Sip, sup and siesta like a Spaniard for 7 days on the ultimate food adventure!

Share your best travel recipe to go on a culinary assignment to Spain.

Wouldn't this be an amazing adventure?!?! I came across this contest on Twitter today. All you foodies get on it and enter! I'm excited about anyone winning this contest, and you should be too, because the winners have to blog daily about their adventure, so everyone will be able to be part of the adventure.
Here are some details from the website:

We’re looking for three culinary explorers to embark on food-fuelled assignments to uncover the local recipes, techniques and attitudes that make Spain a seriously celebrated food destination.

This is your opportunity to go on an all-expenses-paid trip to learn from the producers, chefs and home cooks that are so passionately dedicated to Spanish cuisine. You could be scoffing churros and preparing patatas bravas in Madrid, cooking fideuàs and indulging in crema Catalana in Catalunya or perfecting a tortilla Espanola and gulping gazpacho in Andalucia - all right alongside the locals.

What the judges are looking for

We are looking for three culinary anthropologists to explore the history, traditions and social habits that define Spain's cuisine.
The three winning foodies will discover the techniques, the ingredients and the influences that make food from the Iberian Peninsula truly mouth-watering and unique - through visiting the sources and cooking alongside the local people.
Does this sound like your type of gig? Then it is up to you to convince our judging panel through your recipe, story and essay that you have the spirit of adventure and passion for food to be chosen for this opportunity. We will be looking for:

• a unique, drool-worthy, tried-and-tested recipe (with accompanying photos of the dish, cooked by you)
• a great story behind your recipe
• strong eye for detail
• a compelling reason why we should send you to Spain

What you'll be doing

Each food explorer will keep a daily blog on World Nomads documenting their culinary experiences in Spain featuring stories, photos and recipes from the road.
You could be preparing pisto in Madrid, trying the world famous jamon serrano in Andalucia or whipping up the perfect allioli to go with lunch under the shade of an olive tree in Catalunya.
While on assignment, all of the winners’ experiences will be filmed by an accompanying cameraman. That means if you win, you must be comfortable having every bite captured on film.

What are you waiting for? Go enter! Oh, you can do that here by the way.

The Old Farm Market outside Duncan, B.C., Canada

I know we've already had Halloween and Thanksgiving, but I don't want to miss sharing these things. I'm sorry I am late.

Back in October, hubby and I attended a conference in Victoria, B.C., Canada. In grade 9, I went to a boarding school in Duncan, B.C., which is about an hour north of Victoria. I had been hoping to get back and see my old stompin' grounds someday and we were so close, so before we headed home, hubby made sure we had time to go up and see my old school. We couldn't get a hold of someone to officially set up a visit, so we just showed up and hoped we could walk around a little. Well, goodness me, we happened to pull in on Sunday afternoon about 10 minutes before they started an open house event! We were the first ones there so we were honored to receive a full tour of the facilities from the current head girl. It was pretty awesome to not only re-visit my past, but also to be able to share a piece of such a memorable part of my life with my husband.



After we left, I was hoping to find a vegetarian style place to eat, but considering almost everything seemed to be closed on a Sunday out there, I think we were lucky to find anything to explore at all. We did end up finding this great market just outside Duncan right off the highway. It was just so quaint and full of country charm. I would love to be a "regular" at a place like this. I hope that those Duncan shoppers don't take The Old Farm Market for granted. We picked up some snacks for the ride back to Victoria to hold us off until we found a restaurant to eat at.






There was an absolutely huge pile of pumpkins outside. I found it funny that there was a sign saying, "No Climbing Pumpkin Pile. Thanks, Management".






I thought, "Who would climb on a pumpkin pile?!?" Well, I guess I must be totally naive, maybe because I am the mother of only girls, but 1 minute later we hopped into our rental car and what did I see as we were pulling out? Two boys climbing up the pumpkin pile!

Coming Up...

Wow! Has it really bee almost 2 months since posting?

I can’t imagine having any more crazy stuff happen to me (none of it is food or vegan related), so I should be able to post with some regularity now? I have so many posts saved up. I have material at least until Christmas. (smile) For simplicity sake, I will not post my “events” in chronological order, but just post whatever back-logged post is easiest to do for each particular day. I have been to Victoria, B.C., Canada and to Shanghai and Beijing in China and also San Francisco in the last few months, so I have lots of vegan adventures to share. Stay tuned.

VegNews Magazine

The other day I finally had the opportunity to visit a local shop here called Earth's General Store. I was there for a quick browse to see the selection of items that they carried. I ended up walking out with the most recent issue of VegNews from their selection of magazines. The magazine has the subtitle of "VegetarianNEWSFOODPLANETTRAVELBUZZ". There were a few vegetarian magazines to choose from and I ended up picking this one because it had the most vegan references on the cover. I was delightfully surprised to begin to read and find that the focus of the magazine is actually more on vegan eating (and living) than vegetarianism. While devouring the magazine, I made an entire page of notes with websites to visit, books to read, little thoughts, and some products I may look into. I am sure you will see posts on a lot of these things as I work through my notes in the coming week or so.

It looks as though VegNews offers regular organized vegan/vegetarian group trips. Although the current trip is sold out, it looks fascinating. It is a 12-day trip to the state of Rajasthan, India and includes, among other things, a visit to an all-vegetarian village, daily yoga classes, and a vegan cooking class.

My two favorite parts of this issue were an article discussing race, class and equality in veganism in America and an article with a selection of some of the best recipes from VegWeb, a vegetarian website with more than 15,000 recipes submitted by users.