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!

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 =)

One Day

Cheap Tuesday = movie night.

Girls night = chick flick night.

Cheap Tuesday + One Day = bad chick flick evening.

Needless to say I did not enjoy this movie too much. It wasn't severely great acting, and the 20 year time lapse during the movie failed to yield any aging on Anne Hathaway's part.

Having not yet read the book, the ending came as a unexpected plot twisting shock. That was probably another big factor as to why I didn't like this movie. One does not expect, upon entering the theatre for a romcom chick flick, to find such disastrous reality-check type endings.

Lackluster acting, disappointingly predictable, unpredictable and then predictable again plot twists, it by far wasn't anything to write home about.

Gladiator

"I can't believe you haven't seen this before!"

Ironic. Coming from Adam.

But I really hadn't seen it before.

It was playing on TV the other day so I had to sit and bear through it. Although it's actually quite good..

I'm not an epic historian or anything of the like. In fact, if you've watched movies with me before, you would most certainly know how much I dislike watching movies about wars or history.

Gnomeo & Juliet

I love animated movies. Although I don't think I've actually seen any since last summer's "Despicable Me". I've been wanting to watch this for a while but never really found a time or mood to watch it.

Lucky me (really?), headaches have been ruining my life as of late so I took an evening off of staring intently at word processor documents for at-home mani pedi's while watching a movie.

Cute! I love the spin on a Shakespearean play, and animated!

Even the character names remain the same, I loved how true to the original this film was.

I recommend this for anyone. It's such a cute movie, with lots of entertaining bits to make it more modern. Even Shakespeare himself makes an appearance (albeit, as a statue, but still)!

How Do You Know?

The answer? You really don't... Unfortunately.

Kendra and I hadn't hung out in a while so we decided to chill out at home (where central air is a godsend) and watch a movie.

We walked to Blockbuster and spent some time deliberating about a movie to rent. It was a toss up between Jennifer Aniston's "Just Go With It" or Reese Witherspoon's "How Do You Know".

Too bad for us, we clearly chose the worse movie.

Sucky! I really like Paul Rudd, so it was disappointing for this movie to be so lackluster.

My recommendation? Don't watch this.

How do I know? I just do.

Cherries! and a recipe gone-awry!

Kendra gave us a nice basket of lovely fresh picked cherries Friday night, so aside from eating them by the handful, I decided to do some baking with them. The result? Turnovers and a loaf.

can't get enough... cherries!

Despite their delicious-looking-ness, I wasn't too happy with my baking this weekend. I'm not sure if it was me, or just the cherries. I haven't worked with them before, so I was surprised that things I make on a regular basis turned out quite like this.

how much grease do Brits like? EW!

What surprised me the most, was how awful (I thoguht) the cherry loaf turned out. I had never heard of cheery loaf before, but Adam swore by it and requested one be made, so I found one on BBC Good Food.

WARNING!!! DO NOT USE THIS WEBSITE!!!

I was so horribly dis-satisfied with this recipe. It was gross! I substituted the white chocolate for dark and I mixed all the cherries and chocolate into the loaf instead of only half and adding half to the top like they said, but it should most definitely NOT account for the atrocity I found upon removing my loaf from the pan.

There was grease EVERYWHERE. and I literally mean everywhere. The loaf pan was lined with so much grease I could see it physically dripping down the sides from the amount. The parchment was soaked in grease. When I put the loaf on to a cutting board, it instantly stained it a red grease. You couldn't pick up the loaf slice without it sagging due to the weight from the butter.

How much butter do the British like in their loaves? This loaf was heavy in both senses of the word: heavy in the stomach because of the insane amounts of butter and heavy because it literally weighed SO MUCH!

ONE CUP of butter? FOUR eggs?!?! REALLY?!!?!?!?!?!

I didn't even top it off with the chocolate ganache on top. Imagine if I did that, you would die of a heart attack!

I was skeptical when it called for nearly 2 sticks of butter, but I went with it anyways because the photo looked so delicious and moist. The recipe had gotten 4 stars for crying out loud!

I've had baking disasters before, but this was just ridiculous. Aside from the heart attack amount of butter, the loaf really was delicious. Unfortunately, I had to wrap my slice in paper towel and squeeze some of the excess butter out because I could literally feel it clogging my arteries.

I guess baking the British way doesn't work for me. I can't stand there all day weighing out my baking items!

The Illusionist

This movie is from quite a few years ago, but I never got around to seeing it because I was drowning in trying to make sense of The Prestige, which came out the same summer.

We saw this on netflix, so decided to watch it Friday night. I thought it was good and was able to make sense of this movie a lot easier than The Prestige.

I won't give it away for those who still haven't seen it, but I highly recommend it.

Classics

Gotta love classic films.

Yes yes. I know. Kung Fu Hustle is hardly a classic, it's not even a decade old. But this will become a classic.

I was scrolling through NetFlix this weekend and saw that they actually had good movies! First up was Kung Fu Hustle.

I haven't seen it in a while but am glad I watched it again. I forgot how boring and hard it was to follow at the beginning, but things fell in line quickly.

Everyone has to admit though, that Weird Science is such a cult classic.

Adam's never seen it before, which totally blew my mind. My brother and I grew up on this show!

I was surprised to see that NetFlix had quite the random assortment of movies available, considering the other week I spent about 20 minutes looking up movies I wanted to watch and not finding a single one.

Yay for re-watching some of my favourite old movies!

X-Men: First Class

Now I'm not a big fan of all the superhero movies that have been raining down on us for the past decade, but I wasn't against going to see the new X Men movie (#95 on my DayZero).

A prequel to the XMen trilogy from recent years, I guess I was intrigued in finding out exactly how Professor X is put in his wheelchair. Other than that, I had no recollection of any of the characters or their powers.

Matt wanted to see it so bad (despite having already seen him opening night), and since Something Borrowed was no longer in theatres, we switched it up to watch X Men. A couple of the girls came too, so it was a fun night.

The movie was long, but not in the sense that you felt it dragging on. More in the sense that my ass was going numb in the seat and I couldn't find a comfortable position.

I liked the movie, it was definitely gripping to watch. I don't know much about the X Men or how closely it fell in line with the comic books, so I can't comment on that. I'd still recommend it to anyone who wants a good summer movie.

That, and I'm downloading the X Men movies right now so I can catch up and know what I was watching...

Bridesmaids

My favourite evening is Tuesday because of cheap night at the Cineplex. A group of us girls went to see Bridesmaids. It was a packed house and the movie was hilarious.

I didn't know it starred SNL actors, so I wasn't surprised after learning that just how witty the humour was. This is definitely not your normal chick flick and everyone should go see it.

Hawksley Workman

Woop woop!

Oh Susanna opened for Hawksley Workman last night. I didn't know who she was, and I didn't know who the opener was going to be beforehand. She was an okay act. Her songs were all very similar and she was kind of a boring act to watch. No expression when she would speak and always looking down and not at the crowd when she spoke. Not anything spectacular. Only polite golf clapping from the crowd.

The main show was hugely different. Hawksley's so eclectic, his show was fantastic.


He didn't play much (or anything) from his latest CDs, so it took some adjusting for me to remember what songs he was playing. I only fully versed myself in the latest songs. I should have seen that coming though, since he's got 13 years of material for him to pick and choose from..

Line up change for the encore

I shot some videos too, and will post them as I get them online!

Saoirse Ronan

It was a weekend full of this young starlet. We watched Atonement at home Friday night and the new 'thriller' Hanna at the theatre on Saturday.

I've seen Atonement before, but because I didn't know the plotline beforehand, I was semi-confused throughout. We were shopping at Winners Friday night when I saw it was going for $3! Of course, I bought it, and we watched it that night. Great movie, and despite not being able to understand like 25% of what Kiera Kinightley says, it's still good. Saoirse plays the younger sister Briony, who tells a lie as a child and it ends up altering her entire family's lives. She spents the rest of her life trying to atone for her actions.

Hanna is the other movie we watched Saturday night at the theatre that came out a couple weeks ago. I've been wanting to see it , but laziness prevented us last weekend.

The story of a super-operative, trained to kill a CIA operative who is on the hunt for her, I actually quite enjoyed it. It's not my typical type of movie (gory and violent), but it just looked so intriguing.

The only thing I didn't like is the lack of explanation (and reality) in altering the DNA of unborn fetuses to make them stronger, fear less, and be the ultimate super soldier. Can you say unrealistic?

Fun fact: Saoirse's name is pronounced "sersha". Whaaaaaaat?!?!?!?!

Star Trek

So I know the movie's been out for a couple years now, and I've always said "yeah yeah, I'll watch it", but now I finally have. Cross that one off the list, or rather, add it to the DayZero list (#27).

We're a boring old couple (already, I know), and didn't have plans this weekend. So it was another Friday night in, with a vast assortment of movies to choose from. This is the one Adam selected, and since he so adamantly claims he likes chick flicks, I decided to sit this through. Plus, I actually really have been meaning to see it... Nonetheless, I'm sure the glasses of wine beforehand reeealllly helped getting through it.

Surprise! I like it! Despite being confused (nothing new there..) for a large majority, I did end up understanding what was going on. Having only the previous knowledge of "Spock" and the weird hang signal gesture and catch phrase, I think I did pretty well.

I Love You, Man

So this past weekend was a pretty lazy one. Aside from a potluck to attend and needing to do some lab work, there wasn't much else to do. Naturally, we watched a movie. Not one I would ever really want to watch (bro-mance movies aren't my type, whaaaaat??).

Anyways, I didn't flip through many of my DVDs, so I kind of went with the first choice (check for 95 on my DayZero list), I Love you Man. My brother has seen this and I know of many guys who rave on about this movie. I like Paul Rudd. Win win?

Absolutely. Paul Rudd is always a hit with me. Jason Segel cracks me up on a regular occasion, but it's unfortunate that I always only see him as "Marshall Eriksen".

I liked the bro-mantic comedy side to movies. Perhaps I should steer more toward this genre?

No Strings Attached

Natalie Portman has four movies this year (I'm including Black Swan in this) AND a baby. What a year!

One of her movies, No Strings Attached, was the feature of our Friday night last weekend.

Cute. Funny. Sappy. Sad. Loving. All the things you expect a typical chick flick to be. Plus, Ashton Kutcher. Oh. And Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling) from The Office.

I'd say this is a good year for Portman, and you should absolutely got see at least one of her movies.

January 2011 pt. 2

The weekend after my birthday was to finish off the rest of my Christmas gift for Adam. I had originally got him all the tea and coffee stuff, the Jarome Iginla figurine, Storm hockey tickets for before Christmas and Marlies hockey tickets for after Christmas. I was confused about where my Marlies tickets were, but they finally arrived in my inbox a couple weeks before. So hence, the planning began.

We weren't going into town overnight, so it was a quick whirlwind trip of the west downtown area. We got to Ricoh Coliseum without (read: minor) any problems and enjoyed a pretty good game. Much better skating and skill level than the Storm, but I didn't think it was worth the hassle and cost to go see them on a regular basis. We beat the Peoria Rivermen, woohoo! (this is the only time I will ever cheer for a Toronto hockey team).

After the game, it was ridiculous trying to get out of the parking lot. Eventually we did, and we made out way to the green P off Spadina for dinner. The wait for a table was just a few minutes (the advantages of being a table for two), and we were set. Dinner was yummy, but not sure I will head back because of the extravagant cost of it, but Adam got a good lesson in chinese eatery. After dinner, we walked the whole 25 feet to get to a chinese bakery so we could get some more deliciousness. And enter stage left: Adam's love for pork buns.

The following weekend when I went to Toronto again to visit family for Chinese New Year, I indeed, did buy him more pork buns... Oh Adam, you are one lucky man... =)

January 2011 pt.1

So I haven't posted in a while now. It's time to recap the year so far, and I shall do it in month form:

We started the year with a Friday night out. Borealis was the restaurant of choice, and although I have been before and liked it, I was very disappointed this time around. It was a busy night, so the dining area was pretty full. Everyone around us seemed to have really yummy looking meals so I was excited. Then came our dinner. Adam's looked delish, whereas mine looked about 1/3 of the size. It was a (very) small portion of salmon, even by my standards, with hardly any salad to go with it, hidden underneath. Needless to say, I ate my entire Marble Slab ice cream cone that evening.

For my birthday weekend, we went to see Morning Glory the Friday night. Starring Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton, I absolutely loved it. The story of an over-ambitious news turned executive producer who needs to get her two co-anchors together and save the morning news program. I love McAdams so of course I loved the movie. Oh, and Ford and Keaton are great too.

On the Saturday, I had dinner at the Fat Duck with a small selection of my friends. The restaurant wasn't as big as I thought (having gone past it everyday for the past 18 odd months), but quaint and nice inside. Since it was my birthday, I also got a free dessert which I tried desperately to share with everyone, but no one was biting.

After dinner, it was wine and dessert at my place. A smattering of desserts had been made/brought to my place beforehand, and I had a large selection of wines sitting in my fridge and on the wine rack.

Good eats + good friends = good times

On my actual birthday, Adam was insistent on making me dinner, so I let him be. Taken from the cookbook Kendra got me for my birthday, he wanted to make vegetable stew. Delicious for a mid-winter evening. =)

MCB Xmas Party and a busy day..

Last week was my department's Christmas party, and this week is Adam's.

It was a long day for me, as it started before 8am. The girls and I planned breakfast at Cora's at 8am, so Jerlene came to pick me up just before that. Ann and Wilson were already there and I was surprised that there weren't actually that many tables that were seated already. It didn't seem to pick up much more during our time there either..

I didn't like Cora's that much. The food was good, but I wouldn't go back. It was very heavily focused on the fruit portion of breakfast, which I think is great, but what I really wanted was my pancakes and eggs for breakfast. They don't have 'a la carte' on their menu so I couldn't just order my pancakes and eggs, and all their other set breakfast choices included ham, sausage, bacon or something that I couldn't have.

I ended up getting french toast, and it didn't come at all like how I was expecting. My toast wasn't dipped in egg and fried, it looked like it was just regular toast and topped with a HUGE amount of fruit. Don't get me wrong, the (essentially) fruit platter was delicious, but I wanted some subsistence to my breakfast, which I felt like I didn't get.

I had to last until lunch...

Lunch was a meeting with Martin Harry, the Eastern Marketing Manager for SeCan. SeCan is responsible for sponsoring the other scholarship I won this semester. As part of their campaign with the scholarship, Martin comes up from Ingersoll to personally hand me my scholarship cheque. There is also a press release written up about me, complete with photos and everything. And of course Martin takes me for lunch so we can chat. We went to Gryphon's Lounge, where I probably will never go again. There wasn't anything vegetarian on the menu, so I was so glad when she told me their special was a 'brie melt' and I would be okay for food. Unfortunately, she put real bacon on my caesar salad, so I had to pick that off. I couldn't get it all, so I eventually had to eat some bacon too, but that was disappointing.

The evening was full of being sober around lots of very UNsober people, aka. the MCB Christmas party. At the Italian club, we had to drive there. The plan was, Adam would drive us there, but he would drink, so I would drive home. And drink he did. Michael ended up dumping the contents of his entire flask into his glass of coke.

Class-y.

The dinner wasn't that great, as Adam's chicken looked super dry. The vegetarian meal was pretty yummy, but by no means was it scrumptious. The food from the Delta last week was a lot better. Regardless, after dinner, dessert and more prizes, the dance floor opened up and therein began the shit-show. It wasn't as bad as it was made out to be and that I expected though. As much as people were quite drunk, I'm sure the ridiculous antics didn't start until they all got to Apartment 58. We could fit another 3 people in the car, so I drove downtown to discover it was $5 cover to get into 58. Adam didn't really want to go, and I couldn't justify the $10 for 30 minutes inside, so we went home, much to Chris' disappointment.

A text at 2am from Chris mentions how we are his favourite. Awww yay! For that, Chris is the main feature of the photos in today's post. Enjoy! =]

Paella

Tory introduced me to paella last year, when she made a version of it while we still lived together. I made a couscous version when I went back to visit my parents last Christmas, but I decided that I would try to make it the authentic way this time.

I got all the ingredients together, and made all the broths the right way too. I got the sofrito done (which takes a long time!), braised the rice in it and everything. It took a while to make, but the outcome was delicious.


I don't think I'll make it too often, because of the work it takes. But props to the Spaniards who traditionally make it every Sunday. I guess it all your dishes are this delicious and take equal amounts of work, you get used to it.

#63 of my DayZero list: Learn to cook exotic dishes