Decade

Not sure if you know this, but its been over 10 years now I’ve been blogging. True this is my third website (it started on Blogger, moved over to MSN Spaces which was transferred to WordPress). A decade of blogging… and at the core of it, very little has changed. True the subject matter of my posts has shifted from movie reviews, rants and longings to wacky stories with my roommates towards now food (eating of), food (making of) and to a lesser extent food (craving of), and occasionally travel.

Apparently at the core of it… nothing has changed. I still love Dr Pepper (though now I indulge in it much less), I ate an entire package of Oreos in under a week recently, I was shocked the other day when I reached into my bag of Voortman’s Gingerkids cookies and found only crumbs and I am sitting here chain-eating clementines. Every winter I still think of the chocolate snowflake donut, a pang of sadness in my heart that they discontinued it.

I guess what I am trying to say is… I still, 10 years later, have no idea what I am trying to say.

 

Poutine

Winter hit us early this year, and it sucks. We had been meaning to go to  Nom Nom Nom Crepes, recently voted best poutine. Trouble is, its an outdoor vendor. We would have to eat it while walking home or risk taking it home (and poutine does NOT hold up well cold). We caught a break this week with a warm day with no precipitation. Or so we thought, as soon as the sun went down it was cold and windy. We tried to hold out not eating the poutine, but we caved and had to eat it as we walked. Brent had wanted to get a smores crepe, but they were out of Nutella. He suggested getting a second poutine, I gasped in horror. Poutine is a food that very quickly tips over into too much, it is not meant to be eaten in large quantities (unlike for example, cookies).

It was tough to eat the poutine, we had ordered the smoked meat version. It was smothered in meat, a whole layer of meat piled on top. It was hard to get a bite of everything in one go. The cheese curds were quite good. The fries managed not to get soggy in the gravy. My only complaint, is that it was actually not salty enough (a rarity when it comes to poutine). Good overall though.

 

Margarita Cupcakes

We were having people over, and I was feeling fancy. One night I found myself making Margarita Cupcakes. It was a lot of work, having to grate the lime rinds. The cupcakes just tasted like lime cupcakes, and the icing, well there you could taste the alcohol. Overall the cupcake were underwhelming and definitely too much trouble for not enough tastiness. Plus now I am left with a bottle of tequila, the recipe called for a few tablespoons and the LCBO does not sell those little sample bottles of alcohol.

I had run out of cupcake liners and all I could find were Christmas ones at the dollar store.

 

Best Butter Chicken

There is nothing like walking for half an hour after an intense bootcamp workout… in order to eat the best butter chicken in the city. We just so happened to take a route to St. Clair that took us up Bathurst. My eyes lit up, Dutch Dreams!! I insisted we stop at this ice cream parlour/Dutch store. I was desperate for (at the time) Speculoos cookies  . The previous week while I was in the States I lamented getting only the berry Oreos, leaving behind brownie-filled Chips Ahoy. Lo and behold, we found them at Dutch Dreams, along with lemon Oreos and stroopwaffel cookies. I was in heaven.

Pukka should be voted more than just best butter chicken. Yes, the butter chicken was amazing, with just the right amount of spicy. And yes the sauce on its own was also delicious (we ordered a basket of assorted naans solely for that purpose). The real star was the sweet potato samosas. They were unbelievably well made. Just the right amount of crispy without being teeth-breaking hard, the insides were not a giant mush and they were not sopping in grease.

It was nice to go out to a fancy restaurant to eat butter chicken. I so easily associate it with a buffet in the middle of the day, where I overeat and spend the rest of the day hating myself. This was a nice change of pace.

 

 

 

Seeing How The Other Side Shops

Pusateri’s was recently voted best gourmet food store. And so a rainy Tuesday evening we found ourselves in the heart of Yorkville. I am sorry but the food there was not all that gourmet. They had Skinny Cow ice cream bars… but no chips!! The only “chips” I found were tortilla, bean or apple chips. Or popcorn. There were a few small bags by the register, but that just didn’t cut it. The in-store made ready-to-eat meatballs were pretty decent, better than Longo’s. The only really gourmet thing I saw in the store was some fancy tuna steaks. They didn’t even have a lobster tank. I was expecting a shelf of caviar, a section of gold-plated food and biggest disappointment of all: not one person was wearing a monocle. What I wouldn’t give to see a lobster wearing a monocle*.

Silver lining: the nanaimo bar. Although I’m not sure the credit goes to Pusateri’s, because it was not baked in store. It was from Pauline’s Pastries (hence the reason, we HAD to get it). Let me tell you, sweet mother of god, this nanaimo was otherworldly. If you’re like me, you eat the Farmer’s brand ones from the grocery store and midway through your second tiny square you are sweating, your teeth hurt, your heart is going to explode and you are getting vertigo. This nanaimo was ginormous and I never once had that feeling. It was oddly light and not super dense, the base was not greasy and the chocolate on top, heavenly. So really, this post is about the best nanaimo bars in the city.

*one day I will Photoshop such a photo, seeing as it does not exist