Cilantro is love.

We took my dad out for dinner today because it was his birthday and he's still teary about his mom. We went to the Cannery, which is kind of cool, because it's down in the middle of the Port of Vancouver. You need to go through the security check-in to get down there, so that they can keep tabs on how many vehicles go through and make sure that you're not a terrorist.

I doubt terrorists would be driving around in a bright yellow Plymouth Caravelle two years away from having vintage plates. But we would.

And we would drive past all the cranes loading and unloading the container ships, past the fish canneries and grain elevators. Past the exact same rendering plant where Pickton used to send the dead bodies of prostitutes to be turned into cosmetics and glue. Well, pieces of prostitutes. The pieces the pigs wouldn't eat. And, well, allegedly. Innocent until proven guilty.

And all of this is near where mom used to work just out of high school, doing all sorts of trading of goods and supplying equipment to longshoremen. Women from the canneries used to come in and ask in very poor English if they could purchase rubber gloves, but only left gloves and not the pair. They'd argue with them over whether or not they should be able to purchase single gloves or not, but the object of the game was to get them out of the door as quickly as possible, because they reeked of fish guts.

The Cannery Restaurant doesn't smell like fish guts though. It's got a nice view of the docks and the port, and the service and food are always really decent, at least when we've been there. Seems to me that last time I was there I had a piece of blue-rare ahi tuna marinated in rum and a peanut sauce. This time I had trout and pineapple salsa, which came with some scalloped potatoes that had almonds and leeks cooked into them.

I have become convinced that you can mix cilantro with absolutely anything and call it salsa. The first time I had mango strawberry salsa it literally blew my mind. Now I make salsa out of practically everything and leave it in the fridge. Sometimes I mix it with cheerios and eat it that way, just to use it up.