Gouda is gooooood

Three of us teachers did a shopping run last weekend to Vancouver Island to break up the February blahs and get some slightly more exotic food than is available to us in Waglisla winters. I think Beloved Friend and Kindy Teacher Pal may have wondered at the wisdom of a shopping trip when our ferry trip home was wracked with stomach-flipping deep sea bends for a couple of hours travel through pure open-Pacific power (driven on by wild windy winter weather). They both looked very green around the gills while I, knocked out by Gravol, dozed through the worst of it and dared not get up when I felt the ferry sway with heart-pounding angles.

But oh... this trip was worth it for some of the lovely goodies purchased. One such delectable was smoked gouda which I have since used on a yummy comfort dish known as "Smoked Gouda and Caramelized Onion Quesadillas". An elegant twist on a basic concept: bacon onion cheese and bread. If you are looking for the recipe, you'll find it here at epicurious.com.
I used half the amount of sugar for the onions as they asked and it still was rather sweet. I suppose, honestly, you could leave sugar out and it would still taste good as fried onions.


The pictures don't really make them look very elegant. This time. But I know I'll be making this again. Sans sugar.

Another lovely find, this time on the ferry itself was Denman Island Chocolate.


We'd originally tasted a sample on Vancouver Island: Two ginger chocolate buddhas and one dark chocolate buddha (Chinese New Year theme, perhaps?). I had to have some again but I didn't expect to see them so soon onboard the ferry. So I took two samples: another Gingerama and a new one, Zesty Orange. Oooh yummy! As you can see from the picture they are not only a lovely dark chocolate (Belgian btw) but they are also ORGANIC!
The ginger is really nice. The intesity of the bittersweet chocolate has just a hint of candied ginger taste to tease you. The nice thing about this chocolate is that it doesn't leave a weird aftertaste in your mouth like cheaper bittersweets can. What you taste is the bitter chocolate on your tongue for about five minutes. It melts nicely in the mouth with a bit of friction but I don't think I ever let it melt completly before diving in the with my teeth. Zesty orange was a bit more disappointing. The orange essence it promised was ghostly at best, sometimes non-existant. But still, the chocolate itself was so good that I won't hold that against the company. I just won't get that kind again.