Every Brazilian I have met raves about feijoada, Brazilian BBQ and their food in general. Therefore I had to try out Kingston’s only Brazilian restaurant (semantics question: is it really a restaurant if it’s take-out only?).
Feijoada (pronounced something like Fay-jo-ada if I’m getting that right) is a mixture of beans, sausage and other meats. It’s quite a hearty and flavourful dish - albeit un-photogenic - we definitely could’ve split this between us…
…But we also wanted to try the cassava (yuca) and beef. Cassava is a tuber that originates from Brazil and is a common staple in poorer countries (as recently featured on No Reservations). It’s also the base for tapioca - there’s your trivia for the day! The beef was tender and generally pretty good - again it was a lot of food.
Luckily we stumbled upon this lakeside park near the restaurant (take-out spot?) - the perfect site for our spring picnic.
One thing I’ve learned about Brazilians is they are ridiculously nice. I feel like the Canadian stereotype was a little misplaced. The owner of the restaurant kept up this impression and even gave us some muffins on the house just because they were an experiment!
Claiming to have the largest poutine selection in Canada (why not go for the biggest selection in the world if you’ve already claimed Canada?) The Whistle Stop is 24h diner conveniently located downtown (read: close to the bars).
It hurts my hippy-soul to think of all the just-in-time (read: factory-made and full of preservatives) toppings they must have to use to have this large of a poutine selection but late at night (read: after the bar) there’s nothing like a quick poutine. Jackie and I decided to go latin and ordered the Mexican Poutine. They gave us a ticket and asked us to sit in the Tea Room. The Tea Room is an adjacent restaurant that apparently is used as a secondary poutine dining room at night. It is odd being in this kind of venue in a post-bar state.
Olives? Nacho cheese sauce? I cannot believe I ate this.
Sinan ordered some sort of sausage poutine:
Word to the wise: be smart and always order the PULLED PORK POUTINE. I didn’t get a picture but it is worth it.
Our first patio breakfast of the season - since it was technically a weekday though (Easter Friday) they weren’t serving breakfast. After the waitress asking us to move tables a few times (in case a larger group wanted to sit on the patio) we finally settled down to order. When the food came we were all a little disappointed. My sandwich came on a bagel. The salads were composed of iceberg lettuce topped with an old-school melange of vegetables - I think my grandma might like it? I do have to give them credit on the fries though; they are good every time.
Feeling a little more healthy Ro ordered a salad with chicken. Again the iceberg lettuce leaves something to be desired. The kicker, though, was that the chicken was still a bit frozen on the inside. I would call that a kitchen-foul.
Next we have the famous Charlotte Anne’s caesar salad with the Friday special - the chicken parm sandwich. The chicken parm wasn’t what I would think of as a chicken parm - they had chopped the chicken and mixed it in the marinara sauce. Okay, they put their own spin on it! Great for them. The Dempster’s whole wheat bread though has got to go. Step it up a notch - if we’re going with the theme of underwhelming at least spring for the Dempster’s Ancient Grains variety or even the Honey Wheat! (Can you tell I wish we had gone to The Planet - they make all their bread in-house).
Since the waitress raved so much about the chicken parm with the ranch / garlic whatever dipping sauce Casey went for that as well.
To top off our sub-par experience it took quite a while for the waitress to process our payment (is there a better invitation to dine and dash?). She took off every time she processed a new card. Needless to say she reprimanded us when we tried to speed the process along by pressing the buttons intended for the “merchant”. Even if she was swamped with customers I say just stick around for a few seconds so your unhappy customers can get out of your restaurant sooner - what if someone new wants to sit on the patio!
Sorry Charlotte, we won’t be returning.
The best thing about these crackers - other than the fact that my gluten-free friends can eat them and my gluten-loving friends actually love the taste too - is that the recipe is so easy you can pretty much memorize it after attempting it once. It basically just includes a half cup of four types of seeds - the crackers bind together through the magic of Chia Seeds (cha-cha-cha-chia!). When you add the water to the chia seeds they excrete clear jelly an stick the whole mixture together. Chia seeds are also magical because they are packed with all sorts of nutritional value - hence the name Endurance Crackers.
I found the inspiration for these crackers at Oh She Glows. Angela suggests adding garlic and onion but I find the garlic and onion take up more time and tears than I’m usually willing to give up so often I just add the Herbamare (which, I discovered, is herb-infused salt). If you’ve never heard of Herbamare and don’t intend to take a trip to the health food store just to try something new and novel I would just add a few herbs of your choice - oregano and sage would go well - in addition to salt.
After your mixture is sticking together like an alien-seed-blob you simply spread it on 2 parchment lined baking sheets. I also threw in craisins at the request of my roommate - which I would highly recommended. I would also recommend spreading the mixture as thin as possible to get the most cracker-like end-product.
Then cook for 30 minutes and then flip it. I find it easiest to flip after cutting it in half with a pizza cutter. Then cut the two halves into smaller cracker-sized pieces after you flip the large pieces. Then cook for another 20-30 minutes and voila! The crackers go great with Angela’s Red Pepper Hummus which I also tried out - it turned out great, I have to admit though I took a shortcut and used jarred red peppers.
Endurance Crackers
Ingredients
- 1/2 Cup Chia Seeds
- 1/2 Cup Sunflower Seeds
- 1/2 Cup Sesame Seeds
- 1/2 Cup Pumpkin Seeds
- 1/2 Cup Craisins
- 1 Cup Water
- 1 Tbsp Herbamare (or herb-salt mix of your choice)
Directions
- Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir until it sticks together.
- Spread in a thin sheet over 2 cookie sheets lined with parchment paper.
- Cook for 30 minutes at 350. Flip and cut into pieces and cook for an additional 20-30 minutes.
- Serve with hummus or by themselves.
