a tasty saturday morning

Last week, I stumbled on an article detailing the 25 best things to eat in Edmonton, and honestly, I thought, I'll just give this a quick read-through. There's probably not going to be anything of interest for me (like usual).

First find:
Hellas Foods (12407 109 Ave., 780-455-8168)
I started reading this one because I'd never heard of Hellas Foods. It's got the best spanakopita in Edmonton, apparently. But what? What. Wait a minute. At the end of the blurb, it quickly says that they also have tyropita. Someone sells tyropita in Edmonton?! We had NO  idea. This is by far bigger and more exciting news than the stupid spanakopita, people! You can get spanakopita anywhere. Tyropita, on the other hand, seemed to be something we could only get if I decided to make it or if we flew back to Greece.

Ok, so, the entire point of our trip was for the tyropita, but when we got there we found a larger, better selection of Greek foods than we had at the "other" store. We ended up leaving with an armful of goodies along with our tyropitas.

The tyropita

It was...good enough. We were really sad it was cold. They're not normally kept cold, so we had to wait until we got home to heat it up in the toaster oven. Now, remember, I've had tyropita many times in Greece, Idle Husband has eaten it all his life -- we're a little biased. This wasn't exactly a tyropita that we'd rush out to get every weekend. But considering this may be the only place that sells it, we'd definitely go again just to have another taste. A little longer in the toaster oven would solve the mostly temperature-related problem and there wasn't as much feta as we would expect to find (though, I don't mind it being easy on the cheese). That being said, the crust was light and flakey and it made for a yummy breakfast.

Other Greek things to get if you happen to wanna go there: 7 Days croissants, Petite Beurre (cookies), Elite wheat rusks (crackers), Krinos tea in bunches, Papadopoulos biscuits (cookies), Spicy feta dip, roasted red pepper and feta dip, and Greek yogurt. The prices were a little steep, but it was kinda worth it as a treat since we haven't seen most of these anywhere else. We'll probably go back to try their tzatziki dip (we didn't buy any this time cuz I'd already made a fresh batch on Friday), and IH was super excited by the honey so maybe that, too. And by that time, we'd probably be ready for another tyropita.

Second Find:

Duchess Bake Shop (10720 124 St., 780-488-4999)

Amazingly not far from Hellas Foods, is this cute little bake shop. Apparently, they sell the best macarons and you know what? I've never had a macaron. I keep seeing them in all their splendid colours on every blog imaginable, right down to recipes and detailed how-tos. I've been keeping an eye out for them, but I was getting so frustrated at not being able to find them that I was about thisclose to blindly attempting to bake them just so I could taste them (even though they're supposed to be really tricky to make correctly the first time). I had to have them. I've been obsessed. Now, I'd forgotten the name when we walked from Hellas Foods, and we ended up walking right past the store at first. There were a couple people standing beside it, but I honestly didn't think anything of it. I thought maybe there was a bus stop there. Whatever. On our second time by, we'd figured it out and by then, there were about 5 more people milling around waiting for it to open (and about 4 more people coming up the street). This was 5 minutes before opening on a Saturday. This place must get super busy.

First impressions: I loved how quaint the shop was. So cute with little cafe tables. I went to the counter to scope things out and I spotted the lovely macarons all lined up and ready. Except I was not expecting them to be so small. Are they normally small everywhere else? I kinda expected them to be about the size of a regular cookie, but instead they were maybe the size of a toonie. Maybe slightly larger, but not by much. That was kind of a let-down, honestly. Especially for the price. I had discussed it previously, and since neither of us knew what we were getting into, I decided I would buy one of each flavour they had. On hindsight, I wish I would have bought two of each. While I decided to delicately take a little nibble to sample each flavour, I handed the first one over to IH for a delicate nibble, too. Well, "delicate nibble" equates to popping the whole thing in his mouth and with that, the first cookie disappeared. Sadness for me as I'd just had a tiny, barely tasteable bite of the salted caramel (the flavour I've decided was probably my favourite). Anyway. Situation rectified, we tried the rest and they were all very delicious. The only flavour I didn't truly enjoy was lavender. It was good, don't get me wrong, but there's just something about lavender that makes for a soapy taste. It wasn't hugely soapy, but there was that aftertaste. I know it's edible, but it's really hard to seperate it from it's lotion and soap usage. Checking out their website, I see they have more flavours that weren't being offered to us on Saturday. Like strawberry, rose, and cafe. I'll definitely be going back in the future for these tiny treats because I really did love those little cookies. Besides, Idle Husband has promised to buy me more to make up for his huge man-nibbles.