Photo from Pixabay
Here is…. A passion that started 4 years ago. In a sea buckthorn field in the Eastern Townships.
That day, I was with my son Sébastien, a chef in Montreal, picking sea buckthorn. We got pricked a lot while harvesting a few hundred grams of this boreal berry!
This plant has lots of really unpleasant long thorns. So what should you not do for great discoveries?
Sébastien made a delicious mousse, served with an excellent game pâté.
I didn’t know sea buckthorn. And I had no idea what adventure this would take me on: from Estrie, to Quebec, to Lake Saint-Jean and to the north of Norway (end of January, 300 km north of the Arctic Circle, when the sun doesn’t rise, and yes!).
I discovered other wild berries, boreal spices, wild mushroom mustard, spruce vinaigrettes and so much more.
I needed nothing less to become passionate about it and want to devote time to it.
Especially that…
Especially since I also love all this snow in winter, whether we’re cozy, floating in front of a fireplace or outside snowshoeing in the woods.
Not to mention hiking in these large, majestic spaces, in summer and autumn.
So, celebrating the northernness of Quebec, what does that mean? What is Nordic Quebec?
Here it is… a list in a random order!
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- A hike in the Charlevoix region
- A tiny wooden camp in the woods
- Cook salmon over a campfire
- Fiddleheads or wild mushroom mustard to accompany your meats
Autumn in Nunavik- Wild blueberry pancakes
- Candles that smell like pine
- Canoe camping in national parks
- Gravlax with boreal spices, homemade
- A soap scented with sea buckthorn and Labrador tea, or balsam fir
- Big woolen stockings for a cocooning evening
- A memorable boreal meal at La Légende restaurant in Quebec
- A stew with a mix of Kamouraska spices
- A snowshoe walk among snow-covered fir trees
- A mulled wine by the fire
- A night in an ice hotel
- A cranberry muffin and a northern pecan tartlet
- The Coureurs des Bois and their 160 km cross-country skiing (Canadian Ski Marathon)
- An evening of “ice skating and beaver tail” at the Old Port of Montreal
- A glass of ice wine with goat cheese toast
- Works by local creators who speak to us about Nordicity.
Are you tempted? Are you coming to discover it with us?
I could say more… But for you, what is Quebec”s nordicity, this part of the country in the most northern part of America?
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