Mark, Emma and Sarah all dropped me off at Kristina’s house at 10:03 on Saturday morning. A few minutes after he left I realized I was missing two critical items:
a) my camera
b) my wallet
There was no way I could go to Mt. Tremblant without either of them. The lack of wallet did nothing but:
a) disappoint
b) delay
c) fuel my growing OCD in regards to my wallet and its whereabouts.
I am alarmed by this increasing deterioration of my mental health. I’ve started to check my wallet’s location in my purse, bag or backpack more often than required, even though my rational self KNOWS IT’S THERE. It’s that lingering niggling one per cent of doubt that causes me to double and triple check everytime. But this time I checked and lo, it wasn’t actually there.
Anyway, Mark had taken the girls to Best Buy to purchase a copy of SNL’s Best of Christopher Walken DVD for the Boy’s Night he was hosting at our house.
Kristina and I raced to the Best Buy parking lot so I could check our car for the aforementioned bags and when it wasn’t there we were forced to backtrack to my home where they were sitting in a nice pile right beside the front door.
It’s about a two hour drive from Ottawa, and we celebrated the mid-point of the trip with a Quebecoise delicacy in a small casse croute (in a town of which I can’t recall the proper name of) but was designated Notre Dame de la Poutine.
Avec une Coke Diete s’il vous plait. Ohhh, it was good.
This was the first instance of what eventually amounted to a vast amount of cheese ingested over the course of two days.
We stayed at Kristina’s in-laws condo. Tremblant itself was pretty much how I remembered, although a lot had changed in the eight years since Mark and I had been there. It’s a storybook little “village” at the base of a ski hill. You can ski right into stores, restaurants and some of the hotels. It’s pretty cool. Four of the runs were open, but our weekend wasn’t about skiing. It was all about lazy leisure. And cheese, although the latter part wasn’t exactly intentional.
On Saturday night we decided to go for fondue – essentially replicating was we had eaten earlier in the afternoon – albeit in a slightly classier fashion.
Upon entry to the fondue place we were greeted by a scary underlying odour. It smelled like a combination of burned cheese, smoke, melting snow, and stale sweaty sneakers (which, in hindsight, was probably just been another kind of cheese). I was temporarily unsure of what we were getting ourselves into. But we were up for adventure and decided to stay. Kristina figured we’d stop smelling it after awhile, and she was right, but later I was distressed to learn that the stinky cheese smells had been absorbed in my clothes and my hair.
Upon our seating we were served a lovely white wine. The meal we ordered ($31 pp) included a massive bowl of cubed bread, about 8 hard boiled potatoes (FOUR potatoes pp?) and a gigantic pot of hot cheese mixture (a couple types of cheese with white wine) and perhaps surprisingly, a green salad.
The salad was good, but I felt it represented a symbolic gesture. I debated whether I should dip it into the fondue but decided it would be uncouth to do so… especially if it was found in the pot afterwards. I could picture the kitchen staff grumbling about the idiotic anglais. I ate it anyway, sans cheese. ANYTHING to offset and hopefully help dissolve the incredible amount of carbohydrates we were ingesting. The salad was a welcome addition afterall.
We had good luck with the bread chunks. They were simply delicious, and achieved a much higher ratio of cheese per dip. Each mouthful was heavenly in its cheesiness. The potato chunks however, had a much LOWER ratio of cheese per dipping and consequently we were not able to achieve suitable cheese coverage. The cheese just right slipped off! So what would be the point of eating potato over bread I ask you?
I stuck to the bread.
As we ate I watched the amount of cheese in that huge fondue pot slowly decrease. I tried not to imagine it filling my stomach and spilling over into my arteries. But it was so good! The other popular item on the menu appeared to be Raclette. That was interesting. Perhaps next time…
The rest of our weekend was spent watching movies, drinking martinis, eating (mostly) non-cheese items, tromping around the village of Tremblant, and on Sunday we went for a lovely swim in the local pool and the outdoor hot tub. It was fun to watch the skiers while we soaked.
The next day we had a somewhat healthier meal (I made a big salad) and yes, there was cheese in it.
I was delivered safely home around 7:30 Sunday evening, and I was happy to find my family waiting for me … all clean and scrubbed. Awww. So cute!
Thanks Kristina, for the lovely weekend!
Photos will be uploaded to my Flickr page later today.
