have bowl? will travel!

Chopped salad out on the patio, served in my favorite salad bowl. At the bungalow in Los Angeles, CA.

The Yellow Bungalow is spending some time in Vancouver, Canada. Each Thursday, I’ll be sharing a more personal account of my adventures there. Join me as I discover this delicious city!

After the scouting trip filled with donuts and pork ribs, I went back to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks to finish up some work and pack up the rest of our belongings (sweaters, puffers, and warm weather gear!) before coming back to Vancouver for the longer stretch of 3+ months.

Before leaving the bungalow and my tiny, well-loved kitchen, I took a good look around and asked myself: “What do I absolutely need to take with me to Vancouver?” I glanced around and my eyes landed on the wooden salad bowl that gets rotated around the house on the regular. It’s not uncommon to find the bowl filled with ripening bananas for smoothies and lying on the buffet, cradling a watermelon and a couple of cantaloupe until I’m ready for them, and most often wiped out and piled with market lettuces and brought straight to the dinner table, the most beautiful way to eat salad that I know of. The bowl was a wedding gift from a very special friend, hand carved from a single piece of wood by a local artisan. This is the kind of piece that shares a lifetime with you, a bowl that bears witness to life’s celebrations and milestones, and then gets passed on to the next generation. The bowl was coming with me indeed.

The bowl is packed, the dog has his Canadian papers (no quarantine, thank goodness!), and we’re ready to join James in beautiful, delicious Vancouver. He also came back to California with us but only briefly, so he was already settled in at our new place.

Date square from Tartine Bread & Pies. Vancouver, BC.

Upon arrival in Canada, we dropped off the luggage (salad bowl and dog food!), then walked over to the local bakery, Tartine Bread & Pies, for a treat. Traveling makes me hungry and airport food does not do the trick. It’s very late in the afternoon and I need a snack but don’t want to ruin our dinner plans. I order a date square and a cup of coffee, then meet James and Marco at a little table outside. The sun is shining, the leaves are starting to change, and the air is crisp. The date square is exactly what I needed: buttery oat topping that crumbles when you bite into it, with a rich, complex caramel date center. I could certainly get used to this.

Date bar and coffee? Check. Husband and dog? Check. New city to discover? Check. I felt like life couldn’t get much better. And the truth was, it really couldn’t get much better.

Things were about to change…