Ian cooks Jambalaya

Ian made veggie jambalaya and whole wheat bread last night for dinner. It was all very impressive and I only had to help him a couple of times.

Here's the shrimp defrosting!





Ian hard at work and/or posing for pictures that make it look like he is working hard.








The jambalaya part-way done. Mmmmm.....










Ian eating the final result...

Cafe 668

I will try and use small words for our "challenged" readers out there.

On the advice of Now newspaper's cheap eats special, we went to Cafe 668 located at 668 Dundas St. We had some pan fried veggie dumpling things to start, pretty tasty but kind of expensive for 8 skinny items with some so-so dipping sauce.

Then I had a tofu veggie stir fry in coconut sauce with rice on the side. Lots of tastiness. Ian had some pad thai which was so-so. Not as good as Spring Roll's but still pretty tasty.

So that's the story. Hopefully I have kept it nice and simple!

Simplicity

Some people thought that the last post was too complex so let me break it down into "baby" steps.

Lone Star Old Menu Items
Item A - 1/4 pound fajita's - select from vegetable, chicken or steak - Price X
Item B - 1/2 pound combo fajitas where you can select two of (vegetable, chicken or steak) - Price Y

Lone Star New Menu Items
Item C - 1/4 pound fajita's - select from chicken or steak or vegetable - Price X
Item D - 1/2 pound fajita's select either all chicken or steak or both - Price Y

Note the lack of the vegetable choice for the 1/2 pound "item D". Every time we go we ask for item d with chicken and vegetable. They initially say no go but then always report no problem after we explain it's been done before. What's the deal, is it some sort of grandfather clause?

The Lone Star

The name says it all. Not 5 stars, or 3 stars, just one lonely little star.

After hitting up the track for the Canadian International we decided to hit up the Lone Star for some fajitas since we haven't been in a while. Debate about where to go meant we didn't go to the one at the airport and instead went downtown. (This was probably for the best because the airport Lone Star specializes in fajita's and bad service). No menu change since our last visit so that of course means they no longer have the half pound fajita combo with 1/4 lb chicken and "1/4 lb" portobello mushrooms. Since they still do have a 1/2 pound item on the menu we ask for the chicken and veg. As usual they say that's not possible (despite the fact that 1/4 pounds of chicken, veg and steak are all identically priced) but when we say we've done it before, they change their tune to saying "oh yeah, that's not a problem".

The actual fajita's themselves were reasonably tasty but the big let down was they have a new salsa. We wolved it down in an effort to mask the sadness of the track losses (Who would have thought that Jambalya wouldn't have the speed down the stretch?) but the salsa can only do so much - especially this salsa. This new salsa is basically diced/crushed tomatos. Disappointing. They should bring back the old salsa.

Mystery egg item

In the last year of so I have been getting back into the eggs a bit. Yesterday for lunch I made a egg type item. Here's how to do it!

Saute butternut squash, onions and asparagus until squash is almost cooked. Mix up eggs, some milk (soy in our case), cheddar cheese and arugula. Pour over the saute veggies and let cook and brown on the one side. Now here is the difficult part, you must flip over to the other side. I used a plate type operation, but it was still kind of hard. The easier thing to do would be to broil the one side in the oven, but we only have pans on the non-stick variety which I don't really want to warp in the hot oven. You can't really win on this one, the non-stick pan will make your life ALOT easier, but then you can't put it into the oven. Ha ha.

Bad Sushi

Went for a b-day lunch in Mississauga to Crazy Sushi. Only barely adequate and expensive. We did get some free "pancake" items on the house to start, but since they were a bit greasy and sketchy I am just neutral on them. Not sure why the co-workers seems to like it so much? Maybe they don't have the cheapness affliction that Ian and I do.

Just go to New Gen.

Very very cold

Went kayaking with Milton to a spot on the grand river near Paris (Ontario!). Was so very very very very cold due to extreme icy water and extreme wind that I had to stop by Tim's and pick up some loot for the ride home. Small hot chocolate was so-so and frosted cinnamon roll very tasty. I seem to keep using the word very. Very sorry about that.

Rivoli

To overcome our sad lack of eating out and cheapness, Ian and I went out for a nice meal to Rivoli. The night started poorly with a rather chipped glass to drink my stella out of. Then came three veggie spring rolls with some tasty dipping sauce, not a great value for $6. Ian went all out and ordered ahi tuna with mashed sweet potatoe, squash and side veggie for $17 I think. Very very tasty and a surpising amount of tuna. We are both huge squash fans, so that was pretty tasty stuff! I ordered a thai vegan banana stir-fry. There was a bunch of slightly over-deep-fried tofu, lots of veggies, yummy sauce and only a bit of banana. Overall pretty tasty and not bad value for my $11.

I think we'll be back, but not too often due to price!

A sad state of affairs...

Cheapness and healthiness now rules out lifes...so lots of lame eating in :(

Carpaccio

Ian and I went to Niagara falls for a reunion type item for his mom's family. We had a set menu thing for $21. Included bread, bruchetta, choice or soup or salad and choice of stuffed pasta, lasagna, spaghetti/meatball or steak, then included some chocolate/vanilla ice cream and some coffee/tea.

Pretty good value overall and suprisingly good for Niagara falls...

East

Went to East for dinner since we haven't been to anything from the Spring Rolls family in almost a month. Of course the satay pad thai with seafood was the daily "pay the regular price" special. It was tasty as always. Janice broke with tradition and had pad thai - except of the curry variety. Both were reasonably tasty although I seem to have something stuck in my throat from the meal. No idea if I will ever recover from that.

For lunch, we went to Gateway of India. I found the naan better than usual and I think this was the first time I went since they started having ice cream so that was a nice little surprise. Overall though not that tasty with the butter and tandoori chickens similar and boring. For the mini-restaurant strip on baldwin though that may be as good as it gets.

Run for the Cure

Ian ditched me at the end for a time of 24:45, I came in at 25:45! Pretty decent considering neither of us is in great shape.

As per tradition, we went to Fressen and had some corn fritters and other assorted yummy stuff. A "very tasty" rating and one thumb up in value ($9 each).

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Hummus Expiry Recommendations

In terms of hummus expiry we generally stick to two to three days for homemade hummus. For purchased hummus I go by the if it looks fine eat it rule. If it has a date then I generally do not betray that best before recommendation. In an upcoming post we'll try to talk about this more extensively

Refer to my earlier hummus expiry post for more information

Hummus Expiry etc.

Have you ever wondered if your hummus has expired? Apparently people who have visited our blog searched for just that. We're number eight when you google "hummus expiry". Unfortunately, the article google links to doesn't really discuss hummus expiry so you may just have to eat that expired hummus.

For future reference, I generally don't eat hummus after the expiry date. I have found with some of Trader Joe's (world's best almost-complete grocery store) hummus (or hummi) that they seem to separate after a few weeks. I don't think they've gone bad (well the expiry date says it's fine) but they definitely become less appetizing. I'm not faulting Joe because in general his hummus selection is second to none. The President could learn something from them since they seem to only have one hummus whereas Joe had at least 4 or 5 (standard, eggplant, jalapeno, and others that I don't recall).

Also in case you're wondering other searches that have led to our blog include:
- "nearest ikea to mississauga" (maybe because of their terrific $1 breakfast - recommended!)
- "pizza pizza jays strikeout" (maybe because of the free pizza you get with your ticket when the Jays get seven strike outs on Friday or Sunday home games)
- "shephards pie toronto" (maybe because of the President's variety of frozen shepherd's pies - all tasty)

Finally the nearest ikea to mississauga is probably the one in etobicoke at the 427 and the QEW. Breakfast is served until 11 I believe. After that you'll have to wait until 3 or so for the 99 cent pasta to kick in. I still hope to go sometime for the Wednesday multi-course meal. The evil Gardiner has blocked recent attempts but some week soon I hope to. I'm not sure if this is at all ikea's or just etobicoke so you'll have to check with the source.

Super tasty salad rolls

I made some cold salad rolls with rice paper, noodles, lettuce, carrots, mango, cilantro and some shrimp/leftover salmon for Ian. Some PC Memories of Thailand sauce.

Very tasty, albeight labour intensive.

Ian-freakishly healthy

Ian has taken his healthy eating to a new level. He has started adding brown lentils to our rice for extra fibre....

For those that knew Ian "back in the day" you will know this is quite the change from his old unhealthy ways.

Radichio and Belgian Endive

I've been buying new veggies that I have not tried before. I baked the aforementioned veggies with some salt/pepper and olive oil and drizzled on some balsamic vinegar.

These veggies were extremely, extremely BITTER! Not sure if I picked up defective veggies, or this is how they normally are??

Domino's

When Ian lived in Vancouver, we had a movie watching, dominos pizza party. I remembered it being pretty fun, so we had another one last night..5 years after the original....

Overall, not quite the same amount of fun-ness we remembered, but the pizza was still pretty tasty. Ian had pepperoni, I had pinaepple...total cost for 2 mediums was $15.78 so not a bad deal at all considering it will be enough for 6 meals or so.

Maybe the problem was the lack of pizza bread???

Watched Lara Croft Tomb Raider. I thought pretty good, Ian thought terrible and no plot at all.

Really bad meal at home

It was leftover night and we pretty much ate the world's worst meal...

Ian had leftover pasta/pesto, tortilla chips & salsa and crackers and cheese and some of my meal.

I had leftover chickpeas and 1/2 can of canned tomatoes that I froze earlier. So I threw in some veggies, some cumin/coriander and cooked for about 20 min. Turned out surprisingly very very bad.

Yep...leftover night = not good.

Freaky non-food Related Posting

After the picnic Ian and I went to his friends girlfriend's place for some poker party action. The girlfriend's roomate had this fake tatoo she got at some picnic that afternoon. I said, me too, I got this airbrush tatoo at a picnic. Turns out we were at the same one! Her sister works at my office! Pretty crazy for a city of 5 MM.