(Un)French Food

Even though Montreal can be as French as France can be, it proved itself to be an international city in its own right over the last weekend of May by hosting an international food and cultural festival along the Old Montreal waterfront. We saw (and tasted!) food samples such as Spanish empanadas (relatives of the good ol' Singapore curry puff), churros (the sugary version of you tiao) and maple syrup sweets. The Aussies were there having a hellava good time getting curious people to pay good money for a mouthful of kangeroo meat on a stick. Which is disturbing, cos I distinctly remember seeing bags of chilled kangeroo meat in Australian supermarkets under the pet food section :/

It was pretty interesting watching some of the food being prepared, especially the maple syrup lollies:

Step 1: Pour strips of 100% pure Grade A maple syrup onto a bed of ice

Step 2: Roll it quickly around a stick before the syrup cools and hardens

Step 3: Lift and Lick!

Over our steak dinner the night before, we were talking about different types of meat and what we have eaten or would like to try. It all started cos my brother ordered buffalo steak (aka big hairy bison meat) grilled into a bloody medium rare state. It tasted rather gamey to me. Ugh. Although I've tried bits of kangeroo, ostrich and alligator meat (and even some bug mush on toast while on an Australian bush walk), and I might give guinea pig a go when I get down to Peru, I'm not exactly collecting medals when it comes to eating exotic animal meat. Which is why I gave those hyper Aussies a miss but the guys swapped $2 for a couple of pieces of kangeroo meat. Hoppity hop!

Finally standing still for a pic after I gave them a pissed-off look. Pissed off cos I was struggling with a mouthful of melting maple maltose, which was happily stringing itself all over my hair, face, hands and camera, and they refused to cooperate too. Grrrr.

Fancy a taste of Australia, Spain or Canada?

Familiar food - Ovaltine and some Milo hiding in the far corner

I guess this crepe flinging guy was the only French ingredient around

But hey, the fair seriously lacked some good Chinese food! So we headed for the everything-also-got Asian supermarkets in Chinatown to get provisions for dinner. The Chinese are really the pros in importing all their favourite food items into whichever country they get their foot into. We found you tiao and mooncakes even.

I'm dearly missing hot, freshly fried you tiao with porridge or tau huay already

We got what we needed to make our own dinner back at our hotel (which is highly recommended if you're heading into Monteral - Les Square Phillips Hotel & Suites, a repeat winner of TripAdvisor Reader's Choice awards for its reasonably-priced and quality rooms.) All we needed was the all-Singaporean ingredient - the foreign domestic worker. Which, on this occasion, turned out to be me. My sister, the part-time maid, only turned up for work during commercial breaks on TV.

My childhood past-time in the 1980s

Meet Maria - she wrapped 50 wantons!

I swear this was the best meal available in Canada (and the US of A) that night: home-made wanton noodle soup!

Yummylicious!