Last Meal of 2013

When Andrew and I got home from work on New Years Eve 2013, we were surprised when we were told what we'd eat for dinner. Raw malpeque oysters, from Cooke's Cove, on the half shell as an appetizer, and for the main course: steak, scalloped potatoes, gravy, buttered veggies, and salad.






I didn't know how to eat raw oysters. Some people just swallow the oyster without chewing it. But what's the point? I read that a lot of people just chew it a few times before they swallow the oyster. I squeezed a drop of lemon juice, slurped it up, chewed it twice, then down the hatch. It wasn't bad at all. The briny taste of the sea, a hint of oysters, and lemon was great! The oysters disappeared in a flash.

I'm not a steak person, so the steak dinner was so-so. Dinner was a little too fancy for my taste. Did you end your 2013 with a great meal?

Canadian Thanksgiving 2013

Happy belated Thanksgiving to our Canadian readers! And happy early Thanksgiving to our American readers!

Unlike past years, we just had a small family dinner with our immediate family earlier this week on Monday, October 14th. On the menu: smoked salmon cream cheese appetizers, prime rib roast, pan-dripping gravy, sweet potato mash, buttered carrots and corn, and dinner rolls. We were going to have three kinds of homemade desserts: apple pie, apple crumble, and cookies.


The day started off slowly. I didn't end up going downstairs until 11:30am. It was nice to sleep in after a hectic week at work. My brief morning began with open-faced peanut butter banana sandwiches and a cup of coffee.


We began our prep work by making pies and cookies once everyone had a bite to eat in the morning. The apples actually came from our Golden Delicious apple tree, which Dad planted about 10 years ago. Mom made the pie pastry out of Tenderflake and some butter. The apples were peeled, cored, sliced, and seasoned with brown sugar, cinnamon, and a bit of salt. Then some oatmeal crumble was made for apple crumble. There was a little confusion in the kitchen and we ended up making apple pies, apple crumble, and even an apple crumble pie. I'll touch more on that in another post. (Update: Apple Crumble Pie post is up.)


I also worked on these DoubleTree chocolate walnut cookie dough too. Once the cookie dough was done, I put the bowl into the fridge to firm up.

I've been thinking about making these beauties for a while now, well, since I stayed at the DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton. They gave us warm cookies when we checked in. So amazing!


Around that time, Lucy arrived and we began to snack some more. She put together a Ritz cracker with smoked salmon cream cheese, half an olive, and some dry dill. Looks good, doesn't it? Lucy even took this, and a few other, photos with my dSLR.

Costco had one of their smoked salmons on sale the during the week. Cream cheese was also on sale a week prior. So we stocked up on both of them. Dad chopped up some smoked salmon and mixed it with the cream cheese for a nice kitchen hack. The real smoked salmon pieces were so wonderful!

I was planning to make either a spinach dip or caramelized onion dip, but we loved the smoked salmon cream cheese so much that we didn't need anything else. True story.


For the sweet potato mash, the sweet potatoes were peeled and boiled. They were mashed with half and half cream, cinnamon, powdered ginger, salt, butter, and freshly cracked black pepper. There was a carrot left behind.




Once the mashed sweet potatoes were seasoned, they were spread into a baking pan and then topped off with marshmallows.

I'd use less ground ginger and add more black pepper next time. Maybe I'd bake the mashed sweet potatoes for a bit before topping with marshmallows next time. That way the mash would be hotter.


This is the prime rib roast out of the oven. The burned parts is just the cap of fat. The prime rib was baked to rare and then we had to pop it in the oven for more time. By the time it was taken out, the prime rib was medium-well.


I grabbed my camera and went back to the table but Lucy blocked me off from taking the photo. She wanted the first shot. Alrighty then. After she took the picture, I swooped in to take one on my camera.


That's most of our spread. The dinner rolls, ginger ale, and red wine are missing.


Having prime rib was a nice change to turkey. Maybe we'll try making lamb next year.

Jimmy really enjoyed the prime rib. "How do you make something like this?"

"First, you need to buy a high quality of prime ribs -- high quality. Then you just season it however way you like it; like with steak spice or salt and pepper." Lucy chimed in.

As for the desserts, I'll be writing about the apple crumble, apple pie, and apple crumble pie separately. Here are the DoubleTree chocolate walnut cookies. I based these cookies off Food Geek's recipe.

The cookies taste the best when enjoyed just like the hotel serves their cookies: warm. That way the chocolate chunks are still gooey. The proportions of walnuts and chocolate chunks to cookie dough was a bit off. I remember the cookie was chunkier. I'll have to try the recipe out again. Until then, I'll hold off on sharing it.

Cooking and baking with the family does get noisy, but that's because we all have our different ways of doing things. Things get done however elaborate the meal is. And that's because we all know how to cook and, to some extent, bake. The underlying lesson is to learn to cook and bake for yourself and others. It's a life lesson.

Blendtec Training in the GTA

This past weekend, twenty seven people across Ontario and myself were sent to Mississauga to be trained on a new demo. I currently work for Professional Warehouse Demonstrations (aka PWD). We, PWD, do most of the food demos found at Costco Canada-wide. While some companies do send their own people sometimes, we do everything else. Still aren't sure who we are? We're the people behind those red tables giving out free samples of various of products.


My coworker, Glenn Coco aka GC (her alias), flew to the the Greater Area of Toronto (GTA) on Portei Airlines -- I mean Porter Airlines. We had never flown on Porter so we were both excited. Our flight left Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, we didn't get to check out Porter's lounge at the Ottawa airport.

Weekend at Mont Tremblant

This past weekend, we brought our Aussie relatives up to Mont Tremblant. We rented a chalet and did some sightseeing. As soon as we got back to the chalet, people were either grazing or making food - sometimes both. Let me just say that the photos cover most of what we ate.




On the first full day we were there, we went up to the Mont Tremblant Village and walked around a bit. The weather was -20 Celcius with blue skies. We didn't stay there long at all. After a brief BeaverTails break (the Kilaloe Sunrise is pictured on the bottom left; cinnamon, sugar, lemon juice), some of us went tubing while everyone else went back to the chalet.






That night, we had a spectacular prime rib dinner with a few sides: mashed potatoes with mint, side salad, heart of palm salad, and gravy. There was also Japanese-marinated chicken (soy sauce, palm sugar, ginger, and garlic) for those who didn't like beef.


There wasn't anything for dessert that night, unless you count the southeast asian fruit punch that JN made. We used some canned jackfruit, rambutan and some of the liquid, longan, pineapples, lychee jelly, and fresh strawberries with Sprite, tropical fruit juice, and Grey Goose.


On the following morning, we breakfasted on bacon, breakfast sausages, bagels, rice, toast, coffee, hot chocolate, and/or tea. Then we snacked on some boxed white cake with fresh blueberries.




Before we had lunch, there was a fruit platter of guava, papaya, strawberries, and asian pears. Containers of hummus and baba ganoush were opened along with a few bags of chips.




Lunch consisted of marinated ox tongue, which Uncle TS prepared and marinated the previous night. It was served with a nuoc cham-like sauce: fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar, garlic, cilantro, green onions, and chili peppers.



Both the ox tongue and dipping sauce were addictive. Delish!




Mom, Lucy, Jimmy, and Richard arrived with some homemade bo kho for lunch as well.

We (Lucy, Jimmy, Richard, and I) left the chalet before everyone else ate a lobster dinner. We arrived in Ottawa just after 9:30pm. I was so exhausted that I don't remember getting into bed. There was just so much food!

Sandwiches, Sliders, Fajitas and Subs

Sometime last week, I went to T&T and stocked up on some groceries. While walking up and down the aisles, I had one dish in mind. I wanted to recreate the ham and cheese french toast sandwich, which I had in Taiwan.

The main ingredient that I needed was the sweet milk bread. The loaves were all sliced a bit too thick to my liking. Oh well. While we didn't have any processed sliced cheese. I just used what we had in the fridge.

Richard gave the bread a taste test with a smear of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.

I didn’t feel like dipping the sandwich in some egg, but damn, it was lookin’ good! The pan was too hot so the cheese didn’t really soften much.

Each bite invited waves of flavour. First it was salty from the margarine then ham and cheese. The sweetness of the soft bread showed up before yielding to the tangy mayo. The ham and cheese once again rounded out the flavour.

To add another Taiwanese flare, the sandwich was chased down with sips of Mr. Brown’s instant coffee.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Later that afternoon, Andrew made a few dinner roll sliders for his after school snack. Using the base of black forest ham and spring salad mix, he made a few different combinations:

• Smoked salmon cream cheese + cheddar
• Caesar dressing + cow cheese (wedges)
• Caesar dressing + parmesan cheese
• Salsa + cow cheese

The sliders, which had salsa, were his favourite, “because salsa is salsa. It would’ve been better if there was less cow cheese.”

Andrew enjoyed the smoked salmon cream cheese ones the least.

He’s still learning his way around the kitchen, but he always seems to surprise me with the stuff he comes up with. Andrew made a mac and cheese with roasted lemon juice and red onions. I was hesitant as well, but it was freaking amazing! It was the best dish he has made – hands down!

Sandwiches are always fun to make, especially when your kitchen is stocked up.

Exhibit A:

Sometime last year, we had some veggies that were close to expiring and so we made fajitas. We took out some chicken and beef from the freezer, defrosted them, marinated them, and then cooked them on the barbeque.





Lucy and I felt like experimenting with the rice and tried to infuse some flavour with cumin, broth, and tomato sauce. The rice turned out soggy and bland. Fail.





Everyone had their own plate and put their own fajitas together.

Surprisingly, there were still leftover beef, chicken and some of the condiments the next day. But what happens when you run out of tortillas? Make subs of course! I'm not sure what kind of bread this was, but it was probably the frozen stuff we bought at Costco. Anyway, the bread was toasted and then filled with pâté, chicken, beef, cheese, red onions, dijon mustard, cheese, cilantro, red peppers, and a squeeze of lime juice. Cold cuts were added when the chicken and beef from the fajitas ran low.





These subs were more than filling. What an easy lunch in the sweltering summer weather.

Gaspé Trip: Day 7

The family spent most of the day in Quebec City after leaving from Rivière-Ouelle. We spent the last morning of our roadie on driving west. We past the depressingly dark clouds around Rivière-Ouelle and found sunny bright skies in Quebec City. It was a welcome change after the past couple of rainy days. We were all hungry, so we parked in Old Quebec City and searched for lunch.

We found a cute bistro along Rue Saint-Jean. It wasn’t as busy as other restaurants and their menu looked good.

EU had their lasagna. It doesn’t look that great, but this was a classic example of how looks can be deceiving. Although there wasn’t much cheese, the lasagna tasted might fine.

My aunt ordered the grilled salmon salad. She didn’t say much about her dish. I think she would’ve enjoyed lunch much better if there was steamed rice. One of my uncles also got the grilled salmon salad.

Grandma had the duck confit with apricots and mashed potatoes. I tried a few bites and it was pretty good.

Grandma couldn’t finish it all, so she made my uncle a sample plate.

AU and one of my uncles had the steak and fries special. We were all surprised and disappointed at how tiny the steak was. AU was more disappointed when he cut into the well-done steak when he asked for it to be cooked medium-rare. He surprised the waiter when he asked for them to fire up a new steak because it was overcooked. Once he got the new one, he was as happy as can be.