Bon Appétit!

Culinary delights from this trip include the following:

1. Poutine - of course we had to eat poutine while in Québec! This dish consists of fries, white cheddar cheese curds and sauce (similar to gravy). It's good, but not particularly healthy! It was also very expensive (about $6-7 for the portions pictured here, not including anything else). There were a number of different varieties that we tried: regular, with sausages and with ground beef.

2. Montreal smoked meat - this is delicious, and very filling. Best eaten with hot mustard and a pickle, a smoked meat sandwich is traditional fare in Montreal, but alas also very expensive. My sandwich was $9 without any kind of accompaniment.

3. Queues de Castor (Beaver Tails) - a Canadian novelty dessert playing on the national mascot - the beaver. These are like the carnival food "elephant ears" but come in a lot of varieties such as peanut butter and banana, strawberry shortcake and maple butter and nuts (what we tried). Tasty, but very expensive. We shared this one and it cost $8.00.

4. Pizza au soleil - although not a traditional dish in any way, I couldn't resist taking a photo of this "sun" pizza which was named for le roi soleil - Louis XIVof France.

I have been a bit surprised at how much more it costs to eat out in Canada than in the USA. Even modestly priced restaurants (in fact even McDonald's) are noticeably more expensive. I think that is also due to the fact that prices are more expensive in Eastern Canada than in the West. Gas prices have varied between $1.07 - 0.94 CDN per litre (approx. $3.20 - $3.50 per gallon in USA). The CDN dollar is quite strong right now which is good for us, but may make a little difference for US students. I was able to get price quotes in $USD from the language school which will help.