While I threw up the recap post very quickly (was preparing it through the week), I had not originally intended on posting about the food we had. But NPY asked about it and I’m all to happy to throw this together while getting caught up on television shows from the week. I want to honour the week of cooking and dining and sharing in the way I know how–blogging about it.
Home-cooking Chinese meal
I really wanted to share the very homestyle-tasting bamboo shoots and mushrooms dish I learned to make recently. …

A few weeks ago, SmartCanucks.ca informed me that Nordica/Gay Lea was giving away vouchers for a free tub of their cottage cheese if you Like them on Facebook, etc.
Cottage cheese is one of those things I feel like I “should like” and have not given a decent try. I haven’t procured for myself a great amount of it before but have tried it at a breakfast/salad bar with the fruit that was sitting next to it as mixings. Perhaps I did not also take enough of the syrup the fruit was …

After reading the 21+ Ways to Upgrade Your Grilled Cheese, I’m tempted to buy a loaf of bread and use it prepare the best-sounding (to me) ideas:

Instead of butter on the outside, spread mayonnaise like Miracle Whip (or Kewpie that I have??) on the surface
Grilled Caprese: sliced tomato, fresh mozzarella, basil, EVOO
Grilled Chipeeze: potato chips in the sandwich (although I’ve strictly banned potato chips from my diet, they are allowed if it forms part of a meal)
Grilled Brie with Nutella
Grilled Kimcheeze
Crisp Grilled Cheese: grill in a thin layer of Parmesan …

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When I bought chicken quarters and ingredients like cloves and star anise earlier in the week to finally make Hainanese chicken curry, I thought I would just be cooking for myself. The logical day to cook fell on today, Good Friday, when everything around my apartment is closed. But ,um visited Toronto for 48 hours and she and Lil Sis stayed over last night. Just before coming home last night after a Ching Ming dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant in North York with three uncles, we …

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On Saturday morning, a little plan was running through my head. I had blown way too much money at Old Navy during their Friends & Family (30%) sale and had to put my credit card on ice for a few days. But food shopping is a justifiable expense and I lined up five recipes I wanted to knock off in the course of two days.
And as I was writing out my shopping lists, I was listening to the most recent DNTO episode Live from Toronto: We’re “in over …

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Post-op meal: avocado, steamed heirloom tomatoes, non-spicy mapo tofu, Japanese rice. Everything overcooked to slide down with minimal chewing effort involved.
 
I totally psyched myself out about my “mini surgery” today until NPY convinced me that it would all be okay. But during the procedure, the periodontist gave me a running commentary, which included him noticing something else wrong, and modified his procedure away his original plan. While in the dentist chair, I squeezed out a tear because the very thought of having to go to that office …

Il Fornello (Richmond Hill)
On a particularly lazy day when we did not deserve to dine out, Lil Sis and I went to Shoppers Drug Mart near her place and the old-looking Il Fornello looked appetizing. There are several locations around town and with seven locations around GTA, we were going to try it sometime so why not that evening? We went in almost resolved to order just one dish to sate our appetite for Italian food but the prices were not too bad and who wants to cook the other half …

In December, I was in Vancouver twice. The first time, I was in town for 48 hours over a weekend. The second time was a joyous Christmas weekend, 96 hours. This isn’t all I ate as there were family dinners and repeat visits to some restaurants. But these are some of the highlights!
Faubourg Paris
As we admired the beautiful bistro area behind the cafe of of Faubourg Paris in Kerrisdale, I was asked how I learned of the place. Well, I don’t recall. When NPY and I couldn’t go to L’Abattoir …

At one point, I thought I should just rename this blog entry “Places Vina told me about and so I tried them”. She has been working in the financial district of Toronto for years, right in the heart of it all, and some days (read: most days) you just don’t want to prepare ahead of time and bring food with you. Fortunately, in a two-fold way, the skyscraping office towers of Toronto sit atop The PATH, an underground maze of shops and restaurants, for your lunch-hour dining convenience and shopping …

Since our New York dineout experiences were largely at Asian food establishments (at least one meal each of the six days we were there), I posted about those meals under Dineout Reviews: Asian food in New York City (2011 Edition) on the other blog. Here are the rest of the meals we had.
Shake Shack (Midtown, Times Square)
We could see the new midtown Shake Shack from BiNK’s apartment and determine that at the time we got into New York and the Times Square area at 2-ish, there was no line out …