Poutine - those Canadians know what's up.

If I had to pick one thing to eat for the rest of my life it just might be poutine.  Honestly though if I ate poutine every single day then 'the rest of my life' would be shortened to a few years.  This artery-clogging goodness has its roots in Quebec, Canada.  Although arguments on what is considered the "original" poutine abound, poutine is basically a glorious mess of fries, cheese curds, and gravy.

My first encounter with this divine snack was on July 6, 2013 when my boyfriend and I drove up to Canada for the day to visit Playland.  Playland is part amusement park, part country fair, and due to poor planning skills my boyfriend and I failed to exchange our USD to CAD.  Thankfully there was ONE eatery in the park that accepted Visa.  We ordered some pizza, poutine, and sprite, not expecting anything amazing.  We were wrong.  Poutine was a mixture of crunchy, melty, salty, heavenly deliciousness.

The second time I met up with poutine was in September.  Again my boyfriend and I drove up to Canada for an overnight stay in downtown Vancouver - this time prepared with Canadian money.  I had gone on Yelp to find some poutine places and the #1 review was for Mean Poutine on 718 Nelson Street.  This place definitely had some mean poutine.  In fact, the poutine that my boyfriend and I ended up getting was called "The Mean Supreme Poutine" which had beef, bacon, peppers, mushrooms, and onions.  This poutine was one of 7 specialty poutines but you also can make your own!  They also serve the most amazing hotdogs ever!  You can view their menu here.

Finding cheese curds at a grocery store proved to be a bit difficult - even after hitting up Whole Foods and local markets.  Unfortunately I live 2 hours away from the Tilamook cheese plant - where I know they have cheese curds - so you can understand my excitement when discovering the Fred Meyer that was 2 minutes away from my apartment had some in stock.  I bought some gravy packets - those 58-cent powder ones - and some frozen fries.  I also added some caramelized onions to the mess.  The result wasn't as good as Mean Poutine's, but it satisfied my craving for it.

Nom, nom, nom!

Poutine is the perfect snack when you feel like being particularly gluttonous.  This weekend my boyfriend discovered that Trader Joe's carries poutine packs in their freezer section!  We also added kalua pig shipped up from Hawaii made by my father.  

Look for poutine in the freezer section at your local Trader Joe's!

Verdict?  We definitely should've added salt or something to the Trader Joe's fries.  They were a lot thicker than the generic Ore Ida fries I was used to, but also tasted like very bland potatoes.  The cheese curds were also a bit on the rubbery side since they were frozen in little packets and needed to be defrosted, but luckily we had some fresh cheese curds from Fred Meyer on hand.  The kalua pig definitely saved it.  Nevertheless, long live poutine.