20 Foot Starfish

Today I drove down to East Sooke Park and out to Botanical Beach in Port Renfrew, 2 hrs away. Botanical Beach is an area of tidal pools with some pretty cool sea creatures growing in them. It's like going to an aquarium and peering down into the tanks from above. Pretty darn cool.

Of course I took lots of pictures and posted some of the better ones on winkflash (email for details). Of those, I chose a few to put here.

East Sooke Park:

Botanical Beach:

Finally, the highly anticipated 20 foot starfish!

Ok, so he's not that large, he just has 20 feet. That's all.

Where will I drive to next week? Probably nowhere far. I actually also hit China Beach today, but didn't take pictures since it was just a sandy beach. Going 4 places (2 locations in East Sooke Park) caused me to run a few of the hikes and I'm terribly exhausted.

Whales!

Each spring, some 22,000 gray whales migrate north from Mexico and pass by Vancouver Island on their way. This past week there was a festival for the migration, but I only learned of it on Saturday. So yesterday Brad and I drove up to Ucluelet & Tofino (4 hr away) to watch the whales as they swam by. It was also a great excuse to see the west coast on such a nice and sunny day.

The coast was a whole lot rockier than I expected, so the whales had to stay pretty far out to sea. But, we did see them blowing up water as they swam a few km out. Twice, I managed to capture the blowing with my camera. Here are the pictures (the whales are between the 2 humps in the rock). The second one is better, as I caught it as the water is being shot up rather than as it is just falling down. If you look at the full size image, you can see a stream of water in the center going up, with the rest of it being spray.


Sorry, it may be hard to see the pictures because Google compresses the images even more before they post them on Blogger.

We hiked along the Wild Pacific Trail, which gives some great views of the coast and the rainforest. I've added lots of photos to my winkflash album for the trip. As always, email me if you need details. Here are some highlights:

Pumpkin Stuffed Shells

Inspired by a pumpkin filled tortellini dish that I had at a restaurant in Florida, I set out to create a similar (pasta + pumpkin) but completely different dish. Since I hate pumpkin pie and loved the tortellinis, I thought I would like this creation. I was wrong.

Because I don't like it, I won't bother to type up a full recipe. But this is essentially how it went:

Stuffing for shells:

• 1/2 pumpkin goo from a can (not pie filling)
• 1/2 ricotta cheese
• cinnamon
  
• a bit of maple syrup (it didn't taste sweet enough)
• crushed red peppers (a little bit)
• pepper
• salt

Sauce:

• 1/2 ricotta cheese
• 1/2 milk
• flour (enough to thicken)
• cubed tomato
• crushed red pepper (way too much, I forgot it is extra powerful when heated)
• tiny bit of oregano
• rest of the stuffing that didn't fit in the shells

Do the usual: cook the shells, stuff them, bake in greased pan for 30 min at 350F. Eat over 4 days.

The reasons I didn't like it were: 1) tasted too sweet like pie and 2) red pepper was too strong in the sauce, though that may help with #1...

As a side note, the "jumbo" shells in Safeway (only brand they sold) were smaller than the ones Mom always used. Blame Canada.

This Americanadian Life

I know that many of you check my blog for those oddities that separate Canada from its neighbor (no, not Denmark). Mr. Netzel was kind enough to direct me to my competition in the blogosphere. This Americanadian Life is written by someone who moved to Toronto about the same time I moved to Victoria. Perhaps you will enjoy the read, at least it has a very clever title.