Rhymes with Hungry

I take back all the bad things I've said about Kowloon

2011-08-03T16:47:00.007-04:00

Your dining out habits change drastically when you have a toddler. You need to figure out where you can go where people don't care if:

1) there is high pitched shrieking with your appetizer
2) there is the possibility of thrown food
3) someone runs up to a fellow diners' table and tries to climb into the booth

This is how we ended up dining at the Kowloon on Rte 1 in Saugus on a Saturday afternoon at 4. I used to snort whenever this place came on to the Phantom Gourmet. I thought, Man... those Andelman brothers must have some sort of deal with the owners of this place because it seems like every second episode, they mention the PuPu Platter and the Kowloon Komedy night.

So we stayed away from the PuPu Platter since appetizers that are on fire are generally not a good order with a curious toddler at the table. We got chicken wing appetizer, a whole fried fish, and something else that I can't recall... probably because I slugged down a Mai Tai before any food came.

L got a cup of milk with a cute straw adorned with an umbrella. She promptly destroyed it.

And yes, there was high pitched shrieking. She was probably summoning some of her dolphin friends because she judged from the decor that there should be some marine life somewhere. Note the mommy shushing finger depicted above.

Oh the things we do for our children.

Deep Fried Egg Topped Poutine @ Saus

2011-07-17T07:00:00.004-04:00

I'm Canadian, so I know a good poutine when I see/ingest one. This is my second time dining at Saus, but the first time that I noticed the deep fried egg on the menu. I envisioned a battered and hard boiled egg that was dipped in the deep fryer, but boy was I wrong.

E made the order and got us a Belgian Poutine topped with aforementioned egg and a waffle with salted caramel sauce.

Such a pretty deep fried egg! My guess is that they cracked the egg into the oil and then the white got all crazy and the yolk stayed intact and was cooked to a medium hard boil. We had to be careful carrying it over to the table so that it didn't topple over.

As soon as L saw it she started yelling, "more more"! Which in toddler-ese means "gimme". She was a fan of the fries, but not so much into the curds. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get cheese curds in New England. You can special order them at most fancy cheese shops, but this didn't help me when I was planning the menu for my Canada Day party only 2 days in advance of the event.

Waffle was also delicious. Salted caramel is delightful and waffle perfectly crispy. One of the staff showed us their waffle iron which is cast iron, gets super hot and helps the crispness by the sheer weight of the iron. He said they heat it to 190 degrees Celsius which I bet could result in some pretty serious occupational hazards.

Saus does a brisk late night business as you may well imagine since it is situated right next to a bunch of bars close to Quincy Market. Many drunk poutine purchases on the weekend I suspect.

During the day it's quite family friendly with nice clean tables and no worries if you drop fries on the floor or make squawky noises! Bon appetit!

Does American Chicken Taste Like Wood?

2011-07-03T07:40:00.007-04:00

Two of my co-workers are originally from China. They both mentioned to me over lunch the other day that when they first moved here, they thought that the chicken here tasted like wood. In order to get yummy tasting chicken they would often resort to buying fresh killed chickens from stores in Chinatown, such as Wings or Ming Kee. You can also get t-shirts from this place in Cambridge, Mayflower Poultry.

To test out this theory, I asked X. to help me buy a live chicken this week. We walked over to Ming Kee which is only a block from our office and she helped me pick out a nice 3 pounder. She speaks Chinese, which helps as the workers there were limited in their English communication. My feathery friend came to $8.75 and they de-feathered him and separated all the giblets for future use.

I polled the Chinese people in my office (n=2) and decided to opt for cooking it by boiling with green onion and ginger. It takes about 1 hour, but the process is pretty easy because it just involves throwing everything into the pot.

I've got my eye on you!!! This is a little creepy. But delicious. I think it is the combination of the skin, dark meat and giblet bits that makes it extra tasty and so non-wood-like. I also saved the broth for other tasty recipes.

It was served with a green onion, ginger and sesame oil dipping sauce!

First Food, Then Chocolate - Max Brenner

2011-06-26T07:23:00.006-04:00

This is probably as close to the modern day Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory as you are going to get.

We saw this restaurant featured on The Best Thing I Ever Ate, Pizza Episode. They just opened up a new location on Boylston St., so of course we had to go check it out! We made reservations for a Saturday night at 6 pm, which was a good thing because it seemed like a lot of people had the same idea. L is depicted here waiting impatiently for the feasting to start.

We started with an order of the kid's mac and cheese. There is a science theme, with many of the condiments arriving in laboratory measuring devices. Syringe marinara appeals to my nerdy side.

I had a Berry Nutty Professor Chocolate Cocktail. Delicious!

For my main dish, I chose the Yummy Baja Style Tacos. One of them is missing you will note. There was a lack of fish, but there was nice crunch and spice.

E ordered the Mexican Jambalaya which was super spicy (not depicted). I made the mistake of biting into a red jalapeno pepper ring thinking it was a red sweet pepper. Thankfully L had a big cup of milk that I cooled myself off with!

We finished off with a Chocolate Chai and a Chocolate Surprise Tiramisu. Note the Erlenmeyer flask with liquid chocolate and the graph paper plate!

There were many fondue options, but flaming pots at the table are generally frowned upon when dining with a toddler. There was a lovely backdrop aroma of burning chocolate and marshmallows as a table close by was having the Smores Fondue!

We'll be back because with such an extensive menu there are too many things that I need to try.

I forgot about my cool dance moves here:

Is it "Quack Quack" or "Coin Coin"?

2011-06-24T06:04:00.007-04:00

One of my friends who is from Switzerland and speaks Swiss German was telling me all the different ways that animals make noises in her country. I guess this all stems from the fact that our kids are at the age where one of the favourite past times is to teach them, "what does a monkey say?"... "ooh oooh ooh aah aah aah!" or "what does a dog say?"... "woof woof!" or is it "ruff ruff?"

This got me thinking about duck, or "ya ya" are L likes to call them because she goes to a bilingual Mandarin daycare. Mandarin ducks say, "quack quack" by the way.

Being in Chinatown exposes me to the opportunity to walk by a lot of hanging BBQ meat stores. I'm sure that in a couple of years, L's friends will be screaming, "ewwwww duck face", like Rudy Huxtable et al., but for now, ya ya it is. The live chicken stores also intrigue me, but that is for another day when my friend X will come with me and help me order. She swears that when she first moved here from China, she thought that store bought chicken tasted like wood and she had to buy tasty chicken from the live poultry stores in Chinatown. Now her palate has adjusted which is a bit disappointing, but I'd like to taste what one of these yummy ones is like... maybe even one of the ones with black skin! The skin is purported to have some therapeutic and medicinal purposes, especially for women!

So back to the ducks. On my way home last night, I stopped by Chinatown Cafe and bought 1/2 crispy BBQ pork and 1/2 BBQ duck.

Since I started receiving my Community Supported Agriculture shares from World Peas in the last couple of weeks, I haven't had to go shopping for fruits and veggies and I thought that Monsieur Canard might go well with some brussels sprouts and kale that I had from this week's bounty. There were also some nice garlic scapes that were from last week that I hadn't finished yet. These nice cruciferous vegetables (the baby cabbages and the kale) have great crunch! Cruciferous just means that when they flower, they make a cross-shaped flower -- so holy! It's the same family that broccoli and cauliflower come from.

So these little buddies got all chopped up.

Thrown into a pan with oil and the chopped garlic scapes with a citrus ponzu bath.

And topped with my BBQ'd friend.

Best part is that I still have about 5 servings of leftovers for the weekend. It's going to be a rainy one, so this is my version of summer comfort food.

2011 Locally Grown Patio Produce

2011-06-10T05:30:00.008-04:00

The crazy rains throughout May/June in New England, followed by some ridiculously hot temperatures and more rain have been good for my plant babies. Everyone talks about eating local and organic these days, but the money and access is always the rate limiting factor.

We are lucky enough to have our own little patch and okay weather to grow a bit of stuff. A small elevated patio, however is not really productive enough to feed our family of three which includes a ravenous toddler. Yes, you heard me... ravenous. We have yet to see the "picky" moniker that is so common these days. Probably because she has never really been offered dinosaur shaped nuggets, we never order off of the "kids menu" and she would rather eat a whole apple or pear than a Delmonte fruit cup. I can't tell you how many times people stop us and say, "is she going to eat the peel on that whole fruit?". Hmmm... why not, I eat the peel. Fruit cups have brainwashed society into thinking that kids will choke and die on apple and pear peels.

I think also the fact that she "helps" plant the garden by "digging" in the dirt with her kid sized trowel gives her an idea of where the food actually comes from. Post a comment or email me and I can send you some peer-reviewed journal articles providing positive evidence for this. And these are actual community based research trials done in schools, so it's not just anecdotal.

All that being said, I also belong to a organic produce delivery service, Boston Organics and have coordinated set-up a cluster distribution point for the World Peas Community Supported Agriculture group in Charlestown. Boston Organics takes care of the organic and World Peas does the local part (and often organic, but because they are small farmers, they can't afford the USDA certification most times).

Anyway, here are some of my backyard babies before they bear fruit (well more precisely veggies). I'll update the pictures once we get more blooms!

Happy growing!

Snap peas.

Sage and thyme (foreground) Bell pepper (background)

Zucchini (I think I need to thin these out)

Grape tomatoes, lavender and scarlet flax (in the smaller pots in front)

Chives atop of my rain collecting barrel.
We don't have a hose hookup since our patio is on top of the garage on the 2nd floor and the house hose hookup is downstairs by the back door. This is better anyway, because why let all that good rain go to waste?

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!!

2011-06-06T15:06:00.003-04:00

That is Jenny's pizza sauce all over her face and Ben & Jerry's Clusterfluff to seal it in.

Grilled Pork Stuffed Squid Tubes

2011-06-01T06:50:00.005-04:00

I had a craving for this Vietnamese dish after watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel about the Humboldt squid invasion.

I found a couple of recipes online that described how to make this yummy treat that my mom used to make when I was a kid. I used to act as sous-chef, helping her clean the squid of its guts, ink sac and pseudo-spine. However, one of the aforementioned recipes said that to make life easier, I should buy the pre-cleaned frozen version.

So off to HMart we went on Memorial Day to procure the ingredients. Shopping with a toddler is always dicey, so I grabbed my items without carefully reading the labels.

To make sure that I didn't give us all food poisoning, I opted to stir-fry the ground pork, mushrooms and shallot filling the morning before I was going to stuff the tubes. Then, to my surprise, when I got home from work and pulled the defrosted box of squid out of the fridge, I noticed that there would be more work to be done!

Eek -- they weren't cleaned - eyes, guts, pseudo-spine and everything! Thankfully, L had fallen asleep in her stroller on the way home from school, so I had a window of opportunity! My childhood skills came in handy and I was able to de-gross the squid tubes handily!

Stuffed and grilled and delicious! I used toothpicks to "sew up" the tube ends so that the filling didn't come exploding outwards on the BBQ. Great with hot sauce!

The Littlest Sous-Chef

2011-05-10T05:46:00.004-04:00

Okay, so this isn't really about food, but it does demonstrate an alternative use for all your pantry items. A warning that this takes a little creativity and concentration... especially for an 18 month old budding executive chef!

Extra smart invertebrate salad

2011-04-30T12:43:00.003-04:00

I've been getting bored of my usual protein sources lately and since the weather is warming up, I've been craving more salads. Salads are of course known for being very proteinaceous. I was futzing around the grocery store this week, I noticed some frozen octopus in the seafood section and also noticed that 2 1/2 lbs of octopus was only $5.99. Hmmm... it's probably cheap because most people would a) think it is gross b) not know what to do with it. I've had some pretty tasty Greek and Japanese style octopus dishes, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

I hesitated a little since a former co-worker was always talking about how smart octopi are and how he would never eat one. I had some foresight and googled "octopus intelligence" after I made the salad. This video demonstrating octopus resourcefulness is pretty cool, but be forewarned that the music is really bizarre in a new-age sort of way.

For those of you who are brave and interested in trying this dish, I boiled the octopus for about an hour until the legs were tender enough to stick a fork easily through. There are a lot of octopus boiling references around that suggest you need to smack the heck out of the raw octopus and boil it with a cork for who knows what reason, but I just did plain water with some salt and then rinsed it in cold water and it was pretty darn tender.

While I was chopping some of the veggies I thought that a mandoline might come in handy, but as you can see by my carrots, the titan peeler julienne peeler worked it's magic, so I will continue to hold off on the mandoline purchase!

I used rice vinegar, sesame oil and black sesame seeds for the dressing. Yum!

Is it bad luck to eat Rabbit?

2011-02-13T19:23:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year!! Informal reader poll: Is it unlucky to eat rabbit this year, or just rabbit foot?

We celebrated the Lunar New Year by attending the Lion Parade downtown this afternoon. There were multiple lions and lots of lettuce and oranges being thrown. In fact, I got hit in the forehead with a mandarin orange as I left Pho Hoa. Actually, I walked into it because it was hanging from the door frame. Yes, I'm that clumsy.

It's good to know that Pho Hoa is also known as the Health Conscious Choice. Which means that anyone who is currently following the 4 hour body, should be okay. Please DO NOT interpret this as my endorsement of this weirdo's philosophies. That would be very un-academic and un-evidence based of me.

I'm surprised that the firecrackers didn't freak L out more. She was completely unphased by the noise. The smoke actually set off the fire alarm in the restaurant and we sat through some loud beeping and flashing lights for most of our meal.

It was a bit like dining in a Vietnamese-themed rave. I wonder what would have happened if there was an actual fire going on in the kitchen because no one eating made any movement towards the doors. I guess the food was that good.

I found it rather reassuring that the Boston Police Officer who was supervising the parade (at time and a half I presume), knew the restaurant owner by her first name. So I'm guessing that he would not let us burn to death while eating vermicelli bowls and banh xeo.

Huzzah! A Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) distribution point in Charlestown

2011-02-07T16:35:00.005-05:00

Local local local! I'm pretty excited that this is getting off the ground. And we even made it into the Charlestown paper!

My fresh, locally grown fruits and veggies should be planted in the ground just north of my house by the immigrant farmers at New Entry Sustainable Farming Project and World PEAS CSA.

Yum.

This food face approves.

A Surprise Treat!

2011-01-31T06:46:00.004-05:00

Who says that commenting on blogs never gets you anything! Not me anymore... I left a comment on Christine Koh's blog about these cool wall decorations and I won a free set of them! I never win anything!! And it was very timely because L had been particularly cranky that day due to a new molar coming in and this momma was about to lose it.

So here is what I won. We have a very blank wall space that is perfect for it, so as soon as it arrived, I put it up. Well actually I waited for L to take a nap because despite her best efforts, often it is just easier to do these things myself right?!

What a sustainable treat! You can move them around, swap them out for different ones and because we rent, there is no need to paint! Perfect for us urban folk right? Looks like a bomb went off in our dining room, but that is the price you pay for having a creative toddler.

All this decorating makes me hungry, so we toodled over to the Pru and had some noodles at Wagamama. Yum!

Fine Dining with a Toddler in Tow - Newport, RI

2010-12-28T10:21:00.008-05:00

Ha! Is that really possible? I swear it is! We made it through relatively unscathed over the Christmas holidaze. We were double teaming L (ie the parent to toddler ratio was in our favour, so this may not work for those of you who are reading that are outnumbered).

Key tips for semi-relaxing toddler dining:

1) Go early (ie brunch or lupper) and scope out the scene before hand. Since we were dining in Newport, I used my "friends" on Chowhound to probe for recommendations. Reservations are your friend because waiting and toddlers = oil and water. Not miscible.

We tried 22 Bowen's for dinner at 5:30 pm and the Grill at 41 N for brunch. Both very child friendly - both offered high chairs without blinking an eye and the servers were all very accommodating. Food was very good at both places. 22 Bowen's had a kid's menu but L just ate whatever we ate cut up in small pieces, so no need for the traditional dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets!

22 Bowen's:

The Grill:

2) Bring a lot of toddler accessories. Toys, books, placemats. L's new favourite is "The Snowy Day". Also feeding baby a few snackitizers before the real food comes helps avoid a potential meltdown.

3) As much as you can, clean up the vittles that inevitably fall all over the place or apologize to your server profusely and leave a big tip. You do want to be able to go again don't you?

4) Order alcoholic beverages for mom and dad. Increases the likelihood that you will feel relaxed and which in turn makes your kid feel more zen... or at least it seems that way!

5) If all else fails, go to a coffee shop. These are perfect for loud and messy because these are usually populated by teenagers, college students who are equally or even louder than a well-behaved toddler.

Crunchy, Salt, Pepper and Vinegar Kale Chips

2010-12-12T17:14:00.005-05:00

We got a huge bunch of kale from Boston Organics on Friday and I wasn't totally psyched about it, until I saw this recipe for Kale Chips.

I modified it a little by not adding very much salt (used sea salt) and also adding pepper for some spiciness. Pretty tasty, I must say. I bet I could even get L to try it because she loves all things crunchy... all the better to crunch with (using all 8 of her choppers!)

But right now, she's too busy playing with her cardboard box from Target.

A Year?! Birthdays-giving

2010-12-07T08:52:00.007-05:00

L is ONE!! Last year at this time, she was smaller than our turkey that was prepared for 2. This year we had a bigger crew of 6 adults and she definitely outweighed the turkey. In fact, she started at a mere 5 lb 8 oz and now weighs in at 19 lb 8 oz.

I didn't want to have a whole cake to accompany the ridiculous amounts of Thanksgiving food, so I opted for cupcakes. Everyone says that you should have a "smash" cake for the birthday peanut anyway so cupcakes make sense.

What is better than having the cupcakes delivered right to your door in a van decorated with a cartoon panda? You can order them online and this satisfies my desire to never speak to a real person when making purchases. One of L's baby friends even called at the last minute to have her 1-year old cake special ordered and they were able to deliver (and deliver!). Great!

This was essentially L's first encounter with a confectioner's sugar and butter melange, so when we first placed it in front of her, I think she was unsure whether or not it was edible. Once I broke it up, she figured it out quickly.

The adult favorite was definitely the red velvet. They have lots of unique flavours like the "boozy" themed which is on our list to try next.

Thanks for helping us make birthdays-giving extra special!

Happy 4th Fruit Pizza

2010-07-06T10:36:00.004-04:00

This is about as patriotic one gets when one is a Canadian living in the U.S.!

I made a tasty tasty fruit pizza with refrigerator pizza dough, ricotta cheese, lemon zest, shredded fresh ginger, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. The recipe that I modified called for grilling the pizza dough on the BBQ, but I thought it would give the pizza a strange meaty smoky flavour, so opted to do it in the oven instead.

Delicious!

Then Linnea got to try some cherries for the first time which made her look like some sort of patriotic blood sucker.

Hope everyone had a great weekend. Stay cool!

Danish Pastry House: Baby Friendly Cafe!

2010-05-31T06:27:00.008-04:00

I was alerted to the existence of this awesome bakery/cafe by this blog. Please take note of the great chalk drawing of the very Scandinavian boat on the menu.

Oh course I had to try it, but trying things has become a little more challenging due to the need for planning. I finally remembered that I should try it (reference the mommy-mind-is-like-a-sieve syndrome) and figured Memorial Day Weekend should be a good time to check it out because:

a) the place is in Medford very close to the Tufts undergrad campus, which meant that with graduation having taken place last weekend, it would be less busy and I would be less likely to be overwhelmed by students (although I did run into one of my students, which was weird because I teach on the downtown campus! It was also weird because as I introduced her to E, she kept on bowing to both of us. E thought this was hilarious because he thought that meant she had the utmost respect for my teaching ability, while I am pretty sure it was just cultural)

b) people were beach bound because that is what people tend to do when it is 85 degrees out and it is a long weekend. Since our delicate baby skin is not good at the beach and E hates the beach, that is where we were not!

We love all things Euro as you may have noticed from my posts about Karl's Sausage Haus! So this place rocked! So much room for a stroller, loud enough to drown out the baby noise, but not so loud to freak out the baby and self-busing tables, so very casual. Even had Danish gossip magazines for you to peruse if you were so inclined!

And the food! So fresh and so tasty. E and I shared a sandwich with goat cheese I think and a salad. I had a chai latte which was not too sweet so I loved it.

The desserts were great too -- we shared a potato cake (marzipan I think with cream filling and a big juicy strawberry inside -- it doesn't look like much from this picture, but it was darn tasty)

And this awesome raspberry chocolate cheesecake which again was not too sweet, so appealed to my non-sweet tooth!

I also got a couple of chocolate chip cookies and a couple of macaroony things (pistachio and vanilla). Unfortunately, we left them in the hot car while we went into the evil BabiesRUs and also to the pet store to buy L her first biorb fish tank, so the macaroons got mushy but were still tasty and the cookies just got out of the car-oven fresh!

As you can see, L really loved it!

So for those of you with kids or just with taste buds... give it a try!

Preview of Things to Come.

2010-05-31T06:25:00.002-04:00

Check out L's love affair with her newest "food" puzzle!

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner!!

1st two times for Nom Nom Nom

2010-05-06T05:26:00.008-04:00

Boston Organics Avocado and Breastmilk Mash!

Can I get a woot woot?!

Next step = Mum Mums with Momma...

Wanna try mah mum mum?!

Now I can smear mum mum AND avocado on mah face!

Wanna see me in action???!!

My Own Little Boston Organics Baby

2010-04-16T17:35:00.005-04:00

It's dreary and I have so much work to do that I don't know where to start. But to reverse the blues I'm listening to "B is for Bob" - a Bob Marley CD that I got at the BPL -- L likes Bob Marley because it is upbeat and kind of like a lot of peppy kid songs is it not?

Instead of doing the easiest thing first like I usually do - I'm right now working on something that is going to distract me from the blahs -- my own little organic baby and thinking about what I should feed L first instead of MIIIIILLKKKK!

Here is what the Boston Organics box looked like before she jumped in...

I hate Anne Geddes vegetable babies, but who can resist my own little organic cute peanut butter banana!

Baby Friendly Mexican Breakfast Brunch - Tu Y Yo

2010-04-12T00:36:00.005-04:00

So L does not look as impressed with our Mexican Fonda dining experience as me... but let me tell you momma loves the Chilaquiles Toluqueños at Tu Y Yo, so we tried to see if the peanut would sit in her car seat without screaming and disturbing the other brunch diners.

We happened to get to the restaurant at a time when she would have rather been napping -- oops! Parental timing mishap... but she dealt with us eating with minimal squawking and we have become more adept at eating with one hand, or taking turns eating.

Since the service is very quick here and very friendly, we didn't feel too bad about delaying L's nap time and she was mildly entertained by the music and the ceiling fans. This is the second table service restaurant we have taken her to -- the first being IHOP where it is so noisy that no one cares if a baby screams the whole way through breakfast (although she snoozed in her car seat for that meal!). She has successfully "eaten" at Chipotle as well, but I don't think that really counts as a restaurant, does it?

I'm thinking that before she becomes mobile it will be easier to go to restaurants... as long as we can find places that have enough room for all the ridiculous accessories babies come with these days, don't have a wait or slow service... any suggestions for us, from other Boston-area people who like to dine with infants?

Spring has Sprung - It's time for Baby BBQ!

2010-03-27T11:29:00.005-04:00

Spring was here briefly in New England which prompted us to break out the BBQ for the first time this season. Unfortunately it snowed again a couple of days after we BBQ'd, so I haven't been out on the patio since.

And don't worry, I didn't BBQ the baby, but I just noticed looking at these pictures that there were a lot of "baby" foods in this BBQ -- brussels sprouts = baby cabbage, baby corn and baby shrimp! Well these shrimp aren't really baby sized, but they are considerably smaller than the super jumbo shrimps I usually splurge on.

How can you not love any type of food called "Mr?". Although I don't really like "Mr. Sub" for all of my Canadian readers out there.

I have discovered that BBQ is a good way to cook when you have a baby because:
1) there is usually minimal clean up because it is done outside, so who cares if it's messy
2) daddy is more likely to help out because BBQ'ing is considered to be more "manly" than regular cooking
3) it forces you to go outside for some fresh air which sometimes is hard when you spend a lot of time with a cranky baby and don't want to be embarrassed by her "bad" behavior

This weather is making me crave SOUUUUUPPPP!!!

2010-03-15T11:34:00.004-04:00

It is nasty in New England right now. Thankfully I can telecommute for most of my job because E, L and I all got colds this Friday. Since we've been cooped up I haven't had a chance to get groceries, so E was nice enough to venture out to Pho Pasteur and get me the Vietnamese food I've been craving. Here is me housing some Pho Dac Biet yesterday afternoon.

Fun fact about Pho Pasteur is that it is in the space formerly occupied by a strip club in the old "combat zone" of Boston's chinatown. So E and I refer to it as "Pussycat Lounge" and it's actually programmed into his cell phone that way!!

This morning I had leftover Banh Xeo for breakfast! Mmmmm....

Lactivore getting set to become omnivore...

2010-03-12T16:24:00.003-05:00

chomp chomp chomp -- I love BPA free hooves made of natural "caoutchouc"

uh oh... I guess it's time to start reading those homemade baby foods books and to buy a bunch of food making accessories from diapers.com!

My Baby's Breath Smells Like Fajitas

2010-03-08T03:31:00.003-05:00

Okay, so here is why I have been MIA for the last 3 months or so... 2 days after my last post I had my first baby girl! You can check out her awesome moves here.

She was born around Thanksgiving and here is a picture of her with her first feast. The roast beast is bigger than her and yes, she is a girl despite her blue "slanket"

Needless to say, I have not had much time for cooking creatively or eating out, so there hasn't been much to write about. The food that I think about most is breastmilk and this may be a bit too much information for some, but it seems like many days lil' L's breath smells inexplicably like fajitas. E thinks her breath smells like tacos, but that is close enough to fajitas to make me think that I haven't gone crazy.

I haven't eaten fajitas in the last 3 months... perhaps it's the copious amounts of Thai take out we have been eating?

Anyway, I feel the direction of my food blog (and the rest of my life for that matter) changing considerably due to the arrival of the peanut. Stay tuned for adventures in baby food making and many pictures of food ending up all over the place!

A Very Belated Post About the Meat Sweats

2009-11-21T11:57:00.005-05:00

The fall has been quite the blur. I'll explain in due time, but one possible explanation would be that I was lulled into a protein induced coma by my road trip through Canada.

Here are two very meaty encounters that I had while traveling this summer. The first in Ottawa and the second in Syracuse, NY.

We went to Sweetgrass Bistro based on several recommendations from food friends and from some of my Ottawa pals. It was most certainly a unique dining experience since a) I had never had aboriginal food before and b) the air-conditioning was broken in the restaurant and it was a hot and humid Ottawa valley day and night.

We started with an order of Navajo Frybread which reminded me a lot of a beaver tail except more crunchy. It came with a little dish of honey for dipping!

We then shared the Hunter's Platter. I can't remember which meats were featured because I'm a bad girl and didn't write anything down, but I think there was some elk, duck, bison, wild boar and maybe some goose?

E had a huge slab of bison!

Definite meat sweats post this meal. I wondered whether this was what it would be like to be in a sweat lodge?!

During out meat-nanza, our friend Ted could not stop raving about this other place called Dinosaur BBQ. His glowing endorsement of the place pretty much solidified that we would be stopping there on our drive back from Toronto to Boston. Syracuse is about halfway anyway, so it made the decision that much easier.

Even though this place looks clearly like a biker bar from the outside, there was a very diverse clientele inside even at close to midnight! Here is one of the highlights of the decor.

Our appetizer was the fried green tomatoes and we shared the traditional sampler: 1/4 Chicken: Leg & Thigh, 1/4 Rack of Ribs, Texas Beef Brisket. It came with a side of coleslaw, mac and cheese and cornbread.

I think the best part of the meal was the peanut butter pie. Unbelievable and makes me sad for people with peanut allergies. What a perfect way to cap off our meat-venture. I am now curiously craving a salad...

Dreaming of ice creams past on a rainy day weekend

2009-09-12T09:25:00.006-04:00

The last days of summer are leaving us in New England. Fall is my favourite season of the year so it doesn't really make me that sad, but others are lamenting the short summers and the return of school daze. I guess I am a true supertastic nerd and should stay in academia forever because back to school often gets me a little excited. If I could feel justified in buying a new pencil case or lunch box I think I would be even more excited.

But today it's pouring rain and nasty outside, so it's given me the opportunity to catch up on some summer posts that I've been neglecting. Last time I was here, I mentioned we were making a road trip up to Canada, so here is the first leg of the trip from Boston to Vermont to the Ben and Jerry's factory!

I must say that the factory tour was very short and not super exciting, but considering it cost only $3 and we got to sample some ice cream at the end, I probably shouldn't have expected much.

Since it was a weekend, there wasn't any ice cream production going on, which was a bit disappointing, but I guess ice cream makers deserve weekends off too. The factory was surprisingly small and I wondered how it could possibly fill all of my ice cream needs, but I'm thinking that this original factory is more of a figure head factory at this point and not one of their main production points.

We were verboten from taking pictures inside, but the flavour graveyard and the B and J's bus were the coolest parts anyway.

Here are 3 flavours that I wish I had a chance to know...

Here is one flavour that offends my public health practitioner/research ethics side, so it's probably better off dead... because really, who wants to eat an ice cream that reminds them of syphilis?!!

Mmmmm... maybe I'll go have some of that Coffee Heath Bar Crunch for breakfast. Coffee is a morning beverage after all!!

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part VI: Pre-Vacation Garden Check

2009-08-15T06:41:00.004-04:00

Today we are leaving on a one-week road trip back to the motherland. We'll make our way from Boston to Vermont with a stop over at the Ben and Jerry's factory -- flavour graveyard here we come! Then we'll continue on to Ottawa, where I grew up from the ages of 2 to 22. Then it's further north to North Bay where my bro's family lives by a pristine Canadian lake. Our last stop will be in Toronto for some serious feasting with some old friends from my second degree and my first job working as a slave to the London, Ontario hospital system. I'm hoping that last part won't give me any undesirable flashbacks, but more likely it will make me happy to see all my friends that I used to spend 80 hours a week with and even happier that I never have to do that again!

My vegetable garden, cooking exploits and time to write this are a testament to the joys of working half as much as I used to. I used to think that I was the kind of person that only needed 6 hours of sleep maximum per night, but now that I can get 9 hours on a regular basis, it's miraculous how much less crabby I am. Also contributing to my less irritable nature, are:
1) I have time to make and feed myself and E yummy food, and
2) being able to get exercise in a form that is not brisk walking down the hallway of a hospital towards the next potential disaster.
In summary -- vast improvement in quality of life.

Now that I don't have to worry about how to minimize my crankiness, I can turn my worries towards how to keep my veggies healthy while I'm away and also how to use up said veggies before leaving for the week. I thought the answer for part one of that question would be aqua globes, but since my patio gets so hot, I will have to enlist neighbors and friends to keep an eye on the babies so that they won't get parched. I think I'll move them indoors temporarily so they won't be in direct sunlight because most days the temperature registers close to 100 back there.

Now for the veggie usage question. I think the jalapenos will do okay being left on the plant for another week because they are still pretty small and haven't changed colour yet (from green to red) or gone through "corking" yet. I contemplated, cutting up some and freezing them, but then read that they get mushy so I wasn't so keen on that.

But what about all these tomatoes?

The basil and tomatoes got a lot of use yesterday. Here is a salad with Roma tomatoes, basil, chick peas and hot banana pepper bits. It made a nice and refreshing lunch.

Then for dinner, I chopped up the remaining tomatoes with some oven roasted garlic in the food processor. Added a little basil and served the sauce with some left over peppers, mushrooms and shrimp over some whole wheat pasta.

The only bowl that I have that is big enough to serve this in is a bowl that I got from Target for a Halloween party, so that's why you see the hint of skeleton trim around the black bowl!

So my fridge is clean and off we go to pack the car and embark on some Canadian eating adventures! Tim Horton's, Harvey's, President's Choice products, ketchup flavoured potato chips and poutine, here we come!

Basil-nanza!

2009-08-06T18:32:00.005-04:00

The basil on my patio has gotten out of control (the picture above is from several weeks before the overgrowth) and some of my tomatoes are vine ripened. This was a good excuse for me to buy a food processor. Actually, I haven't needed much of an excuse to buy a new kitchen doodad as of late (please see the imminent post on the Titan Peeler... and no I didn't make wood shavings from a table leg for dinner). I've always resisted buying a food processor because I have a really good hand blender which is pretty good to make smoothies and soups and is so much easier to clean than a blender/food processor. But I figured since I had so much basil and someday I'm going to want to try to make baby food to convince myself that this will prevent my kid from wanting to eat McDonald's everyday, I should finally break down and get one. This Cuisinart one was very well reviewed and was under 40 dollars. It holds 24 oz, which sounds pretty small, but the plethora of basil I had fit in there just fine and since my kitchen is pretty small it doesn't take up much space in a cupboard, which is key.

Here is one of my breakfasts this week which did not involve the food processor but had some basil and some tomatoes. It looks like a lot of food for a little person like me, but if I don't eat this much before I go to work I get grumpy and hungry by 10:30.

Here is the basil-nanza being washed, then sitting in my new kitchen toy with some olive oil and going into some ice cube trays for use in pesto, dressings, marinades, sauces etc. I figure since it's frozen I won't get really sick of eating basil-y meals in the next couple of weeks because I can spread the consumption out over a few months!

An Uninvited Dinner Guest

2009-07-29T20:12:00.004-04:00

It has been a particularly rainy summer in New England, but finally we have gotten some serious heat and sunshine. My arugula was not doing so well with getting drenched everyday, so was starting to look very sad, but with the steamier weather was starting to perk up a little.

Suddenly one morning this week, I went outside to water all my babies and found this!! Eeeeekkk! At first I thought we might have had some hail in the night that shredded the leaves, because this happened to one of my co-workers, but all of the other plants (tomatoes, basil, green beans and various flowers) looked fine.

So I took a closer look and found the culprit. Here is his mug shot.

I think he may be a Cabbage White Caterpillar, but does anyone have any other guesses?

Only one and he devoured all the arugula! He tried to escape the next morning. How rude! At least he can have the decency to stick around so I can see what he turns out to be! So I knocked him gently back into the container and laid some tomato leaves that I had pruned and some basil flowers to see if he would like to sample that buffet. He seemed to be quite picky and went right back to what was left of the arugula, so I guess it must have been pretty tasty.

Oh well. To drown my sorrows I went to a restaurant this week with a co-worker and ordered a crispy calamari, arugula and avocado pizza which was delicious.

Homemade Belgian Waffles

2009-07-26T06:59:00.007-04:00

Waffles often fall into the category of things I want to go out for instead of making at home. This is for several reasons:

1) I don't own a waffle maker and think it is one of those kitchen appliances that is more trouble than it is worth in the cleaning department
2) I thought that it would be too hard to figure out how long to cook them without burning the outside and leaving the inside raw
3) I tend to be more of a savory cook than a sweet cook

But things have changed for the better! We were recently watching a food/travel program on the Travel Network called "Extreme Fast Foods", which featured a place called the Waffle Cabin., which is situated halfway down a ski hill in Vermont. Ski a bit, stop for waffle. Hold waffle in one hand while skiing down rest of hill!!

Now even though I grew up in Canada, my family was never a downhill skiing family. I tried snowboarding a few times, but my butt has never wanted to go back. Seeing the waffle cabin, I seriously considered taking up skiing next winter just so that I could get some of these in my belly! E was even more excited about it than I was, which led to him talking about waffles almost everyday until we happened to go to Karl's Sausage kitchen and found the special ingredients for Belgian Waffles.

Then he started talking about waffles everyday, several times a day until we went to Target and got this waffle maker for $18.99. I gave in because really if it was a terrible, useless contraption, less than 20 dollars was not that much to sacrifice.

The key to this type of waffle is the pearl sugar. It creates a nice crispy and sweet outer shell to the waffles and aids in giving the nice caramelized colour. Also key to decreasing the mess factor is following a Belgian waffle recipe which makes more of a moldable dough rather than a batter. This means there is no batter pouring and much less mess in the waffle iron and thus much less clean-up duty. We made three varieties: plain, chocolate chip and cinnammon chocolate chip.

I'm quite surprised that waffle cabins haven't caught on in popularity in New England as I imagine it would be a great cold weather food. E and I have been joking that should our careers not work out, we would consider opening up our own waffle cabin somewhere in Boston!

Hot Chorizo and Salad with Mustard Sprouts

2009-07-19T12:15:00.003-04:00

My mustard sprouts have sprouted and we finally got around to cooking the rest of the sausages that we got at Karl's Sausage Kitchen.

The mustard sprouts were surprisingly mustard-y which is a good thing since my favourite condiment is mustard!

The hot chorizo were not so much hot as they were nicely seasoned, but went very well with the curry ketchup and Sparkling Lingonberry and Apple Juice that we got at Karl's.

Nothing like a weekend to catch up on all the things that you actually want to do/eat!

Karl's Sausage Kitchen - Saugus, MA

2009-07-14T18:07:00.006-04:00

It's usually very difficult to get E to go food shopping with me. The exceptions to this rule are:
1) if he has run out of cereal or
2) if it involves serious Euro foods such as with this field trip to Karl's Sausage Kitchen! It helps that this store is only about 20 minutes from our place in Boston and that it had some very tempting Euro-treats listed on their website!

I must admit that this place is awesome! At first it seems very small inside but I immediately found at least 10 things that I wanted to buy. Euro candy, Euro condiments... even Euro beauty products and Euro romance novels. E was drawn immediately to the tasty looking sausage collection and we bought some Hot Chorizo and some Weisswurst.

The people working behind the counter were extremely helpful and would give all the shoppers advice on what were the best meats to buy for what occasion. As an example, there were two guys going on a camping trip, so one of the employees advised against the blood sausage as it explodes on the grill. A very useful bit of info I'm sure that they appreciated as their camping trip would have been less enjoyable with bits of blood sausage splattered all over their gear.

We also bought a crazy selection of Euro treats which it will take me a while to sample and tell you about.

Here is the Weisswurst post boiling and grilling with one of the pretzels we bought. I'm not a huge sausage-o-phile, but these were possibly the most tender and juicy sausages I've had that were not consumed in Germany.

Sprouts update

2009-07-08T07:30:00.006-04:00

I'm pretty impressed at how quickly the mung beans have grown. They have already been harvested, cooked and enjoyed and it has been less than one week. The mustard sprouts are still growing their way into a sandwich so I'll give you another update on those later. I also recently received a Zesty Salad and Sandwich Mix, so that is next on my list to grow.

Here is what the mung beans and mustard sprouts look like after having soaked under water in the jars for night and being cozy in their new sprout home.

Then check out the mung beans after only 24 hours!

36 hours later...

And 96 hours later being showered before they meet the stir-fry pan.

Here they are featured with some grilled scallops that the hubbie grilled on the BBQ because he likes to think that grillin' is a man's job.

I probably could have waited a few more days before harvesting them so that they would get longer, but I was too impatient and wanted to taste them ASAP. Nice and crunchy and no worries about pesticides, fertilizer and dirt residue!

I think this would be a great science experiment/kitchen activity for kids. You could put them in charge of the twice daily rinsing of the sprouts so that they don't go funky and then they could be very proud of their involvement with meal prep. The added bonus is that the results are super fast which appeals to both the level of patience of me and that of a toddler!

Sprouts!

2009-07-03T17:59:00.004-04:00

I never like to buy alfalfa sprouts or most other sprouts from the grocery store because I am paranoid about all the outbreaks of E. coli and Salmonella that are reported from not being able to wash them properly. This combined with the fact that I am a sucker for weird kitchen/gardening implements caused me to buy this Seed Sprouter contraption from an online garden store called, Hirt's. I was pretty impressed by the rapid service and prices so I would recommend them from that point of view. Don't know if the thing works yet because I am just on Step 1 of the included instructions, so stay tuned!

I have started to soak the mustard sprout

and the mung bean sprouts.

Tomorrow I will transfer them to their new sprouting environment and in at most one week, I'm hoping to have some tasty results!

MSP airport treats

2009-06-30T22:18:00.004-04:00

Now that you can't bring liquids over 3 oz through security and nearly all of the airlines charge you for snacks, I've been buying a lot more exorbitantly priced items at various airport newsstands. This is in the hopes that en route I don't a) dehydrate and b) get hunger induced crankiness. To justify spending silly amounts of money on water and snacks I thought I would splurge on these two never-before-tasted-by-me items.

I am a sucker for bubbly flavored waters and can go through 10 bottles of 1L Zazz Seltzer Water in under a week, so I thought I might enjoy this very attractive looking bottle of Metromint. I picked up a bottle of the tangy Lemonmint because the thought of chocolate mint flavored water seemed a bit too weird for me. The label seemed to promise that I would feel excessively refreshed after drinking the bottle.

Well... the verdict is that the lemonmint smelled a lot like lemon, but tasted a lot like minty toothpaste water. I'm still not quite sure if that is a good thing. I'm leaning towards the negative on this one.

I also picked up this chocolate bar which I have yet to sample because I thought that it would make me thirsty and I didn't want to drink anymore of the toothpaste water! I think the reason that I picked this bar in particular was that I was hoping that after eating it, it would make me wise and kick-ass like Yoda. It still sits in my purse waiting for me to feel the need for a Jedi mind trick!

Bouchon - In Las Vegas this time!

2009-06-16T09:45:00.003-04:00

I am mildly obsessed with Bouchon. It was extremely tasty when I tried the bakery twice while in New York. So I knew that when we were making a trip out to Las Vegas to see The Flight of the Conchords (the show sold out in Boston too fast for us to snag tickets!!), that we would have to stop by the bistro.

I was not disappointed. Je voudrais un croissant! Flakiest of flaky, chocolatey croissant goodness!

A yummy Croque Madame... These fries were amazing. Even better than McDonald's fries! Oh come on, admit it, you love McDonald's fries don't you?

And some tasty waffles. Light and airy. E doesn't even like bananas and he said these were still extremely satisfying!

The only thing that would have made it better (or more French) was if "Foux du Fafa" was playing in the background. Magnifique!

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part V: More Babies - Green Beans and Arugula

2009-06-11T06:42:00.003-04:00

The morning dew makes the veggies happy.

At first I thought my green beans needed more water because the soil looked cracked, but it was the plants busting through the soil. Tadahhhhh!!

And here are some teeny tiny arugula plants. Really... if you squint you can see them. I think they are camera shy.

Last year I tried arugula, but grew it indoors so my light scorched the heck out of them when I went away for a couple of days. Hopefully being outside will help. I'm planning on hiding them under one of the patio chairs for a little shading when it gets hotter.

Green bean arugula salad?

Local Produce Feature: Fiddleheads!!

2009-06-07T06:42:00.005-04:00

Back in March, Michael Pollan came to visit Tufts on his book tour for "Omnivore's Dilemma". I felt pretty lucky to be able to see him speak since:

a) it was free
b) I had given an exam to my Nutrition students a few hours before and since Nutrition students are all food nerds like me, we all agreed instead of continuing with lecturing we would free ourselves up for this special lecture.

This is all a prelude to the fact that I will make an effort this spring/summer to feature things that I bought at the farmer's market or that is locally grown. So here is the first in the series.

I didn't know before I bought these fiddleheads that they are a unique delicacy to New England!! To tell you the truth, the sight of them kind of weirds me out. They look prehistoric and the curled up fronds look like a microbial trap. My google search of "fiddlehead food poisoning" confirms that there have been case reports. Seeing as I already enjoyed my dish several days ago and am typing sans violent GI symptoms, I'm guessing I cooked the heck out of them. At least I was not paralyzed by my public health practitioner side, right?

I've usually only had these with a bit of oil, butter and garlic, but I decided to try them in a stir fry with chicken, red peppers, garlic and black bean sauce. Delicious!

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part IV: Bearing Fruit!!

2009-06-06T11:05:00.004-04:00

A baby Roma and a baby cherry tomato!!

I learned today that Roma is determinate. So no pruning.

Cherry tomato is indeterminate so prune away!!

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part III: Plant Puberty?!!

2009-06-02T07:59:00.004-04:00

My babies are growing up so fast!! I've moved the more delicate ones outside to join their tomato friends. It looks like the tomatoes and basil have hit plant puberty as they have started to flower.

Apparently this means that I should trim the flowers on the basil to prevent woodiness of the stem and to start staking and prune the tomatoes because fruit is coming soon!!

The jalepenos are looking healthy but no signs of coming of age yet. I've also started some green beans but those have yet to emerge from the soil so a picture of dirt didn't really seem too exciting.

I'm so proud of my babies and jealous that they get to hang out on my patio all day while I'm at work.

Squashsghetti with Lamb Balls

2009-05-28T18:17:00.004-04:00

My actual job has been getting in the way of food documentation. It's not that I haven't been eating anything. Quite the contrary. I guess I just haven't felt motivated to be at the computer when the weather is nicer and when I've spent the day inside at work. But today is New England chilly so I'm stayin' inside. This meal I prepared back in MARCH!! Or at least that's what iPhoto claims.

Who loves Spaghetti Squash?!! I do, I do!! Who loves lamb balls?! Not lamb testicles, but ground lamb meat in ball form. Put them together and you get: Squashsghetti with Lamb Balls!!

Bake the squash as per spaghetti squash instructions and then run a fork through it to get what really does look like spaghetti without the carbo-load and with more crunch to it.

While I bake the squash, I make lamb balls following roughly a recipe for meatballs that I got from Rachel Ray, but then modified A LOT, because me no likey her that much. I added some cinnamon and cumin I think because those are lamb-y type spices.

Usually when I make meatballs with 3 meat mix (the meatloaf mix), the secret ingredient is Sriracha chili sauce, but I think I left that out because that is not so lamb-y. The key with my balls is that they are baked as per the evil Ray recipe.

Put it together and you have lamb-y squashy goodness!

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part II

2009-04-25T11:28:00.003-04:00

It's hot hot heat this weekend. They say it's supposed to get into the 80s, so I've decided to transition my veggies to the outdoors.

I started with the tomatoes to see how they will do since I think they are probably the hardiest of the bunch and then maybe later I'll put the cilantro, jalepenos and basil out.

The tomatoes are enjoying basking on the patio. One of them is looking a little sad and yellow. I think I let him dry out too much or maybe not enough fertilizer. I fertilized them all last week, so we'll see what that brings.

The jalapenos are looking a little less sad. The basil looks great and I debuted some of the cilantro with some shrimp on the BBQ last night. Yum!!

Oh No! A Mr. Bill Birthday

2009-03-30T18:02:00.006-04:00

One of my pals, who is an amazing hostess, was throwing a b-day party for the man friend. I submitted an evite challenge to come up with a theme as all birthday parties have themes don't they? Or maybe this is a phenomenon that is supposed to end once you enter the double digits of age.

In response to the challenge, she very appropriately rose to the occasion and decided that she would craft a Mr. Bill cake out of fondant! Having never worked with fondant, she was quite intimidated, so contacted a pastry chef friend for advice. This friend quickly responded to her by saying, "I HATE fondant!!". Oh Nooooooo!! I don't think this was the response that she was looking for. She persevered, since she is a trooper and must really like this man friend and the result was fantastique!!

Mr. Bill emerged from his foil protective covering and proceeded to light it up at the party.

Birthday boy had a hard time making the initial incisions but was soon enjoying serving Mr. Bill up to the hungry party guests.

Here are some of the other delicious party offerings!

Prosciutto wrapped melon:

Tomatoes with yummy stuff on top (tapenade, pesto, hummus -- I think):

Vegetable frittata-like thing:

Toothpicks with more yummy stuff (mozzarella, basil, tomatoes, olives, artichoke hearts):

Everything was so delicious... and especially Mr. Bill! Thanks F! And Happy Birthday!

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part I

2009-03-27T17:40:00.004-04:00

Spring has sprung! Well at least it has indoors in New England. It's still a little brisk outside at night to start planting outside, but my gardening calendar on boston.com said it was time to start sprouting some seeds so here we go!

E and I moved into a house with a very sunny patio in August so I've been excited to see what I can grow back there. Since we don't really have a patch of grass that isn't condo owned and operated, I will have to settle with what I can grow in a container.

So far, this is what my babies look like. We have two types of tomatoes, cilantro, basil and jalapenos. The peppers are being fussy I think, but everything else seems to be flourishing under the fake lights so far.

Up close and personal with the Roma tomatoes:

The cherry tomatoes:

Cilantro!

Basil and sad looking jalapenos:

If everything works out well, then I will be making me some mean salsas in a few months. Can't get more fresh and local than my back patio! Hope they will make it through the transfer outside...

Ca Kho To - Vietnamese Catfish In Caramel Sauce

2009-03-04T20:33:00.005-05:00

This post comes with a stink factor warning. For those of you unfamiliar with the pungent odor of fish sauce you must prepare yourself for this recipe by opening some windows and turning on all fans in the house full blast. Now, it doesn't stink like durian or anything, but the fishy-ness has been known to be a sticking point in some relationships. Phu Quoc is a island of Vietnam where the fish sauce made is supposed to be especially tasty aka stinky. I heard from someone that it had something to do with the fish diet of squid, but don't know if that's true. Do you know if it is true?

I must admit that I used this recipe but added some vegetables because I am from the "more matters" school of thought. More vegetables that is and not just more of everything!! Now this dish is traditionally made in a claypot, but since I am not lucky enough to own one of those, I made it in my medium sized metal pot and then transferred into a ceramic dish to serve.

The recipe that I followed said something about "smoking slightly", but I would like to vote for more of a moderate smoking factor when I added the fish sauce to the caramelized sugar. But the finished product sure was worth it!

Oscartinis!! An Oscar Party Celebration.

2009-02-23T18:12:00.003-05:00

My friend F wanted to roll out the red carpet for us... mostly because her and her man friend were going to have a Super Bowl party for the grand debut of their new HD mantastic television but didn't get it together in enough time for that event.

So the next logical TV event was the Oscars. I don't usually watch the Oscars because all the fluff in the middle just makes me sleepy, but really how can one turn down food and martinis?!

The red carpet led up to the spread which was a make-your-own-pizza buffet! This was perfect as the party included some supreme meat eaters and some vege-types.

Even this feline (nominated for the category of Best Bad Kitty), Biscotti, got to participate as he managed to leap on the table during the preparatory stages and placed a paw on two pieces of prosciutto. Those two pieces got put in his bowl and he was banished to the bedroom.

Here is my yummy pizza - eggplant, olives, basil, mozzarella and a few dabs of tomato sauce. A couple of martinis to wash it down and the good company made watching the best sound, lighting and make-up tolerable. I guess I better go out and see Slumdog Millionaire now!

Japanese Hot Pot Party!

2009-01-24T12:01:00.004-05:00

Before I attended this feast I was ignorant to the fact that Japanese Hot Pot and Shabu Shabu are two separate things. Both involve cooking at the table, but in Japanese Hot Pot everything is put in at the same time, whereas with Shabu Shabu, the meat is put in at various times throughout the meal. The thinly sliced meats make a specific "swishy" sound which is where the name comes from. Ponzu sauce is an integral component of this meal as it lends a lot of flavor to the meat -- in this case it was halibut and chicken meatballs. Towards the end of the soup-fest, we added udon noodles. Yum!

Our gracious hosts had us over in January, at a time in Boston when hot soup is very much appreciated! They had a very fancy hot pot apparatus which they brought with them from Japan when they moved over here.

There were several tasty appetizers - an asparagus dish and a tasty Japanese fried chicken that Japanese boys have a particular liking for. My friend Mayumi (the chef), claims this is very easy to make and that her husband can even make it, so has challenged the other boys to also make it for themselves. That sounds like a Japanese fried chicken throwdown!

Some happy hot pot participants!

A Budding Tea-rista!

2008-12-02T16:51:00.005-05:00

My niece, Fionna, really likes preparing people beverages. I remember when she was not even the ripe old age of 2, if you were hanging out in the kitchen she would ask you, "Kafeee?", which translated from toddler-speak into "Would you like me to help you make some coffee with the Starbucks Espresso machine?". She even knew the steps involved and the correct order to perform them in. Should you deviate from the plan, she would waggle a little scolding toddler sized index finger at you and redirect.

Now she has moved into the specialty teas. My brother was having some friends over for the weekend, probably to play some nerd-tastic role playing games or something, and Fionna thought they would enjoy some refreshments!

How lovely! Everyone is amazed when they see these flowering tea balls and even more amazed when they are presented to you by a preschooler! They start out looking like this.

Kinda looks like an owl pellet if you ask me!

Then... wait for it...

Wait for it...(Fionna is looking a little anxious that her guests won't be enthralled)

Tadddaaahh!

What a lovely hostess!!

Burnt Marshmallow Hot Chocolate (parental guidance advised)

2008-11-15T09:49:00.009-05:00

I bought a bunch of Halloween themed Peeps intending to make Ghost Hot Chocolate, but everyone was too stuffed after eating the food that we never got around to making it. A few years ago, we inherited a culinary torch from a friend that was moving overseas. I don't make many desserts that require torching, so the torch has stayed in the original packaging until I had a very morbid yet delicious idea for its use.

I was a bit of a pyromaniac as a child. I never really burnt anything of significance down, but as my older brother will tell you, we used to spend a lot of time frying various critters of the insect kind with a magnifying glass in the backyard and also putting grapes in the microwave to start little mini-globe shaped fireworks. I also distinctly remember my brother putting a piece of raw meat near an open window with a screen and flaming the mosquitoes that landed outside with a lighter and an aerosol can. It's a wonder that we didn't turn out to have antisocial personality disorder with all the torturing of insects we did as children, but I guess that applies more to kids who torture animals that are cuter than bugs. Anyway, I digress.

I much prefer the taste of charred marshmallows to just melty ones. I know that the carbon is a carcinogen, but it's not as if burnt marshmallows are a staple of my diet, so I figure just once in awhile is okay.

So here goes, step-by-step:

1) Make some hot chocolate and buy some marshmallows (peeps or otherwise)

2) Float marshmallows in HC

3) Fire up your torch! Boooooooooo!!!

4) Ooh! A little too burnt, but smells lovely!

5) Turn crisped mallow over to get other side which will be a little harder to torch because it is wet, but will look quite lovely and inviting to drink!

Boo!

2008-11-09T12:01:00.006-05:00

Oh my! I just realized that it has almost been a month since my last post. Things have been busy at work and after reading and staring at a computer screen, I guess I haven't felt motivated to do more computer related activities once I get home. Or maybe my lack of posting was because I was so consumed with planning for my Halloween/Housewarming party!

I admit that most of my ideas for food were stolen from a Taste of Home Halloween magazine. I also admit that I was more amused with preparations for this party than a person over the age of 30 should be.

On a trip to Target, I picked up some pretty awesome Halloween themed sodas. Jones soda has several different limited editions for various holidays and themed events. Want some turkey and gravy soda for an upcoming Thanksgiving or Christmas party? Well, you may be able to find it here!

Here are the rest of my spooky offerings:

Severed Hand Punch - a big hit! Easy to make... all you need is a latex glove. Wash it out to rid of powdery rubbery taste. Turn inside out and fill with liquid. I chose a mixture of cranberry juice and water so that it would freeze quickly, but not water down the punch upon melting. Float the resulting frozen hand in whatever liquid concoction you desire. I also had pomegranate floating in to represent miscellaneous body bits!

Mummy Turkey Dogs - or Halloweenies! Any variety of tube steak will do. Simply wrap with Pillsbury bread stick dough and dot on eyes with mustard.

Bleeding Heart Brie - Brie with cherry preserves wrapped in crescent roll dough.

Eyeball Taco Salad. This was supposed to be cut into individual "faces" for serving purposes, but by the time we made this, most of my guests and my sous chef were too in the bag to care. They just wanted to shove nachos in their gullets.

Halloween shaped tortilla chips! These were harder to make than I thought they would be because my cookie cutters were not very sharp. I think metal ones would have worked better, but I only had plastic. I sprayed them with olive oil and sprinkled with a creole spice mix that I had made for something else and then baked them at about 375 for 12 minutes. They may not look so pretty, but they tasted good.

Here's some of the spread.

And some of the spread eaters!

The Shrunken Head Aging Process

2008-10-12T08:53:00.005-04:00

As promised, here are some updated time lapse photos of my apple crafts.

One week old:

And two weeks old:

The red one is especially more deflated with age. I realize I should have been more scientific about this and put in a measuring tape for scale or tried to be more consistent about the distance between the camera and the heads, but I think you get the idea.

Along the lines of science, I may have inadvertently started a fruit fly breeding colony in my kitchen as I found one little drosophila having a little snack on the green apple's face. For all you science nerds out there, my new "friend" had the cinnabar gene for eye color.

Now We're Cookin' With Gas - Seared Scallops

2008-10-06T18:56:00.004-04:00

My new gas stove and I are just getting to know each other. Up until this point, I've never lived in a place with a gas stove and always marveled at how fast things cook when I've been at a pal's place who had one. I've had to modify my cooking timing somewhat with all this hot hot heat. The good news is that my new kitchen is a lot skinner than my old one, so I'm never too far away from what could be boiling over or burning.

To test the burn potential, I thought I'd try something seared, so picked these juicy looking scallops on my last online shopping spree at Peapod. For a great overview of the Peapod shopping experience, check this out. Some may think it is odd to buy seafood online that then spent time in a truck on the way to my house for who knows how long, but I survived with no red tide to report.

3/4 lb of fresh scallops on Peapod - $15.99/lb. Did I get ripped off here? Who cares, cause they were deeeeelicious.

Here is what they looked like searing and seared.

And what they looked like on a bed of veggies just before going to bed in my belly!

Autumnal Crafts - Shrunken Apple Heads!

2008-10-04T12:28:00.005-04:00

I don't normally like Martha Stewart but here is something that I saw on Boston.com that was Martha Stewart inspired that I got really excited about.

Shrunken apple heads! I remember making these with my babysitter when I was a wee one. She had a little wooden rocking chair and would make little bodies for them and everything. I am not that crafty, but I thought I would try it out since I am having a Halloween/Housewarming at the end of the month and these shrunken heads would add to the decor.

Assemble the ingredients for the shrunken head making. Essential items are the lemon and the salt so that the apples don't get all brown and nasty.

Here is what my apple heads looked like on the day of their birth...

And what they look like at two days old.

The green one started to get a little mold growth because I think I didn't have them stored in a dry enough place, but I tried to salvage him by carving off the mold. (image not shown because it was a little icky) I will post their progress through puberty into ripe old age over the weeks to come...

Rainy Saturday Shopper-tainment: Patriot Place

2008-09-28T08:53:00.004-04:00

How do you get a man to go to Bed Bath and Beyond? Put it right next to Gillette Stadium! Yesterday it was rainy and miserable and we had a list of non-fun errands to accomplish. E hates going to shopping establishments on Saturdays when they are mobbed with mothers with children in tow, tweens and arguing couples. We inevitably become one of those arguing couples on Shopping Saturdays because we hate dodging the crowds and shopping makes me tired and hungry. So we have traditionally avoided it at all costs. But we may have found an acceptable solution: Patriot Place! Their very fitting slogan for us is "Everyone wins!"

As it is about a 30-40 minute drive from our place depending on traffic I was already peckish once we got there. There look like there will be many options, but so far, only Skipjack's, Dunkin Donut's and CBS Scene are open.

So of course we had to check out CBS Scene. This place was not good for my ADHD-like tendencies with screens all over the place and buttons to push at the table. I had trouble figuring out what to focus on which distracted me from checking out the menu. I was too busy trying to find a CBS TV show that I wanted to watch on our personal TV!

Thankfully our waiter saw how frantic I looked and suggested the fish and chips special. Fresh Haddock that day only. We went for the fish and chips, a baby spinach salad and a side of mac and cheese. E ordered the food and I ordered a very boozy coffee drink, which prompted the waiter to say, "... and what will you be having for food?". I responded that we would be sharing all aforementioned food which he seemed puzzled by. I guess most people tend to overeat when they go here because let me tell you we were pretty darn stuffed after we finished our food and had I eaten more I would have felt oogy.

The fish and chips was probably the best I've ever had, and I've eaten a lot of fish and chips. For a time I ate them almost every Friday because the university cafeteria always had it and I had one of those deadly meal plan cards. Now I realize that I likely had a mild fried fish addiction during 1st and 2nd year university. The CBS Scene fish were very light on the batter and very crispy thin chips, so now that I'm older I don't feel guilty eating this as it doesn't feel like the dish is immediately coating my arteries.

The mac and cheese was also spectacularly cheesy and extremely hot because of the skillety thing they put it in.

Spinach salad was also very fresh. Not floppy at all, which is a big spinach salad risk when too much dressing is applied. I wasn't expecting good food at all because when I think of football and food it's almost always greasy and heart burn inducing.

I think they are trying to appeal to the XX and the XY with this place because it had a pretty good view of the stadium, huge TVs everywhere, yet fancy pants drink menus, nice place mats and pretty darned good food. See... everyone wins!

After we were well-fed. We bought some of that foamy soap that all girls love at Bath and Body Works and then headed to the chichi movie theatre. The theater reminded me of the ones in Canada and Amsterdam. Much bigger open spaces in the lobby and it had nice plushy semi-reclinable seats and even a special "lux level", which from what I could tell from our "economy" seats just had bigger, leather seats. They also had that shaker seasoning for your popcorn that I used to love getting in Canada, although I'm told it is now not as readily available due to messiness issues. My only negative experience of they day at Patriot Place was the movie that we picked, "Eagle Eye". Avoid at all costs unless you enjoy ridiculous plots lines and lots of breaking glass.

"Not too sweet" = a good dessert to me

2008-09-23T17:34:00.008-04:00

This is probably a gross generalization, but most of the people that I know who are Asian are much more about the salty than the sweet. I find this is especially true of those of the older generation who did not grow up in the US or Canada. My possibly unfounded generalization has been anecdotally tested only in my friends or family who are Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese, so maybe this is not true of people who are of Korean, Cambodian, Filipino etc descent. If you knew me, my pet peeve is believing that all Asians look a like so we must like, do, behave the same way... uh oh, here I am falling into my own trap! Best I shut up now about this.

When I have cravings they are generally for salty snacks -- I could eat pickles and salami all day, which does not bode well for my future blood pressure. Usually if I am paying a dessert or a compliment I say, "mmmm... that was yummy because it was, "not too sweet". A lot of people think that is dessert and "not too sweet" sounds silly, but then again I'm silly so maybe that's why it works.

This place, "Bouchon Bakery" in the Time Warner Building, is for the people who like me, like their desserts, "not too sweet".

They even had a "not too sweet" beverage option! I like how they describe this as the "Grown Up Soda", because me choosing this soda is probably the only grown up thing about me.

Here is the the grown up Oreo type cookie, called the "TKO", that was not too sweet.

And an outstanding Wagyu beef sandwich which I shared so that I would have space for aforementioned grown up cookie. By the way, I got a lesson on Japanese beef terminology from my Japanese friend. Wagyu beef, generally refers to a type of cattle in Japan that has that nice marbled flesh (ie fat) that makes it taste good; whereas Kobe beef is a particular kind of Wagyu cattle that is farmed in Kobe, Japan. So all Kobe beef is Wagyu beef, but not all Wagyu beef is Kobe. And that is our lesson in sweetness and logic for the day.

Vietnamese Sour Soup - Canh Chua

2008-09-13T16:03:00.005-04:00

This is hands down my favourite kind of soup. Lots of flavour, lots of veggies, lots of crunch and pretty healthy! What more could you ask for? I also find it refreshing, yet comforting all at the same time. Somewhat a feat for a soup if you ask me!

I must admit that I don't really make it from scratch because the soup base packages or cubes that you can get at the local Asian grocery store are pretty darn tasty and since tamarinds aren't really locally available here in New England, I don't really want to go through all that effort. I guess I could get the tamarind paste and play around with that, but I guess I'm too lazy.

One of my favourite parts of this soup is being able to use this weird vegetable that's hard to describe. In Vietnamese, it is called 'Bac Ha' and in English it is referred to by many names -- taro stem, elephant ear. See here for a much better explanation than I can give. My favourite part about putting this veggie in this soup is that the little holes take up a bunch of the soup broth so then when you crunch into a piece there is sour soup flavour explosion in your mouth! Careful if it's hot though!

I made mine with catfish, bean sprouts, tomatoes and sprinkled some fresh chopped cilantro and Thai basil on top. I think that traditionally this soup is eaten over white rice, but I had run out, so it was vermicelli noodles this time. Some people also like to eat it with pineapple, but I think canned pineapple leaves something to be desired and didn't have any fresh pineapple on hand, so left that out this time. Still tasted great!

U.S. Open Offerings

2008-09-07T16:16:00.004-04:00

From my last couple few posts, you may get the impression that all I do is gallivant and eat. This is not technically true as I usually prefer to cook and eat at home, but the last few weeks have been a bit of an anomaly. I'd like to chalk it up to spontaneity, but I think it's more of poor calendar manipulation techniques enforced upon me by the Y chromosome in my life (oops he may read this, but oh well...).

It was E's mom's birthday present to go to the U.S. Open and being curious about the tennis and of course the celebrities I thought it would be fun to go. Who knew they would have such great food too!

My first Flushing treat was a morning crepe! This was followed by a discussion about why North Americans do not embrace the crepe concept as much as Europeans. In Boston, there have been several crepe establishments that I have loved to frequent, but subsequently go out of business. Very sad for my belly.

Crepe Express had it down. The crepe was really easy to eat not only because of its deliciousness but also because of the nesting technique of the wrappings: sno-cone paper inside of larger outer cardboard. I can never resist getting one savory and one sweet so that it feels like meal and then dessert!

La Grand Bouffe - marinated chicken, spinach, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese. I think its names translates roughly into English as, "the big bite".

La Gourmande - Bananas and Nutella. Nutella makes everything better. I'm technically allergic to hazelnuts but I like to take risks for the sake of chocolate spread!

I washed it all down with a U.S. Open smoothie. All their smoothies had cutesy tennis names. This one was called a Strawberry Smash I think.

And here is a demonstration of what my abdominal circumference was approaching after a weekend of eating through Flushing and NYC!

In Search of Fish Tacos in San Francisco

2008-09-03T20:16:00.008-04:00

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in San Francisco and I thought I should eat some less creamy and puffy than Beard Papa, so it was suggested by Eric's twin brother that we go check out the Ferry Building since it would have many different options for our fickle party of five.

He mentioned a Mexican place he had been wanting to try and we all made a B-line for Mijita Cocina Mexicana. People in Boston often complain about the lack of good Mexican fare. I am a fan of the fish taco so I'm always thinking of my lightly battered deep fried friend whenever I approach a Mexican place and this one was definitely not disappointing.

The carnitas was also filled with porky goodness.

I wanted to wash it all down with a Mexican Squirt, which sounds really nasty, but I think it is just Sprite? They were out of Squirt, so I had to settle for a Mexican Coke, which tasted a lot like "American" Coke, but I think it had a different sweetener. Who knows...

Then we went to mall and watched this paper mache Godzilla chow down on this poor mannequin. He looks like he enjoyed this almost as much as I enjoyed my fish taco!

Cross-country for Cream Puffs!

2008-08-28T08:01:00.005-04:00

I haven't posted for awhile because of a flurry of activity. We moved into a new house in Charlestown, MA -- for those non-New England readers, it's where Paul Revere ended his ride at Bunker Hill. This has increased my commute from 2 minutes to 25 minutes. Really not a hardship but a bit of an adjustment for my spoiled self. Look forward to some new kitchen adventures and some BBQ adventures! Once we get a BBQ for our deck that is!

Immediately after our move (we moved on Wednesday), we flew to San Francisco because my man friend's twin brother had tickets to the Outside Lands festival in Golden Gate Park. I'll reveal more about this silly adventure later. As expected, flying cross-country 1.5 days after moving into a new house was not the greatest idea for these two tired, old and boring people.

But really, it was all worth it to stumble upon a Beard Papa's just around the corner from our hotel when I was feeling exceedingly grumpy and crotchety.

There used to be one of these in Faneuil Hall but it closed down. Probably because people here thought it was weird, but I thought it rocked! They make fresh cream puffs right in front of your eyes. Injecting the cream into the puffy thing as you watch! There are also lots of other treats too. I've only ever tried the molten chocolate lava thing, which was deeeeelicious warmed in the micro-onde. Beware the hot molten choclatey center that can burn the roof our your mouth. They had tiramisu cheesecake at the location in San Fran, which I now regret not going back for. The flavour of the week this week was caramel, so we had one chocolate and one caramel.

Fraternal Twin cream puffs for a fraternal twin brother organized weekend!

I'll have to fly back there to get a green tea flavoured one, but will have to time it right since the flavour changes weekly. Maybe I'll call them before I fly cross-country again. And I'll try to schedule it at least a week after a major move. Could be tricky!

Authentic Japanese Feast - Part III

2008-08-18T19:00:00.005-04:00

This is the final installment in my three-part Japanese feast. Tonight I will feature our desserts and an extra special Japanese breakfast!

We had two different desserts. The first was vanilla ice cream mochi. For those who have not tried mochi, it is a rice paste that is sticky and it often surrounds a small ball of ice cream. So cute and round.

Then we tried a very famous brand of cookie with some green tea. I'm not sure why this cookie is called "chocolat blanc et langue de chat". That translates into "white chocolate and tongue of cat". It makes it sound like a witch cookie.

I told my Japanese friend that I worked in vitamin K research and that I had heard of a natto being very rich in a certain form of vitamin K, but that I had never tried it. She was kind enough to go out an buy some natto for me to try!

Natto is a fermented soybean product that is a very common breakfast food served with white rice. The beans are rich in vitamin K because the bacteria that ferments it makes vitamin K! It is quite stinky and as you can see very goopy. The goop is much like okra goop but thicker.

Here you can see that I'm not quite sure if I should swallow it and my silly man friend is laughing at me. I'm not sure if I would replace my usual breakfast of yogurt and fruit or eggs on an English muffin, but it's good to know that I have options!

Authentic Japanese Feast - Part II

2008-08-15T20:03:00.003-04:00

Here I will feature our fish courses of the Japanese meal.

According to my Japanese friends it is much more difficult to find sushi grade fish in Boston as compared to Japan, where it is readily available. That being said, she made some delicious sushi with smoked salmon. The presentation was beautiful, with them being housed in a two tier box. It was like opening a tasty present!

The second fish course was Roasted Mackerel with Herbs. It was again like opening a fish present, as it was wrapped in special Japanese wax paper. Mackerel (or Saba in Japanese) is a very popular fish to eat in Japan. I mentioned to my Japanese pals that while in Munich we ate "Steckerlfisch" which is essentially mackerel inserted on a stick and BBQ'd. They have never dined on it this way, but seemed enthusiastic to try it, especially when I mentioned it washes down well with a big stein of Biru!

The last installment in the trilogy will have the dessert course and a special traditional Japanese breakfast...

Authentic Japanese Feast - Part I

2008-08-11T18:43:00.004-04:00

This will be the first installment in what I think will end up being a three-part series. My Japanese friend and her husband invited myself and the man friend over as we will soon be moving out of the apartment building we all live in. She promised a traditional Japanese dinner and boy did she deliver!

When we arrived at their unit it became very apparent that they had been cooking all day. There were yummy smells out in the hallway leading to their door. I think it must be a custom to have slippers available for guests. Whenever I've gone over there, one pair awaits me at the front door. This time there were two pairs for our four feet!

A beautiful salad was already occupying the table. It was Rei Shabu Salad. "Rei" meaning cold and "Shabu" referring to Shabu Shabu. Fun fact #1: Shabu Shabu is an onomatopoeic word: the thin meat makes that sound when it is dipped and waved around in the boiling water!

Also on the table was a Japanese Squash Salad. This squash is also known as Japanese pumpkin and I think is called "Kabocha". The outer skin is green and the flesh is orange. Fun fact #2: the Japanese do not celebrate Halloween.

My favourite dish of the evening was one of my friend's mom's specialties. It was asparagus wrapped in thin pork cutlet (tonkatsu) and then dipped in egg and breaded with panko. Delicious. Fun fact #3: Teenage boys especially enjoy eating tonkatsu with rice.

I was lucky enough to get some leftover asparagus and tonkatsu to bring home which we feasted on at various points throughout the next day. I was sad to see the last one pass my lips this afternoon.
More of the feast to follow...

Gyoza Lesson

2008-08-09T09:25:00.004-04:00

My language exchange has morphed into a recipe and cooking exchange which is perfectly fine with my belly. Food is after all a very important part of learning about a different culture. I introduced my Japanese friend to beets and how to roast them. In return she invited me over to make dumplings!

Still in the spirit of learning Japanese she prepared me an ingredient list with translations.

We mucked around a bit with the ingredients.

She had the coolest ceramic ginger grater that eliminates all the fibrous material from the ginger and puts all the gingery goodness into the surrounding moat. A quick google search found that I could easily purchase one for about 10-15$ or one that is in the shape of a blowfish for even less. Fugu!

And then we got down to business with the wrapping. Hers are prettier and less oozy than mine. It's a bit like arts and crafts and I'm like the toddler who uses too much glue and sparkles.

Fry em' up! Yum!

Gourmet Chocolate Bars

2008-08-06T08:34:00.005-04:00

I first came upon Vosges chocolate bars when I was in search of the Bacon Bar. Yes... it is what it sounds like -- a chocolate bar with bits of bacon sprinkled throughout. Some of you may think it is gross, but everyone who has tried thinks, "yum!". If you think about how good pancakes, syrup and bacon taste then you may be able to imagine the goodness that is the Bacon Bar.

Apparently they sell Vosges at Whole Foods (or Whole Paycheck as one of my old professors likes to call it), but I found them at the same gourmet store in Copley, Gourmet Boutique, that I found the elusive Haribou Fruity Smarties at.

On a repeat visit I tried the following two bars:

Woolloomooloo Bar - Roasted and Salted Macadamia Nuts, Indonesia Coconut, Hemp Seeds,
Deep Milk Chocolate
I had a hard time tasting the hemp seeds, although I'm not sure what a hemp seed would taste like other than crunchy.

Barcelona Bar - Hickory Smoked Almonds, Grey Sea Salt and Deep Milk Chocolate
Of the two, I enjoyed this one much more. There is something about the taste of chocolate with a little hint of salt that brings out the flavour. Maybe that's why I enjoyed the bacon one so much.

At nearly 8 bucks a bar, it is a pretty pricey treat, but I definitely think the Bacon Bar is worth trying for the taste and for the novelty value.

Momma's Banh Xeo

2008-08-03T09:27:00.004-04:00

Being up in North Bay, Ontario there isn't really much choice in terms of Vietnamese food (or many other types of ethnic food for that matter). Usually when I visit my brother there, my parents will bring various ingredients from Ottawa as there is a decent sized Chinatown there with lots of Asian grocery stores.

My inability to cook using measurements is both nature and nuture. Many will find this post frustrating for the low reproducibility of this dish known as the Vietnamese pancake or Vietnamese fajitas to some.

You can buy the packages of flour base for Banh Xeo that has some unfortunate "Engrish" instructions that may make things confusing for you... "one bowl of coconut milk"?! In case the print is too small for you to read (if you click on it you'll get the bigger version), you are also supposed to add 3 cups of water, some chopped green onions and a small packet of turmeric.

Once you're done the mixing it should look something like this.

We also cooked some mung beans for the filling and some other goodies for the filling too. The meat is usually shrimp and pork, but the only pork regionally available that day was about half a pig's worth so that was omitted.

Vs/s320/DSC02285.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230284884293764434" />

Then you heat up a frying pan. My mom uses a paper towel dipped in vegetable oil to grease the bottom. Ladle in one spoonful of the batter and cook until crispy and a bit browned on the bottom.

You also need lots of greenery (cukes, lettuce, basil, mint), some carrots and some fish sauce for dipping. Fill, fold, eat and enjoy!

Fancy pants dining in Toronto - Fuzion

2008-07-30T10:35:00.006-04:00

I was staying with a friend who is very conveniently located downtown. It's in close proximity to so many yummy restaurants. We took a little stroll up Church street, past the gay Baskin Robbins to Fuzion Resto-Lounge and Garden. We managed to snag a spot on the patio because our reservation was for 3 and there was only 2 of us.

I had the Grilled Quail. Mini birds but maxi on the flavour. It was really dark by the time we got our entrees, so I had trouble framing the shot. I also had side of garlic sesame rapini for the ruffage and the vitamins.

My dining companion went with the seafood risotto. The scallops were gigantesque!

We were both too full for dessert so we'll have to try that a different time.

Zoo Food

2008-07-28T14:16:00.004-04:00

One of my favourite places to go on summer vacation used to be the Toronto Zoo. I still remember the "big foot" prints painted on the ground that marked one of the trails. They are still there, but are a little faded. I went with a friend who used to be a member of the "little foot" club which I think is now called "zoo kids". This kangaroo was disobeying the sign and the subsequent one could read. Oh wait, maybe the sign was for us human animals.

All that tromping around makes one hungry and thirsty. There are strategically placed vending machines along the pathways. Wanta Fanta??! Do I look like a Fantana?

Luckily, at every pavilion there is a "Harvey's" which is a tasty Canadian hamburger chain owned by Cara operations Ltd. They are also responsible for Swiss Chalet, Kelsey's, Milestone's and Montana's. A plethora of Canadian restaurant chains!

I had the Angus Burger combo and they also have a very tasty veggie burger that is not at all bean-like or suffering from the falling apart phenomenon. I have always been suspicious of the non-meatiness of the veggie burger, but have been assured that it is just texturized veggie protein.

My favourite rest-stops are the combo Tim Horton's, Wendy's, Harvey's. Heaven by the roadside.

My hometown has diversified

2008-07-26T10:26:00.003-04:00

I grew up in a sleepy suburb of Ottawa called Blackburn Hamlet. I haven't lived there since 1998 but I still visit every once in a while since my parents still live in the house that they moved into when I was 2 and some of my high school pals are there too.

It was a great place to grow up -- lots of places to dig in the dirt and collect crayfish and tadpoles. However, variety was never it's strong point. I was one of the only non-White kids in the school (aside from Brian Cheng the Chinese kid) and at that time the restaurant options consisted of a selection of fast food chains. It's a good thing my mom is such a good cook.

So two of my friends from high school took me to a new chain establishment, Moxie's, that apparently the entire eastern suburb of Ottawa also decided to frequent on a Thursday night. It may have been due to the scantily clad hostesses and servers, but the food was decent. The extremely loud 80s and 90s music playing overhead was a little odd. I think their goal was to bring a bit of the "big city" feel to the 'burbs.

I tried the Beef Tandoori, which the server warned me was very very spicy. It was spicy, but I don't think that it warranted the very very for me since most of my taste buds have been burned off by previous cooking experimentation. It was very pretty.

Even prettier was my tea bag that I had with my dessert. Soooo silky!

Cilantro cupcakes?? Sous-titre: Cleaning out the fridge before vacay

2008-07-23T21:24:00.006-04:00

Summer means fresh produce and fragrant fresh herbs. But it also means planning when shopping because I don't want to over buy and then have things rot in my fridge if I go away for several days.

From my next several posts you will see that I am taking an Ontario tour to see my friends and family. What that means is that my man friend will have to fend for himself in terms of meals. I tried to pump him full of vegetables before I left, but didn't get the chance to use all the yummy veggies that I bought from Russo's (a great family-owned and operated market in Watertown). Knowing that all the remaining vegetables would be left to increase the ethylene concentration in my fridge and thus begin the decomposition process, I thought I would experiment with freezing herbs!

Doing a quick google search gave me varying opinions on the tastiness of frozen cilantro. Many people said that it works well but others said that the herb is best served fresh and gets black and yucky if frozen. Seeing as the cilantro left in my fridge would be going to waste anyway, I thought I'd give it a shot and deal with the consequences later. I figured it couldn't be terrible because most sources said that the frozen cilantro would be mushy but could be used in sauces. This sounded not unlike the Recaito, which is a Goya product, that I've added to many stewy type meals.

Here is my cilantro washed and happy on the chopping board prior to pulverization.

I put the herbs in a bowl, snipped coarsely with my kitchen shears. Then I added the juice of a fresh lime, some olive oil, salt and pepper.

Then, the mixture went into a silicone mini cupcake tray that I purchased at my beloved store, Target! Popped them in the freezer and when I get back from my Canadian holiday I'll let you know how it turns out!

Let's "cook with a book" - cooking with kids!

2008-07-21T06:49:00.007-04:00

Here goes some shameless family promotion. (For significantly more, see "My bro's page" in sites that make me hungry on the right hand side.) My niece, Fionna is both extremely cute and extremely smart. I'm saying this not only from a biased auntie's perspective, but from a professional perspective. I've seen a lot of kids in my line of work and Fionna and Abby (my younger niece) rank in the top 99th percentile of cute and smart. Yes, the confounding factor is the reporting by a family member, but I've already fully disclosed that conflict of interest.

Contributing to their cuteness/smartness factor, may be the fact that Fionna attends Montessori school where "play" is "work" and they are taught from the beginning that finding their own stuff to be interested in is key. This is clearly demonstrated by the phase that Fionna went through of shining silverware. She had a little toothbrush that she would use to clean some sort of candelabra at school so this translated into a lot of clean, shiny things at home as well.

So recently, she saw her mom cooking in the kitchen and so demanded that she also be allowed to "cook with a book". Only thing is she picked this book! Apparently to a young thing, all books can be cookbooks despite the lack of cooking instructions in this picture board book.

The following kitchen fun ensued and thus she will have a higher likelihood of being in the kitchen when she is a teenager than standing in the line at McDonald's? Is this how we should be addressing childhood obesity? Maybe, if only we could encourage her to make vegetables instead of cupcakes in a 10:1 ratio then we'd be successful!

e4T3JDrogYM/s320/IMG_6915.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225420320671581026" />

If our vegetables containers had cute silicon feet like this cupcake holder, I bet it would be easier. Also of note, is the way our genetics cause us to "house" food in the same manner.

Land and Sea

2008-07-19T07:56:00.004-04:00

Last year I went to the New England Sand Sculpting Festival and took pictures of the crazy sand creatures there. During one of my Japanese lessons, I showed my Japanese friend the pictures and tried to explain what it was like. Then we got on the subject of the famous "Lobster Roll". So I decided that this would be a perfect field trip!

On Revere Beach, which is T-accessible (that's the subway here), stands "Kelly's Roast Beef". It's a local chain and there is also one near the Wellington T on the orange line and also one in the monstrous Jordan's furniture IMAX complex in Natick. Really what more could you need if you have lobster, mattresses and a huge movie screen?! From the name, it doesn't sound like they would have much seafood, but in fact there is a large seafood menu. There is controversy in Boston about where you can get the best lobster roll, but this is definitely one of the front runners. It's not really a fine dining experience as you have to be very vigilant... if you're not paying attention you could get your eye pecked out by a very large sea bird. Some people think that $17.00 is way too much to pay for a lobster sandwich, but with the meat of 2 1 lb lobsters, it seems pretty worth it. Especially when your dining partners are two other small Asian women and our bellies can fill up pretty quickly. We shared a lobster roll and a clam plate.

Here is me showing them how it's done.

As you can see "Kelly's" was one of the sponsors of the competition. I bet Iron Man could put back a few roast beef sandwiches!!

Monkeying around in the kitchen

2008-07-16T16:36:00.004-04:00

As promised, here is my awesome monkey vegetable peeler. I like how he lives on my paper towel dispenser and looks like he is going to climb around in my decorative lucky bamboo. This is the same peeler that I nearly peeled my thumb nail off with in the post about the fruity Smarties. We bought him in Europe but then found out that he is manufactured in Boston. Well, I guess he was meant to come back to his home land with us!

Also along the lines of monkeys is our monkey-scrubbing-pad-holder-thingy. I got him at Economy True Hardware in the North End, where they have a surprising amount of great kitchen tools.

And here is a mango that I sliced up with that blue knife that someone with good taste liked. I love mango and apparently I love all things orange.

Presto!! Basil and Pumpkin Seed Pesto

2008-07-12T09:46:00.006-04:00

Another farmer's market find was this fragrant bunch of basil. I brought it home and "planted" it in a glass of water in the fridge and covered it with a plastic bag while I thought about what I would do with it. Because I was thirsty, I used a few sprigs to mix myself a drink. Mushed up the basil in my Flavour Shaker, added some fresh lime juice, a sprinkle of sugar, some gin and some bubbly water. Very refreshing!

This left me with the majority of the basil bush still left, so I thought I'd make some pesto, eat it with something and freeze the rest. Living in Chinatown without a car sometimes makes non-Asian groceries difficult to find if you just want to walk a few blocks. Since Asian people don't often eat pine nuts, I gave up on looking for these. I walked over to Sagarino's that often has a very good selection of cheese (I needed parmesan) and did not find pine nuts of course, but thought these pumpkin seeds would do. I also thought about using walnuts, but curiously there was not a walnut to be found in the joint!

So here goes the pesto.

1 cup of pumpkin seeds and 3 cloves of crushed garlic.

I blended these up with my hand blender. I initially made quite a mess since the bowl was too big and the blender flung seeds everywhere. I'm still picking them off of the floor!

Then I blended up the basil leaves (the whole bunch) and mixed it with freshly grated parmesan (about 1 cup). This mixture was rather dry, so I mixed in a bit of olive oil until it was more unctuous.

The next night for dinner I grilled up some chicken, red peppers and mixed it all with some spaghetti! The rest I'm planning on freezing in individual servings (since I only needed a few tbsps. per meal, so there's still a lot left!)

クッキー = kukki = cookie

2008-07-10T07:54:00.005-04:00

My Japanese language skills are improving, although I think my vocabulary is expanding, the grammar is still very challenging. This was made very obvious to me when I tried writing a "thank-you" card to the parents of my Japanese friend. They came to my Canada Day party and in traditional Japanese style came bearing presents. They gave me some deeeelicious Yoku Moku cookies (kukki) and some beautiful bookmarks with drawings of Kabuki. I drafted up something for Mayumi to check to make sure I wasn't calling her parents, "stinky fish face" or something else insulting. Much giggling ensued because I wrote everything out of order due to my English grammar translating into Jap-lish. Here is the final edited version of my card.

Japanese things are always so pretty -- packaging is esthetically pleasing and there are often opening instructions. Portions are smaller but flavours were delightful. Orangey and lemony goodness.

Farmer's Market Finds

2008-07-08T22:39:00.003-04:00

Walking around on July 4th in downtown Boston requires some strategic tourist avoidance. The plan has to include getting an early start as people start camping out on the lawn in front of the Hatch Shell to get a good fireworks and Boston Pops viewing spot.

We had plans to do some errands around the Pru, so happened up the farmer's market in Copley Square that is there on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Yummy produce abound! We bought these funky rainbow carrots and some odd coloured beets. I didn't notice the urinary pigmentation this time since they aren't as dark red. Here are the beets, but I won't show you the salad as it was very similar to a salad that I wrote about earlier. I used goat cheese purchased at the farmer's market instead of gorgonzola.

Here are the rainbow carrots.

I made a tasty veggie side using string beans and a citrus marinade (lemon rind, orange rind and juices of both fruits). And served it alongside my beef brisket that I made in my slow cooker.

We've been looking for these for 3 years! Fruity Smarties

2008-07-06T16:44:00.003-04:00

We first encountered Fruity Smarties on a trip to Germany - the land of Haribou. Haribou is the company that brings you all different forms of gummy candies. Most notable would be the gummy bear. Does anyone else make the tricolour gummy bear? I like to bite different coloured ones into three pieces and then glue the head to a different coloured torso and then to a different coloured pair of legs. Once when I was a kid, I did this and saved one of them in one of those plastic bubbles that houses the toys you get out of a vending machine at the movies.

I know the idea of fruity smarties sounds gross, but these are surprisingly good. They have a hard candy coating and gummy candy in the middle. Sounds a little like Skittles, but much tastier and a bit bigger.

We found these candies in a imported chocolate and candy store in Copley Place, called Gourmet Boutique: http://www.gourmetboutique.net/index.htm
It's the same store where we first bought a Bacon Chocolate Bar by Vosges. Also very gross sounding but exceedingly tasty.

Here is what they look like in cross-section. You can also see in the picture where I nearly peeled off my own fingernail while peeling carrots. Ouch! I needed to off-set my candy consumption with some beta-carotene.

So It's Canada Day, Eh?

2008-07-02T22:49:00.006-04:00

Being Canadian and living in the U.S. there are times when I say things that give me away. Examples are: "Would you like to go out for some poutine?" or "It's cold outside, you may want to wear your toque." and "... I was oot and aboot"

To introduce some of my Boston pals to these great cultural phenomena, I thought it would be fitting to have a Canada Day party at my place. Most of them didn't even know when Canada Day was (It's July 1st), but everyone was very eager to try Canadian beers and pretend that my indoor pool was the cool and refreshing Lake Ontario.

I went on a search for Canadian items and came up with some essentials.

Canadian flag - $2.99 on Amazon.com

It is surprisingly difficult to find cheese curds here. I called Whole Foods and they recommended that I try some of the Armenian markets. I almost gave up on making poutine (ingredients = french fries, cheese curds, gravy), but then my friend Meagan came to the rescue with 4 packages of cheese curds from Trader Joe's! I think that traditionally, the French Canadians prefer white cheese curds, but seeing as my options were limited, these turned out sufficiently greasy and unhealthy tasting.

Also displayed proudly in the party room was a container of Tim Horton's coffee. This is nearly sacrilegious in the land of Dunkin' Donuts, but people seemed to be okay with it.

Kappy's Liquor had a surprising variety of Canadian beers including some of the Quebec Unibroue favourites like, Maudite.

All in all a fun time had by all!

I bought a slow cooker! Let's eat pulled pork!

2008-06-26T20:40:00.005-04:00

My online shopping habit sometimes gets me into trouble. This time it got me more kitchen tools to experiment with! My new crock pot and hand blender will likely be the subject of the next several posts.

Summer isn't a time when you think of using a slow cooker because you might associate it with hearty stews etc. But a quick internet search of "slow cooker" and "summer recipes" had me drooling over pulled pork sandwiches. Pickles almost always make a sandwich better and the Cubans have it down with this one.

So last night I sauteed up:
1 onion - chopped
1 big shallot - chopped
6 crushed cloves of garlic
1/2 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tbsp peppercorns

Then I added:
1/2 big can of diced tomatoes
some squirts of Worchestershire sauce
some squirts of soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
a dash or two of dried thyme

This I let cool and then poured in 1/4 cup cider vinegar because when it is cooler it apparently is less stinky?

The marinade was then poured over top this lovely hunk o' pork (~2.5-3 lbs) and I let it sit in the ceramic part of the crock pot in the fridge over night.

Then in the a.m. I plugged the piggy in and set it on low. Went to work, but then became paranoid about leaving a small appliance on while I was not home, so I came home at lunch to check on the status. Since I live 2 minutes from work it wasn't a great hardship and it was already smelling awesome even though no one had been slaving over a hot stove all morning!

Then I came home, and after 10 hours in the crock pot I had THIS! Well, that is, after I hauled it out of the crock pot and deconstructed it with two forks.

Grilled up some whole wheat hamburgesa buns, chopped up some kosher pickles, slathered on some mustard and voila! Soooooo tender! Apparently the leftovers are also yummy if frozen into single serving sizes and then warmed up in the microwave later!

b.good = oh so good

2008-06-24T17:40:00.004-04:00

Walking down Newbury street always makes me hungry. It must be seeing all those girls with big huge sunglasses and unhealthy body mass indices (and I mean underweight bordering on anorexic/amenorrheic/osteopenic -- you know the ones I mean, the ones that say, "like" and "ohhhh myyyy gawwwd" so much that it sounds like a vocal tic).

So where better to ensure that I don't go without grub than a healthier "fast food" establishment like b.good. It's a local chain, so sorry all my Canadian friends, but you'll have to come visit me to try it:

http://www.bgood.com/index.php

Thing is I'm not sure that you could call this fast food because it so yummy and so sans greasiness. This brings up the debate that we had a Christmas this year in Minneapolis re: what constitute "Fast Food". Our consensus was that it had to involve French Fries (or Freedom Fries as people in Boston prefer to call them) and obviously the rapidity of the service is key. So by that definition, b.good qualifies, but when you see what I ate, you may think that it gets disqualified.

So I had a very mildly flavored water that I think is also a local thing. Refreshing, but barely a hint of lemon, so not for those who like the sugary beverage. Tasted like someone had squirted a tiny wedge of lemon into it and that's good enough for me.

Then we shared the Sesame-Ginger Chicken salad which was so fresh and so crunchy. Jicama is my new favourite salad ingredient!

We also shared a Chipotle Chicken Sandwich which was a bit fruity tasting. We concluded that this must be the caramelized onions, but maybe someone can set me straight on this?

Tasty tasty. And fueled me up for more dodging of those stick figures shopping the high-end stores.

Ekiben - Korean/Japanese in Bethesda MD

2008-06-19T17:49:00.004-04:00

My last day in Bethesda I was feeling faint/cranky and it was HOT so I decided to grab a bite to eat before dragging my bags from the hotel into D.C.. I always know that when I start to feel worried or start to feel like hyperventilating, the most likely reason is due to hunger. My learned self soothing technique is through food. I also thought it would be a good idea since there were several fires in the Metro due to power failures that morning. Who knows... I could have been trapped in the subway with nothing to eat! Imagine languishing in the underground with no sustenance. Although you can't eat or drink on the Metro in D.C. so the point is moot.

I stopped at Ekiben, which was right across the street from my hotel. I had been there for take-out earlier in the week but ate Japanese, so I thought I'd try the Korean as I had read that it was even better.

At lunch (which is defined as from noon to 4 pm) they have lunch specials and 1$ sushi, so I couldn't resist having some sushi as an appetizer. I was the only one in there since it was way past noon and it came out really fast.

The BiBimBap was very fresh -- crunchy vegetables and tasty meat and eggs. It was really big so I overindulged and then had to sit for awhile during the expansion phase. The sushi appetizer was okay, with pieces that were a little small, but also fresh.

I asked for an itemized receipt since I was going to claim the expenses and I think I caused them to break their cash register. It took two employees to fix it and I admire their patience!

Here is also a picture of what I had eaten earlier in the week. Not as yummy as the Korean food, so I think if I was in the area again I would stick with the Korean side of the menu.

Passage to India

2008-06-16T17:29:00.004-04:00

I learned while at my conference that Bethesda, MD is the city with the highest restaurants per capita in the US. The restaurants that I did try were really showing me something including this place, "Passage to India".

Here is the website:

http://www.passagetoindia.info/

The owners seemed to be there and all the staff very helpful. They were quick to accommodate our request for separate checks as we were all semi-strangers eating together because we were all attending the same conference. The menu is organized by region, which is cool because I don't think I've been to an Indian restaurant where there was so much selection. I was disappointed that there was no paneer on the menu, but I guess that didn't fall into any of the regions?

I had an appetizer that I had never heard of before:

SEV-MURMURA CHAAT
An exotic combination of puffed rice, cilantro, vermicelli, dates and tamarind

This salad was very tasty with lots of fresh flavours.

Followed by:

CHICKEN KAIRI LAUNJI
Chicken with raw mango preserve and pickle spices

And because I am a pickle freak I also ordered a side of pickles. Which was good because they were xxxxxtra spicy!

One of my dining companions had the sampler:
CHEF’S SAMPLERS
The following Khazanas (treasures) are a selection of our best sellers presented to you on a silver platter. You will be served an assortment of appetizers, followed by an array of entrees accompanied with saffron rice, lentils, raita and topped off by a dessert.
SAMUDRI KHAZANA – Seafood assortments

Overall, a yumtastic experience and I would definitely go back if in the area again!

The Burger Joint - Bethesda, MD

2008-06-11T18:15:00.004-04:00

I am forced to eat out for a whole week since I am doing a work thing at the NIH and staying in a hotel that has a mini-fridge and a microwave on the 4th floor, but it seems weird to cook when you don't have any actual utensils.

I walked around the corner from my hotel and found this place called "The Burger Joint" and noticed that on their menu they have a burger called "The Greek" that was featured on an episode of "Throwdown with Bobby Flay". Here is the front of the menu.

I ended up ordering a veggie burger made with brown rice, black beans, oats and molasses. It was mighty tasty, but suffered from the fate of many veggie burgers in that it was very crumbly. I wanted the sweet potato fries, but unfortunately someone in front of me claimed the last box which I guess means that they are pretty fresh. So I settled for regular fries which I saved in the mini-fridge and have been eating soggy and cold as late night snacks.

All in all, a good experience and I'll have to go back to try "The Greek" - it has fresh lamb, tzatziki, mint and feta. Refreshing!

Another nice feature was their biodegradable take out bag made from corn. I'm not sure that this is technically a better way to make a bag, as I've heard it takes more energy? Not really sure about that though. Anyone have any idea?

Robyn - Konichiwa Bitches

2008-06-07T10:51:00.001-04:00

Konichiwa B*****s

2008-06-07T10:41:00.003-04:00

I am learning how to speak Japanese from a friend that moved into my building 9 months ago from Japan. She is the cutest thing and very enthusiastic to practice her English and help me learn her language. I'm really excited because this means she might also teach me how to cook Japanese food! She loves to cook because she thinks the US portion sizes are way too big and also it is not customary to tip in Japan for any service, so she thinks that is a bit weird.

Since starting my lessons, I realized that there is a song out by the very Euro, Robyn, called "Konichiwa B*****s". Okay, come on admit it... you remember her song from the mid 90s "Show Me Love". So let me see if I can include her youtube video of the song below. Oops it ended up above, don't know how to change that.

Anyway... I just want to let Robyn know that she spelled "Konichiwa" wrong in the title -- it should be "Konnichiwa". Also, having pediatrician experience I can't say that I've ever "hammered a toe", although the phenomenon of "hammer toe" does exist and I am a sufferer of this rather unsightly and annoying condition. I really don't know what my new Japanese friend would think of this. I think I'll ask her this afternoon...

Shrimp, Veggies and Soba Buckwheat Noodles

2008-06-04T17:56:00.005-04:00

This is what Eric likes to call the "Christmas colour stir-fry" although I admit it looks more Christmas-y when it is on a bed of rice, since rice looks more like snow than brown soba noodles. Well, I guess it could be snow that was in a high traffic, salt and sand area.

Here is the raw shrimp peeled and mixed up with some lime juice, vegetable oil, jalapenos, minced ginger and garlic and fresh ground pepper.

Next you chop up some veggies. Here we have a selection of red and green bell peppers, edamame (frozen, so I boiled em' a bit first) and shallots. I finally used my last shallot from the ridiculous peapod delivery mishap, so maybe my next meals will be less shallot-y.

Then you boil the water and dump in some nice bunches of soba noodles. They cook real fast, so be careful or else you will get a mushy brown lump. I like to drain them and run them under cold water. They are still yummy cold.

Fry up yer shrimps with some hoisin sauce, dump in the veggies and voila!

Tastee offerings!

Doctor! My pee is red!!

2008-06-02T18:32:00.004-04:00

A common complaint of a new beet eater is that soon after beet ingestion, the urine turns a shade of red that can be mistaken as blood. Not to worry! It's just the red pigment of the beets and not another urinary tract infection or kidney stone. So continue to enjoy the lovely beet salad shown below. Oh yes, and the same phenomenon can occur in the poop.

Sauteed Beet Green Salad with Roasted Beets (oh yeah and some chicken apple sausage too!)

I like to wash my beets the day of purchase because they typically come with a lot of grit that I don't like setting up abode in my fridge.

I clip off the greens above where they join onto the beet because then they won't bleed as much when they are being cooked which causes a lot of loss of the red pigment (anthocyanins) which are purported to have lots of those trendy antioxidant properties.

Then I drizzle the beets with oil, sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper and roast covered in foil at 400 deg. Celsius for ~ 1 hour or until they are pierced easily with a fork. The beets are much easier to peel when cool, so I usually do that the next day in the prep phase for the salad.

The greens, I usually steam the same night and then sautee in olive oil, garlic and shallots the next day before making the salad.

Here is said salad with a side of chicken apple sausage. This is a Germany type meal that my man friend enjoys very much. Yum!

Minty Crispy Treasures

2008-05-31T09:15:00.003-04:00

A special edition M&M treat has come out to celebrate the new Indiana Jones movie. When we heard about this, we scoured the city to come up with at least one small bag of the candies.

We went to Sugar Heaven, CVS, City Convenience and came up cold. Some websites said that K-mart was carrying them, but not wanting to trek out to the suburbs, we resorted to ordering a huge box of them over the internet from a store called Candy Land.

They arrived yesterday and they did not disappoint! They are bigger than we thought they would be and have a nice mint chocolate flavour with some small rice crisps embedded within the chocolate. Indy would approve.

Here is what the packaging looks like.

Individual candies have imprints of different archeologic symbols on them. Very satisfying. I'll try to not devour all bags by next week!

Gin Lemon Rickey

2008-05-29T18:19:00.002-04:00

The new refreshing drink of the summer is my concoction the Gin Lemon Rickey.

I employed the "Flavour Shaker" that I bought in a very Euro kitchen store in Amsterdam. It is a kitchen tool made by Jamie Oliver, hence the "ou" in "flavour" (but also because I am Canadian). I don't think it was made to make drinks but essentially it looks like a black Barbapapa that can serve as a mortar and pestle. For more information, see:

http://www.flavourshaker.co.uk/

Here I mashed up some mint with ice cubes in the implement, then added gin, lemon bubbly water and enjoyed on a hot summer day.

Some famous characters who enjoy the traditional lime rickey:
-Mr. Burns
-Tony Soprano
-people in "The Great Gatsby"
-Karen from "Will and Grace"

Shmish with Rice and Vegetables

2008-05-28T15:41:00.000-04:00

I discovered this vegetarian "fish" when eating at Buddha's Delight across the street from our apartment.

Then I was even happier when I found it in the vegetarian "meats" section of my local Asian grocer! So here is Shmish prepared in a clay pot (which is actually a ceramic pot, since I do not own a clay pot)

The best part about Shmish is that it is molded to look like fish complete with scales. I think the mild "fishy" flavor comes from the seaweed that it is wrapped around. It comes frozen, but thaws really quickly.

I cut it up and mashed it around with some minced ginger, this interesting cilantro paste thing that is a Goya product, soy sauce, Sriracha hot sauce, lemon juice, shallots and minced garlic. Then I chopped up some red bell pepper and broccoli and just zapped in the micro-onde for about 5 minutes, then stirred it up and zapped again for another 3.

It was served with white rice and some fresh herbs (cilantro, green onions and basil). Yum!

Vietnamese Five-Spice Cornish Hens

2008-05-26T08:31:00.003-04:00

This will be the first post in my "Made it, then Ate it" series.

I bought two frozen cornish hens at the Asian Grocery Store, Super 88 and then figured I should do something tasty with them. So here we go. I'm not much of a measuring cook, so the reproducibility may be low, but I think that the flavors are something not easily messed up.

Here is the marinade:
cup of white wine (I used a 5 dollar bottle of Chardonnay, you are supposed to use dry... is that dry?)
1/2 cup of soy sauce
1/2 cup of Worcestershire sauce
2 thinly sliced shallots (I ordered 5 shallots from peapod and instead got 5 packets! of organic shallots... i have been cooking with shallots a lot lately)
a thumb length of grated ginger

Whilst mixing up the marinade, cleaver your hens into four pieces, salt each side and place them in a strainer to absorb the saltiness.

Rinse off hens and put them in your big bowl with the marinade and put in the fridge for at least 2 hours, but best overnight. I did it for about 8 hours.

When done marinating, mix up the following in a big stock pot:
8 cups water
1/2 cup sugar
3 squirts Hoisin sauce
1 tbsp Chinese Five Spice Powder
some fresh ground pepper

Boil the above, then transfer hens from marinade bowl into stock pot. Boil again, then remove from heat and let sit for 20 minutes with cover on to poach your birds.

Preheat oven to 350-375 degrees. Remove bird pieces from the stock pots and dry on paper towels. Transfer to foil lined baking pan. Then pour over both sides of bird bits the following mixture:

juice of 1 lemon
honey, 2 squirts
soy sauce, 2 squirts

Put pan in oven and bake with skin side up for ~ 30 minutes or until golden and crispy looking.

Eat and enjoy!

Brain eaters attack Boston!

2008-05-25T13:40:00.000-04:00

They have ris'n near South Station and threaten to suck out our brains. Please send help. The apocalypse is nigh.

Photos where I look hungry

2008-05-24T09:29:00.000-04:00

Looking for some thematic photos to post, I realized that I often make the same face when posing with food.

First, is me eating some right off the tree pears in at winery in the Niagara region.

Second, we see me at an IMAX 3-D movie with a big bag of salty salty popcorn.

And finally, attack of the injected cupcake at a now defunct novelty cupcake shoppe in the North End of Boston.

What rhymes with "hungry"?

2008-05-24T09:01:00.001-04:00

I can't seem to find many words that truly rhyme with this word. There are a lot of cousin rhymes but so far, a quick google search reveals "angry" and "sundry". The online rhyming dictionary I found says that no perfect rhymes can be found. Can anyone think of others?!!

Also interesting is that a bunch of hits for the Busta Rhymes song, "Survival Hungry" come up. I now need to see what said song sounds like.

I am often very hungry. People think that I either have an intestinal parasite or that I am a binge/purge type. None of the above, thank you! I just like to eat, cook and think about food. But I am often hungry for other things... many of which I plan to share.

Thanks for reading and now it's time for a snack.
-jt