A Fine Frenzy - Almost Lovers

There's something about this song. It's so beautiful it's haunting.




Your fingertips across my skin
The palm trees swaying in the wind, images
You sang me Spanish lullabies
The sweetest sadness in your eyes, clever trick

Well I'd never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me

Goodbye my almost lover
Goodbye my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be

So long my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

We walked along a crowded street
You took my hand and danced with me, in the shade
And when you left you kissed my lips
You told me you would never ever forget these images, no

Well I'd never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me

Goodbye my almost lover
Goodbye my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be

So long my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

I cannot go to the ocean
I cannot drive the streets at night
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind

So you're gone and I'm haunted
And I bet you are just fine
Did I make it that easy to walk
Right in and out of my life

Goodbye my almost lover
Goodbye my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Why can't you just let me be

So long my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

3 days left!

Until my thesis defense! Blog on hold until then, and possibly a few days after that too.

Woohoo!

Butternut squash and goat cheese...

Oh man, food is my life.

Just writing this blog post title made my mouth salivate.

I just love the strong complex flavours of goat cheese. How it's such a soft cheese. How it's not quite a silken texture yet, but it's not really a gritty texture either. How it pairs well with a nice white. How you can drizzle olive oil or balsamic vinegar over it. How you can just eat it. On it's own.

Ooooh yummm...

...

Anyways.

I was reading the latest issue of "Fine Cooking" on the weekend and I came across an article about making fresh pasta. Following it, were a few recipes on making fresh lasagna dishes. The last one, was a butternut squash lasagna, with mashed garlic butternut squash filling between layers of fresh lasagna, coated in a beautiful goat cheese bechamel sauce.

Oh my, that sounded heavenly. But tough luck on getting me to make fresh pasta again without a pasta roller!!

I opted instead, to use up the rest of the pasta shells I had kicking around from the last time.

I roasted half a bulb of garlic and a butternut squash cut in two. Mashing it all together, seasoning it, and mixing it in with a cooked concoction of the leftover mushrooms and a shallot.

Stuff stuff stuff! Into the pasta shells they go!


I could have gone for a cheesier bechamel sauce, but I left it to a tad too late to start adding the goat cheese, and it was thickening up on me like no tomorrow. I only managed to add about 2/3 of a cup of goat cheese before I had to take it off the heat for fear of creating a glutinous mess.

What baked up in my oven 30 minutes later? A batch of heaven. That's what.

Insalata caprese

I didn't have the right cheese. And I didn't have fresh basil leaves. But I have everything else. And I added delicious avocado slices.

This salad is so... not... really a salad. But I love it. Alternating slices of tomato and mozzarella. Drizzled with a good quality cold pressed extra-virgin olive oil. Salt to taste.

Ooh, it sounds so delicious!

Oh yeah, this was my little appetizer treat for the Grey Cup. Oooh yeah....

Potato curry

I seem to be lacking a lot of ingredients in my pantry lately. Blame it on having a blanked brain while at the store.

I just wanted something simple and hearty, but was missing many ingredients typically used to make my curry.

For example, curry paste.

Seriously?

Nonetheless, I made it using skim milk mixed with corn starch. Well that doesn't sound healthy. Although I am weighing the benefits of that against the use of an entire can of coconut milk. Really, which seems worse?

I just wanted something delicious to eat. And thus, I made it.

Potato and carrot curry. I can't even remember if I added chickpeas to this. I would have been crazy NOT to.

Pearl barley risotto

So here's something I'll probably never make again!

Over the last year, I've gotten pretty good at making my risottos. Who'd have thought that switching up the grain would completely change the game?

Not to say that my risotto turned into a cooking disaster. It didn't. On the contrary, it turned out great. I just apparently *hate* pearl barley.

I can't remember where I saw this, but the low GI factor really intrigued me, so I got some pearl barley to test this out.


Although it turned creamy just like it should, the consistency, texture and flavour profile was a total miss...

No matter how long it's cooked, pearl barley has an inherently gummy chewy texture and a bland boring off flavour that just doesn't work well with the likes of a risotto.

Needless to say I ate maybe half of what was in my bowl and promptly threw the rest out.

-sigh- this was way more disappointing than when I discovered steel cut outs get boring after the 2nd day! =(

Mac 'n cheese

I love love LOVE macaroni and cheese. I had a lot of KD growing up and with an appreciation for "real food" now, I've learned that it doesn't take much more effort to make it from scratch.


Lesson's learned this time around?:

1. DON'T buy the whole wheat macaroni. No matter how healthy you want to be, the Healthy Harvest just doesn't cut it with cheese macaroni.
2. Use more jalapeno. Apparently, this pepper doesn't have much effect on me. The spicy heat was sorely missed, and I was left with a sad bowl of un-spicy mac 'n cheese.
3. Bring on the cheeseeeeee. Man, do I ever love it.

Baked pesto salmon

Last week, I was in the mood for pesto, but not in the mood for pasta. I wanted to eat some protein, so I opted to try a pesto salmon.

I baked it in foil on a bed of green beans and it turned out great. I could have salted a teensy bit more (as usual) and let it bake for a touch longer, but it turned out great.

Delicious!

Spaghetti squash

I am a fan of butternut and acorn squash, but for some reason I just haven't ventured to the spaghetti variety. I thought I'd give it a try, as I bought one the other week.

After thinking for a week of what I could do with it, I realized why it is not high up on my squash priority list: there isn't much you can do with it.

So I did the standard.

Spaghetti squash seemed even more difficult to cut than the butternut. I couldn't hack through it, so I ended up making a bunch of slits and tossing it in the microwave for about 8 minutes before I could get a knife through it.

I tossed some olive oil over it and baked them cut side down for 30 minutes. Then, with fork-ful power, I turned it into this:


Looks delish, doesn't it.

It certainly looks great, but I got quite sick of eating it soon after. Plus, with such a massive squash, it was more than 1 meal. AKA. zOMG-give-me-anything-else-to-eat!!

My squash dinner was topped with a random assortment of "in-fridge" ingredients. Aka, pasta sauce, onion, chick peas and jalapeno.

Raspberry cheesecake cupcakes

So I've been busy the last little while fretting about graduation and frantically getting everything organized.

The weekend was fraught with stress, as I was told of impending edits to certain aspects of my analysis that was pervasive throughout my thesis. YIKES!

Nonetheless, I called upon my stress to help me bake. Funny how it actually helps.

With another wine and cheese party in the works, I thought I'd shake things up and make cheesecake instead. The lack of plates meant I needed to get crafty. Thus, cheesecake cupcakes!



These were actually quite easy to make, it just takes a while.

First came the base, which was a typical graham cracker crust. Simple.

Next came the jelly, which I made from scratch with fresh raspberries, sugar and some water.

Layer on top some cheesecake deliciousness and bake that until a toothpick comes out clean!

I also made the whipping cream fresh with some heavy cream mixed with cream cheese. It didn't quite get as thick and fluffy as I was hoping, but I always find that I under-whip the cream because I'm afraid of over-whipping and turning it into a slew of wet butter...

They were a hit at the wine and cheese and were devoured very quickly! Too bad I only brought 18 there, I really should have brought them all. Oh well! More for me! =D

Chocolate mousse shortbread sandwiches

Sounds like a mouthful doesn't it?

It is.

A mouthful of delicious, that is.

To counteract the licorice taste from the fennel in the Mediterranean soup, I opted for a semi-sweet dessert to go with it.

I saw this on gojee again, therefore, I clearly had to make them.

The original post wanted honey coated strawberries to top these, which makes sense after-the-fact. However, strawberries aren't in season right now and I wasn't going to rush out to get something picked unripe and shipped from thousands of miles away just to satisfy a malleable cookie recipe. The cookies were destined to go strawberry-less.

Despite that, they turned out great. The cookie batter is a consistency I'm not really used to. It was really wet and was to be rolled out quite thin. It turned out to be a lot more cookies than I thought, which is nice for sharing.


Don't they just look delicious? I used nested cookie cutters, so I had small and large sizes of the same fluted shape.

The cream filling was a simple concoction of melted semi-sweet&dark-mix chocolate and whipped heavy cream. Only half the cream was whipped so it didn't have a ridiculously light and fluffy texture. The chocolate also helped to weigh it down a bit to give it a heavier denser consistency like that of buttercream (although it was far from it, let's be honest).

The cookie filling was piped with a 1M Wilton tip for extra oomfph on the edges.

Mediterranean soup

I was busy on the weekend. The kimchi and sloppy joes were on Saturday. Sunday I used to relax a bit, make some chocolate cookies (coming soon!) I was dying to try out and test out making a Mediterranean soup.

As usual, I get inspiration from watching the Food Network. Michael Smith was on TV and the episode highlighted his Mediterranean chicken soup. Given the fact that I don't eat chicken, clearly I needed to improvise. I started my soup stock with the standard mirepoix. The vegetables in the soup were rounded out with green bell peppers and half a fennel bulb (I didn't dare to throw it all in for fear of licorice-y-ness).

I know it's a Mediterranean soup, but I didn't start with a sofrito base because I wasn't making it Spanish. Just to make it even more ambiguous, the soup was finished off with a random assortment of things:

• black olives
• Israeli couscous
• chick peas
• fennel
  

I didn't realize Israeli couscous continued to absorb liquid the way it does, so my lunch the next day was conspicuously chunky. Still delicious though!

Sloppy "joes"

I had a couple meals planned for the weekend and I was glad to make these vegetarian sloppy joes.

I've only had sloppy joes once in my life. And even the likeliness of that event is hazy. I can't remember where it was I had it, for what reason and who (on earth) would have made it for me.

Regardless, it always looked like a ridiculously messy-licious meal so I wanted to make it. This vegetarian version has lentils instead of ground beef. It uses pasta sauce, mustard and chili powder. I added some ketchup to it also, just to up the flavour.


The result? Delicious on a bun. I actually really enjoyed this and there is also a lot leftover (I made over a cup of lentils).

Definitely suggest everyone try this out and I think you won't miss the meat at all.

After dinner, we went out to the Pennywhistle to meet Rob and celebrate his defense. His Ph.D. went well and we met up for a couple beers. I didn't know any of the people but it was still a good crowd and there were definitely interesting conversations going around.

Congrats Rob!

Kimchi

A few days ago while in the office slacking off, I came across a way to make homemade kimchi. I don't normally eat it, but thought I'd try it out and see.

I don't think I used the correct type of red chili powder because I didn't get a nice paste consistency and it wasn't as bright red as I was expecting.


A whole head of nappa cabbage was enough to fill two standard mason jars full.

Aside from that it still tastes pretty good, from what I can tell. I think I should really learn to cut the amount of listed chili powder... I obviously can't handle it hahaha

Shrimp stuffed portabello mushrooms

I'm posting my first "interactive" foodie post on something I made for dinner Wednesday night.

I actually really like portabello mushrooms. At first, the taste was a bit strong for me but I've grown into it.


I've been looking for more ways to use them, so I've been buying them every couple weeks and trying to come up with things to do with them.

Perusing gojee.com didn't lead me to anything that sparked my interest (or fit my pantry contents), so I re-visited my old love, epicurious.com. There I found a nice shrimp stuffed portabello mushroom recipe that I wanted to try out.

First, scrape the gills and remove the stem from the mushroom caps.


Then sautee the onions and garlic for a few minutes in canola oil until soft before adding them to the rest of the ingredients (bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, mayonnaise, cooked shrimp).


Stuff it all into the cleaned caps and bake for 20 minutes at 350F!


It was super simple and it came out delicious. I only made 2 mushroom caps so I just split the recipe accordingly.

I had mine with fresh tomato slices on the side.

Butternut squash pasta

The weekend has two days, so after warming up to a bowl of soup and slice of pie, I thought I'd make a quick dinner to wrap up the weekend (aka. pasta).

I had a butternut squash sitting around since the week previous and wasn't sure what to do with it. A quick search on my go-to website gojee.com led me to a delicious butternut squash pasta.

I melded two recipes together because I don't like bland sauce-less pastas. I added the rest of my remaining pesto sauce with half a cup of pasta water to thin it out, tossed it with my roasted butternut squash pieces and threw on some black olives for fun.


You think I would've learned by now that I really am not that big of a fan of olives, but I am relentless and keep tossing them in everywhere I look.

Despite my olive mess, I'd say this pasta goes into the book of repeats, although I'm going to need to use more pesto sauce next time to really coat my spaghetti.

Broccoli soup

I received some of the final edits on my thesis from Al this weekend so I was busy working on that. Finishing it mid-afternoon meant there was plenty of time for me to whip up a delicious dinner for the evening.

The broccoli at the store this past weekend wasn't the greatest, but I wanted to eat it so I went with a soup instead.

I made a cauliflower soup a the week before and didn't like it that much. Roasting the florets didn't help up the flavour profile and I much prefer cauliflower in my gratin or curry.

I do, however, enjoy my broccoli all buzzed up into soup form.

I thought I'd go with something simple that I've (semi-)made before: potato broccoli soup. I amped it up with some spring onions too, but it turns out I didn't like the sharpness it added.


Plus a little baguette on the side. Perfect dinner!

Of course, dinner is never complete without dessert and Adam's incessant *whining* about pie resulted in a freshly baked one.

I certainly do enjoy making this pie though. It's relaxing to make, aside from the initial makings and the crust-in-pan development.

Asia Day 16: Home!

October 8
Finally, the day came that it was time to go home. My flight was just after lunch, so we headed to the airport mid morning so I could make it through the pesky customs line in good time. I had some money left over so I tried to spend it as best I could.

Obviously, I bought a Hello Kitty phone charm. Clearly the best use of money.

My trip was great, made better by all the appearances by family. I don't know if I'll go back in the next few years, but it'll be on my list of places to return to eventually!

Movie list for the flight home?

• Bon Cop Bad Cop
• Mr. Popper's Penguins
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon
• Just Go With It
• Bad Teacher

Clearly I didn't sleep on the plane. Unlike my flight TO Hong Kong, my flight BACK did not have a free seat next to me. In fact, I probably had the worst seat possible. I was in the middle seat of the middle row in the plane. Next to 2 asian guys who were keen on overstepping the armrest into my seat. Also, I pee A LOT!!! =(

By the end, the lines to go to the bathroom were over 10 minutes long! And there was only ONE LADY in front of me!!!

I met a lovely man in the line (har har hilarious) who turns out had circled the globe in the last 2 weeks. Wow!

We chatted while in line before getting back to our respective seats. I waited for him when we got off the plane and we chatted until my luggage came off the carousel (which was a very very long time =[) We switched cards and I guess we... are fb friends now?!

Anyways, I am glad to be back home! And I believe I am now caught up in my blog posts! Yahoooooo...

A whole year? Already?

Adam and I celebrated our 1-year anniversary this past weekend, so we decided to go back to where it all started...

Yes, my friends. We went to...

Greek Garden.

Delicious! I really do like that place so I was glad to get to have some Greek food again. As in, I was glad to once again have spanikopita that I don't have to labour over myself.

I left work a bit early so we could pick up a GPS from Future Shop on the way home.

That beauty of a baby set me back quite a bit, but all in good intention. This way we don't have to keep borrowing Jen's GPS and I get the excitement of owning a new fancy gadget.


I came home to some gorgeous delivered flowers, that was dropped off at the neighbour's since they came too early.

Then for a "fun" game of darts in the backyard where I clearly excelled. Darts because Adam was awful at winning me any prizes when we went to the CNE this year. So he made his own game so that he could "win".

Obviously, I am way better.

Some prizes didn't quite fit...

But clearly, I won them all.

Greek Garden was busy (busier than I'd ever seen). We were a bit early for the movie so we stopped in the bookstore first to peruse. I picked up another Michael Pollan book to add to my growing collection and we went to watch The Help.

I hadn't read the book so I was hesitant to watch it, but it was sort of the last chance to see it, so I figured, why not.

The movie was fantastic, and if movies are always worse than the books, then the book must be absolutely incredible.

It was a fun night and I was totally pooped out. Good thing everything in town is so close, home was only 10 minutes away!

Asia Day 14-15: Hong Kong

October 6
The last few days went by quickly. We were winding down and starting to organize suitcases for the packing fiasco that was barreling towards us at lightning speed.

I was finally able to get time away from my parents, so I spent it shopping by myself at the nearby Olympian City.

I got some time to myself, to think, and to really look at/buy things I wanted.

I got to have Japanese for lunch and bought a few things for myself. That made my happy.


My happiness is always shortlived, we were having dinner with some people I didn't know that evening.

My uncle had us meet him at the mall above the Mong Kok East station. We walked around for a bit and he showed me Goldfish Street (金魚街) before heading to the restaurant.

Lucky me, we were at a seafood restaurant. A large portion of the dinner was seafood, aka. food for me!

How do you buy your goldfish?

The family that invited us to dinner was my uncle's oldest (and youngest) daughter's godparents. They have two sons who were also there, the older married one also had his wife in tow. Among others, there was my aunt, uncle, the newlyweds, my aunt's sisters and one of the kids and husband.

We were a big table, and I was paired to sit next to my cousin (who came a bit late). On my other side was one of the godparents' kids. Turns out he went to UC Riverside, so we had a somewhat intellectual conversation. He was in business, so I clearly we had no real business delving into each other's respective fields.

Dinner was good and it was nice to see everyone before we left in a couple days.

October 7
If memory serves me right, this was the day we had dimsum with my aunt and her side of the family that was in town. After that, we walked Olympian City (again for me) before calling it a day some time mid afternoon. The evening was taken up with my uncle once more, where he took us to Carp Channel (鯉魚門).

It is so named, because the street only contains two types of stores:

• restaurants, and
• fish markets

All fish markets also have very large very old karp. A few of the fishmongers were fond of showing me that if you threw a small fish in the air towards them, these humongous fish would jump up with lightning speed to catch and eat it.

I. Was. Terrified.

Anyways, we walked the street and my uncle showed it all to me. We were waiting for my cousin to arrive to pick the food and a restaurant. He phoned to say he was near, so we picked out our food and picked a restaurant.

Oh. Right. I should explain that.

The restaurants don't actually have any food in terms of protein. Their service is, a chef to cook your meal. Your meal, being what you purchase at the fish market.

Let me explain via photos.

You choose what you want to eat from the tanks (above and above)...

Then they bring them to the restaurant in bags...

Then they cook them all up for you the way you like!

Sooooo delicious I was definitely seafood bellied for a couple days! =)

Sweet potato salad

I totally forgot about some sweet potatoes that I bought at the store a few weeks ago. I spotted them a few days before and decided I needed to make use of them.

I also started using this great website gojee.com recently. You can put in what you have in your fridge and it will search its database for great ideas!

Anyways, I popped in sweet potato as one of my "cravings" and i came across this delicious looking salad. Sweet potatoes, red peppers, black beans, onions. Sounds fantastic!

It was a breeze to whip up (although the cilantro sure was missed) and tasted great!

Muffin pig!

Too funny to resist!

Also, I'm supposed to be working on the final edits for my thesis, so just a random post for today!

Cabbage rolls

I've never had cabbage rolls before.

I've also never made cabbage rolls before.

Challenge accepted. (teehee score! HIMYM reference!)

They weren't super hard to make, but getting the filling to the consistency of that made with beef wasn't easy. Also, my 'soux chef' overboiled the cabbage and I was left with only tiny cabbage leaves to work with. The result? Small not-quite-fully-wrapped cabbage rolls.

Regardless, I found it quite delicious, although I think I'll be hard pressed to make these again. (I'm not a huge fan of eating boiled cabbage!)

Pumpkin carving

Halloween! I love seeing the cute little kids all dressed up in random but hilarious (and cute too!) costumes to scope out the best candy.

I didn't get much this year since Adam said it's the lowest expected turnout in years. I picked up a box of 50 mini chocolate bars, expecting to get around 25 kids. Marc/k from downstairs also brought up a 75 pack of mini candies to hand out, but the turnout was so underwhelming!

I was saddened by how few kids came, I probably had about 15. By the end of it, when kids were coming, I was giving away handfuls of candy - one of chocolate and one of candy.

It was disappointing, but at least I was proud of my pumpkin this year! It was an easy carving to do, but it's super cute!

Super cute!

Impossible pie

Searching for the most difficult, labour intensive, lengthiest pie recipe ever?

Sorry. You won't find it here.

Contrary to the name, impossible pie is a breeze to make. In fact, it's... impossibly easy! Oh yes, I just went there. My puns really are getting worse and worse...

I had to make 2 of these pies on the weekend, it was that good.

This pie is called impossible pie because of how impossibly easy it is to make. It's a crustless pie that you mix all together in one bowl (wet and dry), pour it into a greased pie plate and bake for an hour. It's that easy!

The trick to this pie is that while it's baking, the ingredients separate. Since it is baked for so long, the water (milk) evaporates from the pie and the crust separates itself out and sets on the bottom. The leftover milk solids thicken and gel up the pie, forming that delicious "filling".

Impossible pie is a oh-so-delicious "crustless" coconut pie!

This was made October 29 (see, I'm catching up on my posts...).

Asia Day 13: Macau

October 5

After feeling horrendous from the bus ride at the Peak, I semi-recovered to make it on the boat ride to Macau. The sickness from the evening before was unfortunately timing, because we had already pre-planned the day in Macau and had 3 tickets for a Franco Dragone show.

Ergo... I had to grin and bear it for our day in Macau.

After docking in Macau, my dad thought he'd be super clever and sneak a free shuttle ride to a random hotel near the touristic district. Unluckily, my dad isn't quite as clever as he would like and led us to a hotel shuttle that wasn't very close by at all. Aka. The Grand Lisboa.

Nevertheless, I was glad to just be off things that moved and happily made the walk from the hotel to the tourist district.

The architecture is old and grande and beautiful, heavy on the Portuguese influence. The big colourful flower decorations on the ground behind the fountain are decorations for National Day (October 1). The week long celebration had run through and the decorations were being taken down.

I don't remember what street it was that the fountain was at, but we were on our way to the Ruins of St. Paul. We eventually made it there (amidst the throngs of people) and also headed up behind it to the Fortaleza do Monte. There, I got to sit on a cannon. Seriously.

It looks like fun and games, but this was initially a centre for protecting Jesuit property. Eventually it was seized by the government for Macau defense (aka. the Portugese colony). It's seriously old (1600s) and is in pretty darn good shape. A museum like thing has even been built in the centre of the fort.

The reason we went to Macau though (as alluded to), was for a performance. Franco Dragone used to direct nearly all large Cirque du Soleil shows but left some time before 2000. One of his latest shows was playing at the City of Dreams in Macau, billed as a $2 billion HKD production. It is the largest permanent water based show and was quite spectacular to see. It wasn't as large a production as some Cirque shows I've seen before, but the sheer volume of water that the stage holds and the impressive stage changes that occur underwater and reveal themselves, was magnificent. I truly enjoyed the show and was very glad that we were just a few rows up enough that we didn't get wet.

I have photos, but will not be posting them because I don't want to be getting in any trouble. The internet is a scary place, y'know...

Ginger shrimp

At the food show we went to a while back, I picked up a little bookmark recipe from Chatelaine for some ginger shrimp. It looked delicious and I certainly need more ways of using avocado.

I gave it a shot to great results!

As good as it looks!

Avocado, feta cheese and shrimp cooked up in a delicious asian sauce. I served it over a bed of rice and nearly died it was so delicious!

United Way baked goodness

Every year, my university has a campus wide Fall semester campaign to raise money for United Way. It's sort of a competition between departments/colleges on campus where we each have campaigning goals to reach. I always partake in the events that involve food and prizes. This one had both.

Jeremy and Greta came over to make some delicious treats to have at our International Coffee Break.

Greta wasn't going to make anything but Jeremy was stoked about these oreo chocolate truffle things. Whatevs, I can help him make stuff but am not in charge of what he wanted to make. I, however, wanted to make a Linzer torte.

blackberry Linzer torte bars

There were some mistakes made but I'd say they turned out great! My tortes were a little denser than I think they're supposed to be, but I used all whole wheat flour to make it a little bit healthier. The oreo truffles turned into white chocolate oreo truffles, but they worked fantastic.

We also raised over $300 for United Way with our coffee break! Go us!

FoodNetwork Delicious! Food Show

I know I've been totally behind on my posts, but I will be getting them all up soon! As of right now, I have completed my thesis for a total of 90 minutes. I haven't sent it out because I am waiting to get to school tomorrow so I can print the massive bugger (230 pages!!). So in the meantime, I am catching up on everything else in my life (aka. cleaning my room and calling my mom. yikes!)

Next on the docket, updating my blog. So here goes!

After the Kate Voegele concert that I wrote about a while back but that really happened like 3 weeks ago... we got a good night's rest before heading back down to the same general area (DT Toronto) for the Food Show.

I was super excited for both the concert and the food show, so now onto part 2 of my wonderful weekend.

I think we got to the Food Show just after 11, so plenty of time to walk around before heading to see the sustainability speaker from Stratford's Simple Fish Company. The talk was at 1230 and not 12 like I expected, so we had an extra 30 minutes to walk around, where I pretty much saw everything and ate it all with my eyes.

The talk was pretty good, he talked about other types of fish that are great for sustainability in this area, and did a lot of up talk about his business too (can't say I blame him). He cured some salmon for us to eat and shucked an oyster for everyone in the crowd. Delicious! Adam had his first fresh raw oyster and let's just say he didn't dislike it (that's still a hurray in my books!).

We did a good chunk of wandering around and eating and I definitely have my favs.

• St. Phillips - their cakes make me want to die and go to bakery heaven
• Marcys - their sea salt and pepper calabrese crisps... TO DIE FOR!
• Bobette & Belle - such creative girls and I love their passion for bakery treats!

There are so many stores I could name that were just delicious but I won't to save the internet from my droolings over delicious food.

I was saddened I missed Lynn Crawford. I'll just have to attend another food outing and try to catch her again. I'm obviously way too poor to eat at any of her restaurants, so I think running into her and getting autographs/photos would be my best bet.

But for now, here's some food porn for you all.

Entirely chocolate!

Oh, St. Phillips Bakery, I envy you.

Delicious!

After the Food Show, we were meeting my cousins for dinner at Epicure (Queen St W). We walked most of the way there, and with some extra time, I got to head into the Winners that is directly across the street. Hurray! I love Winners!

Also, I love delicious food. Although I got a seriously spicy dish for dinner, it was still very yummy (or at least, from what I could tell after my tastebuds had been singed off). We had interesting conversations, in fact multiple ones at the same time (as we always do), and I'm sure Adam's head was reeling after that. My cousins and I are quite good at having multiple conversations simultaneously. I can't say that it's the Bach genes though, because my maternal side cousins and I do the same thing. Hrm, perhaps it's the asianness in us...

Dinner at Epicure was great, I certainly do like that little restaurant, but it was time for us to head home because we had to get back to Ildiko's little engagement party shindig. Albeit an informal one (and we will be arranging a formal one), it was nice to have a little get-together where (for once!) Greta was there! Hurray for only going home every other weekend.

Certainly it was a busy busy weekend =)

Kate Voegele!

So I was super excited for this concert since I knew she was coming (months ago!) and the date had finally arrived!

I had planned it out with my aunt that we would drive to the concert Friday night, but stop in after it was over for a good night's rest. The next day, I had tickets to the FoodNetwork's Delicious! Food Show and was super hyped about that too! What a great weekend in Toronto!

The concert was listed to start at 730 but it began at 7. There were 2 opening bands, Grady *something* and Michou. I had heard Michou before and really liked them live, so I bought their CD after the show and got it signed too! The guys from the band are laid back and great and it definitely showed on stage.

After the openers, Kate Voegele was up! I knew she was thin, but couldn't believe how much more than I thought. Anyways, she was great and it was an awesome show.

Here are some photos of the night.

More on my trip to the FoodNetwork Show in a later post!