East

Ian and I went out for a farewell dinner tonight (he's heading to San Jose tomorrow morning).

As usual, pretty tasty spring rolls, seafood pad thai and Satay veggie + tofu. Add in a pint of beer and not a bad deal for $34 including tax and tip.

Some place in Buckhorn

I went kakaying on Saturday to the Mississauga Creek in Buckhorn (sorta North of Peterbourough). For breakfast we stopped at this cafe type thing in Buckhorn that actually turned out to be pretty tasty. I don't remember the name, but it was sort of West of town on a hill kind of overlooking a lake. Cute red building.

Anywho, I had a "mini" breakfast with 1 egg, bacon (that I gave to Barb), 1 piece of toast the a large mound of the tastiest homefries I have ever had. Highly recommended for a meager $3.19!

The river didn't turn out to be so hot with lots of flatwater and logs seem to have made there way into a couple of the really good rapids thus causing some portage action :(

Middle Eastern at Place Ville Marie

I became hooked on this middle eastern place in the food court at place ville marie in Montreal. For only $6.30, I got my choice of 5 veggie items. Stuff like potatoes, rice, coucous, hummus, falafel, tabouli, cucumber salad + you got the pickled turnip + tomatoe. Also included a toaty pita. Usually the food at these fast food pick your own stuff is kinda sketchy, but this stuff was all really tasty.

All in all, a fantastic deal for too much food for one person to eat! The guy serving the food is the fastest guy I have ever seen on the tongs. Somewhat impressive.

I believe the place is called "Gourmet Med" or something slightly cheesy like that.

I'm going back to Montreal next week and I will definately be back!

Sept Isles Quebec and Labrador City

The past few days I have been stuck in these crappy towns visiting the plants of the Iron Ore Company of Canada (basically Rio Tinto). Plant visits went ok, but I believe you me, the restaurants and hotels were a bit iffy.

Sept Isles, not so bad, aside from me not really speaking french and not being able to properly read the menu. Thus, ending up with random items of things I did not expect. The place seems really into the seafood with crab caught fresh and shrimp in brown paper bags. The crab sandwiches looked DISGUSTING. Basically a 1.5" thick by about the size of your face around on bread. That's it. With a bit of mayo on the side. Anywho, I'm sure they actually tasted alright, it was just too much seafood all at once.

Then, it was off to Lab City where the sketchiness continued, Thompson style. Restaurants were awful, even though I could read the english menu, there weren't a heck of a lot of veggie items out there. The hotel was awful, the rental car made horrible power steering noises despite only having 3000 km on it.

I'm off to Montreal for a few nights next week, so I'm expecting to have a much better experience there!

Old Spaghetti

I was feeling like some garlic bread so we went to Old Spaghetti for dinner last night. It's pretty good value, I got the spaghetti with tomato cream tarragon mushroom pasta. Ian got the spaghetti with meat sauce.

Included was garlic bread, soup or salad and ice cream with coffee or tea, all for about $9-$11.

As usual, the bread was really good with really good garlic whipped butter. My minestrone was pretty decent, Ian's clam chowder was good.

The spumoni ice cream was also tasty. Basically, great value for decent italian.

The only problem here was the service. We went in and talked to the hostess and they said a 15-20 minute wait for a table and that we could go and order a drink/appetizer from the lounge and then they would paige us.

We didn't really want to, so we waited around in the lobby and we got in after 20 minutes. They were calling people about every 2 minutes.

But then, once we get in, there were ALOT of empty tables!!! Like 1/3 of a pretty large dining room. So not sure what's up with that????

I suspect a scheme to bolster the lounge drinks and revenue/person.

Anywho, I think it's pretty shady and was a bit upset by the whole thing.

Thymly Mannor in the Sault

I'm in Sault St Marie for the week and last night we went out for dinner to Thymly Mannor.
It's an old house renovated into a restaurant and they have some nice private rooms and that sort of thing.

I had the gnochi with tomato sauce and it was super tasty. We asked the waitress how to make gnochi and it turns out all there is to is potato, flour and egg rolled up into little balls and boiled.

The other two guys had fish and steak, both quite tasty.

My only beef with this place was the service. Extremely slow to even give up menu or take our order. Not sure what was up with that. Maybe busier than they had expected for a Tuesday night?

Washington DC

Trip was pretty good, a bit short on time so will keep it short.

Ian pretty much ran a tight ship and has us up at 6:30 AM and going strong till 6:30 PM seeing numerous attractions/day.

For dinner, we ate at Ethiopian once. They pretty much seem to be on every block, sorta like the TO sushi joints. Pretty similar price and taste to our usual TO ethiopian place.


Other than that, some OK Thai, pub food and Ian really liked the Peruvian he went to.

Ben and Jerry's was tasty as usual.

Yummy Squash

We had some leftover uncooked squash, so I threw it into a pot (1" cubes), added some OJ, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger and garlic.

I put the lid on and steamed on medium for about 5 minutes and it turned out super-tasty! Ian thought they looked like tater tots...ha ha!

Black Bean Sweet Potato Burrito

Tonight I made some burrito from the "Low Fat Moosewood Cookbook". They turned out super tasty and the sweet potato made them creamy even without cheese.

Here's the main gist of it...

Boil sweet potato

Blend with black beans, lemon juice, cilantro (use food processor, potato masher etc)

Stir in fried garlic, onion, jalepeno with cumin and coriander.

Add salt to taste.

Bake in tortilla shells for about 20 minutes. Serve with some rice (healthy Ian likes brown) and some homemade guac and salsa.

Lack of Updates

To answer Jacko's question, the lack of updates have been due to lack of eating out.

Ian has taken up healthiness and combined with our usual cheapness = no updates :(

For example, Ian ran on the treadmill for 20 minutes today and then came home a drank a low sodium V8! I was out running 12 km, so basically we both needed a nap and were far too tired to consider even walking anywhere to go and procure food.

Perhaps I will turn the blog into a vegetarian cooking type thing???