Happy Halloween!

Fatburger for dinner; cotton candy for dessert.

Subsistence

Another healthy evening's meal: crackers for dinner, feat. Patrick deliberating lyrics. Later: a terrible pizza slice from downstairs from the Railway.

Later still: delicious potatoes from near Hastings & Main.

Crackers for Dinner

It's been a depressing week in food. Luckily I have been taking vitamin supplements. Think about vitamins. Who decided that they were vitamins? What exactly are they. Where do they come from.
Did God make vitamins? Or did humans? "And then God created Vitamin C."

Samosa In A Cab

Tonight I ate samosa in a cab for dinner.

The Saddest Leftovers

You know that something has gone awry in your life when you find your dinner plate looking like this. Tonight's dinner: the least charred leftover pieces of the giant burnt pizza. [Edit: to clarify, this is a photo of the pieces I did NOT eat! These are the leftovers of the leftovers. (The saddest leftovers.)]

:'(

Yay, giant pizza!


Boo, burnt giant pizza.

Corner Suite

More Corner Suite Bistro on Sunday night.


That is all.

Calabash Bistro

Last night we ate at Calabash, a new Caribbean bistro just on the edge of gentrification at Carrall and Hastings Street in Gastown.

This here is a Bashy Sour, made of Flor de Cana rum, pineapple purée, lemon, cane sugar, egg white and crushed black pepper.


I also had their house-made (non-alcoholic) Ginger Beer, but the best thing on the drink menu is the Cheeky One, a four-ounce shot of draught beer of your choice for one dollar.


For dinner I just had a couple starters: jerk mussels in a creamy white wine sauce, and ginger plantain. Both were great, and incredibly spicy! SOOOO spicy. In a good way.

Dessert: dumplings stuffed with brie and guava.

Things other people ate that were great: veggie burger, coco buns and oxtail; I also really want to go back to try the ackee and saltfish.

Banana Cookies

I made these banana cookies for a second time. Here's the basic recipe, adapted from One Smart Cookie:



Banana Oatmeal Cookies

1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1 large egg
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups oats
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup craisins

Beat together butter and sugars in a large bowl. Add bananas, egg and vanilla. Mix together, but not too well -- try to keep the bananas lumpy.

In another large bowl, combine the oats, flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

Stir dry mixture into banana mixture, and add craisins.

Drop generous spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet, and bake for 10 minutes at 350°F.



Today's variations: Vegetable shortening instead of butter. I used three bananas. One medium egg. Just less than a cup of craisins, and an additional 1/2 cup of fancy Gourmet Warehouse Callebaut Belgian chocolate chips. Also: the bananas I used this time were frozen. Last time I used fresh overripe bananas, and I think that's the way to go for maximum banana flavour.

Nutmeg Mushroom Potatoes

I was going to make potatoes & cottage cheese but then I forgot to buy the cottage cheese. So I fried up some shallots, green peppers, garlic and crimini mushrooms to go on top, and for seasoning I used Emily's recipe for Mushroom Shepherd's Pie as a guide, and added soy sauce, dijon mustard, Worchestershire sauce, nutmeg, rosemary and pepper to the mix. And then some vermouth. Finished with some grated Parmesan cheese. Not bad for recipe inventing/appropriating.

Week of Safeway

Hey guys, here's a picture of some broccoli & bacon slaw that I ate.

Ditto

The sushi was so satisfactory last night that I ate it again tonight. It was somewhat less satisfactory.

A Safeway Meal

A stop at Safeway on the way home yesterday resulted in me eating assorted shrimp sushi rolls (actually not bad!) and tomato & bocconcini salad for dinner.

Samosaday

I was sick today and subsisted on leftover veggie samosas from Deserts. I'd left them in a paper bag overnight and by morning the entire bag was translucent. Hopefully all that grease will form a protective barrier to fight off encroaching cold germs.

Mad Men Meals

A gathering was had to watch the final episode of season four of Mad Men. I ate latkes from Deserts on Commercial Drive, and there was this wonderful chickpea-black bean-mint hummous provided by our gracious host. Here we see Chad making the hummous dip look pretty, because "the eyes eat first."


Also: found-coupon gelato! Cheesecake and coffee flavours. The ice cream provided foreshadowing for the Spilled Milkshake, a rather pivotal event in the rising action of the episode.

Corner Suite feat. Jesse's birthday

A little while ago I picked up a couple of Groupons for Corner Suite Bistro De Luxe. So did Jesse and Mauve. Thus a bunch of us found ourselves here for Jesse's birthday on Saturday night. (Sorry these photos are so dark, but that's how Corner Suite is: lit by a few candles, with intermittent flashing red lights from the fire department across the street.)



Food highlights: The herbed butter that comes with the bread is so good it's easy to just fill up on that before your meal comes. And we ordered even more things to eat with bread: chicken liver pâté. Whew. And Jesse's duck rillette. ("It tastes like Thanksgiving in a jar!")


Cheese plate! (and that's bacon jam on the left.) The two in the middle were so great. I forget the names. But I plan on ordering them again next week. Mauve?


Counterpoint to last week's thoughts of vegetarianism: veal tongue! That tongue really melts in your mouth.


By the time my tuna niçoise salad came, I really did not need to eat anymore. But I did my best. Really fresh, flavourful ingredients. But yeah, it would have been better enjoyed on an emptier stomach.


But, it's Corner Suite Bistro, so as much as ridiculously possible must be eaten. I had an espresso and three kinds of sorbet for dessert: concord grape, peach and blueberry. Thanks, Corner Suite. See you next week!

Arriba, Uncle Fatih!

Friday was one of those kinds of nights.

Rigatoni with Homemade Sauce

Tonight I made some rigatoni with 'homemade' tomato sauce.


I made the sauce from the following:

• 1/4 small onion, diced
• 2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• an ample sprinkling of crushed red pepper
• chopped up frozen President's Choice 'homestyle' meatballs
• a whole can of whole plum tomatoes
• a generous squirt of Primo Pizza Squeeze
• some oregano
• some basil
• a handful of grated Parmesan cheese

IT WAS REALLY GOOD

Chicken; Shrimp; Sidekicks

After paying a visit to the meat shop to get change for laundry, I put my vegetarian contemplations to bed. Sundried tomato and basil fried chicken for lunch.


Lemon & herb shrimp skewer for dinner. On a bed of Sidekicks.

Sonymelette

Check out this omelette that Sonya made for me. What style! Sonya has been receiving cooking lessons from a French lady. It shows. (iPhone 4 photos! Not bad.)

More Thankfulness

I'm thankful to have had a day off to do NOTHING. And to cook my own meal. Meat-free. I made some bucatini. With sundried tomato pesto and vermouth and onions, peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms.


I'm also thankful for this pumpkin pie from No Frills. Not quite like my mom makes. But pumpkin pie nonetheless.

Greek Salad and Sapulpan Smoked Cheddar

I didn't have a Thanksgiving dinner last night, but I was really thankful to be eating my first vegetable-based meal in over a week: a Greek salad from Opa! (located in the Pacific Centre food court). I was at the mall to buy an iPhone! Which I am also thankful for. I think. Much later we ate some of this smoked cheddar cheese that I smuggled back from Oklahoma. Cheese with a southern accent! Mmmmm.

Porkin'

by Claudia

For Thanksgiving this year, Liz and I decided to skip turkey and go the giant-mound-of-pork route. The bo ssam recipe from Momofuku for Korean-style lettuce pork wraps looked both uncomplicated and affordable (pretty unusual for a Momofuku recipe). So, there it is. 8 pounds of pork shoulder, ready to be lovingly slow-roasted and basted for 6 hours.

Because I like to make things harder for myself, I decided to spend 4 hours making buns to accompany the pork. The end product almost erased the memory of having to hand-knead for 15 minutes. And waiting for the dough to go through three rises. Almost.

The finished product, ready to be shredded. The most difficult part of this recipe is trying not to put your face into the meat every time it needs to be basted.

A colourful plate of deliciousness! Dinner also featured Liz's mango slaw with cashews and mint.

For dessert, Liz's INSANELY GOOD lemon cream trifle with blueberry compote and strawberries. We hoovered this thing.

Since we obviously didn't eat enough last night, this afternoon's trip to Bellingham required a stop to Casa Que Pasa for their forearm-sized burritos.

Their most famous item, the potato burrito, is made up of fried potatoes, mexican rice, beans, cheese, smothered in a garlic mayo sauce, all wrapped up in a tortilla. I tried to take a good picture before I realized that it's just a mass of deep-fried, brown mush. The most delicious brown mush!

Food Styling Mise-En-Place

White chocolate ganache-injected chocolate ganache-covered chocolate cupcake for breakfast! Eventually.

Eating like a grown-up

by Claudia

I maybe forgot that I agreed to post while Michelle is away. (Even though she's been updating lots...perhaps she thought that Oklahomans don't know about the internet.) Also, starting a new job and celebrating my birthday in the same week means I have been eating mostly potato chip and alcohol-based dinners. Having to do this blog shamed me into finally cooking a real meal last night... thanks Michelle!


(The most important thing of note in this photo: my new Peugeot salt and pepper mills! So shiny, you can see me in them. )

First up: Arugula Salad with Caramelized Onions, Goat Cheese, and Candied Walnuts. I don't care much for walnuts, so I used pecans. Solid salad. This could probably stand on its own as a meal, but, uh, I'm a hungry gal.

So then I also made a gnocchi recipe from Sunday Suppers at Lucques, one of my current favourite cookbooks. But, being the lazy and cheap home cook that I am, I made a million substitutions. Instead of chanterelles, I used creminis. Instead of making the ricotta gnocchi, I used the pre-made stuff. And instead of fresh breadcrumbs, I used an old bag of panko crumbs that have been sitting around my cupboard for far too long. Still, this was delicious. I think perhaps the 7 tablespoons of butter had something to do with it.


Finally, I made cookies that required the following for the mise en place:


Eating like a grown-up, sort of.