Month: November 2016

Paella on the Prairies

For most Canadians, when we think of Spanish cuisine we think of paella and sangria. I’ve watched for years as my friends or new people we meet interact with The Spaniard – the conversation is often the same. If they have been to Spain it is to Madrid or Barcelona, and if they talk about food, they talk about paella. The Spaniard is from the north coast of Spain. While you can find sangria and paella at bars and restaurants in Santander, the region of Cantabria is far from the south where the dish and the drink originate from. Funny enough, The Spaniard only started making paella after he moved to Canada. He brought back a paella (the name for the flat pan the rice cooks in, as well as the name of the finished dish) to Edmonton after his first trip back home at Christmas, and he has been feeding my friends and family paella on the prairies ever since. Since a paella is to be cooked over an open flame, The Spaniard took advantage of the covered …

Sunny in San Antonio

For The Spaniard’s 30th birthday I wanted to do something special – I wanted to take him to his first NBA game. Unfortunately, preseason was still going on during his actual birthday, so I couldn’t deliver on my gift until two weeks later. Thanks to the city suggestion from my old roomie Marc, we decided on San Antonio so we could catch the Spurs. We had an early morning flight with two connections, so by the time we arrived in San Antonio we were exhausted. Our hotel was conveniently located along the river walk, a world-renowned urban waterway below street level, which allowed us to orient ourselves with the downtown just 15 minutes away. On our first morning we set out along the river heading north towards the Pearl Brewery district, a very cool area that mixes residential, restaurants, shops, a hotel, and a branch of the Culinary Institute of America into refurbished (and a few new) buildings from the old Pearl Brewery. Saturday happened to be market day so we grabbed a gluten free banana …