New York adventures

I was recently in New York for a legal technology conference and took the opportunity to visit for a day or so with my friend Chris, who is a man about town with the foodstuffs on offer in the Big Apple. He lives in Brooklyn and picked me up at the airport (making me feel like a movie star), because he is awesome. Soon after dropping off my gear at his place, we headed for the subway for a wild ride to our first stop on my New York food adventure: Bark Hot Dogs in Park Slope. Delicious dogs accompanied by disco fries and white birch beer (which I'm going to describe as a cross between wintergreen Life Savers and root beer - so not sure I'll ever order it again).

Very delicious, all natural etc. I had the classic NYC dog with sweet and sour onions and mustard. In the back is Chris' pickle dog. The food was great and I was particularly amused by the nine-year-old-going-on-25 little girl who sat beside me. She was interested in my opinions regarding the food and the beverages. Obviously I'm so very pretty and smart that everything I said to her needed to be repeated with great gravitas to her father. There is no doubt that I am a role model on the hot dog eating front, send your children.

 After hot dogs, we ambled around a bit to the Ample Hills Creamery for some of the best ice cream I've ever had. And I have had a lot of ice cream. I was tempted by the Mexican hot chocolate because I'm that way but in the end chose the salted crack caramel. Fantastic. The best part is that you get to make a very informed decision on what you're going to order because they let you try everything in the place, especially on a late January day when it's not exactly lineups around the corner in there. Not to mention, the store is crazy cute.

Now there are few things I enjoy more than street food and in Toronto, we do not have a good variety, so non-stationary food vendors were on the agenda as well. For dinner (before contra dancing!), Chris hunted down the Kimchi Taco Truck, which combined my love of food on the go with Mexican flair. Now in Manhattan, we grabbed our bags of deliciousness and walked up to Union Square to eat on a park bench on a very warm January night. I had a combo of the grilled Korean bbq short rib taco and the pulled chicken taco. Woah! Those short rib tacos were out of this world!!

The next day Chris invited me to join him and a group of friends for dim sum at a local Brooklyn restaurant (which I can't remember the name of) and it too was spectacular. We arrived early in order to get a table, which when we left through a horde of waiting and hungry diners, I understood. There were about eight of us, so we ordered many delicious things to share. It's a good number of people because it lets you try many things but you don't have to have a lot of anything. So a couple of dishes stood out, one was chicken feet, which was the only thing I was not brave enough to eat but was the choice of the birthday boy for whom we were gathered to celebrate. While the feet were not my favourite dish of the weekend, they did come out as the best photo.

I did however take a chance on the jellyfish dish as I'd never eaten it and all the rest of the food was pretty excellent so I figured this was as good a time as any. It was tasty although the texture was a bit more rubbery than I enjoy. There was also some octopus mixed in with the dish and it was all good.

So overall, probably my best-ever dim sum experience. And it was followed by a bit of Chinese new year celebrations on the street, which were enjoyable and left me with glittery bits in my hair until well into the following morning when I finally got to bed!

I left Chris on Sunday afternoon and headed to Midtown to check into the hotel and get into a work state of mind. That night I met a lawyer friend and some of her colleagues and ended up having a really fun time dancing the entire night away. Her flight was delayed and my plans for a swishy Mexican place in Chelsea didn't work out but my favourite Times Square-area standby Virgil's barbecue was called up to the plate and didn't disappoint. From the gang who had never eaten bbq before, there were smiles all around. That's the way they roll at Virgil's. Good, solid bbq that you just can't get in Toronto.

After dinner there was much dancing and carousing and when we finally got back to our hotel in the 3:30 a.m. range, my companions were hungry. So off to Ray's Pizza for some pie. Not the greatest but it hit the spot and allowed us the chance to have a meaningful conversation about health care policy with a lovely man from Seattle.

On the Monday night, I went out with one of my fellow editors and her sisters who had come down for a little r&r. We ended up at a tapas restaurant near 42nd and 8th. Nothing spectacular but a big selection of tapas and a very enjoyable variety of sangrias. A fun night out with new people, can't beat that! (bad pic taken with ye olde BlackBerry). The hit of the evening, I would hazard, were the dates wrapped in bacon. They just work.

Over the course of the next few days, ate quite a bit just around the hotel. The usual oatemeal for breakfast at the Astro Diner at 55th and 6th, which I always try to do when I'm at this conference. Had an excellent Chipotle burrito bowl (fast and convenient) and tried this odd French restaurant/sushi bar mashup Rue 57 again and had a fairly spectacular chicken pot pie.

Now all over Manhattan are these halal food carts that serve up gyros and chicken and the like. Apparently the one that is at the corner of 53rd and 6th is the most awesome. There is always a line up there, particularly late at night on the weekends after the bars close. It's quite a sight. So as I was wrapping up the trip, I decided to have my final lunch at the cart. It is a giant plate of happiness (with a Diet Coke) for $7. Underneath all that delicious white sauce there's a mouthwatering blend of lamb gyros, chicken, rice and salad. Enough food to keep you going for the whole day. Just bring breath mints because there's a big garlic punch.

So long and thanks for all the eats!

Lavash pizza on the bbq

J loves pizza and we've discovered the great joy of making it on the BBQ. We've done it a few times now using lavash as the pizza crust. It's ultra-thin, which I love, and very low point, which J loves, so everybody wins. And they take no time at all to cook. We whipped up a few for a quick lunch today. Max 8 minutes cooking time on the pizza stone on the grill.

Here's mine. It was light bocconcini cheese, a few really thin slices of hot genoa salami, black olives, some thinly sliced onion, tomato and hot banana peppers from the yard. Dee-licicous.

Just plain old good pizza

For years I have walked past Olympic Pizza on Gloucester just east of Yonge and wanted to stop in for a classic pie. Finally a few months ago I managed to convince J to go along and check it out. As a lover of classic pizza, it's a surprise that it took so long to get her to accompany me but there it is. We have not looked back. The place has a great patio on a relatively quiet street and you can sit out there under big old trees and order some lovely pizza or pasta or calzones . . . you get the idea. I generally order the deluxe with pepperoni, green pepper, tomato, and mushrooms. The crust is not too thick and always very crispy. There is a sufficient amount of mozzarella cheese (which for me means a lot of cheese) and it is well cooked. I do not like pizza that is too doughy. I do not like pizza that is not cooked enough so that there is liquid running off it from the sauce or the tomato slices. I do like it with lots of cheese and cooked well. The sauce and the pepperoni are also good. And none of it is frou frou or full of claims about being the most authentic this or authentic that. Olympic hits the all the good points. Here's my delicious personal-size pie from a couple of days ago.

Two great things about Olympic: 1. They bring parmesan and chile flakes in the shakers to the table; 2. If you order anything bigger than a personal pizza, you get it on one of those groovy stands so your pizza is on a pedestal in the middle of the table, as it should be!! Not a bad thing about going here, except that you want to go back for more and more and more delicious pizza.

Two Dinners -- Delicious and Low-Point!

Look at that pizza! It's probably been one of the most difficult things to lighten, especially since I can't seem to find any low-point pizza base ideas that I see on other blogs (other than tortillas and english muffins, neither of which I like as a pizza base)... I tend to save about half my points for dinner each day, so I often will have a 9 or 10 point dinner without any issue, and I am more than happy to give an extra point or two from my weekly allowance for such delicious indulgences.

For this pizza, I used a pizza crust that Whole Foods makes, thin crust, whole wheat and really delicious IF you spray the crust with cooking spray and sprinkle on a bunch of herbs before making the pizza. If you don't, it's a bit bland. Anyway, half of that comes out to be about 6 points. I added low-fat moz, turkey pepperoni, some low-point sauce and a TON of veggies. Really delicious and well-worth the points.

Another good alternative for a full-fat dinner? Healthy fish and chips!


Look at that! We used the President's Choice Blue Menu Haddock fillets, and I oven baked some potatoes. Look how brown and crisp they are! I have to give a huge THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to the You Tube video's that the WW Chick puts up. Her chili cheese fries was inspiring. I make the fries by cutting up the potatoes, spraying liberally with cooking spray and adding about 1 teaspoon or so of oil and salt and pepper and chili powder. Put on a well-sprayed baking pan, put in the oven (450 degrees) initially for about 5 minutes then put in the pan about three ice cubes. Close the oven and cook for another 10 or so minutes, flip over and cook for about 15 more. They get super crispy. Our nod to the Brits was to include peas, though they weren't mushy. I love this canned pea, Lucerne Canned Baby Peas. I have eaten them since I was a little girl and I really really love them. They don't really taste like peas, but they totally hit the spot.

Two great dinners for reasonable points. G loved them, too!

Pizza Heaven.

Pizza is one of my favorite foods. When I was a kid, and I was a little kid, mind you, I could easily polish off an entire medium pizza by myself. I'd feel sick after, but my love of pizza knew no bounds. Ken's pepperoni pizza. Heaven.

Probably one of the hardest things for me with giving up wheat has been giving up pizza. I posted earlier about the kinnikinnik crust, which while good, is not the real thing. It tastes like a substitute. Which is fine. Or it was fine until yesterday.


Do you see that? Hunh? Do you see that delicious pizza? Oh yeah. I found the secret. And you can find it too!

Whole Foods Gluten-Free Bakehouse.

Be still my freaking beating heart.

I had dabbled with this product line while visiting family in the US and was miffed that there didn't seem to be much product available in my local Toronto Whole Foods. I wrote to the store, they said it was a problem with the bilingual labeling requirements. But then, one day, as I was walking around the store gawking at all the products, I spotted the brown label. There were blueberry muffins (which rule, but more on that in a minute) and pizza crusts. They looked a little doughy, cost an arm and a leg, but seemed to be calling my name.

I put them in the freezer because there weren't plans to eat them any time soon. But the night before Canada Day seemed like a good idea. A fast fun dinner to get us through our Battlestar Galactica Season 2 viewing. When I got home from work, I fried some onion and mushroom to use as a topping. We'd also bought some butterball turkey pepperoni to use on top (this is the best pepperoni going in terms of leanness and deliciousness). We shredded a ball of moz and put the pizza in a super hot oven directly on the pizza stone.

And it was amazing. There was NO weird gluten-free taste. No funny smell, no strange after-taste, no weird sweetness. Just crunchy on the outside chewy on the inside pizza. We had a splurge...


I saw a nutrition specialist recently who suggested that the green salad and veg should take up half my plate, so I don't think this is what she had in mind! BUT I did eat TWO servings of salad with lots of veggies and a crazy amount of the delicious pizza. There was plenty leftover, which is very exciting! (Well, it might not be that exciting unless you are me, but for me, it's a total thrill.)

It's so nice to be home on a weekday. It's Canada Day here so we have the whole day off! I am sitting in the sun room, in the sun, with Beanie sitting next to me blazing hot from all the sunshine. It's so lovely. Every Wednesday should be a holiday.

Gluten-Free Pizza.

Pizza is one of my favorite foods. I knew I had to give it up, long before I thought about giving up wheat. It as necessary. Pizza really upsets my stomach as a general rule, and seems to have bad effects on G, as well. So we went form having lots of pizza to having no pizza. And it hurt me. Lots.

Giving up wheat made it that much more difficult. One evening while G was at a work function, I ordered a Pizza Nova gluten-free pizza. It was absolutely vile. I just ate the toppings. My fascination was peaked when I found Kinnikinnick frozen pizza bases.


The bases aren't perfect, it's true. They have a sweet aftertaste, BUT, made on the pizza stone in a super hot oven, they have a satisfying crunch, a chewy texture, and topped with an assortment of spinach, mushrooms and caramelized vidalia onions... it was terrific.

We've had these a couple of times. With wonderful Butterball Turkey Pepperoni, roasted red pepper, onion, black olives... so many combinations!

I am trying a new pizza crust this week. When I was visiting family in Oklahoma, I got to try a selection of gluten-free things from the Whole Foods Bakehouse. WOW! The biscuits were out of this world good. I wrote to our Whole Foods in Toronto to ask why they didn't carry the Bakehouse items. The store manager wrote me back and said that it is because of the whole French/English ingredients listing, etc. But then lo and behold, the next time I went in, there were a few Bakehouse items. So I bought some pizza bases, but I haven't tried them yet. I also bought the blueberry muffins. Very very good. I really enjoyed them and so I went and bought a new batch today.