PC Brie and Cranberry Filo Parcels

I went to a clothing swap event last night and the host made some PC Brie and Cranberry Filo Parcels. I was expecting a high amount of tastiness, but they were actually a bit bland and leaning toward odd tasting".





I have purchased some PC fig and goat cheese items for the scrabble crowd tomorrow night - hopefully these are tastier!

Toronto Life Eating and Drinking

Ian's aunt sent us this magazine for Christmas and it turned out to be very deelightful!

Good descriptions of most of the medium/high end restaurants in Toronto as well as a few of the cheap-o places too.

Also included: a good bar/pub section, wine guide, and foodie type info like where to purchase fish.

I found most of the ratings and descriptions to be decent.

I laughed pretty hard regarding their Kit Kat comment "Offhand servers lack necessary polish" and "Italian fare is up and down". How true!! Check out our review.

Magpie and Stump (Banff)

As per skiing tradition, we visited the Magpie and Stump upon arrival in Banff.

The waiter was a little creepy, but the tastiness of the food more than made up for it! Although, the Magpie may have been the cause of Ian's illness? Who can really say for sure??

Ian went with his usual combo - bean/veggie burrito, chicken almond enchilada and beef taco. Came with a side of refried beans - all for $14.95.

I broke with tradition and got a smaller $7 veggie/bean quesidalla + salad. Jack-0-lantern went with some bean and cheese nachos! They were the real star of the night! A huge mound of refried beans with chips along the side, some tasty house red sauce and a whole hit of cheese on top. All that tastiness for only $9 or so.

Wild Flour (Banff)

After Ian's stomach troubles hospital visit in Banff we went out for lunch to Wild Flour Cafe in Banff. This place was completely packed, even for lunch at 1:30!

I had the salad of wild rice, apple, cucumber and creamy orangy dressing. $3 for a rather large bowl! Then some tasty potato-kale soup. Again, a rather large bowl for $3.50 including some whole wheat bread.

Janice's Christmas Eating Strategy

If I'm going to eat junk anyway - why not work around it! The main idea is to not eat real meals and instead substitute fruit cake, buttertarts, shortbread, chocolates etc. You get the idea.

For the last week or so with the desserts at the office and Christmas parties - this is what I've been doing.

Normal breakfast of toast + PB

Light lunch of coleslaw/fruit with some dried fruit or a few nuts

Dessert/party pig out!

Steamed or sauteed veggies for dinner or snack at night

Ho Su

We walked in the "Blizzard" to return Ian's library books so to reward ourselves for the bravery, there was basically no choice but to go to Ho Su for an early dinner.

We both partook in the specials for the day- I had the vegetarian roll set with avocado maki and kappa/yam tempura maki (12 pieces in total). Ian had the Korean chicken which came with a horrendous amount of reasonably tasty chicken in sauce, glass noddles, bean sprouts/carrots, rice and coleslaw.

Also included were two (only lukewarm) bowls of miso soup, salad x 2, edamame, sweet potato, beans and kimchee.

All this tastiness for only $15.80 including tax/tip and tap water x 2!

Martin's Party

I have been keeping track of years working at my current company by number of boss' Christmas parties attended. This year is number three and they went with the same caterer as for party #2.

The drinks started off well - this year quite a selection of wines with 6 to choose from. I went with Pino Grigio. Pretty tasty.

Appetizers were pretty good - salmon springs rolls, mushrooms on toast, thai beef stuffed in cucumber and some shrimp/salmon on toast things that Ian partook in.

The real theme of the night seems to be stuffed items. Dinner was stuffed tomatoes, stuffed zuchini, more salmon stuffed in pastry, stuffed pork of some sort and lamb chops. Also a lettuce salad with pine nuts.

The real highlight was dessert. Not a lot of selection, but the tastiness made up for that! The usual two bite brownies were on the menu, but were made extremely tasty with the addition of some icing and spinkles. Basically I feel that you cannot go wrong with anything that has sprinkles on top so perhaps I am a bit biased. Also some cranberry & chocolate scones arranged precariously on a layered tray and a platter of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies....mmmmm....

To top off the night, the big boss was giving away very cutely wrapped boxes of chocolate as a parting gift. We each sampled one when we got home - my maple cream was yummy and Ian seemed to enjoy his boring solid chocolate.

This year, they went with some door prizes by pulling names out of a bag. Most prizes seemed to go to the higher up dudes on the board of directors including our CEO.

I think the only thing that we can conclude from this is the board of directors got to their positions through luck??

Although, now that I think about it, I suppose we were all lucky that the stairs did not collapse with 70 of us on there for a photo op!

The "Maddy" aka Madison Avenue Pub

On Friday night, we ventured over to the "Maddy" after the grad student party for a work/french class person birthday party. This joint was a good follow-up to the somewhat grungy scene from Ian's party.

It seemed to mainly consists of drunk people packed into a two renovated houses of fire hazard-y-ness quality. Again with sketchy bench seating - but this time I sat down and made a mental note to throw jeans direct into the washer!

Kelly and Ian has pints and total cost was about $14 including tax and tip- not a bad deal at all for the barely north of bloor area.

Some other people in the crowd ordered fries and nachos - overall pretty decent and I was a bit surprised to taste fresh cilantro in the salsa! Ian was easily impressed by the inclusion of some festive green and red chips with the nachos.

I note from the web-site that appetizers are half price from 3-7 with purchase of a drink. So a similar deal to the Unicorn Pub, but much, much, much closer to us!

Further Uninteresting Followup to the Discussion about Our Uninteresting Blog

The discussion about our blog that Janice linked to earlier was interesting. Kudos to Sheryl Kirby for defending us in her comments and setting Douglas straight about a few things.

I feel the need to more vehemently attack douglas though but I'll stick to just reminding him that:
1) Yes BK & PC are everywhere but they're also in Toronto. If I only talked about foods that are only available in Toronto, would I have anything to post about?
2) If I didn't eat it should I really talk about it? I'll stick to stuff I know - what I ate for dinner.

And where exactly does the idea that my ideal meal consists of a whopper come from? I eat whoppers, yes, but I'll go so far as to say I don't really like them. They're a decent deal (well at least before the massive price increase) but I sometimes specifically work from home on Wednesdays so I don't have to partake in Whopper Wednesday.

And just to reprise the discussion about island foods now that I've had a few weeks to calm down, I did like the food. They make a decent roti. In terms of decent service though, it appears the Village on the Grange location is best avoided. It sounds like things are better at the Parkdale location.

Bedford Academy

Besides the aforementioned terrific grad student christmas party, I also had the TA union christmas party last week too. It was at the Bedford Academy up on Prince Arthur (I know north of bloor but only by a block)

We of course arrived just as the party started to ensure we'd have maximum time there. We found our union brothers and sisters in a nice room off to the side that was set aside for the party. The food soon started coming and it was pretty good. The usual bar fare with fries, nachos, pita + other dip-ables with sketchy dip and chicken wings was all reasonably tasty. There were some terrific surprises though. First decent sushi arrived which made the night for me. It wasn't the mediocre california rolls that I would expect (if I were expecting sushi) but instead decent pieces sushi nigri. Then much later on platters of mini-burgers came around and conveniently came to rest right in front of me. Once we also procured the condiment tray we were set for the night.

The food was plentiful and it definitely makes this month's union dues seem like good value. I just need 7 other events like this to make me happier about the other months of dues.

In general we upheld the stereotype of introverted engineers but we did end up talking to our "Grievance Officer" for a while. The union's key phrase is "Don't work for free" so it was funny to hear that this guy who handles all the "Don't work for free" quarrels feels like he's working too many hours.

Fun things of only marginal interest to most

Fun link to us...

So it appears as though our blog was discussed on another TO food blog. The general consensus is that we suck!

It mainly appears that way because we admit to eating fast food (well Ian does) and we are obsessed with PC! What the heck is wrong with that? PC is tasty!

Check it out.


Ian's Party...

Ian hosted a little grad student party at school on Friday evening and he has been talking about it every since. Hopefully by posting on the blog world, he will stop harassing me about it!

The party was in full swing when my friend Kelly and I arrived after work. The party had sort of a dingy/low-class feel to it that I haven't been involved with since my university or perhaps Thompson days. The couch was a bit sketchy and we avoided sitting on it. Poker was in session too, so the other two girlfriends and Kelly and I were stuck making only mildly awkward conversation.

The beer was marginal, but in good supply - three varieties of Lakeport and Ian really splurged and got some Labatt Honey priced at an additional $0.04 per bottle. I would have to say that Lakeport Honey is probably the tastiest, although lowest alcohol content of the three.

Pizza seemed pretty good - the vultures has swooped in already and polished off 15 large Pizza Pizzas. Only a few strays left by the time we showed up, so I avoided. I have to give Ian credit though - he did manage the pizza situation beautifully and ended up with only a few slices leftover! Nice work!

Chips were in sufficient quantity and variety, but were unfortunately of the Price Chopper house brand for the most part. Since I was hungry, I ate a few bbq and called it dinner.

Anywho, in summary - the food was plentiful and the price was right and Ian is the king of party hosting.

Dim Sum and Inca Kola

One of the new items in the insider's report was Dim Sum. It comes with Har Gao and a bunch of other dim sum items but the har gao was enough to make the sale. I tried them last week in the microwave and they were alright but this week I decided to do things properly with a homemade steamer arrangement since we were too lazy to find the steamer in storage











Up close and personal with the best looking item









Me eating the meal with inca kola. I assume you can't get any more authentic than that?













Overall, the items were pretty good. I hate to bash the president but the real issue is the price, $7.99. The president certainly isn't a benevolent leader with those prices which work out to 53 cents a piece. Sure that's cheaper than the places on Dundas I go to with 2 buck items (3 or 4 pieces per basket). I don't know if this is a well known rule but Ian's rule indicates that eating at home should be 50% cheaper for it to be a good deal.

Gluttonous Insider Report Item of the Week - Dulce de Leche

We went to our usual Joe's (a.k.a. No Frills to the rest of the Toronto and other areas served by them) today for the first time in a few weeks. (As a complete aside, it hardly seems surprising that Loblaw's is in trouble with confusing name issues like Joe's and the Rennie and Liz's we frequent). Anyway they have a pretty decent selection so we were able to pick up some Dulce de Leche. We'd seen the ads on tele and eyed it hungrily in the Insider report so it was only a matter of time before we picked it up.

We had it straight up with some frozen yogurt and it was terrific. I would have taken a picture
but it didn't last long enough. Next time I may mix it up and have it with bananas. I didn't this time so I could fully appreciate it on it's own.

In the mildly concerning department there was no foil or wrapper on the container when we opened it. Nor did I hear it pop when it opened (but an examination of lid seemed to suggest it might not have made a noise). So if this is our last blog post it looks like contaminated food or botulism? may have been our downfall. Given the tastiness though, we have no regrets.

Coming up tomorrow if all goes well, up close and personal shots of the President's Choice Dim Sum I had today (along with my comments of course!)

Island Foods

Well today was the usual Thursday lunch. I was in favor of the korean bbq place that I really should have blogged about weeks ago. The place was amazing, all-you-can-eat for 7.99 + tax. Sadly I don't remember the name of the place (hence the lack of blogging about it, well that and laziness) but if you're ever at Yonge and College (not Carleton as then you'd be on the wrong side of yonge) walk north for a few blocks and look for a good deal! Seriously, I guess I'll post details when I convince the gang to go again.

Back to today's lunch, we went to the food court across from the OCAD building. I think they building may officially be called the Village by the Grange but I call it the food court with the McD's. As opposed to the Taco Bell food court which goes by the name "College Park" to the rest of the world. Anyway, there aren't really a lot of good options. There's McD's obviously but with Whoppers still sitting heavy in the belly from Whopper Wednesday I figured I'd give the heart a break. Others were fans of Wiki-Chicken and hit that up but I generally don't like the pick a few items format. Instead I made a big mistake and went to Island Foods.

The place always has a long line which you'd think is a good sign. Not exactly, they're just trying to compete for world's worst service. I'd been to their location at the Ex before. Same deal, long wait. Their menu is reasonably large so you'd think that might be the problem but no everyone gets the exact same thing, boneless chicken roti and I was no different. You'd think that would enable them to churn them out as fast as Ronald makes Big Macs but no that is not the case. The final product was alright but it wasn't worth the wait. At 6.95 the price isn't terrible but again the wait is unforgivable. I had been to Ducky's on Lakeshore earlier in the week and sure that place definitely qualifies as sketchy and hole-in-the-wallish but they manage to deliver a tastier roti with comparative haste. (With Ducky's I do find it a mildly troublesome sign that the guy is always shocked that we'd eat in but that's forgivable - bad service isn't!)

My recommendation, if you like getting frustrated by bad service and you enjoy long lines then give Island Foods a try. Otherwise, stay away.

A picture is Worth a 1000 Words

is

East

First of all - thank you KP for the run for the cure donation!

Last night we went to East - I strayed away from the usual veggie and tofu red thai curry with rice and went with a special - salmon with peanut sauce and sticky rice. The price was about double my usual, but it was about double in tastiness so it worked out fairly well. Predicable aka boring Ian went with his usual seafood satay pad thai. He ate the whole thing and seemed to enjoy.

The KP and Steve had noodle seafood type things. Not my favorite - but they seemed to like!

Veggie spring rolls also tasty and decent value for $3.

Then we went (minus Ian) to the Grey Cup Great Big Sea + others Molson Canadian Rocks Party, where, not surprisingly, we drank some Molson Canadian.

The highlight of the night were some hooligans sitting in front of us...spilling beer and flicking illicit cigarette butts onto their own pile of coats.

Then, one dude decides to go topless (and he is not the most attractive guy either), and attempts to bellyflop onto a rather high bar table with their 20 half empty cups of beer. He kinda misses and just knocks the table down. Then, they grab a garbage can, so he jumps up on that, then hops onto the table (about chest high), then tries to leap onto a chair from there. He kinda misses the chair and ends up hitting the ground pretty hard. Surprisingly, he seemed to have no broken bones. I guess 20 beers loosens you up a little?

Going Overboard with the New Insider's Report

A little while ago we talked about all the exciting stuff in the latest insider's report. Well this weekend we went out and bought a lot of the stuff.










I guess the Chocolate Granola wasn't in the report but I hadn't seen it before so we couldn't resist. Anyway we've now tried all the products.

Sticky Toffee Pudding - As Janice said, very tasty. Also very unhealthy.
BBQ Chips - I haven't had BBQ chips in ages so I can't really say if they're better than average but they are definitely tasty
Pistachios - Janice's thing not mine
Maple-Flavoured Butter Fudge - Very tasty. I went into this thinking, "Fudge, it's going to be disappointing if it isn't chocolate fudge" but in the end I was very surprised. It's great
Chocolate Granola - This is pretty good. It actually makes me consider eating cereal. I haven't quite gone that far though, and I'm sticking to mixing it with fro yo.

A Loblaws outing last night allowed us to pick up another fun item, Smoking Stampede Beef Brisket. We had some tonight with fresh bread.










And because it was whole wheat we didn't feel bad about clogging the arteries with Brisket. If only BK would have whole wheat whoppers, then I could have as many as I want.

President Back in the Good Books

So we sampled two new items from the PC Insider Report today. Sticky toffee pudding did not disappoint. Highly recommended with some chapman's or PC fro yo.

PC BBQ chips (aka smokin stampede bbq flavor) also very tasty and cheap!

Katz's Deli

Last night we had a little kayak meeting at Katz's deli near Yorkdale. They have a delightful little room perfect for these kind of events.

They ran out of smoked meet so I went with a corned beef on rye with a side of dill pickle. I found the pickles a touch watery, but the sandwich was pretty good. The meat was perhaps a bit dry, but maybe that is the nature of corned beef? Who really knows since I don't think I've ever had it.

For my $7.50 sandwich, it was a horrendous amount of meat - far more than you would ever want to eat! I ended up shoveling some off!

Presidents Choice Disappoints

Chunky Soy Milk...that is all