Fressen

I went with some friends last week for brunch at Fressen. All was well with the organic loose leaf blackberry/blueberry tea in the fun tea-maker thingy except for the price at $3.50!!!

There were 5 of us in total and I convinced them all to order the ultra-tasty corn fritters (usual post Run for the Cure staple). It went a little wrong when they came out kinda burnt and a bit more pasty than usual :(

Potatoes, salsa, guac, fruit, bread etc that came with the fritters was good. Price was right at $9 for a rather hearty plate of food!

Waitresses were rather overworked but the food came out extremely quickly! So at least they have improved in the speed department on one front!

The Winter Insider's Report

It's almost as if the world knows how obsessed I am with the PC products because yesterday in the paper we got two copies of the insider's report. This also works out well with our poor sharing abilities.

Anyway from my preliminary perusal of the Insider's report here are the items I plan to check out on the next visit to the grocery stores. Purchase will of course depend on trans fat content.

Dolce de Leche - Janice is quite excited about this. It's unfortunate that they imported it from Argentina though. At 2.99 though it will certainly outshine the William's Sonoma version that she used to be obsessed with.

Chinese Dim Sum - They have Shrimp Har Gao so that pretty much sealed the deal that I would want to look int it. At 7.99 not super cheap but definitely something to check out. I'm curious to see if the from frozen will work well with har gao

Crunchy Rippled POtato Chips - Everyone knows ripple chips are the best so these may be interesting to check out. Smokin' Stampede seems like it will be the flavour of choice.

Seafood Medley in Garlic Butter Sauce - Sounds good but don't anticipate it being a repeat purchase with the 4.99 price point.

Chocolate Chip Miche - who knows what miche is but chocolate chip like bread seems brilliant. At 3.99 a loaf we'll have to see how big the loaf is!

More to come

Cast Iron Pan Awesomeness

Stove top to oven with one fun pan!

Funny stuff

Refer to a previous post to see Ian fighting with someone who obviously has some sort of connection to the hosters of the worst party ever - EQ3. Don't get me wrong, the couch we purchased from there is decent and $800 well spent.

The link!

Friar and Ferkin

Last night we went out with some of the work crowd - well more with one person in my french class who also happens to work at the same company as me and the people she works with. She also happens to have gone to school with my carpool buddy so he came too!

Anywho, the beer was pretty good at the Friar (John/Queen) and decently priced at about $5.50 a pint. Ian liked his chicken fingers with assorted greasy sides for $10. Kelly liked the sweet potato fries. I make it seem like I did not eat anything - but I did in fact graze on all of the aforementioned stuff and it was pretty tasty, although a little greasy for my new healthy eating regime. Falling off the healthy eating wagon for one night hopefully will not kill me!

East Side Marios

Yesterday we went for a little b-day lunch to East Side Mario's on Winston Churchill.

I think I've only been once - back when I lived in Sudbury. I do not have good memories. My grilled veggie and portabello on panini with pesto mayo was certainly tasty, but the food poisoning started shortly thereafter!

This time I kept it simple and went with pasta + tomato sauce. Tasty and cheap at $5.99. Others seemed to enjoy their sandwiches, pizza and pasta. Only complaint here was the service. They botched up the B-day gals order and seemed like they were having a hard time keeping up with drinks etc.

Week Late News Flash - Burger King Price Increase

Sorry faithful blog readers but I forgot to announce last week that Burger King upped their prices on the daily value (or whatever they're called) burgers. Combos are still 3.99 (at least they understand the benefits of staying below 4 bucks) but burgers are now 1.89. I usually get two Whoppers on Wednesdays but partly because of the whopper of a price increase I skipped it today.

It will take a few more price increases before I head to Buffalo and the land of the dollar value meals for lunch but this certainly wasn't a step in the right direction.

Classic Louie's Pizzeria

I went to a little event on Friday night and we ordered some pizza from Louie's (mid-townish). Tastiness factor was high with the veggie pizza (carmelized onions, spinach and mushrooms with pesto sauce). The meat-lovers people had the onions with two kind of processed beefiness. They also seemed to enjoy.

Anywho, highly recommended, but perhaps not as cheap as Domino's etc.

Ho Su on Queen

Ho Su, as usual, was pretty tasty and quick. Better yet, it is delightfully close and doesn't seem to make Ian sick like our old favorite, New Gen.

Ian had the $10 lunch sushi special with 3 pieces tuna, 3 salmon, 3 piece some mystery white butter fish and 8 piece california roll. More fish than you would want to eat in a sitting and indeed he did not finish! I had a more modest meal with 8 pieces avocado and cucumber maki ($3).

Despite Ian's big spending ways, total was $16.70 including tax, tip, tap water, side dishes (potato tastiness, gimchee, edamame, beans).

TD Free Booty

It's not food related, but it does fit with our cheapness!

A flyer came to our place a few days ago - the goal seemed was to advertise the new hours for the TD attached to our place.

The new hours only resulted in us having to get up horrendously early on a weekend so we dragged ourselves out of bed at 7:45 in order to be one of the first 25 customers to get a free gas card ($10 each at Petro Can). $20 seems like the best alarm clock ever. Both of us were relativity awake before the alarm even went off. Nothing unusual for me, but quite odd for Ian!

Anyway, today free gas. Next week $2 tim's and papers. Week after (for 5 days) - $10 chapters card and/or tote bag. Then week after - draw for a flat screen TV!

Farmer's Market - The Second Edition

Just a little bit more about the peameal concoction. I was reading the paper today and the "new" Weekend Edition of the globe and mail now has a column from that much over-hyped Richard Florida. That's a rant for another day but, anyway, he mentioned having the uber-Toronto peameal and egg sandwich at the St. Lawerence market so that planted the idea in my mind. We spied the shop hawking these sandwiches while at the market so we couldn't resist. 4.95 with tax so certainly not cheap (maybe that helps make it authentically Toronto-ish?). It was pretty good. Just like the Tim Horton's egg mcmuffin is a better version of the original McMuffin, this sandwich was better than the TH edition. However, the bacon wasn't as flavourful as it could be. No other complaints except obviously the price. Except for rare special occasions, I'll have to stick to clogging my arteries with the chain versions.

Oh and sure Janice claims to "care about the environment" but you should ask her whether she'd still be carpooling if her company didn't pay her to do it.

St. Lawrence Market Adventure

In the last few months I've become obsessed with the concept of the farmers market. I guess one too many article about eating "local" food etc.

I am also starting to feel a bit bad about killing the environment and have taken on a carpooler (yeah, he would be taking public transit...so not really taking people off the road...but it's a start!)

Have also ditched the plastic bags, even the little produce ones too! Ian claims that I am putting the petrochemical people out of business, but the in-laws are pretty much retired so that's ok right?

I decided to turn the farmers market obsession into action and convinced Ian to walk over to St. Lawrence market with me. They have a special warehouse type thing across the street from the regular market on Sat only. Supposedly, these are authentic farmers.

I picked up all sorts of good stuff! 3 squash for $5. 4 colored peppers for $1.50. Some tasty tomatoes and some beets that I plan on eating tomorrow. Also picked up a broccoli that I turned into some not very tasty soup. Not really the broccoli's fault though.

Ian couldn't stop stressing that these farmers were likely not reporting the income from these transactions, but a peameal bacon egg cheese bun combo cheered him up slightly!

Cleveland Fun

I went on a two day trip to Cleveland for a course. The location was pretty good - hotel was right beside the police headquarters so the potential for mugging and drug dealers was actually quite low! Should have brought the running shoes....

We were near the trendy "warehouse" district, so I walked over and went a place called Crop on Sunday night. In general, it was packed with an older crowd, but I thought busy is good and went in. They have a special Sunday dinner deal for $23. I got some cornbread with three tasty butters, some salad with all sorts of fun pickled stuff on there, my choice of main - I went with salmon, but there was also pasta, steak etc, then some rasberry ganache cake type thing for dessert! All very tasty, but the salmon was slightly undercooked in my opinion.

Then some sushi the next night. Overpriced and poor selection but nice restaurant and friendly people sitting at the sushi bar.

ROM Fact or Fiction

Last night I scored some free tickets to a fundraising event for the ROM. The basic idea was there were 20 tables - each with 1 artifact. Each table had two curators - one telling the truth about the artifact, one with a fake story. Our job was to pick the correct one. Winner got a trip to Egypt!

I got 10/20, Ian got 12/20 and winners tied for 17/20!

The best part was the free food and drink - and I guess $500 worth of tickets for free! Caterer was "Presidential Gourmet".

Ian enjoyed the appetizers ...
-peking duck in rice paper rolls
-ice cream cones with melon balls and some meat
-bbq eel in sushi format
-shrimp on a stick
-deep fried eggplant on a cracker
-yellow tomato gazpacho in espresso cups

Food stations included:
- antipasto with lots of roasted veggies, bread, cheese, meat, salad etc - very tasty
- mushroom risotto with braised short rib - mmmm
- Japanese coated tofu with mushrooms - so so
- pickerel with squash - mmmm
- ricotta spinach pasta with tomato sauce- also mmmmm

Dessert included:
-chocolate, caramel, pecan squares
-raspberry square tastiness
-fruit
-petit fours

Also highly tasty. Drinks were ok - Ian sucked back a couple of his fav - vodka + fruity juice and later some rum and coke. I went with a white wine and a red wine. White wine smelled extremely alcohol-y, red wine was pretty good.

The More Litter Free Way to Grocery Shop

With the addition of a few more PC bags, we now have enough for a week of groceries! Today, I was on my own and decided to ditch the plastic bags that you put fruit and veggie in! They really have no use and I just end up throwing them out anyway.

It wasn't all that bad! I just put them all on the top shelf and it only seemed to take the cashier an extra few seconds overall. More deelightful for unpacking too!

Woodbine Race Track

We had a little work related conference type thing-y this past Friday and Saturday. For Friday night, we headed over to the track for a buffet dinner and some racing. The buffet was pretty tasty - salad, roast beef that was actually pretty good, fish/seafood, chicken etc. The highlight was some squash that had an eggplant type skin. I was a little thrown off, but the tastiness level was quite high!

The gambling went alright - initially down $6, but made most of it back with a win prior to leaving! They only had the carts - it's a bit ridiculous - whoever can trot the fastest wins! That's like Ian winning $50 K because he can walk the fastest!

Ian is getting all upset by my comments. He said, "they are younger horses. Well, I don't know if they are younger - they just aren't as good." Sounds like an argument gone wrong for Ian!

Lone Star

Not being people to turn down coupons, we headed over to the Lone Star on Front to collect our free bag of chips and container of salsa. Sure, they give this stuff out for free at the start of the meal, but we thought it was good value to take some home with us too!

For the meal, we shared a 1/2 lb of steak + chicken fajita with rice, beans, guacamole, cheese, tomatoes and lettuce. Pretty tasty overall and decent value for $26 for two including t,t &tw x 2.

Healthy Snack Food for Those Who Do Not Want to Die

PC fig newtons. Seriously tasty, fat free and 60% whole wheat. They even pass the Ian taste test. Check out this link. He may be off the chocolate for good - at least for between meals. He still eats at breakfast and the non-newton desserts.







PC flax seed chips. Ian likes plain, I like spicy. No trans, low in saturated and include fiber and other good booty that flax seed seem to have (it's hard to keep track of the omega's).





Who doesn't like m-wave popcorn? Just remember steer clear of the fumes while opening the bag to avoid popcorn lung.

No trans here! Yeah!

Boston Pizza & Hockley Valley

Yesterday, we went on a little hiking adventure to Hockley Valley Conservation Area near Orangeville Ontario. Halfway through, the rain started, so we cut it short and took one of the short-cut loops back to the start and only went on a 2 hr adventure instead of 4.5 hours.

This seems like a pretty popular place. An old-people hiking group was there and a bus load of tourists seemed to be arriving as we were leaving.

For the last stretch, the hike went through a farmers field. The cows made Ian hungry, so stopped off at BP's so he could have an individual Meteor Pizza (3 kinds of meaty topping and meat sauce instead of regular tomato) and get his meat quota for the week. Actually, that is a lie, the gift certificate situation is a bit out of control and BP's was the original plan, even before the cows.

I had a half penne + tomato sauce with garlic bread. All food was sufficiently tasty and quick. Final bill with tax, tip, tap water x 2, cola x 1 was about $27...but only $7 for us after the certificate! Nice! The funniest part came on the way out the restaurant. This family was walking in front of us to the parking lot, and this little dude -about 2-3 years old - was walking slow and staring at Ian. Dad got mad and told him to hurry up, but then the kid points out "those big kids are following me!" Ha ha!

Run for the Cure and Aroma

Thanks to the faithful blog readers that sponsored us on the run this past weekend. Those who thought they were sponsoring us on a 5km run will be pleased to hear that it was actually 5.6 km according to mapmyrun.com (the route was very different than previous years). That's a bonus of over 10%! For free!

Anyway it was a relief to see that it was longer than expected. I took 28:01 minutes and Janice was 30 and change. Somewhat disappointing as it ends our multi-year streak of continuously getting better times. Also disappointing is how much faster some people ran than us on Sunday
- the fastest marathon on Canadian soil happened in Toronto (2:09:30)
- the fastest marathon ever was run in Berlin (2:04:26)
so if I had run 5km alongside any of those people during their races they would have beat me by 10 minutes while still going on to run for almost another 2 hours.

After the run we broke with tradition and skipped fressen. Instead we went to Aroma for lunch. It lived up to it's usual standard except for gulab jamon which was awful. All of my gulab tim bits were rock hard. Disappoint but of course we'll likely forgive and forget.