Biking the Seawall
Saturday we set out for a long bike ride with a planned route of going all the way around the Stanley Park Seawall, then past English Bay, through Yaletown to Science World to Granville Island and the Spot Prawn Festival and back over the Burrard Bridge. The main goal of this trip was ‘food gathering’ which meant both breakfast half way through the ride and picking up food stuff for the weekend along the way.

Breakfast and Boats
After making our way from Coal Harbour around the very busy Stanley Park seawall we stopped just under the Burrard Bridge at Marmalade Kitchen and Bar. We were lucky to get a bar seat right on the path and parked our bikes up against the railing. We faced straight across False Creek to Bridges restaurant on Granville Island. We had a great breakfast of Pancakes with Blueberries for Jeff and Crab cake Eggs Benny for Tara and watched the parade of power boats, dragon boats, kayaks, canoes and jet skis go by. The view was perfect! The service was a bit slow but it did not matter.

Spot Prawn ‘Newbies’
After brunch we got back on the bikes and headed around False Creek to Granville Island, our destination the Spot Prawn Festival at the False Creek Fisherman’s Wharf. The area was packed with people. We got in line on the dock to secure our fresh spot prawns (even though we had no idea what we were going to do with them). After paying our $12 for a pound we were very surprised to get a bag of prawns (15 in total) that were still alive and kicking. In fact they were poking through the plastic with their antennas so we had to double bag before putting them, still kicking, into the back pack for the ride home. It was a good thing that Jeff was riding with the pack because they jumped and poked all the way home.

Still alive and kicking
After a few more stops to get our favorite J. Beethoven Corned Beef, Emmenthal and Cranberry Grainy Mustard at Cardero Bottega (for Sunday’s Canucks Dinner) and to get corn and potatoes from the Robson Public Market we made it home with a bag of spot prawns still alive and kicking. View our Flickr photo set here.  After reading many websites and web recipes for spot prawns we agreed that the best thing to do would be to boil them right now, while still alive, just like a lobster. So that is what we did, and they turned out great!  Two minutes in boiling water and they were nice and pink. After cutting off the heads (yuck) they were the perfect ‘peel and eat’ snack. Since we had never had them before we were surprised to find them more dense and meaty than regular prawns with a texture a bit like lobster and somewhat sweet. While some of the website recommended sucking out the heads or saving them for soup, we did neither.  We peeled and ate the prowns while hot, with a side dish of melted butter – they were delicious!

Spot Prawn season runs for 6 to 8 weeks.  The prawns are for sale daily (in the afternoon) at the False Creek Fisherman’s Wharf and make a delicious, and very sustainable, less than ‘100 mile’ meal.

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