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

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

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!

First Food, Then Chocolate - Max Brenner

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 bad luck to eat Rabbit?

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

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!

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!

A Year?! Birthdays-giving

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!

Danish Pastry House: Baby Friendly Cafe!

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!

My Own Little Boston Organics Baby

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

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!

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!!!

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....

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

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!