Summertime

Canada is a lot like America, which is why Canadians get anxious about their national identity, and also why Americans have such a vague idea of what Canada is aside from a vast expanse of cold, empty space between Minnesota and the North Pole. I like to think of Canada as the accumulation of a thousand little differences. Different signage, currency, lingo, holidays, patterns of speech, etc. All of these things give me a warm, familiar feeling when I'm back there. And while Canadian cuisine doesn't bring to mind the same kind of fully formed idea as French or Italian or even American cuisine, there are many foodstuffs that are distinctly Canadian. One is the Nanaimo bar, which you can find in the States but which is always better when eaten in Canada. (It is named for the city in British Columbia where it might have originated in the 1930s, or not.)



This one was from Thyme & Again, a cafe in Ottawa. The essence of the Nanaimo bar is the contrast in textures between the chewy coconut-chocolate cake layer, the smooth and soft vanilla cream layer, and the top chocolate layer (which ideally would be hard and crisp). Nanaimo bars are best cold and they really should be cut in rectangles, but this specemin was a square and it didn't bother me much.

Another Canadian food is the bagel. This might sound off, but it's true. Many Canadian bagels are different from American ones. There are the Montreal bagels, which are their own special topic for another day. And there are Toronto bagels, like the ones below (a regular bagel and an enormous twister) from Haymishe Bagel Bakery on Bathurst Street near Lawrence. Unlike New York bagels, which are dense and heavy (and wonderful), Haymishe's bagels (and also those of Greyfe's, also in Toronto) have a light-textured crumb. Haymishe calles these bagels fluffy, which is apt. (The twisters use a heavier dough.) And yet the crust, as you can see, is dark and very chewy. The essence of bagelness is a shiny, chewy crust, and Toronto bagels are as good as any in this department.* And the contrast between the fluffy interior and the chewy exterior makes for happy eating. Contrast seems to have become the theme of this post.



While staying with my parents in Toronto, the little man had his first taste of Froot Loops. Also his second, third, fourth, fifth... I loathe the smell of these things and the colors are just preposterous. But he couldn't get enough. When asking for these, he said, "I want toucan cereal." All week long he ate little aside from toucan cereal and bagels. I guess it's good to be two.



Today, home and rested, we made our way to the Wisconsin State Fair.



Last time we were at the fair we decided to wait and have our cream puffs, the signature Dairy State fair food, on our way out. But by then we had filled up on sausages and frozen bananas and the like, and there was no way we were going to eat any more. E was pregnant, the day was scorching hot, and the whole fairground smelled of either livestock or stale frying oil. No cream puffs for us. Indeed we swore we would never return to the fair. But parenthood changes everything, so we were there at 9:30 am, before the crowds had amassed, and went straight for the cream puff pavilion.



One person can finish a cream puff in about two minutes; they're mostly air. But what a mess. I picked it up to eat it like a burger and the cream went everywhere. The best way to attack one of these, I decided when I was done, is to take it apart like an Oreo and eat it in two pieces.

For lunch we ate corn dogs. The little man took one bite and put his aside, but I devoured mine. I watched as the corn dog kid dipped the wieners impaled on sticks in the corn batter and then dropped them in the fryer. It's pretty exciting to bear witness to that kind of magic. After careful consideration, E and I determined that neither ketchup nor mustard is preferable on a corn dog. They're great all by themselves.



The high point of the day was surely the pig race at Hogway Speedway. There must have been five hundred people in the packed stands to watch the little swine scurry around the track. We sense that our young fairgoer will be talking about that race from now till next year's fair.



*Why are bagels are so good? Because of their shape, which maximizes their surface-to-mass ratio and makes them fun and easy to eat (easy to break pieces off/easy to put in your mouth). And because they have a unique shiny, chewy crust (the result of boiling them before they go in the oven), which helps them exploit the benefit of their high surface-to-mass ratio. That they are often dense and heavy also makes them good, but this quality is not part of their essential bagelness.

Eat Canada:

Thyme & Again
1255 Wellington Street West
Ottawa, Ontario
(613) 722-6277

Haymishe Bagel Shop
3031 Bathurst Street
Toronto, Ontario
(416) 781-4212