March 4, 2023
Day 3: Montreal II
Oh my, more snow!
Morning brought another snowfall in Montreal. It had me checking the weather in Porto - golly, it will be rain all week. It's time to forget about weather and just get on with it, I guess. Certainly the Montrealers do not pause for something as minor as snow. We jumped in the car to go to karate class. Even so we began by watching a literal movie in the backup camera of the car as we prepared to leave the driveway. First a tow truck came and in time dragged away one stuck parked car. Then a variety of snowplows blasted by behind us, on the street, on the sidewalk. Finally it was our turn to take to the road. It was not all that bad. We even saw one cyclist on the Rachel Street bikeway!
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To replenish any lost calories at karate we zoomed over to the Polish Bakery. Our main reason was their torte, called a Stefanka, which is seven layers of a lot of chocolate. According to an internet posting "Americans of Eastern European descent have come to call the Polish ciasto stefanka and Hungarian stefánia torta by the name seven sisters cake, referring to its seven layers (six layers in most Hungarian versions). It can be made as a loaf cake or a round cake and resembles Hungarian dobos torta without the caramel topping." Of this, only the seven layer but accurately describes the local Stefanka, making the one from Polish bakery something of a specialty.
Another specialty is the Polish donuts, or Paczki. We needed a box of those, and Swiss Meringues, and a poppy seed (pavot, mohn, muhn, eh) strudel. I checked with Josh and found that only the Stefanka was in honour of our visit. The other stuff was "normal". No wonder the staff knows Josh and the girls so well, and sent best wishes home to Sabrina and Joe, together with some extra Paczki and candies. This also illustrates the way in which a big city divides itself into neighbourhoods, and within each will have small stores and a small town approach.
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One final shout out, requested by my brother, comes also from the bakery realm. Reading the references to the Whippet cookies, he asked me to eat a May West for him. According to Wikipedia, "A May West is a round dessert cake with creme filling. It was created in Canada, and continues to be particularly popular in the province of Quebec. It is currently made by Vachon Inc., a division of Canada Bread. It was originally called a "Mae West", after the eponymous movie star, but the spelling was changed in the 1980s.
The cake was invented by René Brousseau, patissier at Vaillancourt Inc., a Quebec City bakery. As of 1932, May West cakes were made by Stuart Ltd, run by the wealthy Montreal-based Allard family; they were bought out in 1979 by their longtime competitor, Vachon Inc."
A Mae West, it must be admitted, is not a very high quality product. But like a Twinkie, it has a history and a claim to be looked back on fondly. Not that May West has gone anywhere. It was easy to buy a box of them at the store down the street. And the kids seemed to like them. So, Harold, here you go:
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