valentine's day

I'm excited! We have reservations at Sushi Kaji for Valentine's day!

My coworker recommended it to me & I figure it was the perfect place to have Valentine's dinner seeing as how we both completely love off sushi. =P Plus I won a free $200 dinner for 2 at work, so I'll finally get an opportunity to cash it in!

Keep an eye out for the upcoming restaurant review!

chinese new year

Happy Chinese New Year to all our readers! Gung hey fat chau!

It's the year of the Ox for anyone that doesn't already know that.

chinese new year dinner

Last night we had dinner to celebrate Chinese New Year. Although Chinese New Year isn't until Monday - Saturday fit everyone's schedule a bit better, so we decided to have it on the weekend.

So much meat! Roast duck (pictured above), sweet & sour port (pictured below), chicken, bar-b-q pork, abalone and pig's feet. Definitely no vegetarians in our families. My mom said that for Chinese New Year it's almost a rule to have lots of meat.

This morning I awoke and my mom was already prepping to make one of my favourites - turnip cake! It's a pretty lengthy process so I'm glad I also bought a store turnip cake so I could have some for breakfast. It's funny because "turnip cake" sounds so totally unappetizing.

muffie

Before Dave headed back to Ottawa we decided to stop for lunch and since I he had never been there & since I was dying to try a muffin-top I took him to Panera. It was everything I imagined it to be. =) I tried a Pumpkin Spice Muffie (under $2) and it was super tasty and was perfect with the Cafe Mocha I ordered.

I'm totally going to attempt to make these on my own one day.

deep fried taro dim sum

So to futher follow up on my post about the purple yam versus taro root questions - I took a picture of the deep fried taro dim sum dish today while I was dim sum'ing it up with my family.

It's not super purple, but it definitley has a purple tinge.

happy birthday

Happy Birthday to my sis CinnamonKitten!

panera

I finally went to the Panera near Square One!

It's exactly the way it is in New York which is good. And guess what???? They sell MUFFIN-TOPS! Omigoodness!

a follow up to the purple yam

My friend told me that the dim sum dish I was thinking about is made from Taro root, but that there are indeed purple yams out there.

I wonder what purple yam friends (instead of the usual sweet potato fries I love so much) would taste like. =)

purple yams

I was trying to think of what that dim sum we eat is called in English. It's a deep fried purple thing......a yam? taro? I can't remember! I always get them mixed up!

I did find that at least on the internet there is such a thing as a purple yam on wikipedia:
"Discorea alata, called "water yam", "winged yam" and "purple yam", was first cultivated in Southeast Asia. Although not grown in the same quantities as the African yams, it has the largest distribution world-wide of any cultivated yam, being grown in Asia, the Pacific islands, Africa, and the West Indies."

I'm pretty sure this is what I was thinking of. I'll have to take a picture next time I'm at dim sum.

Image from: burntlumpia.typepad.com

stand mixer heaven

One of the first "big" purchases for my kitchen after getting married was the long-dreamt about KitchenAid Stand Mixer Professional Series. I was in love with this thing, but it takes up a lot of room in the kitchen and that's something I just don't have.

Anyhow, yesterday, we decided to finally pull it out and give it a whirl.


Paul, my husband, decided to make his ultra-rich double chocolate cookies (dark chocolate cookies with chunks of white chocolate chips. The mixer definitely made dough-making super easy and fast.



In no time, he was putting trays into the oven! Since I was busy making my own cookies, I barely had time to take a photo before he popped them into the oven.


The last time we made these, Paul made the dough using an ancient hand mixer and we definitely noticed a difference in how the cookies turned out. They looked very consistent and super professional - completely with the pretty crackling on the top!


In the meantime, I was busy trying a recipe I've always wanted to try but never have - Snickerdoodles. I think I've always wanted to make these cookies just so I could say the name.

Again, the stand mixer made mixing the ingredients a breeze.


I love the part of rolling the cookie balls in cinnamon sugar before baking - it smells delicious! From now on, I'm sprinkling cinnamon sugar on everything!


The final result was even better than I had hoped, considering if was my first attempt. They cookies are crispy at the edges and soft and moist in the centre, making for one of my favourite cookies to make to date! (Ok, so I've only made like 3-4 types of cookies ever, but this is still on top!)

happy new year

Happy New Year to all our readers out there!