Ho Su

Ian and I went for a quick dinner tonight at Ho Su on Queen. All was delightful and cheap except for the tempura. Ian had some california roll/chiken teriyaki type item. I had veggie sushi combo. Total bill was $26 including t,t,t,s,s,e,m,b,k (tax, tip, tap water, soup, salad, edamame, mystery saucy veggie, beans, kimchee).

The poor customer service "Diet"

So this week I was in Hawkesbury working at a very exciting steel plant and thus had to frequent the local restaurants for meals.

Poor customer service prevented me from procuring some tasty fast food.

I stopped in at pizza pizza in town and there is one lady cleaning the bathrooms and the other guy cleaning out the drink cooler. The dude says something to me in french, I don't really speak but the gist of it was, just a minute. I say ok, but then wait about 5 minutes and finally walk out. It's been a while since I worked at DQ, but I think that serving customers in a timely fashion if more important than cleaning the joint!

One night I went to the Valleyfield River for some kayak action and stop in at McD's across the street for a drink. I wait about 5 minutes to get my order in, but then the pace is 1 car every 8 minutes or so. There was conveniently no porkchop between the order thingy and the food giver so I took off! It would have been like 5 cars x 8 minutes = 40 min? After 2 cars and 16 min wait I was fed up!

Caribana Disappointment

The city of Toronto seems to like to ruin weekends by shutting down major thoroughfares early and often. This week's reason was Caribana. After eventually making it back home from groceries despite the traffic chaos, I decided to check it out to see if it was worth the inconvenience.

The official website for Caribana is sparse on information like times and locations so I set out on Lakeshore until I hit the action. One of the primary motivations for going was to get lunch in the form of Roti. (This is a blog about food). Anyway I walked and I walked and eventually found a range of vendors set up and there was roti. But that's not the only thing that was there, they had also brought high prices. Now I guess the location is nice and convenient for watching the parade but I am fundamentally opposed to paying prices that are greater than or equal to restaurant prices. At the restaurant, the level of sketchiness is likely to be lower and they provide seating. Here there's none of that - no nice yellow or green dinesafe signs or any dedicated seating. And the final straw, many places weren't that busy. If it's not good enough for the locals, it's not good enough for me.

Non-food related notes of interest

• The parade itself was not stellar. "Floats" with prominent signs explicitly saying that "unauthorized personnel can not go on the float for insurance reasons" take a little bit away from the atmosphere. The thing that kills it more is that a bunch of floats would have this convoy of U-Haul's trailing behind. I'm not sure how these were connected to the main event. I guess we'll never know
• There seemed to be a complete lack of corporate give-aways aimed at buying my brand loyalty. My loyalty was left untouched so it looks like I'll have to stick to double bubble and milk-2-go.
• Advertising should consist of more than just whistling. A lot of the water sellers seemed to think using whistles was key and they were using them constantly. If I want overpriced water I'll stick with the quiet vendors

And where did I eat in the end you ask? I picked up a large pepperoni at Domino's. Total price 9.12 which is less than I would have paid at some of the stations and I'm having it for lunch and dinner.

Free Milk

For those who know where we live, come and pick up some milk! Seriously...please come and get some.

St Louis

Yesterday Ian and I were rather lazy post nap and decided to hit up the St. Louis rib and wing joint basically attached to the building across the street from us. Despite the rather limited menu, the place is always busy..even when the Jays are out of town.

Ian and I both had the half rack of ribs with fries special for $10.95. It was a decent amount of food, although not enough bbq sauce. Ian had a pint of steamwhistle, but felt that due to the shape of the special steam pint glass, he got kinda ripped off.

The mints at the end were tasty and equally delightful were the plentiful hand wipe thingies.

That's about it. Sorry nothing funny to report.

The best things in life are ...

free!

A few weeks ago, I took some candy from a stranger. It's ok it was free













Today was the real score, milk 2 go. Faithful readers will not be surprised to learn I made multiple trips. Don't worry in the later trips I got closed cases so I could stack them! Needless to say the fridge is full. I still feel I should go back but I'm trying to restrain myself

Ribs in the Oven

Ian and I walked over to the St. Lawrence Market yesterday and found some meaty looking pork back ribs for about $4.50/lb. The only problem was, the butcher wouldn't cut in half for us and we didn't want to buy $35 of meat for the two of us for dinner. We walked over to the next meat shop and bought a full rack of baby back for $7.50. Here's the little guys stacked up.




The marinade/rub had some brown sugar, soy sauce, oil, garlic, cilantro and chinese five spice powder...mmmm..








The home-made sauce wasn't so hot, so I ended up doing a blind taste test with Ian. The half home-made, half PC sauce won out!


Here's the final result.

Kit Kat Summerlicious

Ian and I decided to partake in some cheap eats and went to Kit Kat on King for the Summerlicious festival. It's basically three courses for $25 to $35 depending on the restaurant.

I started with a not so tasty asparagus soup - way too bland. Ian has mussels with a tomato wine sauce that he seemed to enjoy. For the main course Ian has chicken with prosciutto in a creamy white sauce with mashed potato and random veggies. I had pan fried sole with wild rice and the same veggie. Ian's portion was huge, but while it excelled in largeness, it lacked in tastiness.

I know that sole is kind of bland so I was expecting some sort of crust or sauce on there, but it came with neither. Overall very bland :( Sadly, my cafeteria at work makes better sole.

The desert was alright tiramisu but this time was a puny portion. With the summerlicious special we ended up paying $64 including tax, tip and tap water.

The real entertainment here were the tables on either side of us. To my left and Ian's right, there was the first date with the young guy and old lady. Neither seemed to have much to say, and the old lady admitted that her mom likes to cook for her so she doesn't really know how to cook anything. Sounds like a real catch! Awkward times all around for those two!

To my right, there was a three generation girls night out kind of event. The two older ladies got all upset about cold veggies with their meal and made a big stink about it. The waiter was extremely rude and made them feel like it was all in their head. Kind of comical. I think the waiter felt bad, so he came by every 5 minutes thereafter with awkward tidbits of what he thought was amusing anecdotes! Ian and I, as impartial judges, gave the effort a D. Awkward at best!

An Outsider's Guide to the Insider Report

I started this post a while ago (it looks like on 2007/05/24) after the Summer insider's report first arrived. I held off posting to make sure I had a chance to try everything that caught my eye (prefix PC to everything)

Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies - these are very tasty. Like the old school Dad's Oatmeal Cookies I used to eat but even tastier. Checking out the nutritional information was sort of a let down because if you care about your heart and saturated fats you'll have to scale back the cookie consumption. Tough but necessary.

Naan Chicken Tandoori Pizza and Pita Chicken Souvlaki Pizza - These were on for $4.49 when the report first came out. Supposedly each box will feed multiple people - I elect to eat the whole thing in a sitting. The Naan chicken tandoori pizza is the better of the two

Field and Grove Juice - There's a mango "based" one and a berry "based" one. "based" because there are a lot of other juices in there besides the one that forms the theme. These are $1.69 currently for 1L. For juice I think that's not bad. I'm a fan of both of these although the mango is my favorite. The concept is similar to the V8 Fusion that as far as I know isn't in Canada yet but was very tasty when I've had a sip down under (in the US).

PC Bento Chicken Yakitori & PC Bento Salmon Teriyaki - No real surprise Salmon is the winner here. They're both pretty good. It's pretty wild and crazy - the instructions say you should heat it up without lifting up a corner to let the steam escape. I followed the instructions and it turned out well. The gyoza is in a little too much sauce and it's sad you only get one. The rice is sort of weird and it wears on you but overall the meal's pretty good. Sure we use some of reusable bags Galen Weston is nuts about to bring the meal home but I still feel like maybe this massive fake bento box and chop sticks (which are a nice bonus that we save) might not be the most environmentally friendly meal. Oh well, the price again is the main deterrent that prevents me from getting these more frequently.

Start Digression
This is also part of a bigger rant (that I may continue late) I have that if food is packaged like it should be a complete meal then there should be enough calories for a complete meal. I'm tired of seeing all these "meals" with less than 500 calories. "Healthy" meals are the worst. It's not healthy to slowly starve to death and if it defeats the point of healthiness if I need to have multiple cokes to get enough calories. If it's a snack sized portion label and price it as such. I'll rant more about this some other time
End Digression

Those are all the products I seem to recall trying. Here's the full listing of new products. I may try some more so faithful blog readers can look forward to that!

BBQ Rib Showdown

Now that I am carnivorous, I am always searching for tasty bbq ribs. The Americans seem to be hard-core and use the word BBQ as a verb. What the Canadians call bbq is actually a grill.

Anywho, I was in Birmingham last week and went to Dreamland. It is quite the mini-chain down there and anyone who likes BBQ seems to be obsessed with this place. The first thing they bring is a plate of wonderbread and some bbq sauce. I didn't quite know what to do with this, so I dipped some bread into the sauce - it was alright - about as good as you would expect wonder bread to be. Then the 1/2 rack of ribs came out. I was a bit disappointed. The actual rib part of it was ok, but I'm not really sure what the other meat was that was clinging to the ribs. It was a combo of fat and gristle. Good thing I ordered the cole-slaw and banana pudding or I would have walked away hungry. Decent value for about $13 I think??

Then, Ian and I went on a camping adventure in the Adirondacks this weekend and spied the "Tail of the Pup BBQ" joint near Saranac lake. It was quite the monstrosity with about 10 buildings in the log cabin style, 3-4 huge tents, live band etc. I started with a Saranac Lake Pale Ale for $4. I had a full rack of ribs for $16 came with choice of two sides - I went with baked beans and cornbread. Beans were a little cold and cornbread was puny! Ribs were ok, as with dreamland - hardly any meat on them. Again some mystery cartiledy stuff on there.

Ian ordered the "meat lovers" plate - came with a piece of chicken, 1/2 rack of ribs, pulled pork and beef brisket. He ordered corn of the cob and cole-slaw as his sides. A fantastic deal for $19!! He seems to have gotten lucky and got some really good ribs - probably more meat on his half rack than my full.

All in all pretty decent and I would go back again but this time order the meat lovers plate!

How to Make Smores

I was slightly disturbed this past weekend to discover that smore making is not common knowledge. So here's how you do it!

1. Get out two graham wafer crackers. On one side, place a piece of chocolate. I recommend a square of milk chocolate from some sort of bar.

2. Toast two large marshmallows. Try not to light on fire.

3. Place marshmallows between cookies and enjoy!

That's it!!!

If you want to go really fancy, you can place the crackers with chocolate on a tray near the fire to better melt the chocolate.

Lone Star

To cheer ourselves up after the EQ3 fiasco, we headed over to Lone star. The free tortilla chips and salsa at the start are fun and they seem to have moderately improved the salsa from last time.

We shared an order of steak and chicken fajitas for $19. It was more food than two people really should eat. Came with fixins - some veggies, rice, beans, guac, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, sour cream etc. The best part is the home-made tortilla machine! Ian said that if we get a house, he is going to buy a tortilla machine. We'll see....

Shame on EQ3

We normally don't comment about furniture stores on here but today EQ3 was supposed to have an anniversary party with food, drink and 20% off. They sent me something in the mail as well as calling me which seemed a little excessive. Anyway we make the long trek over to the wrong side of Yonge and get to EQ3 only to find a disappointing anniversary party. We walked all through the store before we found one table with a few picked over veggies and dip and some "sketchy" (Janice's word obviously) salad. It looked like something that might have just been picked up at the corner store. Seems ridiculous that they advertised an event that was this bed. While we were there they found some more wine of which we got a drop-sized serving. Janice with her fancy expense account wine drinking habits couldn't even finish her drop. With my grad school palate I finished mine and hers without any complaints.

This is a controversial post, Janice thinks we should forgive EQ3 and shop there again in the future. I think with this big a disappointment one strike and you're done! So onto the wall of shame.

North 44

Ian and I went all-out last night and went to North 44 for dinner. The chef at this place, Mark McKewan, also has a food network Canada TV show!! How exciting (mocking tone)! Of course, Ian worried that this would inflate the price due to a horde of TV lovers converging on the place. It certainly not cheap, but I think the high prices were more due to the tasty food aspect of it.

Ian started with the halibut and scallop cakes with some lime avocado stuff on the side. Was extremely yummy, but certainly not great value at about $10 per toonie sized cake. Our waiter was actually pretty good and helpful, but the person they had actually bringing out some of the food seemed to be kind of a dolt - she actually called them crab cakes! Ha ha!

We had a bottle of some type of white Italian recommended by our waiter - it was pretty tasty and went well with the fish cakes. The real highlight was the wine cooler - it appeared to be a two compartment steel bottle holder - where you put the bottle of wine on one side and ice on the other! If only Ian and I were more into welding, we could whip it up!

For the main course, Ian went meaty and had bison tenderloin placed on top of soy flavored spinach and a piece of ravoili. Was also some squash on the side. Ian ordered medium rare. The bison was pretty tasty and surprisingly not tough at all.

I had the snapper special with fingerling potato with some random veggies on the side. Ian called the fish "exquisite". Ha ha!

To end the night, we ordered the desert sampler. It was all very good, but they put a bit too much fruit stuff and not enough chocolate related items on there. They listed a couple chocolate/caramel related things on the desert menu, but they were nowhere to be seen on the sampler plate. A bit of a disapointment and next time I would just order one thing.

Overall, the tasty factor was very high, service was good, decor was good, but the price makes this a once a year event at most!

The Long Road Home

This is a post by Ian - not Janice as the tag on the bottom seems to suggest!

Normally a trip east of Toronto isn't complete without a stop at our favorite tacky 401 roadside attraction - The Big Apple. This trip was no different and here's me on a bridge over grass with the infamous apple.



Now the big apple makes apple pies, lots of them in fact and they sell these pies both in slices and full pies. The catch, the slices are 3.50 but the pie is only 10 bucks. Not a tough decision but much to our annoyance they won't let us eat the pie in the restaurant area. We've been asked to leave on prior trips so this time we skipped the confrontation and took our mumble crumble outside to tailgate it up with our pie as you can see below (note how I'm standing underneath the hatch protecting the precision pie - this will be important later)










While tailgating is maybe cool before NFL games, it isn't particularly awesome for pie eating. I got over it and was enjoying the pie until a sea gull flew over and dropped off a present for Janice. Not good.











It gets worse, the present was large and we thought it splashed onto the pie. Initially, I had a brilliant plan to salvage the pie innards and remove the soiled crust but we thought better of it and ended up having to toss the remaining pie. A sad sad day at the Big Apple

Given this awful traumatic experience (for Janice getting hit, for me having to toss out over half a pie), we have to report that the Big Apple is on the No Visit List of Shame (NVLS). We do not plan to go back for a few reasons
1) If they had let us eat our pie inside this whole incident could have been avoided
2) If they're making us eat outside, at least control the sea gull population as there were quite a few circling (which we only noticed after the incident)
3) The mini golf course never seems to be open

We Eat Toronto - Campfire Edition

Ian and I went camping this weekend to Bon Echo Provincial Park. It looks like a pretty popular place in the summer time, but it was pretty quiet this weekend.

We started off with a hike to Essens lake on Saturday. Was alright and sufficiently "lake-y" to satisfy Ian.



















Juice box connoisseur (SunRype strawberry kiwi).






Ian whipped up some pan fried bracket fungi for dinner.









The always challenging fire starting...I have to admit, we used more than our fair share of "fire starting" sticks I purchased at the Tire! No gas though...that's good right?








Ian monitoring our PC Wild Pacific Salmon burgers.









Smore on face troubles!








Ian goes a little crazy and makes 6 smores at once!










Was a pretty tasty shiraz (French Cross, $11/1L, made by someplace in Niagara) that was actually rather well suited to the melted marshmallows.






Ian wakes up!!!




























He cheered up slightly with my usual "Hearty Breakfast" - bacon, eggs and hashbrowns over the parents ancient coleman stove! Had a little fire incident due to spilled fuel, but no injuries! Good old oven-mitt saved the day!





The canoeing scenery. The park is mainly based on a rather long and deep lake (Mazinaw). Don't quote me on it, but it could be 1.5 km down there - so the deepest lake in Southern Ontario (barring the great lakes of course).








Ian in action!

Big Bowl (Mississauga)

Some co-workers and I went for my very belated birthday lunch. I picked Big Bowl Vietnamese on Dundas between Churchill and Erin Mills. I have been once before and had a veggie tofu type stir-fry and it was ok.

I thought that I would stray away from that and went with bbq chicken + spring roll vermicelli. They have some sprouts and greens in there too (mainly cilantro). Comes with a side of fish sauce that I didn't really use. Vicki pretty much scared me off of it due to how it is made. I mixed it all up, and threw on some sauce from a ketchup type bottle. It may have been "seafood" or "hoison". Hard to say if it was any less sketchy than the fish sauce, but regardless, the tasty factor was high.

For $6.50 (I think, thanks AK for the b-day treat), it was a horrendous amount of food. Pretty much a whole chicken on there + a rather large spring roll. I didn't really get around to eating the noodles, but they were tasty too.

The place was absolutely packed, even on the Thursday!

Free Pizza Pizza

Ian and I went to the Jay's game on Friday night and since AJ Burnett struck out 7+ batters, we got a free slice at Pizza Pizza on Monday.

I partook at lunchtime in Mississauga and was a little disappointed. I went with cheese, and it was moderately untasty - not like my delicious veggie square I used to eat in Hamilton when I was out there.

They also seemed to have some head office types standing around in the dining room and they were blocking the seasoning shakers that I like to use. Not so cool!!! In the end, it was too much food and I was feeling kinda queasy for the afternoon.

Ian went for lunch downtown and had the pepperoni - he felt extremely tasty but not enough food.

Ian the cooking superstar!

Ian peels squash with the new peeler Ian's mom bought us from Williams Sonoma. It looks tiny and weak compared to the big squash but actually works pretty well.












A close up of the action.








Then, Ian cuts the over-ripe pineapple!











He will even clean up at the end!













The chickpea-squash curry with green beans and rice/lentil tastiness!







Some cookie action Ian's dad brought back from Ian's aunt in Peru...mmmm...

Janice Makes a Waffle Comeback!!!

Some oil + cooking till crispy = winning waffles by me this weekend!!