I have added a new vendor to the Great Places to Shop in Kamloops post. I was remiss in not including Gary’s European Sausage and Deli on the original list. Please check it out, and if you have any suggestions of places to try, please let me know! You can find the post here.
All posts by Scott@SCK
Christmas Cooking Photos
One of the things I enjoy about the holiday season, is having a bit of time off to do some cooking. I try to get in some baking, and then after our traditional Christmas Eve Chinese Dinner (thank you Moon Wok) I settle into cooking for the main event. Here are a few pictures from the last two years.
I am trying to get better at both photo taking and working with the photo’s here, so this is serving as a bit of a practice for me. It is interesting, the second most difficult part of creating content for me is the photo’s. I am working to get better at it, but regardless I hope you are able to find some inspiration in the pictures.
Great Places to Eat in Kamloops
Greetings intrepid follower!
Having been working from home the last while, work and life have had us eating out a bit more than we normally do. One of the many things we love about life in Kamloops is the great selection of locally owned non-chain eateries to choose from. There are more places than one can regularly frequent, so given that fact this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive or all-inclusive list, just a list of some of our favorite haunts.
Blue Fish – Located on the North Shore, Blue Fish offers a good sushi experience that is close to home for us. Service has always been great, and the food is very good.
Bold Pizza – For a casual dinner of pizza or pasta, Bold offers a great experience. Friendly service, great fresh pizza and excellent pasta has landed it on our list.
Dorian’s – If you are looking for Greek in Kamloops, this is our go to. Our favorites are the Dry Greek Ribs, and the Calamari Dinner. We have always found the food and the service to be very good and have had many a great meal there with friends.
Hacienda Cielito Lindo – This is a recent addition to the food scene here in Kamloops. A family run Mexican restaurant on the North Shore, it offers a very traditional Mexican dining experience. The food is authentic Mexican, not the North American version of it that you usually encounter in Canada. The flavours are excellent, and all home made. No mountains of beans and rice to compensate for any shortcomings, just really solid good food. The molcajetes bowl is my favourite, and the taco’s and chimichanga are Kathy’s. Dismiss your ideas of what Mexican is and give Hacienda a try.
Jacob’s Noodle and Cutlet – Whether it is for Japanese or Korean food, we really enjoy Jacob’s. The Kamloops Cutlet special is a great choice, and the Downtown Roll is another favorite. The rolls in general are very good, and the sushi is pretty decent.
Lemongrass – A recent addition to our repertoire is Lemongrass. Featuring a great selection of Vietnamese food, we have found it to be excellent, consistent and the service very friendly.
Mason’s Kitchen – Located up at Sun Rivers, the former Hoodoo’s location is a favorite of ours for a nice summer evening meal. They also feature a very good Hunter Schnitzel, pasta’s, Prime Rib burger and have quite a good selection of specials and special events.
Mittz’s Kitchen – Mittz’s Kitchen downtown is a venue we quite enjoy. The food is very good, creative but still approachable. We enjoy it both for dinner, and as a place to meet friends for a brunch.
Moon Wok – For Chinese food there are many choices in Kamloops. Our personal (and long time favorite) is Moon Wok. The food is very good, the service is always great and the specials excellent. The value here is among the best, the amount of food for your dollar is pretty hard to beat. We are closest to the North Shore location, but the Sahali and Valleyview locations are equally good.
Royal Tokyo – This was a favorite for a long time, then we kind of went off if it for a while. However we have been back a couple of times lately and it is back on the list. They feature all you can eat, with smaller portions of each item. This allows us to enjoy many different items each visit without needing a wheelbarrow to get out the door.
Twisted Steak – A bit of a rebranding of Twisted Olive, it is a favourite of ours for a special occasion dinner out. They are doubling down a bit now on the steak side of things and have some awesome offerings that you won’t find elsewhere. This is one of our favorites to be sure.
Black Iron Grill – For this one we venture out to Tobiano. For an evening sunset dinner along the shores of Kamloops Lake, this is a favorite of ours. The scenery is spectacular, the food is excellent, and the service is always great. It is a short drive out of town, but in the summer it is absolutely worth the drive.
These are some of our favourite’s. There are a number of other restaurants not on this list that are worthy of mention, but we just find these restaurants to be our regulars. This list will be a bit of a living & breathing thing, I will update it from time to time as we try new places. I try to not get into doing negative reviews, in a smaller city a negative review can be very damaging to a small establishment. But if we find somewhere we think you should know about, I will be sure to add it here.
I hope this helps you find a new favourite or two for yourself!
Enjoy!!
Scott @ SCK
New Recipe – Short Rib Stew
Hi all
So continuing with my sporadic recipe developments, I have posted a new recipe for a stew I have been making for a few years now. This is my favorite version of it, and it utilizes beef short ribs.
It is -25c outside today, so it seemed to be a good day to post something with that ‘stick to your ribs’ quality.
All the best from my kitchen to yours
Scott
A Year in Review – 2021
As we (all too quickly) approach Christmas 2021, I find myself looking back upon another year spent living with that most unpleasant of uninvited guests, Covid. It has been a strange year, fires, floods, pandemic and highways rendered impassable. We brought Supergirl to a close, and now are working on bringing a new TV series to life. It has been another year of working from home, which is difficult professionally, but has been very nice personally.
We haven’t been able to spend time with family or friends as we would have liked, but we have used the means at hand to keep in touch and make sure everyone is doing ok. It isn’t an easy time, but we are doing alright with it, and like everyone else we look forward to a day when we can again feel comfortable spending time.
Due to work constraints, I have found it hard getting to finalizing a few recipes that I am working on so that I can post them up. I have been doing quite a bit of cooking, but most of it is the day to day stuff that really isn’t that interesting. I have played with doing processed cheeses, something that has been both fun and productive. I have also started to do some work with ground beef jerky and pepperoni, which has also been fun and productive.
I didn’t do much meat smoking this summer, the fires contributed more than enough smoke to the atmosphere, I just couldn’t bring myself to add to it. I am hoping that over this Christmas break to be able to do some smoking, but first I need to tuck into some festive season baking.
Being home has allowed us to frequent some of our favourite restaurants and stores. Some of these are old favorites, and a few are new. We really are very fortunate to have such a selection of eateries and stores in Kamloops. There have been a couple of new eateries open that we haven’t been able to attend yet, but we will as the current situations allow. On that note, I will work on another post with some details on some of our favorites.
In closing, Kathy and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and a Happy and Healthy 2022. May we all be together again next Christmas!
From our home to yours, all of our best
Scott and Kathy
Foodie Television
I make my living as one very small cog in a very large wheel of the machine that creates some of the shows you watch on TV. I have been fortunate to work on some great productions, but I must admit that I really have little time for most of the modern North American programming. When I have time to sit and watch ‘the box’, I tend to gravitate to programming from Britain, or Europe or Australia. They offer shows that are based upon telling great stories, without leaning on crutches of explosions, car chases and shoot ‘em ups.
When it comes to food related entertainment, I am equally unimpressed with much of what is being peddled by the two major cable food networks. The plethora of ‘cooking’ game shows with their contrived drama just is not my cup of tea. I miss shows of old like Emeril Live and Good Eats. Shows that both taught and celebrated the soul of food. Shows that didn’t just treat the preparation of food as something that is a chore, but something that was an expression of love for those in your life and a celebration of it’s roots
Last week I decided to subscribe to Netflix again, having given up on it about a year ago when I found myself spending more time searching the guide than watching the programming. I have been very pleased to find that they now have a full compliment of food programming, and much of what I am seeing is excellent. There a great selection of shows that explore food, the people who create that it and often the places that have given birth to them.
As someone who is cursed with an emotional connection to food, the opportunity to learn about people around the world that have a passion for food in all its forms – cutting edge and traditional alike – is something that fuels both my brain and my heart. To that end, I have decided to make a list of some of the current offerings that I am enjoying, in the hopes that maybe you my intrepid reader might want to spend an hour or three on a cold winters day enjoying some of this programming that I am finding so enjoyable.
Most of these programs are on Netflix, but I will list the network or service with the show below. I will update the list from time to time, as I find new programming.
Netflix – Salt Fat Acid Heat
Netflix – The Chef Show (I suggest that before you watch this series, you watch the movie ‘Chef’ on Netflix as it is the foundation for the series)
Netflix – Somebody Feed Phil
Netflix – Restaurants on the Edge
Netflix – Chef’s Table (there are a few versions of this show, each wonderful on it’s own)
Netflix – Chef’s Table BBQ (my particular favorite of the group)
Netflix – Cooked
Netflix – Ugly Delicious
Netflix – Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Prime Video – Anthony Bourdain No Reservations (only Season 8 at the moment)
PBS – Mind of a Chef
Google Play (Purchase) – Anthony Bourdain – Parts Unknown
Great places to shop for specialty food in Kamloops
As I start this post, this weekend marks the first weekend of December 2020, ahead of what promises to be a very quiet and different Christmas. Work has been extremely busy for me, and the last couple of weeks before we break for Christmas promise to be more of the same.
Kathy was working today, and as it was a gorgeous day and I am spending FAR too much time cooped up in my basement office, I decided to make a trip out to restock the pantry a bit. Coming into the colder weather, the food I cook tends to be a bit heartier and heavier, helps to ward off the cold. So, while working to minimize my travels out and about, I did need to make a few stops.
Kamloops is actually very fortunate to have some truly hidden gems when it comes to places to shop for food. Fresh St Market has just opened up, and they have some great ingredients that you won’t find at the major retailers. They also have a very good online shopping tool and refrigerated lockers outside the store where you can pick up the order. We tried that the other night, and it worked out great.
But today was about some of my favorite ‘mom and pop shops’.
My first stop was Fratelli Foods on Victoria St. I picked up a few packages of gnocchi, but my main reason for stopping there was to get some San Remo balsamic vinegar. I got onto this ‘high must content’ balsamic after a recent trip to Di Muzio’s Ristorante on Victoria St. I will do a post on this kind of balsamic later but suffice to say it is completely different than what you will find on the shelf at any grocery retailer.
After Fratelli’s, it was off to one of my favorite specialty food places, 4 Oaks Oil and Vinegar. I have covered 4 Oaks before here and I very
much like their olive oils and vinegars, but they usually have a very good selection of a specialty pasta out of Oregon, Pappardelle’s. These folks make some amazing dried pasta in all sorts of flavours. 4 Oaks carries a great selection, and I am quite eager to try the Hickory Bacon flavoured pasta!
In addition, I found they now have a great selection of different
flavoured mustards being made in 100 Mile House by Wildcraft Organics, as well as several other products by small manufacturers from around BC. I really encourage anyone go and check out 4 Oaks, you will be pleased you did.
I then popped in next door to Gourmet Greens Produce Market
and took a quick wander. There I came across some pickled Ukrainian sausages by ‘Two Pickled Uke’s Brand’ in Surrey. I have to say that I got them more as a curiosity, but having tried them, I will definitely be back for more. With those in hand and some Blackwells Eggnog for good measure, I was out the door and off to my next stop.
If you have ever ventured to Salmon Arm to the Shuswap Pie Company for their awesome homemade pies, both savory and sweet, then you know how good they are. But during this time when travel is being frowned upon, it is not the best idea to venture to the “home office” to get a fix. Good news is, they have a place in Kamloops that carries a particularly good selection their pies in frozen form. Twin Rivers Market is that place, and they really do have a very good selection. They aren’t the cheapest pies, but they are well worth the money. So, with a Raspberry & Rhubarb fruit pie, a Sausage, Apple & Sage Pie as well as a Steak and Stout pie in my hands, I was off to the next stop.
Last stop was Summit Gourmet Meats to order the Christmas Pterodactyl. Not a fan of turkey personally, but the Chief Taste Tester loves it so I will do one for this Christmas. While there I browsed the case, and noticed they had a tray of Mincemeat. Now mincemeat tarts are my dessert crack, so was intrigued enough to grab a small container to taste test. Suffice to say I will be going back with a bucket for more. Summit has great meat, and I love being able to talk to the butcher and ask for specific cuts of meat cut to what I need for a given cook. They also have great sausages, the Chief Taste Tester is a huge fan of their turkey sausage so it is well worth the trip. With that I was loaded up and headed for home.
*A quick Christmas 2021 update: I still love Summit meats, but they have changed the mincemeat for this Christmas, and unfortunately I am not able to sing it praises as I had last year. It is suet free, so those who are looking for a vegetarian/vegan option may find it interesting however.
*An addition to the list
I was a bit remiss on not listing Gary’s European Sausage and Deli on my list. I am a frequent visitor to Gary’s, they have a great selection of smoked sausages and deli meats. They make much of their own product, and carry a nice selection of imported European foods as well. They are now offering delivery service within the Kamloops area, which is a nice added bonus.
More now than ever, if you have a chance to go past the regular big box grocery retailers and spend a few min checking out these great places owned by local folks, I really encourage you to do so.
Hopefully, this post will help give you with a few ideas of places and products to check out in our home town.
Stay safe and enjoy!
Scott @ SCK
Cooking by Sous Vide
Sous vide cooking was pioneered in the 1970’s in San Francisco. It is a fairly simple concept – vacuum pack the item being cooked in a waterproof bag and place it in a container of water that is set to the temperature that the finished product is desired to be. The Immersion Cooker circulates the water and maintains a constant temperature to provide perfect results every time. There is a particularly good chance that at some point you have had food done by sous vide, they are fairly common in restaurant kitchens around the world.
When cooking a meat such as steak, you select the temperature you want the meat to finish at, and then leave it be. I vacuum pack the steak (usually after a trip thru the smoker) with a pat of butter and a bit of thyme and cook it at 128.5 degrees for 1-2 hours. The result is a perfectly rare / medium rare steak from edge to edge, and after a quick sear on the grill or cast iron skillet to it is a thing of perfection.
The other great advantage of sous vide is your window for the meat being perfectly done is up to an hour or more… not 2-3 min before it is past the point desired. It takes much of the stress out of cooking meats when entertaining, the meat will be ready for 1-2 min a side on the grill, with no ‘rest’ required when the rest of the meal is done. It works excellent for proteins, as well as eggs, custard, cheesecake… anything where a precise control of temperature and gentle cooking will be of benefit.
A vacuum bagger is a nice accompaniment, but perfectly adequate results can be achieved with Zip Lock Freezer bags in most cases. The immersion circulator work in any pot or container, I have a cooler bucket that I use for smaller cooks, and a regular travel cooler for bigger cooks. I cannot impress upon you my intrepid reader on how much I believe in this cooking technique. I have turned a few friends on to it as well, and they are equally enthralled.
There are now several different brands on the market, I prefer the Anova brand, particularly the wifi model which is a bit higher power than its smaller sibling. They seem to go on sale with some regularity, and the discounts can be rather good. I will put a link below for the version that has replaced the model I have.
Here are a few pictures of some of the results I have achieved with the sous vide.
I am still alive…
Greetings to my intrepid reader!
I hope that this missive finds everyone well and surviving the challenges that 2020 has brought with it. As I type this, we are just entering into Christmas season for 2020, and the second wave of Covid 19. It is a tough time for everyone, and it looks like it will be for a bit yet.
In my absence from the site here, I have been doing a lot of cooking, making messes and coming up with some recipes that I am hoping to get up here soon.
I have expanded on my ‘low and slow’ cooking with a few new things. I have gotten into sous vide cooking, and my Chief Taste Tester treated me to a Primo XL ceramic grill. This has afforded me the opportunity to start to work with smoking meats and then sous vide cooking them which has taken my meat game to a whole new level.
I continue to work in film and television, and with Covid I have been working the last few months from home. I am still working on Supergirl, and this year we are working on the final season. It has been an exceptionally busy and tiring grind, but we should have a break coming up at Christmas where I hope to catch my breath.
Competing for my time with everything else are two new projects, both living in the garage at the moment. We are doing a full restoration on a 1990 Chev travel van, and it’s little fiberglass friend a 1977 Triple E Surf-Side travel trailer. Both need pretty much full functional restorations, so that has been absorbing a fair amount of time. I will be detailing some of these projects on the site as we go along as well.
But I am going to make a concerted effort to work on this site a bit more regularly (sound like deja vu all over again?) No major changes planned, just some more recipes and some information on cooking with a Sous Vide immersion cooker.
Stay safe, be well and I hope everyone can enjoy what is promising to be a quiet and very different Christmas 2020.
SCK
A New Recipe (at last)
I have finally gotten the final testing done on what is currently one of my favorite pasta dishes. It is a great savory pasta with prawns in a butter and wine sauce that comes together pretty quickly. It is a great weekend dinner for two, or can be quick enough for a weeknight meal if you have an early day.
I am trying to work through some recipes that I have in development stage, but especially now that I am out of town so much, it is slowing down that process. I have been enjoying some good eats at the coast, both trying out new places as well as visiting some of my old favorites. As things settle down a bit, I am going to profile a few of them here at the Kitchen.
Fall is settling in, first snow on the Coquihalla today, so I guess the rain here at home will get fat and white before too much longer.
I hope that this finds everyone happy and well, and about to enjoy a great Thanksgiving with family. From our house to yours, all of the best, and we hope to talk to you soon!
Scott, Kathy and the K9ids
A Fond Farewell
A couple of weeks ago I finish my last day at CML Properties, before moving on (back?) to a position in the film industry. I have called CML my work home for three and a half years now, and I have enjoyed a great experience with a super group of people. Property management is a very challenging field, and Matt, Craig and Becky have always made sure that if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right. The folks I was so fortunate to work with at CML are a diverse and talented group, and everyone contributed their professionalism and energy to the company. In a challenging industry, I am proud to be able to say that I was part of the CML team these last few years.
As I take this opportunity to return to the film industry (it truly was an ‘offer you can’t refuse’), I do so with very mixed emotions – I am looking forward to the challenges of the project I have been asked to be part of, but I am also somewhat melancholy about leaving both my friends here, and many of the clients I have been so fortunate to work with. Many of these great people are now friends, and I hope that as life winds and twist that I will be able to maintain the friendships that have been forged. My time at CML has been rewarding, and it is with a full heart that I thank everyone associated with CML, as well as the folks I worked with at the properties for making the last three and a half years rewarding and fun.
For the residents at my properties, I leave knowing that you are in the best of hands. I was but one small part of the team that made sure that the challenges of the day to day administration of your properties were met. The great folks here will continue to serve you in the professional way that you have come to know.
As I turn the page to this next adventure, I wish to thank everyone who has been part of making this chapter of my work life a challenging and rewarding one. I wish you all the best, and hope to see you on the streets of our great home town in the years to come!
Best regards
Scott Stewart
So long my friend…
I started this story on October 5th, 2015. I have kept it to myself since then out of respect for the privacy of a great friend.
Tonight, sadly, I can now share this with the world.
Tonight I had a call from an old friend. When we left Vancouver for Kamloops, he and his wife were two of the people that we were sad to leave. He and I had spent quite a bit of time together, a lot of time thru work, and many more enjoyable hours as friends. We share an interest in motorcycles, boats and aviation, so it was easy to enjoy one another’s company.
He and his wife were very dear friends with Aniko and I, and they were amazing friends while we fought the losing battle with her cancer. We rode together and enjoyed many an adventure flying down the highway as well as sitting around the dinner table. They were a great support to me when Aniko was in her battle with cancer, and even bigger support after she slipped away from me.
They were wonderful in how they accepted Kathy into our friendship, and we continued to live life to its fullest, adventuring together on land, sea and in the air. He is a special person, who has always lived life to its fullest, and has so many adventures and stories to tell. I was gifted on more than one occasion with his tutorage on things, his guidance kept me out of the weeds with my 40’ toy hauler trailer, and he lent me as much of his marine experience as I could absorb whenever I was curious. He pushed me in my motorcycle riding ability, the friendly rivalry to be the best WE could be riding was always as pleasurable as it was educational.
He lives life the way that I can only strive to. To never leave an experience untried, to never let a dream pass put on the shelf for another day. He believes in being true to his friends, because he knows how important they are to ones quality of life. He is a combination of friend, brother and in some ways a father figure to me.
Tonight he called me to tell me that he will be going to see Aniko sometime far too soon. I am devastated at the news, but equally amazed at the peace in his voice. He is amazingly at peace with the news, something he chalks up to having made sure he packed his life full of every experience that he could. He takes great comfort in having lived life fully, and having chalked up so many experiences. He told me that while would have liked to have had more time, he is at peace that he was able to do so much in the years that he had. As I sit here with deep sorrow in my heart, I keep hearing his voice in my head as I replay the phone call and I am in awe of how at peace he sounded.
There is such a lesson in how he has lived his life, something that I am wanting to share with everyone. Life is an all you can eat buffet. It is expensive, and wonderful, and completely up to you to make sure you get your money’s worth. We can’t live life like every day is our last, that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. However you have to live life like tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, because it isn’t. Live your life to its fullest, be true to your friends, family and never, never pass on an experience because you can ‘do it tomorrow’. If all of the sudden your tomorrows run short, make sure you have done everything you can to be in a place where you have no regrets for experiences lost because you put them off. I live with the hope that when my time comes, I can have the peace in my heart and voice that he has now.
Out of respect for his privacy, I am purposely not using his name. One day if you read this and you see his name, know that we have said goodbye, and this tribute to a friend and how he lives his life has become a tribute to the memory of a friend gone to ride across the sky with Aniko.
This afternoon Len’s wife Kelly called me to tell me that he had left us on Tuesday to go be with Aniko. Tonight I am writing this with tears of sadness, feeling the pain that we that are left behind must accept so that those we love can be free of the pain they can’t otherwise escape. My heart aches for Kelly, but she is surrounded by the love of family and friends, and we will be there for her. Even in the sadness of Lens passing, the lessons he left behind on how to live life resonate in my soul. Thanks to Len, I have another goal to aim for, and a lesson to work into how I live my life.
When I look at the sky at sunset, I know that Aniko rides on the pink clouds across the sky, but now with Len on the blue ones watching over her for me.
Len Lambert was a great friend, and someone I am so much the better for knowing. I will miss you very much my friend.
Until we ride again…
Scott