One of the surest signs of the approaching summer in Prince George is the evening scent of roasting meat on people's barbecues around town. When you take a stroll through your neighbourhood, the smell of steak and other red meat products being slowly cooked is almost enough to invite yourself over to a stranger's house for dinner. The ritual of inviting your friends and family over for a nice steak dinner is a classic Prince George act of friendship and love. The simple steak dinner becomes a symbolic gesture that lets your friends and family know that you care. You care enough to spend a lot of money on beef for your loved ones.
Victorians have their own version of this tradition. The west-coast steak, as my husband and I coined it, is salmon. To put the salmon dinner in context, you have to understand that although we lived for many years in a city on the ocean with the best fish and seafood available, we don't like it. In Victoria, the act of love between friends is cooking up a cedar-planked salmon accompanied with assorted bivalves and mollusks. Yummy. Picture a young university student from Prince George with a limited palate invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at a friend's house. Missing her family in Prince George, she walks into the friend's house to discover that, instead of turkey for Thanksgiving, we are having a clam-and-lemon-stuffed salmon barbecued on a cedar plank. I know my friends love me because this was a huge salmon and there were lots of clams. I ate it and it was pretty good for clam-stuffed salmon. I remember that dinner fondly and every time someone invites me for dinner in Prince George, I know that it is most likely going to be a red meat product not an ocean creature and I am relieved that I don't have to somehow find out what's for dinner before I say yes.
I love barbecues in Prince George and the smell of roasting meat, not salmon. It's nice to be home where you are more likely to be served a woodland forest creature than a fish from the deep-blue sea. Enjoy the summer, fire up the barbecues and grill up some beef Prince George. If you invite me for dinner and serve me salmon, I'll still eat it because I'm grateful someone cooked.
