I could tell you about the excitement level Ezra woke up with at the promise of attending an ice bar.

I could tell you about whizzing around the rink playing air guitar to AC/DC.

I could mention the spectacular, five star fall that Hannah executed, trying to get off of the ice.

I could make you laugh describing the juxtaposition of the old guy “with something to prove to a 15 year old” shuffling around the rim of the rink with the graceful ice dancers practicing in the center.

Instead… I’ll tell you about the poutine.

Poutine.

Just one word on the overhead menu in the cafe made my eyes go wide and my heart race.

Poutine.

Could it be true? Surely not.

Poutine.

Perhaps the only food that Canadians can claim as originally their own (besides frozen whale and seal blubber, but who wants to munch that while she watches her kids skate?)

Poutine: golden french fries, drowned in brown gravy, slathered with melted cheese.

Affectionately nicknamed by my husband as, “a heart attack on a plate.”

The cheese is the kicker, of course. Traditionally it’s a mild white cheese curd, which is not available on this side of the planet, but a stringy mozzarella was not a bad substitute.

It’s embarrassing, the relish with which we mopped up every morsel of the greasy goodness. Canadian joy pulsed through my veins. “Yeah, but it’s going to settle like a brick in your stomach in about an hour, Mom,” Elisha annoyingly, and accurately, pointed out. Who cares. It was a taste of home.

I don’t know if a person who hasn’t spent a very long time away from “home” can fully appreciate the longing one occasionally gets for taste memories. There’s a visceral pull that is as powerful as any emotional homesickness and harder to soothe because of the absolute impossibility of procuring certain ingredients. At least when I miss people, I can call home!

Poutine. It was beautiful.

Of course so was the skating, and so was the novelty of drinking out of cups made entirely of ice, and the artistically arranged Tapas at the Chill On Ice Bar that we visited as part of the kids’ job. Did I mention the kids have a job? They’re testing all sorts of places for “kid friendliness” for an organization called Bound Round that is putting out a series of traveling apps for kids that we think are pretty cool. We used their Sydney app and loved it. When the kids were invited to be testers, they jumped at the chance! This weekend they tested the Icehouse for skating and the Ice Bar for food and crazy fun.

“Well, it was WAY better than ice skating in Singapore, at least!” Elisha announced. Which of course lead to a bevy of complaining about the difficulty of skating on a plastic rink and how “ridiculous” that was so close to the equator.

No matter how far and wide we travel them, our Canadian-American blend makes us notorious ice snobs the world ’round.