New Beginnings

When mornings start early (sometimes way too early)  uniforms, bags, school notes and the whole busy shebang ~ breakfast for Him and me has always been a precious time to catch up, plan, laugh and just be us.  Without really realising it, over the years we've become breakfast buffs! Good really because it's led us to the best breakfast spots wherever we happen to be.
When we lived atop one of the Mounts, we discovered The Vancouver Cafe just below, hugging a corner of a pretty heritage house lined street.

Sublime Food! My personal quest for The Best Fruit Toast ended here ~ crammed with sweet dried fruit, nuts and tasty seeds, here was a party of a slice, sitting before me, and served with discs of spiced butter just to add to the fun!  Visions of this toast would start invading my mind space just around the time the children would be exiting the car at the school gates!
Before long this was our regular haunt, and we were always rather charmed  that the owner would often stop at our table for a little chat  ~ making us feel very welcome.
It was during one of those exchanges that she asked what I did for a living, and on finding out that I was a writer, offered me a ticket to an upcoming event that was being held at the cafe, and asked me to write about it.
When I gave her that first piece I will never forget the genuine delight she expressed after reading it ~ This industry is choc a block with competitive talent, so it's unusual to find someone openly admire your work.
This woman was my friend now, she didn't know it yet, but she was!
Our mutual passion for all things culinary soon became apparent, after some weeks of creative, mainly food inspired chats, we agreed that the world needed a cookbook written by us!  It's something we're still travelling towards.....
Meanwhile Alison thought that some kind of publication chronicling the community life that surrounds and is linked to the cafe, would be a unique way for her customers to be entertained and informed.
So it was that the Vancouver View was born.