Eggs Benny, Two Ways

Two weeks ago the Pie and I decided to head downtown for a late Saturday breakfast and we ended up at the Bagel Cafe, which is consistently voted as having the best breakfast in town almost every year.  We’d never been before, so it was an interesting experience — the place is pretty cozy so I wouldn’t recommend going in a big group — but the menu was massive and I had the best breakfast I have ever had.  It was eggs Benedict served with a sliver of smoked salmon and a dreamy, creamy Hollandaise, but instead of the standard English muffin, this poached beauty was perched atop a genuine Newfoundland cod fish cake.  It was truly one of the more divine things I have eaten in recent memory.

And I can’t stop thinking about it.  So I had to recreate it.  I mean, who did I think I was?  This, then, is what I did the following weekend.

So first, for the man I married who refuses to eat fish, I whipped up another batch of English muffins.  And then I learned that he has never had eggs Benedict before.  I was shocked.  I order them pretty much every time we go out for breakfast, but it never occurred to me to find out if he had ever done the same.  And then I made the fish cakes, which conveniently store well in the refrigerator.

For the Hollandaise, you want to get your whisking arm limbered up.  Set a large pot of water to simmer on your stove and find a metal bowl that fits snugly over the opening but that does not touch the water (if you’re poaching eggs you probably have a large pot of water already on the simmer so this makes things easy).  While that’s heating up melt as well 10 tablespoons unsalted butter and set that somewhere convenient.

Into the metal bowl goes 3 egg yolks and 1 tablespoon lemon juice.  Whisk that until it’s frothy.  

Set the bowl over the pot and keep whisking.  Lift the bowl away from the heat every once in a while to make sure that it doesn’t get too hot and curdle.

Keep whisking until you produce a thick creamy substance that forms strings when you lift the whisk away.  This is called a sabayon, and that’s basically the structure of your Hollandaise base right there.

Away from the heat, and whisking all the while, trickle in your nice hot melted butter and mix until fully incorporated.

Season with salt and pepper.

And maybe a little Tabasco sauce.  Taste it and season again accordingly.

Keep the Hollandaise warm (but not hot) while the rest of your chaotic morning is going on.  I did this by putting it a bowl of hot water.  This is enough sauce for 4-6 eggs, by the way.

You should also be toasting your English muffins (if you’re using them) and frying up your fish cakes (which you should be eating because they’re awesome).  And if you’re using peameal bacon, fry that up as well.

Now everything else is a matter of timing.  Everyone has their own methods for poaching eggs, and how long they take will depend on the size of the egg, how many you are cooking, water temperature, blah blah blah.  Gordon Ramsay had a neat tip, though: swirl the water into a vortex before sliding in your egg.  The circular direction of the water will ensure that all those little tendrils of egg will end up stuck to the egg itself, making the finished product nice and round.  I also tried the Julia Child method here, where you poke a small hole in the fat end of the egg with a pin.

Then you get your water simmering and you dunk each egg for 10-15 seconds and then you haul them out.  This pre-cooks the whites a little bit so the egg stays in shape a bit better.

THEN you add a bit of vinegar to the water.

And crack your eggs into the barely simmering stuff, one by one. Let them do their thing for 3-4 minutes, depending on how hard you like ‘em poached. When they were done I plopped them in a bowl of hot water to stay warm while I set everything up.  This also washes the vinegar off the eggs. Drain them on a clean towel before you put them on your muffins or they’ll get soggy.

Smear a dab of Hollandaise on your toasted muffin, layer on a piece of peameal bacon, follow that with the egg and more Hollandaise and a sprinkle of parsley or chives and salt and pepper.

Alternately, plop a dollop of sauce on your crispy fish cake, ladle on the egg, more sauce, and a flake of smoked salmon.

Eat it while it’s hot!

Scoff and a Half: Cod Fish Cakes, Rock-style

If you know anything about Newfoundland, you know that historically it has been home to one of the largest cod fisheries in the world.  So if you visit the Rock you can pretty much eat cod any which way you like.  Many here prefer to eat it salted (a traditional way to preserve it), and there’s a huge number of dishes surrounding this particular delicacy.  A favourite locally is fish ‘n’ brewis (pronounced like “bruise”), and is very popular amongst the hungover patrons of George Street.  It’s a breaded filet of salt cod, pan fried and topped with scruncheons, which you may remember from our toutons recipe.  It makes for a good “scoff,” or meal.

You can get salt cod pretty much anywhere on the eastern coast of Canada and through much of New England.  It’s a pretty popular way of preserving fish, so you’re likely to find it as well in markets in Russia, China, huge chunks of Europe, and more or less wherever else cod is sold.  You can also get canned salted cod from specialty shops and online.  If you can’t get salt cod (or you can’t be bothered to get some) you can use fresh cod or haddock or any other white fish as a substitute.  Just don’t go through the soaking step, and add a bit of salt to the recipe.

First you need about 1lb salt fish bits.  I don’t even question what the bits are, though it’s not all cod.  Just trust me on this one.

Dump those bits in a pot. Okay so it doesn’t look that appetizing. Just wait for it.

Fill the pot with cold water.  Bung that pot in the fridge overnight.

Next day, drain that salty, salty water, and fill it again with fresh. Put the pot on the stove and bring the contents to a gentle simmer for about 10-15 minutes.

While that’s on the go, peel and chop up about 1lb white potatoes (this was 4 large ones).  Huck them in a pot and boil the crap out of them as well.

Drain the cooked fish.

Use two forks (or a potato masher) to break the fish up into fine little bits.

Drain the cooked potatoes and mash them as well.  Leave them aside to cool a bit.

Finely chop up a small onion (or half a large one) and drop it in a pan with 1/4 cup butter.

Cook on medium heat until soft. While I’ve got you moving, might as well do the hokey pokey.

Crack 1 large egg and beat it up and put it aside, together with 2 tablespoons savoury, and some salt and pepper.

Dump the onions in with the fish and give that a stir.

Same-same with the potatoes and herbs.

When the mixture has cooled enough that it won’t cook the egg on contact, dump that in as well and mix it in.

Use a spoon to scoop up a generous helping of the mixture and form it with your hands into a little patty.

Roll the finished patty in about 1/4 cup flour (I used buckwheat so I could give some to Fussellette) and set it aside.

This particular recipe made 16 fish cakes for me.

Now you can wrap them up in waxed paper and seal them in something airtight and chuck them in the fridge, or freeze them.

To cook, heat a couple glugs of vegetable oil in a pan and fry on medium high for 3-4 minutes each side.

Flip when you get some nice golden-brown crispies on the bottom.

Serve with fresh chives or parsley and a side of strong condiment, like dijon mustard, relish, or chutney.  Save a couple for the magical creation we will be having on Friday.  Stay tuned!

New Found Ornaments

I saw something like this at a craft fair in St. John’s and thought that I could easily make my own with some found objects and some hot glue.  The “jellybean row” is an iconic element of St. John’s architecture: a series of brightly coloured and quaintly crooked wooden row houses that line most of the downtown streets.  So every craft fair and gift shop in the area sells some version of this, painted on mailboxes, pieces of wood, in stained glass (similar to the disaster I made last spring), and on pieces of shale, which conveniently break on a rectangular plane.

So I found some pieces of this shale, relatively thin pieces that wouldn’t weigh down a tree branch.

And I painted them to look like the crooked, shambling houses around here.

And then I glued string on the back for hanging, with hot glue.

An extra dab, for security.

And that’s it!

On Top of Mount Scio

On Thanksgiving weekend, the Pie and I decided to take a hike to somewhere we’d never been.  St. John’s has an extensive concourse trail system and in our four years here, we’ve explored a good part of it.  Gren definitely has his favourites, as well.  On this day, though, we left him at home.  He doesn’t have the same energy as he did when he was a puppy, so we knew that he would get tired long before we did.  If you’re ever thinking of getting a dog to encourage you to exercise, don’t get a corgi.  They are so lazy.

Anyway.  We took the Long Pond to Oxen Pond Walk.  One of our regular walks with Gren is the Long Pond walk just behind MUN’s campus, so it was familiar territory.  The trail to Oxen Pond, however, is a bit more of a hike.  In fact, it pretty much goes straight up Mount Scio, which is kind of the backstop for the city.  There are a good many stairs, which my poor battered knees protested before long.  The view once you reach the top of the mountain is pretty epic, though.  You can see all of the North Valley, which is where we live and where Memorial University is.

You might want to click on the photo above and zoom in on my Flickr page.  MUN campus is in the foreground in the middle, hiding our house, with the Health Sciences Centre and hospital at the left side of the photo. At the centre of the shot you can see the two clock towers of the Catholic Basilica. To the right of that are the red roofs of The Rooms, our museum. On the other side of the Rooms is a giant hill leading downtown, which you can’t see in this picture. The vee of water behind the church and museum is the opening to the Narrows and St. John’s Harbour. The water to the left is Quidi Vidi Lake, which empties into Quidi Vidi Bay. The river that feeds Quidi Vidi Lake, Rennie’s River, actually gets some of its start from tributaries up here on the mountain. And that’s your geography lesson for the day.

From the top, we took the trail along and down a ways until we crossed Mt. Scio Road and entered the MUN Botanical Gardens.  Because we are Memorial students, we got in for free!  Of course, it being October, much of the showy summer foliage has died back, but we spent a good 25 minutes tooling around the edible and medicinal herb gardens, marveling at how people figured out which herbs did what when you ate them or boiled them or steeped them.  This one was of particular interest to me, a long-suffering victim of chronic UTIs.

Another part of the ornamental garden illustrates the various plants that live in Newfoundland’s climates. Many of these plants adapted well to extremely harsh conditions, and some of the environments in this province have been re-created here. I took a picture of this one because it grows in our backyard (on almost pure gravel) and I can never remember what it’s called.

Inside a shelter there was also a neat little succulent and cactus garden, with a few flowers thrown in.

A little of a last hurrah for warmer weather.

Once through the ornamental garden we finished the trail down to Oxen Pond. We had self-righteously refused to buy duck feed at the admissions desk, because as a rule we try not to feed wild animals. However, as soon as we arrived at the pond we were greeted by some very hungry ducks.

Who soon called in all their friends.

From all the way across the pond.

Eventually we were mobbed and had to leave when they started yelling.

With angry quacking ringing in our ears we continued along the trail to the fen, admiring the lush moss along the way.

In the summer in a bog you can see all manner of cool things, like orchids and lady’s slippers and iris and stuff like that. You might remember some of that from our trip to Gros Morne last summer. But most of those flowers have died back by this time of year. What remains, however, are representatives of the province’s official flower: the pitcher plant. I think carnivorous plants are so cool.

I petted this one (though I probably wasn’t supposed to). Those little hairs are quite soft.

On the way back, we marveled at some more Leslie damage.

A moose path leading who knows where.

And some truly epic fungus.  Here is a small sample.  I don’t know why Newfoundland doesn’t have a booming mushroom industry, considering how damp and dark it is.

Not to mention this poor tree, which was covered in galls. Galls are reactions to irritants for trees. Like an oyster covers a grain of sand in mineral deposits to make it smooth, a tree grows these bulbous things around stuff like insects and worms and fungus and stuff to protect itself. Neat, huh?

So even if it wasn’t summer, we still got to see some cool stuff, which we probably would have missed had it been overshadowed by the more ostentatious products of warmer weather.

End of Season Review: My Three Boat Tours

Our intrepid hero

As our chapter of Newfoundland living draws slowly to a close (our five years are almost up!), the Pie and I are trying to take any opportunity to experience the good things and the amazing things that this province, and the St. John’s area, have to offer.  And this summer, owing to the generosity of my law firm and some fortuitous Groupons, I ended up taking not one, not two, but THREE boat tours of the area, with three different companies.  So I thought, now that the boating tour season is almost over, I’d give you my opinion on the whole enterprise, so that if you’re in the area next spring and summer, you can decide if you’d like to try this experience as well.

But first an Ali-cized version of Newfoundland history.  As you may know, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador has been the location of various fishing colonies from Portugal, France, and England (and a few others) for the past five hundred years.  Legend has it that the first Vikings to visit North America stopped here first, and that they could walk from their ships to the rocky shores on the backs of the plentiful cod in the water.  All that cod meant a lot of fighting over fishing rights, and after a few switches back and forth, England eventually won out (although France and Portugal still have their own interests).  Newfoundland became part of the Dominion of Canada after World War II, and here we are.

Imagine cod cushioning your feet from these jagged rocks.

In 1992, the cod fishery was so severely depleted that the government declared a moratorium on cod fishing — there simply weren’t enough fish in the sea anymore.  This resulted in thousands of fishermen losing their traditional livelihood.  If a Newfoundlander can’t fish cod, is he really a Newfoundlander?

Who says size matters?

Some enterprising fishermen came up with some new ideas about how to put food on their tables.  They converted their fishing boats into tour boats, adding seats and life jackets and taking out the nets and hauling equipment.  Tourism in Newfoundland began to thrive.  And from May to September every year, you can take a tour with one of these companies and see all the sites that Newfoundland has to offer — from the sea.  In May and June, if you’re lucky, you can sail up close to a massive ice berg as it makes its way south to melt.  In July and August you can sail alongside all manner of local whales as they, too, migrate to other waters.

From whaling and codfishing to eco-tourism.

My first tour happened back in late June.  My law firm charted an Iceberg Quest boat to take us from St. John’s Harbour around Cape Spear to Petty Harbour.

View of the harbour, from the Narrows.

It was a calm and sunny afternoon as we pulled out of the harbour, but once we hit the currents of the North Atlantic, the swells got a bit higher and the spray off the bow was enough to thoroughly soak most of us in minutes.

Me and Mel, thoroughly soaked.

There were a few members of the party who had to make use of the barf bags on board.  I’m sure the open bar didn’t help.  I kept getting salt water in my rum and Coke (which actually didn’t end up tasting that bad). But those of us who had our sea legs had a great time.

Everyone had to have a Titanic moment.

My favourite moment of this particular tour was when we rounded Cape Spear, which is the most easterly point of land in North America.  And at that particular moment, I was more east than Cape Spear.

East-er than the east-est

We did catch a glimpse of a humpback whale off our bow, but it was gone before any of us got any good pictures of it. This is the dorsal of a minke who was too camera shy and gone before long.

There were birds all around us, though, and they were interesting too.

We pulled into Petty Harbour nicely sauced and just in time for dinner.

Chafe’s Landing is a restaurant just a few steps from the harbour and is rumoured to have the best fish and chips on the Avalon Peninsula.  And I’m here to tell you that those rumours are TRUE.  It was incredible.

We took a bus back to St. John’s as the sun set, all happy, salty, and full of good food.

While the staff were friendly they weren’t all that talkative with us.  Perhaps because this was a private charter they weren’t required to give us the rundown on the things we were seeing as we sailed around the Cape.

A particular benefit of Iceberg Quest is that they are the one tour company that sails directly out of St. John’s Harbour, so if you’re in town and you don’t have transportation, it’s the way to go.  I think that because it is directly out of St. John’s that the tour cost is probably quite a bit more expensive than those which operate outside of town.  Because the firm paid for it, I have no idea how much it actually cost. But the boat was flashy and shiny and big.

My second tour was with O’Brien’s in early August, and the Pie and I got a Groupon for a four-person pass at half price, which cost us about $120.  We took Cait and Jul and drove to Bay Bulls one morning for a 9:00 AM sailing.  As we left St. John’s and headed south, it got foggier and foggier, and by the time we hit Bay Bulls we could barely see ten feet in front of us.  Not to worry.  We were experiencing what is known as “capelin weather,” which meant we were in luck.  Capelin are tiny fish, about four or five inches long, that provide the main source of food for not only the cod, but many other species of wildlife in the area.  Capelin migrate through here in the summer, and are usually the most plentiful (like, you can scoop them off the beach with a shovel) after several hot days in a row followed by a cold, muggy, foggy spell.

Despite the weather being the pits most of the time, Newfoundland is definitely beautiful, rain or shine, and we were quite taken with the shoreline emerging suddenly from the mist, and disappearing just as suddenly.

Then we hit the mouth of Bay Bulls and saw a giant patch of birds, all feeding from the same place in the water.  This meant capelin, and so, if we were lucky, it also meant we might see some whales.  Then, not a hundred metres from where we were, we heard a humpback take a deep breath.  Then, a few seconds later, we smelled it.  Whale breath is not a pleasant thing.

Over the next hour or so, we were joined by two more humpbacks, who were very curious about us and the other tour boat next to us.  Instead of gorillas in the mist, we got humpbacks in the fog.

Justin, our highly experienced (and musically gifted!) guide, said this was the best year for whales he’d seen, and he’s been doing this for twelve years.  He was very good about explaining to us exactly what the whales were doing when we couldn’t see them.  You see this round patch of water?  That’s the whale’s footprint, essentially.  You get that sort of upswell when the whale makes a deep dive.  It sticks around for a surprisingly long time.

Whenever we thought the whales would get bored with us and take off, they would surface again and just sort of hang out between our two boats.  It was truly incredible.

At long last we had to bid the whales adieu and keep to our schedule.  We headed a bit further out of the bay to Gull Island, which we smelled before we saw.  This area is an ecological reserve for seafowl and has the largest population of puffins in the entire world.  But it’s also home to a huge number of other birds, and we got to see them all.

As we headed back to the Bay, we piled into the cabin for warmth.  When you sail through fog it tends to stick to you, so we were all coated with a light, salty mist, and our hands were so cold it made holding our cameras tricky.  But it was definitely worth it for such an amazing experience!

My third tour was actually just yesterday (because I’m writing this on the 24th of August), and I wrangled another Groupon package deal for four with Mullowney’s Boat Tours for $110, which was half-price.  Trav was staying with us at the time and so the three of us went.  I ended up giving the fourth ticket to one of the other passengers.  The highway to Bay Bulls is only one lane on both sides with little room for passing and we got stuck behind the slowest person alive on the way there, meaning that we arrived at Mullowney’s five minutes after 12:00 PM, the time the boat was supposed to sail!  We thought we had missed it entirely but fortunately, because I had made a reservation, the boat was waiting for us.  They had heard from other passengers that the traffic was bad and they stuck around until we got there, which was really nice.

Despite it being noon, Trav is not yet truly awake.

Today when we left Bay Bulls it was sunny and calm and absolutely glorious.  We had layered up in anticipation that we would get cold and we actually found ourselves to be quite comfortable, even a little warm, in our jackets.  Now, this is the North Atlantic, so for it to be this calm and quiet was extremely unusual.  If you do a tour, make sure to dress warmly.

It had been three days since any of the local tour companies had seen any whales, so we didn’t get our hopes up this time.  It is the end of the whales’ migratory season anyhow.  Because I wasn’t looking for whales, I got to focus a bit more on the sea birds around, and we had a great time laughing at the antics of the puffins, who are the most ungainly flyers I have ever seen.  The other birds regarded them with disdain, and chased them down for their fish.

Gull chasing a fish-laden puffin. Gulls are huge jerks, apparently.

Despite not seeing any whales, we all agreed that we’d had a great time.  Mullowney’s takes a bit of a different route from O’Brien’s, so the Pie and I got to see different sides of Gull island than we’d seen before, and it was nice to observe their habitat when it wasn’t shrouded in fog.  The pleasantness of the day alone made puttering around on the sea a true delight, and the companionship of our friendly young guide Alastair made for an entertaining trip.

Overall:

I can’t say that I had anything other than a very pleasant experience with all three of the touring companies I used this summer.  The staff were all very friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable about both sailing and the areas we visited, and I know from speaking to several of the employees that the companies are not in competition with each other.  That makes for a much friendlier environment, and they help each other out when it comes to spotting whales and bergs and the like.

When you take a boat tour there’s no guarantee that you will see whales or ice bergs or any of the more spectacular things out there.  There’s not even a guarantee that the water will be calm or the sun will be shining.  But even if you don’t get the jaw-dropping experience of seeing giant whales or colossal ice bergs, you can still appreciate nature writ large as you sail past Newfoundland’s ragged coast line and you hear the cries of hundreds of sea birds all around you.  Any day you go, whatever you see, you are guaranteed to have an experience you won’t forget any time soon.

More on the boat tour companies in this post:

Iceberg Quest: http://icebergquest.com

O’Brien’s: http://www.obriensboattours.com

Mullowney’s: http://www.puffinswhales.com

Capilano Suspension Bridge

Happy Birthday Ando!

When we were much younger, my brothers and I sailed with my dad on his ship across the strait from Victoria to Vancouver to see the sights.  Back then, I was too terrified to attempt the crossing at the Capilano Suspension Bridge, but the time had now come for me to face my fears.  Ando, his wife Teedz, and my two nieces, Tego and HG, decided to attempt the bridge while we were out west, and the Pie and I thought we would tag along.  I’m really glad we did.  In recent years, the rainforest surrounding the bridge has been turned into a huge educational conservation area, with lots of interesting stuff to see and do.  Admission is pretty steep ($28 for us students), but it’s worth it.

Right off the bat, you head across the 450ft (137m) bridge, suspended from cables 230ft (70m) above Capilano River.  The Pie told me that the bridge would support 96 elephants, so I was not to worry about falling.  As long as there were no elephants around.

Tego continually watched me for my reaction every time the bridge bounced under the feet of the hundred or so people crossing it at the time.

The view of the river (a little low at this time of year) from the middle of the bridge.

Once across, there were tons of things to see and do to get kids (and grownups) more in tune with the nature around them.  One such activity was to test out your wingspan.  HG was not pleased to be ONLY halfway between a raven and a great horned owl. She’s trying to make herself longer in this shot.

Tego was happier to be a great horned owl, almost a goose.

And the Pie broke the mould by being a giant, and an eagle at the same time.

We were surrounded by so many ancient and massive trees, cedars and firs and all sorts of things.  It was quite a shock to come from Newfoundland, where trees are maybe the height of a house and live for about 40 years, to see things like this Douglas Fir, which was 205ft tall, 20ft in diameter, and about 1300 years old.

Tego learned quickly what it means to be a tree hugger.

HG didn’t find the tree’s height all that impressive.

We also took part in the relatively new Treetop Adventure, which I actually found more nerve-wracking than the big bridge.

Teedz, Ando, and HG were happier than me.

But we got some great views and learned a whole bunch of stuff.

Then we crossed back over the bridge …

And went on the park’s newest attraction, the Cliff Walk, which is a wee construction sticking out from the side of the Capilano gorge.

Tego watching to make sure I don’t freak out.

Because the floor is made of GLASS in some parts.

HG again was unconcerned.

In fact she ran ahead while I clutched the rails.

Once our ordeal was over, the Pie and HG were pleased to accept their certificates for having completed every activity station in the park.  What you can’t see (because it matches his shirt too well) is the Park Explorer button that HG won for completing the Tree Top adventure.  She gave it to her uncle because it didn’t go with her outfit.

Definitely worth a visit!

How Not to Buy A Mattress

Image via beddingmaster.com

I usually cringe at airing dirty laundry (even if it’s not my own) in public, but this really takes the cake and has pretty much sucked a bunch of joy out of my summer.  So I will say this now, and for the record, that if you ever decide to buy a new mattress, never, ever purchase one from Nasafoam.  I will tell you the story here, because I’m feeling really, really vindictive right now.  Sorry about that.

You may recall me mentioning that the Pie and I had purchased a new memory foam mattress through a Groupon Deal.  It was $500 for a $1700 mattress, and as broke students, that struck us as a really good deal (you can see it here).  The question was, did they deliver to Newfoundland?  Many companies don’t, so I posted the question on Groupon’s FAQ page and received a response that to ship to Newfoundland would be $225.  You can see the posting here.  You will also note, for a later point I will make, that nowhere in the fine print does it say it does not ship to Newfoundland.

Anyway, we were happy with that shipping price so we bought the Groupon and submitted it to Nasafoam.  We typed in our information, everything, and then pressed the “submit” button.  Normally when you order something online you get some form of record of your transaction, whether it’s something you can print or something that is emailed to you later as a confirmation that you actually bought the thing.  Several days later I’d received nothing like that, save the “Thank you.  Your information has been submitted” that we saw after clicking the button.

So I emailed Nasafoam and asked for confirmation that I had actually submitted the order and asked for an ETA on delivery, as well as a final cost with taxes included.  I was told simply that “delivery will contact you with final cost.”  At that point, I left it at that.

A couple of weeks went by and I started to wonder when my mattress would arrive, so I emailed again, and was told that it would arrive in 2-3 weeks from the date of that email. That sounded good.  I started making preparations to renovate my office and all that jazz in preparation for my houseguests.

Future site of my mattress. Oh wait, no, never mind.

Five weeks after the date of that email I still had no mattress, and I was starting to get a little cheesed.  So I wrote to Nasafoam and told them that I was cheesed, and demanded a final bill and a shipping estimate.  I got no response.  I emailed twice more with no results.  Then the Pie discovered that Nasafoam had a Facebook page.  On the page they were telling Groupon customers that the wait for a mattress was 4-6 weeks and at this point I was onto almost nine.  I posted this on Facebook and Nasafoam informed me that they had not been receiving my emails.  I have kept every one of their automated receipt emails so I know that is not true and told them so.  Eventually I sent another, slightly angrier email to every email address at Nasafoam I could find.

The response was unsurprisingly disappointing.  One email response told me that my order would be shipped in 4-6 weeks, which of course indicated to me that the person I had emailed my message to had not actually read it.  I responded of course that it had been nine weeks and received simply a “I see that!  Thanks!” answer to that.  The other response I received was a very frosty one saying, essentially, that they had told me delivery would contact me and that they had no control over when their delivery company would deliver any of their products.

Think about that for a moment.  A company has no control over the delivery of its goods?  What kind of crap company is that?

And of course there was no acknowledgement that I was upset (which I mentioned in a very polite way, of course), nor any final bill (which I had requested for probably the fourth time).

The next week I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.  I felt really good about this.

Nasafoam comes back with the response that I haven’t paid my final bill and that’s why they haven’t shipped.

I respond with the fact that they have not sent me a final bill.

They respond again to tell me I haven’t paid my final bill.  Which they have sent to my email address, so they say.  Which of course they haven’t.

I may have turned into Godzilla at one point in this process.  Also I know I definitely growled out “HULK SMASH” a few times as well.

Image (c) Marvel, via “Without Envy”

Rather than smash my head into the wall at the ridiculousness of this situation (and I’m in Portland at this time, mind you, so I’m using my dad in St. John’s as proxy while I try to type out all this nonsense on my smartphone), I suggest that my father call them with my credit card number and we can sort this out.

He calls.  The guy who answers, according to my dad, is an idiot.  He tells my father that  I apparently filled out the form wrong, and put in Nova Scotia as my mailing address instead of Newfoundland.  He had the form right in front of him, he said (which is nice for him.  I never got a copy of my order form).  I’d like to point out here that I have been working in the legal world for almost a decade and as such am an extremely conscientious form-filler-outer.  I do not make mistakes like that.  I double-check everything.  And the Pie was sitting next to me as I filled it out.  He also double-checks.  And, as I pointed out to Nasafoam, Nova Scotia postal codes start with B, while mine in Newfoundland starts with an A, and I sure as heck didn’t mess that one up.

Their response?  ”Groupon is aware that we do not ship to Newfoundland.”

Really?  Could have fooled me.  I sent them a photo of the Groupon FAQ page where I asked them the shipping cost to Newfoundland.  Their response to that was just that I had made a mistake and should have been aware all along that they do not ship to Newfoundland.

And it just went on and on, response and rebuttal through the BBB where they simply ignored everything I said and made me look like the bad guy.  I pointed out their contradictions and blatant lies and they told me I was an idiot (or at least that’s how it felt to me).  The final verdict from the BBB was that Nasafoam was standing by their decision (to do nothing) and that they (BBB) were sorry that I was unhappy.  At least the BBB apologized. I’m in negotiations with Groupon right now to get my money back, and they’re being remarkably helpful, if a little slow, which has kind of renewed my faith in business.

When we returned to St. John’s, the Pie took a screen capture of the Groupon FAQ page where they give me the shipping quote for St. John’s and juxtaposed it next to the section of the BBB complaint where they tell me that I was “well aware it was for nova scotia only” (what? It was an Ottawa Groupon!) and posted it to Nasafoam’s Facebook page with a short paragraph about how not only did Nasafoam make us wait double the shipping time to receive our order but they lied to us and didn’t ship it to us at all.

The Pie’s graphic, with this commentary: “Nasafoam made us wait 11 weeks before telling us they would not ship us our mattress to Newfoundland. They also insist that we knew they only shipped to Nova Scotia but we were quoted a price to ship it to St. John’s, Newfoundland. They refuse to acknowledge any mistakes on their part and blame us entirely. Now a refund will only get us groupon dollars back and not our money back.”

Nasafoam deleted the comment and graphic the next day and closed their page to further posts.

Long story short, the Pie and I ended up sleeping on the floor while my parents were in town so that they could have our crappy old mattress.  The day after we returned to St. John’s we went to the lovely people at Cohen’s, and, for $600, purchased a similar memory foam mattress.  Add in $50 for delivery and they brought it right into our bedroom just a scant week later.  That’s it in that picture up there.  Isn’t it pretty?

Sorry for the venting here, folks, but I really hate it when people lie to me, especially when it’s a local Canadian business.  If you’re curious to know more about the crap that Nasafoam has put me through, send me a message and I can forward you our long and convoluted correspondence, together with the BBB complaint form (as I said, I keep meticulous records).  And if you’ve had a similar experience with some company who refuses to acknowledge any wrong doing, please feel free to rant in the comments below.  I’m ready and willing to listen.

Summer in St. John’s

The harbingers of summer here in Newfoundland are not the dandelions taking over the green spaces (although they do that, too), nor are they the rare but blindingly beautiful cloudless skies.

No, they’re icebergs, and their smaller components, growlers and bergy bits.  Actually, now that I think about it, that’s pretty typical of this upside-down province: ice is the herald of warm summer days.  After all, Gren and I were out in a (short) blizzard just three days ago.

When the Pie and I were here house-hunting in June of 2008, St. John’s was experiencing one of the best years for icebergs in a long time.

Then we moved here, and, true to form, saw barely any ice for the next three years.  This year, however, is another good one for ice, and you don’t have to stray too far from town to see it. This one was nestled in Quidi Vidi Bay a few weeks ago.

It was worth struggling over slippery rocks in high winds and sleet to get a better view.  Unfortunately I only had my phone with me, so the picture quality isn’t what it could be.

The Pie wasn’t too happy without his touque.

These ones are off the shores of Blackhead, a tiny ancient settlement between St. John’s and Cape Spear.

I wanted to get all three in one shot but they were really far apart.

We headed a little further south to see if we could get a different angle and ended up at Dead Man’s Cove for these pictures.

A very nice lady took our picture with a berg.  Unfortunately the berg looks more put together than we do.

Then we found these bits up in Middle Cove.

That’s the Pie down there on the beach.

There were bits of ice all broken up on the beach.

I got to touch a piece.  It was very cold.  If I hadn’t been worried about the pollution I would have taken it home and put it in a drink.

Jelly Bean Row

I love Quality Street chocolates. They remind me of everything good. And I love the colourful wrappers they come in. I’ve wanted to make something out of them for years. This year at Christmas I made sure to save all the wrappers so I’d have lots to work with.

Quality Street also appeals to my environmentalist side. You can re-use the tins for anything you like. You can recycle the foil wrappers that go under the clear ones, and recently, the company started making the clear wrappers out of vegetable products, so you can actually COMPOST them. How cool is that?

So what am I making with these?  I’m glad you asked.  St. John’s is famous for its colourfully-painted and artfully crooked row houses.  They’re often likened to a line of jelly beans, stacked on their ends — Jelly Bean Row.

If you watch any of those ever-popular tourism Newfoundland and Labrador commercials, you’ll see a few of them (though in real life they’re not quite so quaint — or clean).

So I thought I would make a few out of Quality Street wrappers, something to send people to paste in their windows, or to hang on their Christmas trees as ornaments, something that will catch the light and give them a taste of St. John’s at home.

The house construction is pretty simple.  I used black construction paper, folded in half, as a frame.  Then I cut out the frame using a craft knife and inserted and glued down the wrappers in the appropriate spaces.  Then I cut out windows and doors from the black paper as well, making sure to glue them to both sides so the ornament is reversible.

The problem with this particular material is that the wrappers always want to go back to their wrinkled state, and the construction paper doesn’t do a lot to prevent it.

A heavier-grade card would probably work better in keeping the stuff rigid, but at the same time, it would be harder to manipulate.  I wanted to make several of these hanging ornaments and create a sort of mobile for Doodle for her birthday, but the physics of it continued to defeat me — the ornaments were simply too light to be able to balance everything properly.  And I had it all planned so the houses went up on a slant, too!

Alas. In any case, they are pretty enough placed in a window or on your tree.

Have you tried Fussell’s?

This is how Fussellette got her name.

She was sitting in the MUGS room with the Pie, talking about, of all things, pie (we don’t call him that because he’s sweet and flaky, after all).  They were discussing the merits of ice cream versus whipped cream as a topping.

Fussellette, a native Newfoundlander, mentioned that growing up, she had always had Fussell’s on her pies and desserts.

The Pie’s first reaction was along the lines of, “what on earth are you talking about?  Fussell’s?”

I’ve never heard of it either.  So Fussellette bought us some.

Apparently it’s a sterilized thick cream in a can, a Newfoundland staple.  Ostensibly it’s from the Golden Butterfly Brand, but on the back you can see it’s distributed by Smucker’s, which is part of Nestlé.  Globalization …

It’s rather clotted and yellowish, but tastes just like what it is, thickened cream.

We plopped it on our pie.  It was good.