Conference = Room Service

What happens when you go to a conference with 1000 people you don't know? Order room service!

I went to the US for a legal conference on Thursday of last week until yesterday. It was in Orlando, Florida, and the conference hotel was the World Centre Marriott. The hotel was beautiful. The flight to Orlando was terrible. It was really bumpy and I got a little motion sick, so by the time I was late getting to the conference and stressed out about it, I needed food.

Now one of the things I have mentioned before is that Canada is great and all, and I love it here, but there are no hamburgers like US hamburgers. So with great excitement, I had plans to order a Marriott burger, a favourite from my travelling days. And I ordered some french onion soup because it just sounded good. Excessive, oh yeah. But good.

The french onion soup was really lovely. The soup was really cheesy with the perfect amount of meltiness. The soup wasn't overly salty and the onion was really soft and tasty.



And then the main event. The Marriott burger. It's really good. Really good. The Fries were not so tasty despite their good looks. The Marriott burger comes with cheese, bacon and a whole lotta love. I ordered it room service style, as I wanted to be able to sit on my balcony and look out on the beautiful Florida evening!



Sadly, this picture is all fries. But look at those cute but excessively wasteful little bottles of ketchup, mayo and mustard. And oh yes, there are few things that I love more than crispy fries with mayo and ketchup. So it is sufficient to say that although this is all I ate on Thursday, it was a lot.

I finished the day off by walking around the hotel and going to the opening night reception. There were people EVERYWHERE. It was totally crazy. There was lots of fried food and alcohol, and while I was full of Marriott Burger, it was difficult to not give in. But I resisted.

The view from my hotel room?



Ahhhhh. Peaceful. Actually, on the other side of the building where I stayed, there was a quiet pool by the Spa. And it was by far the best pool. You could take your lunch and sit quietly, going over conference notes and materials, and plan the next day. It was really beautiful, and the water was very warm. (Not that there's time for recreation when you are at a conference!)

Mildred Pierce -- at last, for the last

Yesterday marked the first (and possibly last) time that I have had the pleasure of brunch at Mildred Pierce. I have wanted to go there for ages, but for some reason have just failed to get it together to get it together there. So with friends visiting, it seemed like the perfect time. I don't think they were too keen to go, but they put on their game faces and away we went!

The brunch was amazing. Honestly, the restaurant was packed, but the wait wasn't horrendous, and the wait staff was really friendly and helpful. We managed to get a table inside (there wasn't a request for inside or patio, but inside is what we got!) and we have a great table with a little hidey hole looking into the kitchen! It was so cool...



My little view into the world of Mildred Pierce.

So anyway, back to brunch. Because this was likely the only time I will have the honour of eating there, and because I am just that way, we decided to order a brunch appetizer. We opted to get an order of scones, and they were wonderful! They came with a side of strawberry butter and ginger apple jam. See for yourself...




I didn't eat the butter, but the jam was really savoury and sweet.

We ordered some lovely mimosas and ate our delicious scones while waiting for our main brunch dishes. G and I ordered the same dish, the Huevos Monty. Oh my heavens. It was so lovely. Basically, the dish went like this ... two tortillas filled with black beans and cheese and onions, with two perfectly fried eggs on top with fresh salsa, sour cream and avocado creme fraiche. I had read raves of the home fries, so I had to get those, too. The eggs were the most perfect eggs ever, and the tortilla was lightly grilled, warm and the beans were just fantastic. The avocado creme fraiche was just terrific, such a nice cold accompaniment to the warm eggs.


Oh yeah, look at that! YUM!

M had his standard order of French Toast, which looked really really good.


M said it was very good, and the perfect size. It looks good, but not being a big fan of french toast, I will have to take his word for it. M reminisced about his childhood of having french toast made with Wonder bread. I didn't add this, but to me, the smell of french toast cooking smells like wet dog. It's a smell I've never been able to get past.

P had the Arctic Char Nicoise. P recalled her first experience with arctic char, which was at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, when she was at 'an event'. G had arctic char when she was in Nunavut. I have had arctic char never. But I have now sat at a table with it.


It looked really pretty.

The restaurant is closing down after many years of operations. The owner is moving on to other things, and closing her cookery school as well. I think they may be moving, and if so, it's a brunch destination I will definitely take my mother to when she comes to visit in the fall. It was so great. 6 more brunches (and Summerlicious) so give it a go. Before it's too late...

We do have two cats, Bello's just the nice one.

Sasha gets a bad rap. Granted, we've lived together (Sasha and I) for almost 4 years and I have pet her once. She growls and swats at me every time I pass by, and she stares at me with loathing.

But that's okay, I love her anyway.


Look at that belly. Look at that crazy stare.

Urban Beach.

This post is not food related (though it was the calm between the shopping for ingredients for dinner, and the making of the dinner)...

Yesterday, we decided to take in all the city of TO has to offer and go to Queen's Quay to check out the new $10 million dollar urban beach. It's really fantastic. It's right along Lake Ontario, set back directly from the water by a little boardwalk. There's a stretch of sandy beach that has installation yellow umbrellas for lounging under... Really really nice. And yesterday was such a glorious day, there was no better way to relax away part of the afternoon...



This is the view south, towards the island. It's a beautiful view, with the umbrella's offering shade, but letting enough light through to be able to read or still feel like you're outside... it was really spectacular, though not overwhelmingly large...


You could snag chairs, but we just parked it on the sand and went with it. I love sitting outside, and it wasn't hot, but the perfect temperature.

Dinner for 6.

As mentioned earlier, G and I had our friends, P & M over for a visit this weekend.

On Friday night, we had dinner at the Armenian Kitchen, which I did not take photos of because there have been photos of them here previously. So there's that. Not exciting, but quite tasty. We had shawarma and all the fixings. Really such a nice dinner.... We brought baklava home for dinner, but I didn't have any more room.

Anyway, so last night, we decided to make something for our friends from out of town, and to invite our friends from upstairs for dinner. We love to cook for people and do it so rarely that we were really keen to settle on a nice dinner plan. And when looking for a nice dinner, at the moment, I am looking no further than Jamie's Italy, by Jamie Oliver.

I knew we were going to the St. Lawrence Market, so I decided to make the Chicken Cacciatore. G felt like keeping the J. Oliver theme alive, and made a starter of her infamous (and his delish) potato and scarmoza ravioli with marjoram butter. This recipe is G's take on the meal that we had Fifteen last year. It works, it's so delicious. I will ask her to put it to paper so I can share it... Then our guest, P, decided to get in on the action, and offered to make a pear and walnut salad with rocket and watercress. We have a crazily small kitchen, but somehow, we made it work!

The salad was amazing... I am not a huge fan of fruit in food, but the pear and watercress was so refreshing, especially with the shaved parm and toasted walnuts.


It was so terrific, and P made each plate look absolutely lovely!

From there, we moved into G's ravioli. It's really terrific. We had some great fresh potatoes from our CSA box and we bought a little bob of scarmoza at the market, the flavours are dead simple, and since G uses wonton wrappers, it's even more of a snap. But it looks impressive, and tastes divine.



From there, we moved onto my Pollo ala Cacciatore, or whatever it's called. I made it with Donna Hay's recipe for polenta (from New Food Fast), and we used the last of our CSA asparagus. I took a picture of one of the plates...



Whoa. It was so lovely. the chicken had olives, anchovies, tomatoes and chianti in it, and cooked slowly at 350 for about an hour and a half. The sauce was so rich and lovely. The chicken fell off the bone, which is the only way I can stand to eat meat on the bone! It really had all the best parts of a good dinner. We had lots of wine and good conversation (oddly, a conversation about food miles v. organic v. processed food) and it was a really nice night.

We finished with a pistachio bundt cake (that I failed to take a picture of, I am sorry M!!!), that M purchased at the St. Lawrence Market. He also bought two big containers of strawberries, and we had a lovely light dessert after the very rich chicken dinner.

We cracked open a wine that G and I bought in the Loire Valley in France last year, from the Paul Buisse winery in Montrichard. It was really lovely, and took us back to the day that we travelled there, went to the winery for a visit, and met Mr. Paul Buisse and toured the caves and drank his favourite wines. It was really a brilliant outing, and getting the tour of the caves and listening to Paul Buisse talk about his family's history of wine making made it such a special experience. The Loire Valley is full of wineries, and really, this was one of the highlights of our trip. Sharing it with friends, as precious as this sounds, was really such a great way to enjoy it.

Bello's Not Amused.

He looks at us with such disdain. Sigh.

Byzantium!

G and I went out to dinner at Byzantium the other night, a celebratory "you didn't win any awards" dinner. (Long story. Short story: she didn't win any awards, so we had dinner.) Anyway, we decided to go to Byzantium because it's about as fancy at it gets in our neighborhood, and it was all good.

I had amazing beef tenderloin pasta. The sauce was creamy and a little spicy, but nothing too crazy. Good veg, and the pieces of meat were really tender and soft. Lovely!


G ordered lamb with minty couscous. The lamb was really nice, from the local butcher, and the veg were cooked perfectly. Here's the art shot...



It was really a nice dinner

G had a Rolotini, which is just delightful. And I had an amazing red wine, which I don't recall the name of, but trust me, it was lovely.

Good times a-coming!

Just a quick post to say that our good friends P and M are coming into town this weekend, so hopefully I can get some good pics to put up! Or at least some interesting food to talk about! If anyone has a fave restaurant that they think we should go to in the big T.O., let me know by email or comment!

Thanks for the comments and emails recently. I really enjoy hearing from you!

I have some pics to upload, wll do so later. Another late night tonight, and I am just crossed eyed with tiredness tonight, and a very upset stomach. Good times. No, not really.

Anyway, more to come.

Frittata!

G made a delicious dinner tonight... Every Veggie in the House Frittata!!!

The ideas were planted last night when G and I were trying to come up with some ideas for a full dinner for tonight using some of the asparagus we received. We received it both this week and last in our CSA box, and hadn't been home to use any of it. So we came up with the frittata idea. While I worked late, G made another culinary triumph!


This was a beauty. In yesterday's CSA box we got these incredibly delicious little potatoes, they are so sweet and fresh. She boiled three of those and sliced those into four eggs, a dash of milk, cooked mushroom and red pepper, asparagus, chives and a little bit of cheddar cheese dotting the top. It made two big servings...



And here's my attempt at highlighting the delish factor of this dish...



You can see a little bit of everything in this picture. And the great thing was, it tasted great and was good for us!!! It's been good. All these reviewing of new recipes in the magazines and websites and blogs that I read has been really good for coming up with some ideas when all seems lost. Plus, it helps pull us away from thinking of dinner in terms of meat, starch, peas. (I am from South of the Border, after all.)

IHOP

I wanted to have breakfast, and as Mom and my brother don't eat breakfast out very often, we decided to go to IHOP. I have to say, we decided on IHOP with a little bit of dread, but at the same time, we were going to be out all day, so it was necessary to get a solid breakfast going.

I had the IHOP rip off of the MoonsOverMyHammy. It was solid. But the hashbrowns had a long way to go to get to good.


This picture isn't good, and I didn't check it, so oops!



I don't lie. Bland, eh? They needed ketchup. LOTS of ketchup.

My brother had sausages wrapped in pancakes, which he declared to be delicious!



Mom had biscuits and gravy, which she said were very good, as well. Though if you know me, you know that my biscuits and sausage gravy are the BEES KNEES. Oh yeah, they are THAT good.



I am sure Mom's cardiologist would have had his own coronary had he seen Mom eat this, but she didn't eat it all, and we had a good long walk afterwards.

So the next time I go home, we are going to cook up a storm. As I may have mentioned earlier, my Mom's been quite sick and is just getting really solidly better, so I didn't want her to have to stand around and cook all weekend. But next trip home, it's all cooking all the time.

My last day there called for a solid lunch to get me through the whole day. I picked Johnnie's Charcoal Broiler for some delicious hamburgers because, sorry to say, Canadian hamburgers just do not compare.



Oh yeah. Grated cheese, crispy bacon, phenom pickles, lightly toasted bun, and a hamburger made out of meat with just salt and pepper. No breadcrumbs, no eggs, no nothing but hamburger meat goodness. You can see the big handcut french fries, but I didn't take a solo shot. But I did take an innard shot..



Really nice.

Just another Manic Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...

So my plans to post last week did not come to fruition. I worked late every day, and have been out of town since early Friday afternoon. But, as I am home now and dead tired from the longish drive home, I thought some blogging would fill in the time brilliantly.

Last weekend (which seems like months ago), I went home. Ahhh. It's a struggle when I go home between wanting Mom's cooking, and wanting to eat at the restaurants that I miss from home... It's all good.

Anyway, I flew in and had a massive craving for Zio's Artichoke Spinach Pasta. Yummy. So that was stop number one.


This is their Artichoke Dip with pasta, chicken and diced tomatoes. It was so terrific. It's creamy and the chicken is perfectly grilled. It's really just a lovely dinner. I couldn't eat it all, but I gave it a good try. This is one of my most favourite dinners.

We also ordered pepperoni bread, a Zio's classic.



This is a lot like a calzone. It's really terrific, though this bout of pepperoni was really greasy. My whole family loves this, so it was a must get item.

It was really a lovely lunch/dinner. I enjoyed having the pasta and sitting in the restaurant, which is familiar. I had a great view of the open kitchen...



We were pretty much finished from here...it was a heavy meal after having just flown in, so that night, I pretty much conked out on the futon. It was so great to be home when it wasn't the holidays. I really miss seeing my family, and so it was nice to sort of reconnect with my roots. As Dar sings, "there's some things I finally faced, I finally think I come from someplace" -- that's more or less how it goes, and it runs through my head while I am home.

More to follow.

Outta the loooop

Hey all,

No good update tonight. Just wanted to say that I am still alive and out here... last week was a really nutty week at work and then I went home for the long weekend. On the plus side, I have some good pics to put up tomorrow once I get them ready to go...

Mother's Day in France and Spain.

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and while I won't see my Mother until next week, G's mother came over for dinner last night (with G's father of course).

We struggled with what to make, wanting to make it special, but wanting to cook something fun. So, with much leafing through magazines, we came up with a lovely dinner that was a rousing success.

For the first course (oh yeah, we had to have courses), we served a beautiful soft cheese with a freshly baked (not be me or G) olive baguette. At Kensington Market's Global Cheese store, we were given a lovely French soft cheese to try, being told that it was like a brie but dead on ripe. G had a bite and fell in love. We brought it home, let it come to room temperature, and then served it on the great bread/cheese board that I bought.



From there, our dinner took a turn to Spain. Paella! We made the first batch with chorizo and chicken, and then took out my portion, and added shrimp for everyone else's. We had purchased some saffron while in New York City that we used in this recipe. Basically, you start by browning the chicken and chorizo then putting in onion, red pepper, garlic and rice. It cooks for a minute, then you add broth and the saffron and let it cook away for about 30 minutes. You then take out my portion, and add some shrimps. Cook until shrimp is cooked.

It was great. The smell was amazing and everyone loved it.

Here is the paella with shrimp...


For dessert, we had a fantastic spicy chocolate pavlova with freshly made whipped cream and raspberries. The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's "Forever Summer" cookbook. We used this spicy chocolate called 'Dagoba'. It's a spicy Mexican chocolate. It was really delicious.


Yummmmmmmmmmy. Everyone ate seconds. It was great fun. The only downside to the beautiful pavolva was the extreme (and I mean EXTREME) mess G and I made trying to whip the egg whites. We had a big bowl, but our whisk is crazy powerful and when we tried to whip the whites, the eggs went everywhere. We had it all over our clothes, all over the cabinets, in my hair. GROSS! But we managed despite the mess. It was good fun to make and really great eats to eat, so it was nice.

All in all, it was a delicious meal. I really really enjoyed it, and it was really a fun meal to make.

Corn Fritters.

Food magazines sometimes allow us a chance to try things we might not have thought of...

For example...dinner one night last week was delightful, and here's the story...

Dinner was leftover chicken cooked with bbq sauce, served with chickpea salad (a staple in this house, as we also had it with dinner tonight), and some lovely corn fritters. The fritters were great... A little corn meal, a little corn, some eggs, lovely lovely lovely. And honestly, a quite different little meal for the likes of us girls.

Have a see....



Tasty!!!

What's in YOUR fridge?

The food blog becks & posh posed the question... what's in your fridge? Now I am a bit envious of their orderly and swanky looking fridge.

Mine? A mismatch of everything under the sun. Don't believe me?



There's wine, and veg, and organic milk, and leftover spaghetti in convenient lunch sized portions, bubbly water, stock, condiments, hemp oil, whey butter, weight watchers berad (1 point for TWO slices! score!), leftover yaprax, just peanut peanut butter, organic free range eggs, tons of cheese in the drawer ... yikes. We never want for variety.

Also, if you are so inclined, please scroll down, I have made a few posts this evening... check out the cute pic of the cat eating onions...

All the best!!!

Another Tuesday night on the town...

Tonight was actually a really warm night. The first really warm, you-could-wear-shorts-if-you-weren't-perpetually-cold-like-me warm. So G and I decided to go out and sit on a patio. We went to Margarita's in Cabbagetown. We have that charity coupon book with the two for ones, and it's such a bargain! We have used quite a bit of it, and will continue to use them... we've easily saved $50!



Oh yeah. It's all good. This is actually a really decent restaurant. They have a lot of vegetarian options, so we tend to eat there with our friends P & D.

Anyway, tonight, I had the Tacos Casero. They were strips of meat, cooked with peppers and onions, served with a little queso fresco on soft corn tortillas. I like it and my diet likes it too! The meat was a teensy bit tough, but the flavours were really good. I ordered it with a side of refried beans that I shared with G, as the dish didn't come with any sides, and I like to add the beans to my tacos.


My last bite was actually a crazy hot jalapeno, and it set my mouth afire! The beans were really good, a little spicy and really creamy. I love refried beans, and for some strange reasons, they love me...


They don't look so great, but they were awesome! G had the chorizo enchiladas. There's are weird, they come in this bowl-y casserole dish, but it's good.

She gets the green sauce for the top. It's really nice, the lettuce adds a crunchy bit (of course, when I order it, I get it sans lettuce because I hate lettuce in food that's not salad), and the sour cream is artfully squeezed on top.

It's weird because to get to the patio, you have to walk through the kitchen. I wonder if that's some sort of health violation? Well, at least they aren't afraid to have you peek inside! Today, we say lots of marinating veggies for the veggie dishes. They looked dang good, too!

Spring Rolls, Chicken, and Mexican.

Sunday night, G and I went out for dinner to Spring Rolls, a bit of a Toronto institution in terms of the chain asian restaurant. I ordered what has to be one of my all time favorite dinners... tom yum kai soup with steamed white rice. I usually order spring rolls, but tonight we opted for two different types of dumpling, one lightly fried and one steamed.

The soup is great. It's a really flavourful spicy/sweet broth with floating chili's pieces of chicken, mushrooms and tomato just melding together to make a fantastic dinner. I really like to have it with rice, where you can just pour some of the broth onto the rice and eat the whole thing up. Yummmmy. It's really such a lovely soup.



I did take a picture of the rice. But it's a white bowl of white rice. Nah.

I ordered a roasted rice green tea. The presentation here is key...



It's odd and never overwhelmingly hot, but it's still good. G had ordered the Thai tea or something, which looked really....neon.



G ordered what used to be my fave thing at Spring Rolls. The beef ho fun. It's delicious fat rice noodles cooked dry with beef, egg, bean sprouts, gigantor onions, and delicious mushroom soya (I think). It's such a nice flavour, and I had the best of both worlds, since I stole a bite of G's. She brought the leftovers home for lunch and said that they were still good a couple of days later, so it MUST be good. (I had no soup left...)

Beef ho Fun, please present yourself!


And there you have it.

Last night, we wanted to have something easy peasy, so we sat out some organice free range local chicken and baked that with a tiny bit of the President's Beer BBQ sauce, served with chickpea salad and the ubiquitous frozen peas. G made some bok choy from our CSA box for her dinner, but as I don't like bok choy, I did without.

Here's the chicken breast version...




And for those of you who are thigh folk....


Oh yeah, and a mountain of peas. What can I say, another good meal from G. I have just had the will to cook. It's good that G gets home before me, because it means dinner isn't too late, but I miss cooking. And the last few weekends have been crazy... oh well. Do for me, buy for me, lift me carry me... (I love Funny Girl!)

All cute things.

Bello needed a snack, obviously! I may have mentioned it before in my goings on about Bello and his supreme cuteness... but he loves the chives that we grow in our garden. (Okay, G grows them. Whatever.) Anyway, he loves to jump up on the bench and snack away. He'll come to greet us in the morning with the nastiest onion breath, but it's all so aw shucks that we muddle through... tell me you wouldn't kiss this onion boy!

A quiet night and Friday night.

This week has been a bit hectic, so the food pics have been sparse. We had a going away lunch at the office and I was too shy to take pics of the food, the blog's not something I necessarily talk about at the office...

Anyway, Wednesday was an easy night, G was out at a concert I didn't want to go to, so I took that opportunity to have no dishes and a relaxing lie about. President Choice makes a "blue menu" chicken and spinach pizza. One pizza is 500 calories, on the smallish side, and absolutely fantastic. Instead of being cheesey, it has little blobs of ricotta that are really lovely.

As you can see, it's not overly spinachy, just enough to give it a little flavour and make you feel virtuous. The chicken is plentiful, and there are roasted red peppers and add a nice touch. Honestly, I could eat this pizza all the time. Unfortunately, when G and I went to Loblaw's today, there was nary a box of this pizza in sight. Grrrr. That's just how good they are!!!

Last night, we had a big dinner at G's parents house. G's mom pulled out all the stops and made everyone's favorite, Yapraks. It's kind of like dolmades, but with ground beef AND rice inside, stewed with beans. It was fantastic.

G's mom must have been rolling grape leaves all day, because we had this whole big thing, and she said that there was this much again in the kitchen! She served this with rice and also made roast chicken and roast vegetables for the little kids, but the little kids love the yapraks, so it wasn't necessary! I ate roast potatoes and carrots because G's mom makes the best.

Otherwise, it's been a slow food week. We had brunch with a friend at Sneaky Dee's but as I have spoken about this before, I am not going into it here... Otherwise, it's all good.

As I have also mentioned before, I read alot of British food magazines, and they have lots of ads for Fairtrade foodstuffs. Now, I don't see that we have tons of Fairtrade items available here in Canada, and I guess you do start to get into that quandry regarding buying local vs buying Fairtrade vs organic. It's hard to say what's the what. We are buying almost exclusively local produce right now, though we aren't diehard about finding organic. But if there were Fairtrade bananas for example (which don't seem to be for sell here, but feature prominently in ads in the British mags), I would buy that over something that's neither local or organic.

Anyway, I suppose this is the battle we all have. Email me (or comment) your suggestions.

Scarmoza and Potato Ravioli TRIUMPH!

When in London (I am sensing a theme here), as I have already mentioned, we ate at Jamie Oliver's restaurant Fifteen. There, G had an amazing potato and scarmoza ravioli in marjoram butter sauce. G has talked about making it every since, and last night was the night.

She 'cheated' on the ravioli by using egg roll wrappers, but we rocked the scarmoza. I was working late last night, so I have no idea how it was made... but man alive it was delicious!!!!!



It was really really good. Scarmoza is a lovely smoked mozarella, in case you, like me, were wondering.

G knows I am not a fan of the big green salad, so she made up a little salad of boccicini, local tomato, cucumber and peppers, in a lovely balsamic and oil. It was so tasty...



G really outdid herself, and on a weeknight no less. Really, it was so fantastic. The picture of the ravioli doesn't do it justice, but it was really such a great meal. Well done G!