Jellyfish -- Instant and Natural!

This ("Instant Natural Jellyfish") has become our favourite snack ... Julia's and mine, that is. Todd can take it or leave it, and Kate won't come within a metre of it. We've been getting packs of it from the local Asian grocery store for an incredible 99 cents each. Commonly served at banquets, jellyfish is no longer reserved for special occasions for us. Open the package, mix in the chili oil and (sadly, MSG-laden) spice packet, and voila .... instant natural jellyfish! I think the cute pink jellyfish licking her lips (or whatever it is that jellyfish have) makes the contents extra-appealing.

San Francisco

Todd and I went on a brief getaway to San Francisco, while his parents graciously looked after the kids. He had been to California many times before for business, but this was my first time there. On our first day, we walked from our hotel, the historic Sir Francis Drake (complete with Beefeater doorman), all the way to Fisherman's Wharf. At Pier 39, we sat and watched the mostly lazy but occasionally playful sea lions sunbathing.
We passed through San Francisco's large Chinatown on the way back and had dim-sum in a crowded restaurant that held only one obviously non-Asian diner (i.e., Todd). We also visited the famous City Lights bookstore, which played a significant role in the growth of the Beat movement. (More about my visit is here.) Coming from relatively flat Southern Ontario, it was hard work going up and down those hills, but it gave us a chance to admire San Francisco's architecture.
Our second day included several hours at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where we saw works by Paul Klee, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Rene Magritte, and the New Topographics photography exhibition which showed rather stark images of the American landscape. As is usually the case when I go into a museum of modern art, there were a good number of "Wow!" moments interspersed with as many "Huh?" moments. (See Robert Rauschenberg's White Painting, for example.)

The food in San Francisco can be summed up in one word: fabulous! This city is a seafood lover's paradise. Todd and I had two terrific seafood meals at the Eagle Cafe and the Fog Harbor restaurants at Pier 39. The meals included a good deal of oysters and this magnificent Dungeness crab, cooked Asian style. My only disappointment was that they cleaned out the eggs and internal organs before serving the crab to us. Clearly, the restaurant doesn't cater to the Chinese crowd! In addition to the great seafood, we also enjoyed excellent beer, sangria and tapas at The Thirsty Bear.

I loved San Francisco and look forward to going back. Next time, we'll bring the kids with us. I'm certain they'll enjoy this wonderful city as much as Todd and I did!

Eating in Italy

I can't end my series of blog posts on our Italy vacation without talking about the food. When we arrived in Italy, we expected the food to be spectacular. The truth is, while the food was always good, it was spectacular mostly when we paid a large sum of money for it. Food seemed mundane and overpriced in a number of restaurants we visited in Florence and Venice. On the other hand, we had excellent meals at reasonable prices in Bologna. Bologna is known for its cuisine, but perhaps the fact that it isn't overrun with tourists in August also contributed to this. We enjoyed pasta with wild boar sauce, Parma ham, grilled Italian eggplant, and other local specialties including pasta Bolognese (Kate's favourite).

Coffee, juice and soft drinks were generally exorbitantly priced. However, beer and wine were always good and easily available. The best value, though, was the gelato, which the kids and I indulged in every single day of our trip. For most of the trip, I stuck with the lighter fruit gelato (SO much tastier than the fruit-flavoured ice-cream we get at home) but on our last day in Bologna, I couldn't resist this marscarpone-ricotta-cocoa concoction, truly a meal in a tiny cup! We also had great food on the Venetian Lido, where we stayed in a suite with a kitchenette. We discovered a little deli with excellent salads, cold meats and pastries. I bought a lot of marinated octopus there.

Just when I thought there was a danger that the kids would turn into snobby gourmands with all this good food, they reassured me by attacking the Haribo display at the duty-free store in the Munich airport. Somehow I ended up having to lug three kilos of this German jelly candy through Munich and Pearson airports. I opted to bring home chocolates from Bologna instead, and Todd is enjoying his bottle of grappa.

Romanesco Cauliflower

I love the fractal patterns in this cauliflower. Tastes good, too.

Mac 'n' Cheese

I'm way too tired to write a book review, knitting pattern, or anything else requiring much thought, but I've been getting gentle reminders from various sources that I should keep my blog up to date. So the best I can do is this: Kate's fabulous home-made mac 'n' cheese, which I had the honour of helping her make. It was better than KD, really.

Why am I so tired? I guess it's the back-to-school chaos: getting used to waking up before 7am again, rushing to Office Depot because one of the kids absolutely needs a binder/notebook/glue-stick by the next day or else she is doomed to failure for the school year, dashing out to the grocery store after realizing there is no lunch food except granola bars in the house, being told about a parent-teacher meeting just as it was about to get started (with the reassuring words, "But you don't really have to attend, Mom"). However, things are starting to get better. Life isn't exactly returning to "normal", but we're starting to establish a new routine.

Eating in Singapore

My original title for this blog was "Dining in Singapore", but "dining" seems too lofty a term for our eating experiences. Yesterday, Joe and Jill took us to a hawker centre, an outdoor complex filled with stalls selling a large variety of Asian foods. We especially loved the refreshing fruit shakes and all the types of seafood that one can get freshly grilled. There was even abalone for those willing to pay the price for it. We got to sample chili squid, satay chicken and beef, Asian fried rice and a big succulent prawn smothered in garlic, shown above. However, the best dish, in my mind, was the wonderfully gooey oyster omelet in the photo below. Strangely, the only other person in our party willing to share it with me was my brother Joe.


We loved the Asian food courts in Singapore. These food courts can be found at most tourist attractions and in practically every mall (and there are many malls here). It is easy to get a complete meal for the equivalent of $3 or $4 Canadian dollars, and one can choose from Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, Indian, Japanese and Korean cuisines.


At the food courts, you can finish off your meal with a delicious low-fat fruit dessert. I was impressed by the fact that you can buy a variety of fresh fruit by the piece, but what really stunned me was finding out that I can get the following for only $2 (or $1.70 CDN) :


Black grass jelly over crushed ice doused with syrup and topped with longan fruit. Dessert just doesn't get better than this!!

We had other terrific dining experiences, too many to describe fully here, but these included:

• Chili crab and black-pepper crab at the famous Long Beach Seafood Restaurant.
• A very good Chinese lunch at a little back-street restaurant that Jill wandered into, after our yarn-shopping expedition in Chinatown.
• A hearty Indian meal in Little India, eaten on a big banana leaf.
• Excellent home-cooking by Joe and Jill's live-in nanny, Basil.
• And finally, the requisite over-priced but tasty Singapore Sling at Raffles Hotel.
  

Dining in Toronto

In the past month, Todd and I had the opportunity to go into Toronto a couple of times and while there, we enjoyed some good food and drink. We are fortunate to have a reasonable variety of dining options here, but whenever I visit Toronto, I'm reminded that I really do live out in the boonies. In some Toronto city blocks, I can find as many sushi restaurants as I can in all of Waterloo.

While the kids were at camp, we wandered around Toronto's Distillery District, a trendy, artsy area with good beer. Here is Todd with his favourite beverage at the Mill St. Brewery. We also had an excellent meal of oysters and tuna at the Pure Spirits Oyster Bar and Grill. We saw some lovely pieces in the many artists' studios there, but several of them left us simply perplexed. One studio was left completely unattended while we were there, and after a brief visit, we understood why security would be considered optional.

After the kids returned, we paid another visit to Toronto, this time to spend a fun-filled weekend, that included visiting the Canadian National Exhibition, with my cousins from Montreal. (More on this later. I'm still working on the backlog of family news stories.)

A dining experience worth mentioning was a visit to Musa. (The Martini Boys give a review and location info here.) This visit was memorable in that it featured the worst service I'd received in a long time. Even so, I would readily go back for another meal, as the food was terrific and the prices were surprisingly low, especially in contrast to the inflated numbers at the touristy Distillery District. From the brunch menu, I had the Tropicana, a generous serving of scrambled eggs, avocado, sausage, grilled fruits (papaya, mango and plantain), potatoes and toast. Gotta love a restaurant that serves whole-wheat toast as the default and that garnishes the plates with longan fruit. Do go to Musa for the wonderful brunch, but don't go if you have to be somewhere right after or if being ignored annoys you. I will have to pay another visit to my cousin, who lives nearby, so that I can try a dinner at this place.

A Visit from the Parents

I've been shamefully neglecting my blog but it's time to get back on track. I'm taking a short break from work while the kids are on March Break so I have no more excuses for procrastinating.

Todd was away on a business trip for a few days last week, and my parents kindly offered to visit and help out. The girls were happy to see them, and I enjoyed a week-long feast of Chinese food. (I'm admittedly biased, but I think they're the best Cantonese chefs this side of Vancouver.)


Mom and Dad cooked tons of food, most of which is packed away in our freezer now. This is just a small sampling in the photo above. There is a plate of Buddha's Delight, which is a vegetarian dish containing daylily buds, bean curd, bean thread noodles, snow peas, and a variety of fungi that I can't name in English. There is a plate of green beans with spicy preserved bean curd, which both Julia and I love. And yes, that really is a pile of chicken's feet, which the girls refused to touch. Guess you have to be 100% Chinese to enjoy these.


I just had to take a photo of the crabs. So beautiful ... and they taste as good as they look!

Montreal

Today was the first day of school, and after a seemingly interminable amount of time filling out the first-day forms, I am finally able to finish off my vacation posts. We spent the final days of our vacation in Montreal.

We had several relaxing days at my parents' place. They cook seafood magnificently, and we had two excellent meals there that included lobster, crab, oysters, braised mushrooms and greens from their garden. Mom and Dad had devoted lots of time and energy to their garden, as they do every summer. Kate was very impressed by the "melon tree" and tried to pick some of its fruit, with Gong-Gong's help. We were also treated to snails ("escargot" for the refined) in two forms: small ones in a slightly spicy sauce, and a giant snail, cut-up and simmered in soup. Kate, always the picky eater, had to be cajoled into trying a few new things, but Julia enjoyed almost everything that was offered. Todd loves my parents' cooking too, especially when it's washed down with one of Unibroue's beers.

We ate dinner one evening at the Furama, accompanied by a number of family friends, and we were treated to an excellent dim-sum there by my cousin Teresa and her husband Leo. We had a brief visit with their family earlier, which was fortunate as their kids could not join us for dim-sum. Quebec kids went back to school a week before Ontario kids did. The Furama is my parents' favourite Chinese restaurant, and we've never had a disappointing meal there.

On our last day in Montreal, my cousin Beryl invited us to her house for a barbeque lunch. At left is her husband Rob, the barbeque master, with their twins Olivia (in blue) and Amanda (in orange). We had a great time seeing all the kids, including Emma, who is very tall now. My cousin Basil and his wife Kathleen were there too, with their kids Nicholas and Evelyn. Next year, we need to have a longer vacation in Montreal, so that we can enjoy more time with all the family members!

Trains and Stations

We've been taking trains everywhere, and even though the locals occasionally complain about the service, it is wonderful compared to train service in Canada. I love riding on trains, but even hanging out at the stations is fun, as long as the wait is not too long.

This morning, we left from Reading Station, and it was packed with teenagers heading to the Reading Festival. This is a music festival where hordes of people camp out in muddy fields, and the fields were muddier than usual this year as a result of the recent floods. The look for young women seemed to be T-shirt, mini-skirt and Wellingtons in all colours and patterns. Julia seemed rather envious of the Wellies; it is hard to get fashionable rainboots back home.

When we arrived at Paddington Station, we finally got to experience YO! Sushi. This is a chain of Japanese restaurants where a variety of prepared items go past you on a conveyor belt and you select what appeals. The dishes, which are colour-coded according to price, are counted at the end. The idea, not unlike Chinese dim-sum, is fabulous and I so wish we had such restaurants back home, though I'd also prefer to pay the prices the sushi restaurants charge at home. This photo shows Kate and Julia enjoying lunch at the counter.

Kitchen Help

Good help in the kitchen is hard to find, or so Todd thought until recently. I cook on weekdays, but "cooking" usually means rushing a meal (often leftovers) to the table in 15-20 minutes so that we can make it to a skating or music lesson in time. Unlike my brother Joe, I did not inherit my parents' passion and talent for cooking, though I do enjoy eating good food and am occasionally opinionated about how things ought to be prepared (well, no more opinionated than I am about other matters).

Todd, on the other hand, loves cooking and makes very good meals that can frequently be labelled "gourmet". Lately, Julia has been helping out with weekend meals, which means that I no longer have to play the role of reluctant sous-chef. (I am still on dishwashing duty, unfortunately.) Julia makes a very good cucumber-and-tomato salad, which we enjoy regularly these days as the vegetables are in season. I still have to convince her to use my lemon tomatoes, which have just started to ripen in our garden. Today, she looked at the yellow tomatoes suspiciously and then rejected them outright. I didn't try to change her mind. In our house, we live by the rule, "If you don't cook, you don't complain!"

Weekend Activities

A few of the things we did on the weekend:

• We went to the neighbourhood potluck picnic, and our neighbour Nick sent us this great photo.
• Julia participated in her music school's annual recital. She played Beethoven's Sonatina in F Major (1st movement) from the RCM Grade 5 Repertoire.
• We had a friend from Switzerland over and engaged in a long discussion about the current state of the tu/vous distinction in Quebec and France. Todd cooked a leg of lamb on the grill for the occasion.
• I added a new scrapbook layout to the Scrapping Turtle gallery. The challenge of the week was to do a layout about feet, and I had that photo of Kate in her orange crocs handy!
  

Au Pied de Cochon

I recently read a Macleans article about chef Martin Picard and his restaurant, Au Pied de Cochon and decided I must get Picard's cookbook, described as "part scrapbook, part manifesto," for Todd. Why? Because Todd loves good food, enjoys cooking (and is good at it), and has always shown an interest in the culture of my home province, Quebec.

The cookbook, Au Pied de Cochon - The Album, comes with an entertaining and inspiring DVD, though I suggest you avoid viewing it if you're a vegetarian. (Indeed, if you are not fond of meat, it's best to stop reading this blog entry immediately and go back to your previous activity.) While I do like pork and can stomach almost all parts of a pig (I grew up with Cantonese food, after all), I am in the habit of reading all food labels and buy my kids veggie hot dogs. So I am simultaneously fascinated and horrified by Picard's work, which, according to the book's introduction, is "an ode to all things porky, ducky, fatty, and wonderful."

I am pleased Todd likes his gift but I do fear he might actually cook a recipe from it for the family one day. For me, there is a voyeuristic appeal to the book: "Wow, so that's what people who don't care about their arteries like to eat!" I've never been able to bring myself to try poutine, but Picard's poutine with slabs of foie gras covering it is so over the top (in a literal sense) that I'll have to go to his restaurant one day to see for myself. Well, maybe I'll opt for one of the stupendous seafood platters instead. To my Montreal cousins: if any of you ever visit this place (it's at 536 Duluth E.), please send me a review!

Hwae Dup Bop

I had lunch with Fei Min and Laura yesterday at a little Japanese place close to work. I ordered my usual, Hwae Dup Bop, a Korean version of chirashi: raw fish, nori (seaweed) and fish eggs scattered over a bed of greens, served with sushi rice and a generous bowl of hot sauce. Yum!