The Gaint Waffle That Ian Ate for Breakfast

Yes, it was hearty and yes, he ate it all!

Great, Good and Neutral

This week has been a bonanza of eating out.

Monday was a reception for scholarship winners at some company's headquarters. The tour of the facilities was only moderately interesting but the food was amazing. This was definitely the great. Reasons follow:
1) Open bar
2) Kobe Beef Sushi
3) Regular sushi
4) Lobster Maki
5) Massive sautéed shrimp
All items were very very tasty.

Thursday was the end of year party for the union. I've missed out on the last two so I was determined to go to this one. It was looking bad initially with only two drink tickets but the union came through for us in the end and gave us a basically limitless supply. The party was at the Duke of York. I think people like this place but I unfortunately am not one of them. As pub-style places go I think it's pretty good. They had these "neat" mini fish and chip servings. A tiny newspaper and a fish stick sized piece of fish. Pretty tasty. Overall this was the good.

Finally today was Swiss Chalet day. We had a coupon (of course) for a free appetizer. Janice had the appetizer (perogies) and I had the main course (chicken and ribs). That's definitely a split I could live with. Janice liked her stuff reasonably well but probably wouldn't get them again. I on the other hand would definitely the chicken and ribs again. It was tasty as always. I don't know if I'll go back to this swiss though because I didn't like the waitress at all. It's probably worth the walk up to king street to get people that have adequate social skills? For 20 bucks for 2 it wasn't a bad deal but I'll still have to say this is at best neutral because of the mean waitress and the fact that I got used to eating for free earlier in the week

Sorry readers, this was a weak post

The Southern 4-fecta

I am really trying to use the word "Tri-fecta" but then I realized that I actually wanted to talk about 4 things. Ian my human dictionary is not here :(

Anyway, I am departing Birmingham this afternoon and am pleased that we managed to hit up the 4 food groups down here.

1. Seafood
2. Steakhouse
3. Mexicain
4. Ribs

We went to "Habanero" Mexicain near the plant where I'm working at. It seems to be a local mini chain type thing. It was extreme cheap eating at it's best. A been burrito, a cheese flatula and a salad with lots of guacomole for a mere $6.25. About the same pricing for all the other stuff too. Reasonably tasty and certainly more authentic than something like the "lone star" and you could even put "sneaky dees" or that mexicain mini-chain in Edmonton in there too (forget the name).

Then it was off for some ribs last night. Forget the name of the place, but it was in the galleria. The place was PACKED! It was crazy! They even had a rib drive through. I guess my vegetarian eating has now officially come to an end as I partook in a half rack of baby back ribs with coleslaw, baked beans and some cornbread. The sides were among the best I've eaten, but the ribs were somewhat dissapointing. Kinda chewy?? The other's didn't really like either.

The other guys all had a full rack. The ribs came on a large plate of their own. Then the side dishes came out on another plate. It was pretty gross. At least my half rack meal was all contained on one plate. One guy ate all his food, a few large glasses of lemonaide, and a piece of lemon meringue pie. That level of food consumption really is impressive!

Alexander's Steakhouse

Tonight we were off to a steakhouse in the Galleria just outside downtown Birmingham. The rest of the gang had the 12 or 16 ounce steak with a variety of side dishes. All seemed to be quite tasty. I think most ordered medium-well, but they all seemed a bit bloody to me. I think the nicer the restaurant, the more undercooked the steak? Maybe it's just my mostly eating veggie perspective?

I had the veggie burger with fries. Suprisingly, it was one of the more tasty veggie burgers I've eaten. Came with very good BBQ sauce. Not bad value for about $8.

Shared a bottle of merlot from washington state. Was one of the cheaper items on the menu and was not shocked when it turned out to taste a bit like cider vinegar. They had a wine menu completely full of americain wines. Maybe it's just me, but is there more variety when you go to a canadian restaurant?

Landry's Seafood

Am back in Birmingham Alabama for a few days to work at one of the local steel plants. The people I'm with are very "americain" type food eaters, so we headed over to Landry's Seafood. To start, they provided complimentary garden salad with what appeared to be thousand island dressing, but later turned out to taste like balsamic vinegrette. Also came with some tasty garlic bread rolls that are near impossible to cut apart and share!

I had the gulf snapper (apparently not from the gulf coast area)...cooked with lemon pepper and some veggie risotto. High marks for tastiness, but certainly not cheap at about $19. The other three guys had a "seafood platter". Not really sure what was on there, but it was so big that it no longer fit on a round plate. They had to go oval! The guys seemed to enjoy and finished everything.

Dinner Last Night

We stayed in and had a leftover extravaganza + some new stuff.

Tried some baked rutabaga for the first time in many many years I think. It had an odd carrot type flavor that was freakin me out. I think I'll stick with potatoes in the future.




The real fun started after dinner when we popped Ian's cob of corn.












Ian the popcorn chef.











Here's the results post microwaving.











Check out this popcorn board link for fun recipes.





Ian trying to eat every last kernel!





[Update March 26 - Blogger magically deleted the pictures so I put them back but rotating them is beyond me]

Aroma

Due to yesterdays lunch gone wrong, we ended up at Aroma (Indian buffet). It was far far far busier than normal...perhaps because we slept in and were running behind? Or perhaps it was the crowd coming over from the "Learning Annex"/Donald Trump event. Quite a few people had the cheesy little names tags still stuck to their shirts.

Anyway, doesn't really matter why it's busy - but it translated into some rather poor service. Took forever to get seated, numerous requests for a glass of water, and had to make a request for naan bread that usually appears quickly.

Food was tasty though. Pickled beets, pakora, samosa, papandums with 3 kinds of chutney for appetizers. They have salads, but most seem kinda creamy so I avoided them. Main course was tasty rice, chickpea curry, tasty black lentil curry, mixed veg curry. Ian had butter chicken, tandoori chicken, curry goat and perhaps a beef dish??

For dessert, the gulab jaman seemed a bit picked over, but the pieces that I managed to snag from under the foil were tasty. Rice pudding, as usual, was good. Took it easy on the ice cream this time, but the bit of cherry that I had was good.

Pretty good value for $23 (for 2) including tax and tip.

Restaurants of Shame

We had planned to go to a new (to us) Peruvian place today but instead we made a last minute (and in retrospect foolish) decision to go to the Brasserie for their Take 5 lunch. Well after walking there and sitting down we found out that they no longer offer the lunch on the weekends. The signage hasn't changed just some magical "rules" have. We walked out and went somewhere else. I don't foresee going back there. If any other restaurants let us down in such a big way, we'll probably start a restaurants of shame sidebar but for now since it's only the Brasserie that let us down, I'll leave things as they are

Lone Star Coupon Fun

Anyone who knows anything about Ian and I knows that we are not people to turn down discounted eating out.

We headed to Lone Star on Front Street for some fajita action (portabello for me, chicken for Ian). Came with all the "fixins" - tortillas, cheese, guacamole, tomato, lettuce, sour cream, beans, rice and an assortment of random veggies with mine. $12.49 for mine, $12.99 for Ian. Since we had a $10 off coupon, I started to feel a bit bad about the two tap water for drinks and ordered a pint of kokanee ($6.49). With the coupon, $32 including tax and tip.

Ok tastiness levels, but pretty good value considering the disgusting amount of food they provide with 1 meal. Ian and I usually share a single meal and leave full! This time, in order to spend $20, we had to each get a meal.

Calabash

I went with the co-workers today for some lunch in Mississauga (Erin Mills, just North of the QEW). I've been in the past and Calabash Caribbean food has always been tasty and cheap.

This time I got the rice and curry combo with a green salad, rice, dal, potato/channa, curried cabbage and a little thing of hot sauce. Was really tasty, except for the salad. I think they have given up on making their usual tasty dressing and now throw on Kraft Italian (or at least it tastes like they do). All for $8 including tax + tap water.

Others had the soup and stuffed pastry, chicken roti or beef roti. There were three first time Caribbean eaters there and they did not seem to appreciate the roti tastiness. The one guy had chicken and he got about half way through and the chicken seemed to be undercooked. He took it back up and got his $ back. The restaurant claimed that the chickens were "young and veiny", but it really did look undercooked to me.

Hopefully the people don't get sick or I won't feel too good about setting up another lunch!

Caffe Demetre

Last night I ended up going to a friend's book club. I am normally not the book club type, but, since I had already read the Kiterunner, I didn't really have an excuse.

The Caffe is more of an ice cream shop with sundaes, cakes, milkshakes, dessert waffles etc. They apparently make their own ice cream too. I had a peanut butter ice cream banana split. Came with chocolate sauce, chocolate chunks, brownie chunks, peanuts, sliced bananas, whip cream and a cherry. Was tasty, but not exactly good value for $9.50 including tax, tip and a tap water. Perhaps that is the going price for food in the trendy Yonge and Eglinton neighborhood?? Good thing Ian and I have our slightly less trendy Annex spots that we like to go to.

Kuni Sushi Ya

I mentioned last year that I'd head back to Kuni Sushi Ya. Well on Thursday I did. (Truthfully, I've gone another time this year too but I was too lazy to blog about it). Anyway we of course (well 4 of 8) got the all you can eat. We learned from last year's not enough food fiasco (NEFF2006) and this time focused on making sure we got enough. We had a complicated multi-step process to avoid participating in NEFF2007.
Step 1) We budgeted 2 and 1/4 hours.
Step 2) We decided to focus on sashimi.



Last year they were slow to fill our sashimi requests so this year we switched to only requesting sashimi. The only sushi we ordered in fact was some unagyi that I got and some tamago that some foolish people wanted. (These weren't available as sashimi). For a little bit of variety we did get 5 different maki rolls, some shrimp tempura and some gyozga.

Overall with block after block of sashimi I definitely left more satisfied than last year. The quality was OK but not as good as the stuff I had bought the week before at the St Lawrence Market adventure. Price was unchanged from last year I think, 18.99 + t&t although I ended up spending more as now they have a 4 for $10 beer deal that we had to take advantage of multiple times.

St. Louis

We live right by a relatively new St. Louis rib and wing place and so far have resisted heading over. They have a rather limited menu, but that doesn't seem to stop the beer/bar food customers from flocking to the place at all hours of the day.


I ended up arriving pretty late last night and was hungry, so we finally decided to give it a try. To start we had pints of mooosehead since they were having a special where you get cute glass moose coaster and a chance to win some sort of bbq.




Ian had chicken fingers and fries. I thought that his sweet and sour sauce was particularly tasty, but then Ian pointed out that is was because it was actually plum sauce.

I had the nachos. First layer was reasonably tasty- had lots of cheese, lettuce, tomato, jalepeno and green pepper. Came with salsa. After eating the top layer, I noticed that I had some kinda gross cheesy sauce on my finger and when I further investigated, it seemed as though they squirted some fake cheese product on the second layer on nachos. Perhaps real cheese doesn't melt down there?? The nastiness factor was pretty high and needless to say I stopped eating. At $35 for 2 beer and so-so food I don't think that we'll be back anytime soon.

Sorel - Tracy & Montreal Fun Times

I went on a short 2 day business trip to the always booming Sorel-Tracy Quebec and had a meeting at our Montreal office on the way home.

Last night, we went with our client contact guy to a nice French restaurant in Sorel that he seemed to like. It was in a cool building - an old renovated farmers market. Sorel is right on the St. Lawrence river, and apparently, during the war they were major manufacturers of cannons for ships. I guess the German subs made it pretty far down the river and were very close to Sorel. The plan was to take out the cannon plant, but for some reason it never went down. Something lame like the war ended.

Anyway, the french language thing created a bit of sketchiness when ordering, but good thing I asked the client guy what was in the ravioli or I would have ended up with ravioli stuffed with wild game. I ordered some fillet de maquerie - which I was hoping was a piece of mackerel. It was pretty tasty and came with salad, rice and assorted veggie. My co-worker ordered a fillet steak and the client had a rack of lamb...they seemed to enjoy. Also had a creme brulee for dessert, which was alright. Final bill for 3 was $170 including tax, tip, coffee, a bottle of wine, salad or soup, bread, dessert and some hearty fishy/meaty meals. Ok value considering the amount of food ordered.

Today was lunch in Montreal at the food court in Place Ville Marie. They have a good Middle Eastern Fast food place (Club Med) where you can get 5 veggie items for $5.95. Super duper value considering the horrendous amounts of extremely tasty food! I got falafel, hummus, garlic potatoes, tabbouleh and coleslaw. They also threw on a whole bunch of pickled turnips! Probably the best middle eastern food that I have ever eaten - kind of disturbing that it comes from a food court, but you can't argue with the tastiness.

St. Lawrence Market

After our cheap lunch, we walked over to St. Lawrence market on Front to pick up some sushi salmon for Ian.

This is probably the best place in Toronto to get tasty fish, meat, cheese, bakery stuff etc. Also a couple of good kitchen gadget places and specialty food type places. Really not that great for produce and fruit....although we did pick up a very tasty and perfectly ripe avocado for the sushi making.

At one of the Asian type stores, I picked up some tempura mix. Odd that I cannot find it at the No Frills...whereas in Thompson they had it at the extra foods for 1/3 the price!



Some of these little guys were swimming around, but others not doing so much. Maybe they were sleeping (hopefully???).








Kind of grouchy Ian standing in front of our cheese shop. There's nothing like an outing to the market to get Ian into a bad mood!







He cheered up slightly when we arrived at our destination...Mikes seafood. Here's some tasty assorted stuff.







Finally, our mission completed! On the advice of a rather surly fish-monger, he got a big hunk of organic Atlantic salmon. The guy started with a rather small piece, but Ian got him to move the knife over and ended up with $15 worth! Perhaps leftover pan fried salmon tonight for dinner.

Brasserie - super duper cheap eating!!!

On the way home from East, I noticed that the Brasserie seemed to have a super-duper lunch special thing going on! 2 items from their special menu for only $5!

Ian had some pretty tasty fish, chips and coleslaw along with a rather large piece of grilled chicken with moroccon tomato sauce, couscous and chickpeas.

I had the frites with garlic aioli and chipotle ketchup. Also some creamy garlic penne pasta with tomato and mushroom.

All the food was pretty tasty, and with a total bill including tax tip and 1 cola for $16 it is hard to go wrong!!! I'm not sure how long this special is on, but I am going to put Ian in charge of walking by here on the way home to check it out for next weekend!

East

We went out for dinner tonight to East, part of the mini-spring rolls chain.

I was going to title the post "East...of the 427", but Ian nixed it and said it wasn't funny :( He then pointed out that everywhere we eat is "East" of the 427, but actually the joke is that the place is actually called "East". Anyway, I thought it was funny and since it's my blog, I can type whatever I want. Well it's half Ian's blog, but it is my post. So there!

Ian had satay seafood pad thai for the rather pricey amount of $10.95 while cheap Janice (that's me) had veggie and tofu szechuan with rice for a mere $6.95. Wait, now we're having doubts and possibly I had black bean stir fry. To start, some veggie spring rolls for $3.50 or something like that.

As usual, high marks for tastiness!

Total bill was $27.69 including tax, tip and two tap waters.

Boston Pizza

Part II of our weekend adventure to the country (aka something outside of downtown) was a trip to Boston Pizza in Oakville. Thanks to the in-laws I have some sweet sweet gift certificates so we were able to live it up - well as much as you can on a Sunday afternoon. I had the Jambalaya Fettuccini and Janice had the mix'n'match pasta with penne and creamy tomato sauce. Both dishes were tasty as we've come to expect from BP's. I for some reason wasn't super hungry though so I had a little bit of leftovers that I had for lunch the next day.

To look up the menu for the restaurant I had to navigate to the specific restaurant. A quick search of other restaurants menus doesn't seem to reveal any noticeable differences?

Lentils on Wikipedia

For the lentil lovers out there, check out this site for more information on the tasty lentil. Scroll to the bottom and check out the "alternative field crops" link for more information on growing and harvesting.

Not surprisingly, India produces about 1/2 of the world's lentils, but Canada is the world's biggest exporter. Go Saskatchewan! Yeah KP!

Westfield Heritage Village Maple Syrup Festival

As recommended by last Wednesdays Globe and Mail travel section, Ian and I ventured out to the Westfield Heritage Centre by Hamilton.

They have a fun assortment of 1800's and early 1900's houses, shops, barns, churches etc. It sounds as though this place was originally put together by some school teachers who wanted a real life history lesson. Now, it seems to have taken on a life of its own with about 40 buildings on site. It was pretty impressive, everyone there were volunteers and most were dressed up in period costumes and most were pretty informative..although a few were a little over-chatty!

Cost was $19 total for 2 adults + $1 more for a sweet, sweet maple syrup candy.

Most of their buildings were sold to the place for $1 and moved onto the site on flat-beds. They even had a church that was chopped in half, moved and re-assembled!

They were celebrating maple syrup season and had three demonstrations going on. Here's the pics in the order that we saw them (tried to get lots of food and kitchen related stuff). Check out the end for the 3 ways of making syrup (aside from buying the president's choice stuff):






French Canadian House. Dude with funny red hair!










Their kitchen stuff.











A settler/pioneer house. Had some tasty potato pancake with maple syrup.









Some pots for sale at the trading post. A hudson's bay blanket will cost ya 3.5 beaver pelts. Too bad we didn't check the trap line before heading out.








A washer and wringer for sale down at the local hardware store. Good thing technology has improved or there is NO WAY Ian would ever do laundry.

Who am I kidding, I wouldn't be doing laundry either!











Some cooking pots and pans.









Some baking tins. Some good stuff like baking powder, cocoa and oxo cubes. Mmm...wonder if there's still product in them???










Another stove. Probably saw about 10 cool stoves. This ones was really neat with a front burner section and a back oven part. We were about 1/2 hour too early for apple upside down cake :(










Turn of the century butter churner.












Maple syrup molds for turning syrup into sugar candy. Heard that "maple syrup does not keep" about a 100 times!






Me weaving a sash. Some lucky person may be getting a really really cool Christmas present this year!

The guy here made some comment about how, "the kids really love this little weaver, it amuses them for hours" and then had to back-track and say that adults like it too! Ha ha!









Very odd sign down at the train station. Historical interpreter guy didn't seem to be able to explain to Ian why they just wouldn't change the clock to the correct time???






Mark, this ones for you! A very old lumber mill!









Maple syrup method #1 - Native way prior to pots. They would slash diagonally on trees and collect syrup. Then would put hot rocks into a dug-out log. Would take 7-10 days to make maple sugar.

Now that's commitment!








Method #2. Boiling in a series of pots. Early settler/pioneer way of doing things.







Finally, the "modern" evaporator.

The guy here told us that the sap likes to run at a temperature of 4 C, with the sun shining and a slight breeze in the air.

Home Cooking Fun

Ian and I did our usual Saturday night thing and cooked at home.

To start, some bruchetta. It was going well, until Ian convinced me to put the bread under the broiler. Although that is probably the best way to cook it, I purposely avoid it since I usually forget about the bread and then it burns. So yeah, no surprises here, it got a little crispy. Overall still yummy though!



Main course was Risotto with some leftover squash. Recipe from William's Sonoma wedding cookbook that Ian's cousins gave us.

According to Ian, the real main course was pan fried honey mustard salmon from our favorite President Choice. Ian always says "if it's good enough for the president, it's good enough for me." Salmon was not exactly all that honey-mustardy, but still was pretty tasty. Mildly annoying, the two pieces were completely different shapes and thicknesses, thus making the cooking more difficult. I suppose not really the presidents fault though, it's hard to control fish size and shape??? Also some sauteed $2 asparagus from the no-frills.

A bottle of 2005 Masi Valpolicella. The website is a little confusing, but I think I found the right page. Billy said this is the "Best valpol in years" and classified it as a "lively red". At $13.95 it was hard to go wrong. He said this wine is good for summer foods and a good partner for roasted chicken or salmon. Ian felt that he detected a hint of strawberry and oak, while I thought that I tasted some cherry. Just kidding....we are not very connoisseur-y regarding wine.

For dessert stayed relatively healthy and had some strawberries and Chapman's fro yo. Mmmm...

Sneaky Dees

Tonight Ian and I went on a mission to try a new restaurant recommended by Cheap Eats 2006 and again were disappointed. Refer to our previous nasty falafel experience and some Indian buffet. Victims of a slightly out of date book. Note to self, will check out TO Dine Safe website before heading out next time. They are generally pretty up to date.

A cheap tapas place called Oasis was supposed to be at College and Spadina. Cheap Eats 2006 had promised pumpkin dip with pita and chickpea, cauliflower, squash curry, all for $3.60 each. Check out the link: Now Magazine, also made the place sound pretty tasty.

All we found was an inferior looking Savannah restaurant loosely based on tapas. At $9 for a chicken quesidalla, it could hardly be considered cheap tapas though. Not too many creative sounding things, just regular old pub food seemed to be the new specialty.

So, we kept on moving and hit up Sneaky Dees just down the street. They seem to have re-done their website so no more of their weird graphic things and odd shapes windows.

Ian, as always, had the really cheap special - on Friday it's two soft tacos - your choice of beef, chicken or veggie. Comes with salad, mexi rice and not so good refried kidney beans ($7.95). I had the veggie enchiladadas - baked with cheese and some tomato sauce ($9.30). Same side dishes as Ian. Add in a pitcher of beer for $9.25 and total bill came to $33 including tax and tip.

Maybe I am turning into a fine dining connoisseur, but I am finally starting to agree with Ian that the Sneaky is not so great. Sure, it's a horrendous amount of food, but it's not all that tasty. Guess that makes it a classic cheap eat??

I think that next time, I would go back on a Tuesday for the 1/2 price fajitas or Thursday for the veggie nachos + large pitcher of beer for $18.95. Based on previous experience, the fajitas and nachos are probably tastier than the other tex-mex stuff they serve.

Also mildly disturbing, every other customer in there seemed to have a rather large beard....maybe for some reason it attracts facial hair dudes??