the hill from our place in south Burnaby, BC. The main draw for me? Japadog . . . : -)
It was also great to run into a gal pushing 100 years old that we met at a party about three years ago. She was out and about at the event with her walker, since she lives in the Japanese seniors’ residence there, and we had a good long chat in Japanese, mostly Yumi and Yuki, with me following along as best I could.
Here’s a post about that convivial, multilingual, multi-generational potluck.