A late Thanksgiving and turducken

Quick change artists

Like some kind of lifestyle quick change artists we slipped into Vancouver, exchanging our “slippahs” and board shorts for flannel and fly rods in our friend’s basement storage locker where she kindly made some space for our gear.

Donning proper attire for the Pacific Northwest we were ready to head towards the ferry at Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo where we would spend a month chasing salmon and foraging for mushrooms.

Vancouver Island calls us in the fall like the salmon back to the rivers. The summer crowds have long gone and some businesses have tucked themselves in for the winter but for us it’s a magical time.

Canadian Thanksgiving

We have arrived the day after Canadian Thanksgiving and missed the official opportunity to cook up a bird and stuff ourselves silly. We would be expecting my brother in law and sister in law and decided we would have a late Thanksgiving dinner with them. But what about finding a nice turkey and all the trimmings post Thanksgiving day? Maybe we could find a duck or at least a good chicken to roast. Then like a thanksgiving miracle we received an email from our friends at Echelon Foods who decided to save the day and send us all three and then some.

Echelon Foods

A turducken is traditionally a boneless chicken stuffed into a boneless duck stuffed into a boneless turkey. An Echelon Foods turducken roast is a boneless rolled roast of the trio of birds, layered with sausage meat and tied with bacon protecting its football sized girth. It says it serves 10 to 12 people which meant we were good to go for dinner and the hallowed hot turducken sandwiches the following day(s). The smells from the roasting pork and fowl filled our ocean side cottage and late or not thanksgiving dinner was on with triple the goodness of easy to carve turducken deliciousness.

Coho salmon

The Coho salmon were starting to make their way into the rivers and the fishing was turning on. My brother in law had never cast a fly in his life, but with a quick lesson was setting the hook on enough chum salmon to put a smile on anyone’s face. Bald eagles landed on the beach to feed on a salmon, sea otters dart along the shoreline like they just stole your wallet and seals swim within feet of you in the pool just below.

Wet forests

The river is alive with fish and soon it hypnotizes you into a feeling of belonging right there at that exact moment. Off the river we wandered through wet forests searching for mushrooms always being rewarded with at least a couple on each outing and sometimes striking it rich with the mother load of fragrant pine mushrooms.
2015 has been a tough year for us but we still had lots to be thankful for and look forward to returning to the island again next year to answer the call of the forest and rivers. 

If you’re interested in ordering an Echelon turducken or turducken roll wrapped in bacon for your Christmas dinner or other event please contact Echelon Foods.