Ohio Road Trip

I went to Cleveland/Mansfield with a co-worker for a visit to a steel plant. For lunch the one day we went for some tasty mexican. I had the veggie combo c, with a bean/cheese burrito, a quesidalla and this quacamole salady thing. All for the low, low price of $6.25. High marks for tastiness too.

The one night we were there, we ended up at a bar/restaurant and had pints that were only $2.50 each! It was crazy. They are like $8 at best in TO!

Yummy home cooked stuff

The plan was that Ian and I were going to make a nice meal as entertainment. Ian didn't end up doing much of the cooking and instead assembled furniture!


Our new footrest-ottoman type thingy for only $59 from Ikea. Sooo much better than a kitchen chair as a footrest. We were going to buy a $400 item from EQ3, glad we stopped by ikea first.




Our new lamp. The previous one sorta melted. Hard to explain, but it's true.







Anyway, all recipes came from the William's Sonoma Bride and Groom cookbook that Ian's cousins gave us for, you guessed it, the wedding last year! This book is pretty decent for "fancy" type meals and is definately a step up from everyone's favorite moosewood series.


To start I made some potato & leak soup. For the main course, I made some squash risotto, Ian made the salmon with lentils. No, I did not eat the salmon, just risotto and lentil for me. Then some moosewood fudge brownies and chapmans fro yo (as Ian calls it) to top it all off.

We drank a bottle of Rockway Glen Estates Riesling that someone left behind after my make your own sushi party. Check out the website, this winemaker looks disturbingly young, is he old enough to be of legal drinking age?

Friendly Greek

After years of harassing Ian to go to the Danforth Area for some greek food, he finally gave in and agreed to go. It may have been partly due to me offering to pick him up? Who knows. We went to the Friendly Greek as recommended by Ian's cheap eats book.


I had the veggie souvlaki with rice, potato and salad. About the only thing that was remotely tasty was the salad. The rest of it not so hot. Kind of a weird flavor all around.

Ian had a meaty souvlaki with rice and veggie. Same sorta thing.

Anywho, the moral of this story is, I should have just believed Ian when he said that greek food is really not all that tasty! Basically an inferior version of middle eastern food.

Bibimbop

I did some cooking tonight, crazy Jackie-style Korean. No political rant here, just some recipe hints. I started by asking myself "what would George do" and then since Jackie is an anti-fan, I then switched to my Moosewood cookbook for guidance.

Anywho, here's kinda what you do. Make some rice, throw the following on top: sauteed snow peas, leeks, and red pepper, rehydrated dried shitake mushrooms, cut up seaweed and some fried eggs. I accidentally scrambled the egg, but it still turned out ok. Some shrimp on top of Ian's. Then mix up some chilli paste and sesame oil and sprinkle on top. Add salt and that's it!

Mmmmm......

Squash - World's Best Food

Although a mere few days ago, I called the roti the world's best food, I would now like to add squash to the category. It's slightly on the labour intensive side, but if Ian can cook it, you can cook it since he is not the best of cooks.

Tonight I made some lentil, spinach, apple curry with rice and squash on the side. Squash steamed in some OJ, soy sauce, garlic and fresh ginger...mmmm.

Salad King

Janice has been to the Salad King a few times. Not me though, the name is scary - are they going to have real food if they are the king's of salad?

Well tonight I took a bold step forward and went to the Salad King with Janice. It was quite the trek up to a Yonge and Dundas but when we arrived we were able to get a table right away. That was good. Waiting for over ten minutes to be served though was bad

A word about the seating, instead of the crammed together tables that many of the cheap Thai/South East Asian genre are famous for, this place goes for school cafeteria style seating (or equivalently ski chalet style) with long benchs. On one side we had a pole separating us from a table for "two" which was nice. "Two" because halfway through they crammed a single in to join those two. Awkward with two a's.

Anyway on to the meal. I had a "special" of spicy combination which was chicken and seafood in a spicy sauce. It was fairly good. I ordered only one chili on a 20 chili scale luckily as it was really spicy. The scale lacks consistency as Janice's one chili dish of some peanuty tofu curry wasn't anywhere near as spicy. Now the special supposedly comes with a free drink. I look at the fine print and it says up to 1.10 value. Sounds good but then I flip the menu over and see that there is nothing available for 1.10. The cheapest item, a pop, is 1.20. I ask the waiter what's the deal - what drink can I get. He says I can get a pop so I get the champion of all pops, a coke. Tasty as I haven't had from a can in a while. Enjoyment ended come bill time when they had in fact charged me 1.20 for the pop. Not worth arguing so I let it be. In total with tax, tip, appetizer and a "free" pop it was 25 and change. Not too bad.

A website is apparently coming in December.

Roti-world's best food.

Last night I picked up Ian and we went to the Caribbean Roti Palace on Bloor/Bathurst. Roti is tasty due to:

1. Who doesn't like potatoes?
2. Chickpeas are the least offensive of the bean/lentil family
3. The "wrapping" or "skin" as the palace calls it is deelightful (as Ian would call it).
4. Curry is tasty
5. You can order whatever spice level you want
6. They have the yummy caribbean pinaeple beverage that is actually manufactured in Brampton
7. You can throw in your choice of squash, eggplant or spinach for an extra $0.50.
8. Ian can pick whatever meat he wants.

Lasagna Operation

I made some lasagna tonight for dinner. Meaty for Ian, veggie for me. Since Ian is so healthy, red lentils and spinach for everyone!

Here's the step by step photo spectucular!



Here's some veggies before baking.






Some spinach steaming







The cottage, parsley, basil and spinach mix pre-blending








Beef cooking






Lasagna noodles cooking







Cooked lentils. Mixed them into jar of ragu pasta sauce.








Lasagna pre-baking












Cutting the final product.

Boston Pizza

My car was in for servicing so Ian took the go train to mississauga so he could drive his car home. On the way back, we went to BP's. Ian as usual went for the meatiest item on the menu. The Meteor Pizza. About 4 meat items thrown on top and meat sauce as the pizza sauce. He seemed to enjoy. I had some penne with creamy tomatoe sauce. Also pretty good. A "Very Tasty" rating and no thumbs up in value. As Ian says, "how can you charge $15 for spaghetti and meatballs?"

Non-food related survey

Ian has too much computer stuff sitting around on his desk. One computer too many and lots of miscellaneous debris to be specific. I don't really understand the need for more than one computer at any one time.




So...here's the question...Who thinks Ian has too much stuff on his desk?

The long awaited quinoa posting

Faithful readers, here's the much sought after info on quinoa

1. It's a type of grain that you can use as a substitute for rice or pasta. Tastes kind of nutty.

2. According to Wikopedia the Inca's devloped it and Peru, Boliva and Ecuador are the world's top producers.

3. Quinoa is a high protein grain with all amino acids present. A good meat alternative!

4. You cook it like rice, but the important thing to remember is that it must be rinsed well to avoid the bitter outer coating.

So there ya go! All my pre-existing and new found knowledge on this super grain!

Quinoa and Prices

I saw someone came to this page while searching for "sobeys quinoa". Now we don't know anything about the quinoa from sobey's but what I do know is you should avoid sobey's. Unless they actually meant the pricechopper locations, sobey's really isn't that great due to high prices.

Canadian Grocery Rule #1: If you're getting bags for free you are probably paying too much. (Unless of course you're taking a lot of bags?)

Back to the quinoa, I don't think the President has Quinoa so I don't have any firm recommendations. Price should really be your guide, who can tell the difference between low and high end quinoa?

Janice has a lot to say about quinoa in general so faithful blog readers will have to stay tuned for an upcoming special report on Quinoa from janice.

Cookies and Montana's

I went to a distinguished lecture at school in the late afternoon yesterday. The main distinguishing feature of these lectures (or at least this one) are the cookies and milk. Despite our early dinner plans I went a little overboard and ended up having 8 or so cookies. The lesson I took from this lecture was that's too many cookies.

Anyway, after meeting up in Mississauga we decided to to go to Montana's for the annual pre-Ice Dog game dinner. Due to the cookie fiasco, I didn't feel up to a full thing of ribs so I went for the rib tips. They were pretty good. Rib tips really don't get enough credit. The meat to bone ( or equivalently the meat to work ratio) is quite favorable. Janice had the nacho's as usual and they were of usual tastiness. Again as a result of the cookie fiasco we didn't get the mud pie. Possibly a regret. Overall decent food but it didn't come cheap.

Another post about hummus expiry and random news messages

We went from #5 to off the list altogether, but now we are #1 on google! yeah! We rule!

KP, Ian says "why doesn't the kp blog?" It seems like it would be right up your alley....you could talk about good times at curling and I could comment about the curling related items! How fun would that be????

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.