Toronto Weekend July 2013: Part 1

We did a road trip to Toronto for our cousin's wedding last weekend. I'll break it up into two parts. Here's 1 of 2.

I tend to get car sick on road trips because three main reasons: empty stomach, being too warm, riding with a heavy-footed driver. Sometimes it's a combination of the three. The latter didn't apply during the trip. To prevent the first two, I made sure to have a snack before we hit the road and have a bottle of water to keep me cool during the trip.

Hot Pot Dinner

After a trip to an asian grocery store, we made hot pot to help clear out our fridge and freezer. We took out some napa cabbage, frozen homemade dumplings and fish cakes, which we had already.


These assorted South Korean fish balls were bought weeks ago when they were on sale.

Enoki mushrooms, napa cabbage, basa fish, cilantro, dumplings, fish balls, and tofu. There were also tofu puffs.

I didn't know tofu could look so good.

Here's a pot of pork soup that we used for the hot pot. It was made of pork neck bones, onions, carrots, and dried scallops. We debated whether we wanted to add the spicy hot pot mix but decided against it.


We all made our own dipping sauces. Mine consisted of Pearl River Bridge's soy sauce, salmon XO sauce from Australia, and hoisin sauce.


A bit of everything was tossed in.


Majority of the hot pot contents were white. I didn't realize it until after I started eating. And I had a glass of sweetened soy milk too. My favourite part of the hot pot was eating the South Korean fish cakes. Our family has grown sick of the floury fish cakes from T&T. These actually tasted good! We didn't have any noodles or rice with dinner -- which was fine.

Dinner was simple but filling.

Over-Ripened Bananas? Banana Pancakes!

We had over-ripened bananas in the kitchen. Every time that happens, Mom eventually makes banana cake with them -- I say eventually because we sometimes pop the bananas in a bag and then into the freezer.

It was getting a bit monotonous so I tried to think of different ways to use it. Using them in a smoothie is overkill. I couldn't really think of anything but pancakes. So I did a quick search three mornings ago and found this recipe from Pastry Affair.

Banana Pancakes
Adapted from Pastry Affair's Banana Cinnamon Pancakes.

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1¼ tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1 large egg
2 large over-ripened bananas, mashed
1½ tsp vanilla extract
1½ tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tbsp butter
1 cup of milk


All of the dry ingredients were mixed together in a large bow. Then I mashed the bananas separately in a bowl with a fork. Once that was done, I added the rest of the ingredients -- except the milk -- into the dry ingredients. I mixed everything together and slowly added the milk. That's it.

Mom was getting ready for work and saw what I was up to in the kitchen.

"What are you making? Banana cake?" She asked.

"No, I'm making banana pancakes." I answered. "It's not the same."

I heated our griddle to medium-high. While that was doing its thing, I melted a little butter and mixed it with a bit of vegetable oil to raise the burning temperature of the butter. We love to cook pancakes with butter in our house.


Personally, I like mine almost deep-fried. When you add enough butter-oil to the hot griddle and then add the pancake batter, it should have a crust. I made a small pancake as a tester. I found the pancake a bit too thick so I added a little more milk to the batter.

I was a disappointed in the taste. I mean, they tasted great, but they just tasted like banana cake. The whole point of making banana pancakes was to avoid making banana cake. I have no idea what I was thinking. Even when I read the recipe again, it screams banana cake to me. Womp womp...


Despite the likeness to banana cake, the pancakes were still tasty. I made a warmed up some peanut butter and mixed it with some syrup to make a peanut butter syrup. It was so good! Andrew melted some semi-sweet chocolate with peanut butter for his pancakes. We washed the pancakes down with some cold milk. I was ready for a nap after that.

Canada Day 2013

This post is dedicated to all my friends and family who spent Canada Day overseas.