Pre-Christmas Baking

Earlier this week, we invited our younger cousins over to do some pre-Christmas baking. Lucy had two recipes in her recipe box that I wanted to make/wanted the kids to make (with supervision, of course); shortbread and chocolate chip cookies. Both recipes are simple and quick to make – perfect for kids around the age of 10 to make by themselves. Just be there to make sure they measure ingredients properly, mix thoroughly, pre-heat the oven, etc.  

I think kids should be involved in the kitchen really early (5 years +), even if they don’t want to cook/bake. Sadly, it’s a huge life skill that a lot of people lack these days.


Lucy and I are huge fans of Anna Olson. Her recipes not only produce really tasty treats, and always turn out really well. I mean, you’d think that recipes would always turn out when you follow them – which we actually do (sometimes), but that’s not always the case.

Kimchi Teaser

A few weeks back, Lucy made kimchi from scratch! Lucy will go into more details later, but for now, here's a glimpse into our (multiple) kimchi dinners.







Stay tuned for recipes!

Random Tidbits: Part 5 - Camping at Sandbanks

Here's part 5.

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Every year, our family does a camping trip and last year we went to Sandbanks. Now, when our family goes camping it’s not exactly what you think. We don’t backpack and hike to find a campsite, nor do we portage as a family. Nope. We do get a campsite, cook over the campfire, roast marshmallows over the embers, sleep in tents – although some family members do bring along their air mattresses… psh! Our family does go to the beach for the day to swim, tan, play catch in the water, etc. But where everything changes is what we bring to eat. Other than the Canadian breakfast options (bread, eggs, bacon, breakfast sausages, coffee, and hot chocolate), our meals were purely Chinese/Cambodian based; rice, marinated pork and chicken, bok la hong, lap, gapit pao, etc. We'd have the same things to eat from day 2 to the last day... anyway, that's another story for another time.

When we went to the beach, while camping at Sandbanks, we brought along lunch and other snacks. You know, the typical lunch and snacks you’d expect when you go camping? Like gapit pao, rice, sliced cucumbers, bread, marinated pork and chicken, bok la hong, and pickled carrots and daikon. Yeah, those typical Canadian camping food options.

So what did Lucy enjoy when we were on the beach? A gross sandwich made of gapit pao and rice in a hot dog bun. Wow. To be fair, I love my share of trashy foods as well, like eating mock chicken (the stuff with the bright orange stuff on the outside) sandwiches on white processed bread with hot chocolate. I’m not ashamed of my guilty pleasure, but Lucy, I’m not so sure. I think she forgot about her lunch on the beach.

When I showed her these pictures, she couldn’t believe that she ate this for lunch. She ended up eating 3 or 4 of these. Yikes.

Hmm… I think I should explain what gapit pao is. To be honest, I don’t even know how to spell it. It’s a Cambodian dish made of shrimp paste, onions, ground pork, red curry paste, kaffir lime leaves and coconut milk. You eat with rice and/or vegetables like sliced cucumbers.

When it was time to go back home, half of the family went to Toronto (since Sandbanks is almost half-way between Ottawa and Toronto), while the rest of us went back home to Ottawa. On our way home, we dropped by Kingston for lunch. My dad was craving his favourite pizza. Guess what his favourite pizza is?

Nope.

Wrong.

This is going nowhere. Let me just tell you. My dad’s favourite pizza is made by A&P (now called Metro). The thing he loves about it is the thin crust, the amount of cheese and – the most important thing – how cheap the pizza is.

With 7 mouths to feed, two of their family sized pizzas were more than enough to feed us. At $12.99 for a family sized pizza with 3 toppings (on each pizza), I have to admit, it is cheap. We enjoyed the pizzas with some pop and junk food by the waterfront on a warm and very sunny Kingston day.

The first pizza was half pineapple and bacon crumble (bleh) and half Italian sausage.

The second pizza was half pepperoni and green peppers and pepperoni and bacon crumble. I really liked their tomato sauce. It was very simple with chunks of tomatoes. Other than that, it was a solid meh-pizza.

Random Tidbits: Part 4 - Great ByWard Market Restaurants

I'm still cleaning out my external hard drive and found a few more pictures. These two meals were from last summer. Shall we begin?

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Totoya is located on Dalhousie and Clarence in the ByWard Market. This cute Japanese restaurant is run by a Japanese family and is my favourite Japanese restaurant in Ottawa. I haven’t been there in a while, though, so I’m not sure if the quality is still there. The restaurant is a bit on the pricier side, but I’m sure the reason is to counter the high downtown costs. 

My favourite dish is their agedashi tofu. It’s so crispy on the outside! Be careful of the molten-hot tofu on the inside. The dashi and dancing bonito flakes round out the dish. It’s so good!

Lucy, Jimmy and I were there for an early dinner. We didn’t want to order too many things because we didn’t want to go on a splurge that night. So we ordered two other small dishes to share and two larger dishes to fill us up.

One of the smaller dishes we decided to try was Totoya’s spicy chicken kaarage. Think of really juicy popcorn chicken with a spicy sauce. If it weren’t so expensive (I think it as $8 for this), we would’ve ordered another plate. The photo doesn't show the whole serving. I took this picture after a few were eaten, but at the same time, we weren’t given a lot to begin with.

The other smaller item we shared was the spicy salmon rolls.

Jimmy had the tempura dinner set. We were all quite surprised at how generous they were with the tempura. There were 3 pieces of shrimp tempura with a handful of vegetable tempura. This dinner set included rice and miso soup.

Lucy and I shared the katsudon (fried pork cutlets on rice). I was pleasantly surprised at how good this was. The tonkatsu was served on top of scrambled eggs and onions, with a liberal drizzle of a sweet soy sauce, and rice. I liked how the sweet and salty components of the dish never got boring.

To finish off our dinner, we went with the smooth green tea ice cream. I really enjoyed how the tea was stronger than most other matcha ice creams out there. I wish the serving sizes at Totoya were a bit larger, especially for the prices they charge. The quality is there, and I'd still go again if everything is the same, but I think if they either lower their prices or give a bit more, they will gain more local customers.

Another favourite downtown restaurant is Blue Cactus. It’s also located in the ByWard Market. Lucy has gushed about their ribs for years. One night, I finally agreed to join her for dinner to try Blue Cactus’ ribs. Fortunately, we went for an early dinner so we didn't have to fight the normal tourist rush.

I had their virgin strawberry daiquiri. I remember it was fruity and very good. 

Although we would be more than full without an appetizer, both of us eyed their Cajun seasoned calamari. The lightly battered calamari were perfectly cooked. I don’t think I’ve had properly cooked calamari before this. The tender babies weren’t very heavy, which made it even better!

Whether eaten dipped in the sauce, with a squirt of lemon juice, or even by themselves the fried calamari appys were amazing!

We both ordered the ribs because Lucy didn’t want to share. The ribs looked promising at first, but I felt that there wasn’t enough flavour without extra BBQ sauce and the meat was a tad dry. I liked how tender they were though. I thought that some of the ribs we had at the ribfest, earlier in the summer, were more enjoyable. Lucy definitely over-hyped the ribs, though she did say that our ribs that night weren't as good as she had had. 

I was far more impressed with the appetizer than I was with the ribs. The daiquiri was delicious, too! To put it lightly, I think Blue Cactus is more of a restaurant for tourists. But Blue Cactus is great for a get together with the girls, since it’s too noisy for a date night. I’d definitely go back, but only for appetizers and drinks.

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Totoya
297 Dalhousie St
Ottawa, ON
613-241-2224


Blue Cactus
2 ByWard Market Square
Ottawa, ON
613-241-7061