Sze Tan's blog

QotD: Happy Earth Day

What do you do EVERY day to take care of the earth's environment? What could you do more of?

I take public transit on a daily basis and I don't own a car! Moving from Southern California where you pretty much drive EVERYWHERE to Vancouver, a city that has good public transit has been awesome. I can say that it's the best thing I've done in the last year. If I could live in a green home, I would.. one outfitted with solar panels, gray water recycling system, composting, geo-thermal heating and all that good stuff. It will happen one day!

Things that are oh so wrong but tastes so right

Oreo Cakesters

Oreo Cakesters. I bought some and have been eating them.

They taste like evil. Delicious, yummy, addictive evil.

Evil Evil Evil. You know what's more evil.. .Kraft Mac & Cheese in a box. I love drizzling white truffle oil over it. Hahaha.. I am a ghetto foodie.

Which reminds me... I should try out this recipe

I'll let you know how it went :)

Cool things thus far

Life is nutty busy so I've been neglecting this. So... what's new?

I am in the midst of a major software release date, a move to a new place and recovering from a lingering cold. These are the things that are keeping me company right now..

Current reading..

The Birth House: A Novel (P.S.)

A great little novel about life in Nova Scotia in the early 20th century. I'm really enjoying this book.. about halfway through.

Oh by the way, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen was most excellent. I blogged about this in my last post, I think it's got to be the best book I've read this year.

Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch

I also read Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch, picked it up cos I really enjoyed Dai SiJie's other book, Balzac and the Chinese Seamstress... but I have to say, this book isn't quite as good. Nevertheless, it's readable.









On the food front.. we finally got to try out Lumiere's during a special occasion. Be forewarned, it's quite the dining experience.. it took us over 3 hours to go through the Vegetarian menu offering. Very good though. I think however, for the price and type of restaurant it is, there were some unforgivable misses. I expected every dish to be executed perfectly but it wasn't. I can see why they're replacing their head chef with Daniel Boulud. (He's the dude that's famous for his $50 burger) I don't think its a restaurant that you would want to go back again.

Oh by the way, if you're a wannabe foodie like me, you've got to read the following blogs.
French Laundry at Home
Tastespotting

On other good news with food, our new place has a gas stove. OH JOY!!!!! To break it in, I think I'm going to have some friends over and cook up a crazed amount of malaysian nosh.

Ok, time to stop procrastinating and finish packing :)

Books!

In 2007, according to my vox bookshelf, I read about 42 books. I think I may have left off a few that I forgot to post about so I'm gonna make a point to religiously post about books I've read. I'm challenging myself to a 60 book read this year.

Anyways, I recently read the following books:

The Glass Castle: A Memoir

Jeannette Walls

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

Elizabeth Gilbert

The glass castle was very good.. if you like stories about dysfunctional families and that sort of stuff. Eat, love, pray was ok. I think white, middle class, 30 something women would enjoy it, but not this asian, 30 something lesbian.... I guess I just didn't relate.

And on my reading list.... a foodie book, of course :)
'

Choice Cuts: A Savory Selection of Food Writing from Around the World and Throughout History

Mark Kurlansky

Mark Kurlansky is the author of the book "Salt" and "Cod". This is collection of food writing throughout the ages.. it's quite good. I'm halfway through it.

Next on my list..

North Country: A Personal Journey

Howard Frank Mosher

I picked up North Country from the library. It's the author's memoirs of his travel across the US-Canadian border. It seems interesting enough.. but I haven't started it.

Last but not least, our next book club selection is:

Water for Elephants: A Novel

Sara Gruen

It should be good. :) Excited about that one...

Now on to your regular programming...

Eating my way through Vancouver

Another restaurant that we checked out for Dine Out Vancouver was the Watermark at Kits beach.

050722_kitsconcession

The food was exceptionally good and the service pleasant even though they messed up on our order twice. However, they were very apologetic and graciously comp'ed our wine. I started with the West Coast chowder and my dining partner has the Minted Smashed Chick peas. The chowder was great.. not too heavy and a great way to start the meal. For my main, I ordered the Pacific Northwest Bouillabaisse and they were very accommodating to my food allergy and replaced the shrimp. My partner had the salmon on lobster risotto.. nicely cooked.. and the risotto was cooked perfectly.

The desserts were ok, nothing spectacular but very good. The best thing about the restaurant is definitely the view of Kits beach, the main seafood dishes and the great service. We'll definitely have to go back again.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Yr2008

Luck

Gelato? How bout 218 freaking flavours!

On Friday, we met up with our friend and his wife for a spot of tea and dinner. Both of them are born and bred Vancouverites so it was so great to hang out, get the historical low down on various things Vancouver and also talk about the upcoming wedding plans. After dinner, they took us down to La Casa Gelato. It is seriously the most fascinating gelato place I've ever been to.. they have 218 flavours available to pick from, and over 300 revolving flavours.. everything ranging from the rather plain hazelnut chocolate to pear with gorgonzola cheese.. and to my utter delight, durian and jackfruit gelato. OH.. the tastebuds were instantly transported back to childhood hot humid days in Malaysia.

The great thing about La Casa Gelato is that you could try any flavour you want. No questions asked. I tried the pear and gorgonzola cheese, chilli chocolate, durian (of course), jackfruit, longan, passionfruit ... and I forget how many others before settling on a scoop of durian and jackfruit.

If you're ever in Vancouver, go check out La Casa Gelato. And come pick me up on your way there :)

Gastronomical adventures

One of the few notable restaurants we've visited lately...

Salt

First, the SALT tasting room. If you love cheese, and you love wine, you will love Salt. Located in Gastown's historic Blood Alley, it's hidden in the middle of a socioe-conomical dichotomy of sorts that is the Vancouver downtown east side. The reason I say this is that it is a mixed neighbourhood of drugs, million dollar lofts, halfway houses, homeless people and restaurants such as Salt.


Anyways, enough of the commentary... back to the food. SALT is an interesting small plates restaurant that focuses on cheese, wine and chatucherie goods. We were here for Dine Out Vancouver so had a great tasting menu of a 3 course meal for $25. We had the Roast Tomato & Smoked Paprika Soup, the Artisan Cheese plate and I had the Dark Chocolate Mousse w/ Caramel & Raspberry Jam for dessert while my partner had the Trifle with Seasonal Fruit & Sherry-Soaked Sponge Cake. YUM. The cheese we had were a P.E.I Avonlea Cheddar with a side of Cornichons, a UK Stichelton Blue with a balsamic reduction, and a Quebec Chevre (goat cheese) with olives. My favourite, and I was surprised that it was a favourite, was the blue cheese... since I've always found blue cheese to be very overpowering. But this blue cheese was delicious. We paired our meal with a flight of BC wines.. a Quail's gate Chemin Blanc to start with the soup.. a Cedar Creek Pinot Noir with the cheese, and a Quail's gate Late Harvest optima with our dessert. My tastebuds were quite deliriously happy by the end of the night :)

More exciting restaurants later..

Exciting Bus Tales Part 3

Today on the 98 B Line coming back from work, the bus stopped at Airport Station for almost 10 minutes because some guy decided that it smelled funny in the back. The B Line bus is one of those double buses with an accordion middle.. like so:

250px-B-Line-R8063

I like to sit in the accordion middle bit cos it twists and turns like the magic teacups at Disneyland and well, it makes my otherwise boring commute a little more fun :) Besides, not many people like to sit there so you get more space. I think its cos most people get motion sickness.. which reminds me of that one other time when someone threw up right next to me in the accordion section. Yeah. Please, dude.. don't sit in the middle if you're gonna get sick, you dumb ass.

So the last time we stopped at Airport Station (yes, exciting), the bus driver had to throw this weird saw dust stuff on some vomit and sweep it up. That was the same day I lost my bookmark cos right as he was sweeping the puke up, my bookmark fell into the vomit :(

Anyways, back to my story, some dude today decides that it smelled like carbon monoxide gas in the back section of the bus. He made the bus driver stop and walk all the way to the back of the bus to sniff around. So I'm sitting in the accordion as always across from two colleagues from work, and everyone's giggling cos it definitely smells nasty back there.. like someone ate lots of broccoli and cabbage a couple days ago, is suffering from bad gas and decided to fart all over. The guy kept saying that it smelled like burning engine oil or carbon monoxide gas.. till someone blurts out and yells.. "It stinks, yes, but like FOOOOOOOOOOOOD!" .. Yes, say it like I typed it. In which the entire bus then erupts in laughter.

We then went on our merry way.

New Loves

Two things that I've discovered that seems to be only available in Canada the past few months that I freaking love are..

1. All-dressed chips                               

Alldressed

2. Ketchup chips

Ketchup

Holy crap, I'm addicted.