Lack of blog updates :(

Sorry gang, not too many updates with Ian outta town. I think Ian is the real one to blame here, he goes out for lunch everyday but yet nothing on the blog!

What does everyone think, should we get Jackie to join our blog and update on Korean food stuff???

Week Long Kayak Marathon

I just got back from 6 days of kayak action. The real star of my camping cooking was a home-made egg mcmuffin.

Toast up a mini whole wheat pita break pita or two, scramble an egg or two with salt and pepper, layer eggs between pita with a slice or two of black diamond cheddar cheese slices. Good for really any meal! Mmmm....no more eggs till next year.......

Royal Canadian Yacht Club

The regional and world directors and managers from my group were in town for a strategy meeting, so everyone was invited for a cruise around the Toronto Harbour and a BBQ at the Royal Canadian Yacht club. It was SUPER fancy and the food was pretty decent! Better yet, it was all free.....

Not that great for the veggie eaters, but I definately did not go home hungry. The meet eaters had lots of stuff: chicken, salmon, steaks etc...mmmmmm......

Olive Garden

Back when we lived in Edmonton, Ian and I were somewhat obsessed with this place and would go a few times a year. In Ontario, they used to have the Olive but they have pretty much packed it in here and the nearest one is in Buffalo.

So anyway, to make a long story short, Ian and I went a few weekends ago in California. It was a gross amount of not very good food. So yeah, I don't miss the Olive as much as I thought that I would. Maybe I could eat more food in my younger days and it was better value?

If you still happen to live in E-town, go for Chianti or Fiore...mmmmm....

Weekend Stuff

I went for some brunch to Scruffy Murphys in the Yonge and Eglinton area yesterday morning. Alright food for some good prices. The soccer fans were out and going hard with the liquor and pancakes at 11 AM!

Decided to go to new gen today for lunch and the yam maki was tasty. I seem to get the same waitress and I'm not sure she understands the difference between tea and water, but I will not hold that against new gen! Yummy food for $8 including tax and tip.

Burritos

One thing that Toronto lacks is an adequate supply of burritos. Sure there are places like burrito boyz but they're overpriced and they charge EXTRA for guacamole. To make things worse they don't really have many choices for burritos. Here in California though burrito supply is definitely not an issue.

I've been eating them 3-5 times a week while here. My favorite chain is una mas. They offer some very tasty offerings. Janice tried a squash one and wasn't super impressed but I've been impressed with all the meaty ones I've tried. From this trend, we can finally conclude that eating meat is by far the smartest course of action? As the months go buy I will review each of the burritos

As an added bonus, the una mas's seem to have free internet ( I think). The signal is weak in the parking lot when I tried but I assume it's fine in the store. Although I've never seen anyone there with a laptop and burrito?

Yummy Pasta

I am normally not a big Italian fan, but decided to cook up some past tonight.

Here's what I did:

Olive oil + garlic + onion + red pepper flakes -> low heat 10 min
Toss in a bunch of rehydrated sun dried tomatoes + some liquid
Saute for a minute or two

Take off heat and add in chopped parsley, pine nuts, salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Toss with pasta and that's it! Super easy, but really really good!

Really CHEAP wine

I was visiting Ian in San Jose and we went to his favorite whole food-like store, trader joes. The americains seem better and conveniently have lots of liquor available at almost any type of store, including TJ's.

I wanted to buy some $4 wine, but Ian convinced me to be super cheap. We went with a merlot called Charles Shaw aka "Two buck chuck". Charles know what's he's doing and has a whole family of wines. We may visit his winery next month since he seems like a master winemaker.

I was expecting the worst, but it was actually rather good!

I was thinking that Ian should take up drinking as a hobby at a rate of 1 bottle/night since that's cheaper than almost any sort of other entertainment!

Salad King

I went for dinner last night and had the golden tofu curry. Rice was included, all for the low - low price of $6.45 (no tax/tip). This place was PACKED and appeared to be mostly ryerson students on the way home or on the way to night class.

Ian and I generally forget about this place, we'll have to go more when he comes home!

A "very tasty" rating with 1.5 thumbs up in the value department.

Alice Fazooli's

I went in Mississauga for lunch on friday with some co-workers. I ordered some pasta with tomatoe sauce kind of thing. Was only so-so and a bit dry overall. Kind of a rip off for $12 or so.

Service not great, the waitresss asked if we wanted some bread and made it seem like she was doing us a major favor to bring it out for us. A bit bizarre.

Anywho, two thumbs down in the value department and a neutral tastiness rating.

Nature Valley salty and sweet bars

Last time at the grocery store I bought a bunch of nature valley granola bars. One type was salty and sweet soft peanut butter bars. THEY WERE SOOO TASTY!

My kayak bud Milton also thought they were tasty and even more exciting is that he works for a uniform delivery and cleaning company and they service the nature valley plant. He is going to try and hook us up with some cases of them...mmmmmm.

Jackie - they tasted just like those caramel marshmallow bars that you are a fan of!

MKC

I went to the Madawaska Kanu Centre for the long weekend. Food was super tasty and vegetarian stuff was no problem.

Breakfast is always the highlight with some sort of hot grainy thing like oatmeal or cream or wheat with all the fixins...nuts, dried fruit, sugar etc. Mmmmmm and warm on a cold winter...I mean spring morning.

At one point it snowed on the river, so I was happy for the tasty food throughout the day!

New Gen

Post fire-renovated new gen did not dissapoint. "G Yam Maki Set" was super-duper as per usual.

Mississauga Marathon

I had my 10 km run last night. I was training for a half marathon, but then an armpit injury followed by a kayak related leg injury has taken me down for the last 3-4 weeks and I've only been to run an average of about once/week. So I switched to the 10 km and ran it last night in 55 minutes. I was hoping for under an hour, so I was pretty pleased with the time.

The food and drink post run was only so-so with some bagels, fruit, water etc at the end. I was feeling a bit queasy after running that fast so couldn't really enjoy my free food to the full extent.

Off to NEW GEN for lunch today!!! Yeah!!! I looked on the web and it appears as though they still have my "G" Yam Maki lunch set....oh how I've missed you yam maki...mmmmm.

BP's

I play on the company softball team and after the game we went to BP's on Winston Churchill. The patio was nice, it was pasta Tuesday, my team won, my team members (hadn't met any of them) turned out to be very funny and cool and we had a 10% off VIP customer card. All in all a good night!

Sushi Queen

I went for some sushi with friends on Sunday night. I had the usual $7.75 bento and as usual it was pretty tasty and a good value.

Others had weird tofu salads and an octopus soup thing. They seemed to be ok.

More importantly, I drove by New Gen on Sunday morning, and they had a sign in the window saying opening soon!!! Yeah!!! Hopefully they still have my "G" yam maki set.

Red Thai

I was in Montreal this week and for dinner one night we went to Red Thai on St. Laurent.

The decor was cute with a very cool budha in the middle of the place and all the dishes came out on all sorts of cute dishes with lids and the like.

Overall, food was not all that great. I had veggies and tofu with peanut sauce. Tofu was good, assortment of veggies great, but the peanut sauce was oddly quite pasty.

The others had more meaty type things and didn't comment either way on the tastiness, so I'm assuming it wasn't that great. So that's the story!

Oh yeah, it cost us like $250 for 4, so kind of a rip-off too. Ian and I have gone to cheap thai in TO and had better food, for under $30 for 2.

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!