Breakfast in Tofino

We took a little trip up to Tofino, BC this past weekend and made a sort of mini-vacation of it. We realized that we probably won't get to take an actual vacation this year so we thought we'd just make a 3-day weekend a few times between now and fall since that's much easier to do sometimes. Besides, there are still a ton of places in BC that James and I both would like to explore.

Funny enough we were trying to decide between Tofino and Jasper for our first long weekend when the internets helped decide for us. I get a ton of emails every morning from all of those coupon sites like Groupon, Ethical Deal, Living Social, etc. One morning a coupon for a half-price stay in a really nice little resort in Tofino came up. Perfect! Half price made it about the same as what we would have paid to stay anywhere else and now we get to pretend we're all fancy and stuff.

The place we stayed was sort of like a little condo on the beach. We had a little living room and kitchen, which was really nice. I love being able to cook when we're traveling. It makes it a bit less stressful to find food, especially first thing in the morning when you're barely awake anyway. As you can see, we did pretty well for breakfast while we were there.

It was kind of amazing how awesome this breakfast turned out to be. Not that I didn't think it would be good, but wow. This was so delicious it's not even funny. We found a little organic market in Tofino thanks to some help from my Twitter friends. We got a bunch of veggies for breakfast and some stuff to make a quick and easy dinner, plus a jar of pickles. Because really, we like pickles quite a bit. It was a bummer to find that these dill pickles had sugar added to the brine. I'm not a fan of sweet pickles, and especially not sweet pickles pretending to be savory and tricking me. To be fair, James didn't really think they were sweet, I just pick up on that like crazy in things that I expect to be savory.

Isn't that little kitchen cute?! The oven was full sized, too! Living in Vancouver, I've almost forgotten what full sized appliances look like. Everything is miniature here since the apartments are so small.

We ended up just buying a tub of Earth Balance instead of olive oil for cooking everything. That way we could also have a loaf of garlic bread with our dinner and not have to shell out for both Earth Balance and olive oil. I wish I had thought to bring that stuff with me. Oh well, it's not like we won't use it.

James spotted the fiddleheads right away at the market. I've never had them so I was quite intrigued. Thankfully there was a little flyer thing that gave a short run-down on how to cook these or I would have probably steamed them, though I'm sure that would have turned out just fine, too.

First you want to clean all of the brown bits off of the fiddlheads. It's hard to get it all, but just get as much as you can. To cook them, basically you want to slice up some garlic, saute it in olive oil for a few minutes then add the cleaned fiddleheads. Saute for 5-7 minutes and you're done. It's really that simple. They were quite fantastic.

The fiddleheads tasted quite unique. Sort of like asparagus or broccoli with just a tiny, subtle hint of bitterness. Sauteed for just a few minutes like that they were just soft enough and retain a bit of crunch. Yum! I'm going to check the local farmers market for some more of these for sure.

Oh, the rainbow chard. I have no idea what made these so stellar. I just lightly steamed the chard, I didn't even add salt or anything. They were so good, I couldn't stop eating them. As much as I love kale, I had forgotten how delicious this stuff can be. Wow.

We rounded everything out with some roasted yellow potatoes and sweet potatoes. I don't normally throw in a sweet potato with my breakfast potatoes, but I think I might do that more often from now on. Not only did it look cute, it was tasty, too!

We pretty much made all of this on the stove top, too. The potatoes I boiled until just soft and then stuck them in a 350 F oven with some Earth Balance, salt and pepper while I finished cooking everything else. Keep that in mind when you're traveling. A hot plate or a kitchenette or even a camping stove can bring you a wonderful, healthy meal that'll put a smile on your face (even if you haven't had your coffee yet) and keep you going all day. I know I was thrilled to have had such a great breakfast before a day of searching the beaches for starfish and looking for whales.

We didn't get any photos of the whales, though we did see 3 humpbacks! We did take a lot of photos at the beach while we were climbing on rocks and peering into tidepools. Though, here's a tip for you. If it's a really sunny day, but it's still cold and you're out playing around on the beach, think about not wearing your scarf. I had my scarf on all day long in the sun because it was cold, especially the wind. Now my face has a ton of color but my neck is stark white. It looks like I'm one of those women who wears too much face makeup of the wrong color for her skin or something.

Edit: Yes, these are my own photos. A couple of people asked me about them. We took a seaplane tour, that's how I got that shot of one of the islands. :)