week in review

Ok, another new post, still not about Noodle Bar. I will get around to it :P it's just that there's always something new to talk about!

I'll start with last Monday morning. Let me start off by saying, my boss is awesome - boss-some, if you will. He is super smart, creative and just the best boss I'll probably ever have. And to top that off, he bakes! Last Christmas, he gave me and his 2 other immediate underlings a bottle of wine and a loaf of savoury home-made bread each as presents. My co-worker's was made with spinach, pine nut and chevre, and mine was made with bacon, olive and gruyere (SO good - wish I had a loaf right now).

This is his photo, not mine!


What did we get him for Christmas? A cupcake recipe book! LOL. Once in awhile he makes something from it and brings it in for us. Once in awhile, we find a completely different recipe online, and ask him to make that, too. So the other week, my co-worker requested this recipe. And of course, because my boss is awesome, he obliged and brought them in last Monday.

Again, this photo was taken by him and belongs to him.


Amazing right?! First he made the tiny pumpkin pies (tartlets, I guess), then baked them into the centre of cream cheese (!) vanilla cupcakes, then topped them with an AMAZING cinnamon cream cheese (again!) buttercream (no, not cream cheese frosting - buttercream flavoured with cream cheese!)

It was so, so delightful. I'm not very big on frosting, but this frosting was amazing, it tasted like Cinnabon! Having been warned of the ridiculous cream cheese content, I only had half of one, but oh what a half.

More food at work on Tuesday, though this story is sans photo. Once in awhile, maybe every month or two, someone on our floor will order butter chicken roti for anyone who's in. On Tuesday, we had a fairly significant shuffle of desks which left a few people disgruntled. To appease this, we were told that we'd be ordering roti that day, and that it would be on the agency's bill. Sweetness! When our designated roti-order guy called out, "Which place, Island Foods or Gandhi?" I said "Gandhi!" because I think it's so much tastier. I find Islands Foods' roti kind of dry and the flavour is more West Indian, but Gandhi's is so tender, rich and definitely East Indian in flavour, with HUGE portions. I always eat half and then have the second half for lunch the next day. If you're ever in Toronto and want roti, I personally think Gandhi is the place to go.

On Thursday, my co-worker notified me of the all-important news that Blushberry had introduced a new flavour - NUTELLA! I think it's safe to say that her and I are known in the office for our frequent frozen yogurt trips. Ever since Blushberry opened across the street, we've been regulars, and we always find deals on teambuy (like getting a $25 gift card for just $5 - hellz yeah). Anyway, I announced the news to the rest of the agency and at 3 pm led a troupe of about 10 of us across the street to sample the new flavour. I have to say, it's pretty good, but not really worth the hype, haha. It still tastes like frozen yogurt, but it does have that strong hint of Nutella. I had one bite and the chocolatey-hazelnut flavour totally came through, but after adding chocolate chips as my topping, it just ended up tasting like regular chocolate frozen yogurt. I still liked it a lot, but I guess others were expecting something else. One of my co-workers who'd never been to Blushberry before said, "It's sour!" and I had to remind him that even though it's "Nutella", it's not ice cream, it's still frozen yogurt -and yogurt is sour! :P

Again, not my photo - taken from Blushberry's facebook page


Now to switch gears from food to bellydance. On Friday, I danced at a bellydance gala in Burlington with the proceeds of the show going to Women's Education and Literacy in Nepal (WELNepal). It was actually a gala featuring American Tribal Style bellydance (a fusion style that blends flamenco, Indian, African and other dance styles with elements of traditional Oriental bellydance). The special guest was the creator of this modern style of dance, Carolena Nericcio, who also taught workshops at the studio over the weekend. Our troupe performed one number as a short Oriental interlude between all the ATS performers. It was fun and sort of a quick in-and-out for me as I didn't stick around to watch the whole show. But I really love the fact that so many of the dance opportunities I get (like the breast cancer fundraiser last week) help raise funds for important causes. I love that somehow, in whatever small way, my dancing contributes to making the world a better place!

Ok, this post has gotten a lot longer than I thought it would, and I still didn't get to the food I had this weekend. Perhaps I should blog more often :P I'll have to play catch-up again. More later.

a friday

I know I said my next post would be about Noodle Bar, but I had a pretty eventful Friday in terms of food and bellydance, so I thought I'd blog about that first.

I'll start with my day at work. Unfortunately, it was the last day for one of our cherished IT peeps, affectionately known as Big Ben. At around noon, a page went through the agency telling us to come down to IT to witness history. Of course, I had to see what was going on, and when I came, this is what I saw:

A meal fit for a king! Check out Ben's menu, ordered as a special surprise from Dangerous Dan's Diner:

Stats on that burger? A 24 oz. patty with a quarter pound (omg) of cheese, a quarter pound (double omg) of bacon, AND 2 fried eggs!

Umm, yeah, "dangerous" indeed! Some day when I'm feeling really gluttonous, I'd love to have some Dangerous Dan's myself. I mean, I know I like cheeseburgers with fried eggs on top (they served them at the late night bar when we were on vacation in Jamaica), and I sooo need to try a deep fried Mars bar!

Anyway, I'll miss Ben, and I hope he enjoyed that awesome meal.

Moving on to Friday evening, I left work a little early to get glammed up for the Party in Pink, an annual women-only party that raises money for breast cancer. The theme this year was Indiana Jones, so in addition to some eye candy in the form of buff guys dressed as Indy, they also had a few of us bellydancers around to add to the exotic feel.

As guests arrived at the Burlington Holiday Inn's lobby and got registered with their tickets, bongo drummers played some rhythms while we danced and mingled, warming up the ladies for the night of partying ahead. It was fun, and I got to wear my new bedlah!

After doing my bit at the party, Will came to pick me up and take me for dinner. I was in the mood for one of our fave go-to spots in Bronte, Sweet Smoke. The BBQ gets good feedback on Chowhound, and even better, the owner's (or chef's, can't remember off the top of my head) wife is a pastry chef and does the desserts, so the desserts are legit. I'm usually too full to get dessert, but if I do, the Cake & Shake is the bomb (and adorable).

My pulled pork sammie on a sesame seed bun

Will's pulled pork platter with creamy cole slaw & "iron kettle cowboy" beans

Of course, we discovered this summer that Will is really good at making pulled pork himself in his slow cooker, but when an unplanned craving for pulled pork presents itself, Sweet Smoke is the place to go! (Random side note: as we were finishing up, Mike Bullard came in with 3 friends.)

Now, I did save room for dessert that night, but feeling fairly gluttonous, I opted to hit the nearby Tim Horton's for Cold Stone. I sampled their seasonal pumpkin flavour but one spoonful of it was enough for me (pretty overwhelming, don't know how you could eat a whole cupful of it - maybe if you REALLY like pumpkin/pumpkin spice). Instead, I went for the Cake Batter with Skor bits and cookie dough mixed in.

I have to go back in time for a moment and tell the story of my first time having Cold Stone. The year was 2003 and my family was on an August vacation in California. Relatives had taken us to Palm Springs for a few days, and we were having dinner at a Mexican restaurant a short walk from our hotel (side note: this was the first time I'd had authentic Mexican and I loved it, I remember being blown away by the refried beans). All through dinner, my parents and relatives were boringly chatting away and catching up, so my brother and I were kept entertained by the restaurant's TVs, set to a live broadcast of the Miss Teen USA pageant that was happening at another nearby hotel.

By the time the contestants had been cut down to the final 5 or whatnot, we'd long since finished dinner and the adults were still chatting away. My brother and I were now bored of the pageant, having exhausted all our snarky commentary, and our thoughts drifted to dessert (as our thoughts often do - genetically inherited sweet tooth). We'd passed by a Cold Stone Creamery on the way to the restaurant, which had recently been featured on an episode of Unwrapped since the concept was still fairly new at the time. As a budding foodie, I wanted to go badly. We asked our parents for some money and told them we'd meet them back at our hotel.

As we approached the Cold Stone, we could see through the windows that it was sort of crowded. I thought, this place must be really good. We got closer and closer, and when we walked through the doors, we realized that the crowd consisted of overly made-up girls wearing high heels and sashes... it was the Miss Teen USA contestants who hadn't made the cut! Here they were, with the pressure to fit into their gowns and swimsuits finally off (til next pageant season of course), drowning their losses in full fat ice cream with chocolates and candy mixed in. We had just seen these girls get cut on live TV, while mocking them and eating our delicious Mexican dinner. Now we were eating ice cream with them! Way too funny!

Anyway, I remember having some sort of obscenely overdone peanut butter chocolate creation that I couldn't even finish. But despite that, I'll always remember my first Cold Stone experience.

Back to my Friday. Well, as with all good things, it ended with dessert! More later :)

popular demand

Ok, so after some deliberation and the encouragement of a few people (Will, Sari, Robyn), I finally got around to starting a blog. I used to blog quite regularly on livejournal but that was mainly a diary of my personal life and I got out of the habit of posting there when facebook came along. But in the last few months, I've come to realize that there are 2 things that I'm really passionate about, and if I had to tell anyone about myself (what I'm about, what my interests are, what defines me) it would be these 2 things: food & bellydance. So that's what this blog will be about - my adventures in eating and raqs sharqi, in other words, filling my belly, then dancing with it.

So after the past weekend, I gathered some good material for my debut entry! My family and I spent the Thanksgiving long weekend by shopping in New Jersey on Saturday, and seeing the sights in New York City on Sunday. In preparation for our day in NYC, I hit up all my go-to blogs to map out some good places to eat.

Our first stop on Sunday morning was some deli for brunch. I knew it had to be either Carnegie or Katz's. Despite A.Bourdain's reco for Katz's in The Nasty Bits, David Lebovitz's latest NYC post indicated he felt that the quality had faltered as per his recent patronage. So it was just as well that where we parked in the city was closer to Carnegie. From various accounts I knew that we had to get the corned beef and pastrami sandwiches, and that the portions were huge, so we ordered one of each to share between me, my parents and my brother. Our server asked if we wanted anything else, and we were about to get fries but she told us "onion rings are best here" so that's what we got!

pastrami meat mountain!

corned beef meat mountain (and pickles)

Our sandwiches came and as you can see, they were indeed huge! They came with extra slices of rye bread and pickles. Dijon mustard and ketchup bottles were on the table, and we dug in making ourselves sammies. Both corned beef and pastrami were served warm, and it was good to have both to alternate between. I can't decide which I liked better, the corned beef was a bit greasier (in a good way), but they were both really good! We ate til we were crazy full and still had enough leftovers to make 2 sandwiches which we had wrapped up.

nomming

Then we walked over to Momofuku Milk Bar (midtown location). We asked them to reserve some of their infamous Crack Pie for us to pick up later, then bought a half dozen cookies for us to snack on for the day. Based again on a David Lebovitz review, I chose to get 3 Compost Cookies and a Corn Cookie for my parents who love corn. I also took a chance on 2 Chocolate Chip/Cornflake/Marshmallow Cookies.

My parents ate the Corn Cookie right away - my mom always needs dessert, no matter what meal, and usually the same goes for me and my brother but we were still way too full from Carnegie. I did have a bite of the Corn Cookie and it was surprisingly delightful. It was like eating a soft shortbread cookie that sort of tastes bland when you first put it in your mouth, but then explodes with buttered sweet corn flavour (Robyn was spot on later when she said it tasted like Corn Pops - more on that below).

My brother and I didn't dig into the Compost Cookies til we worked up an appetite walking around Central Park. But when we did, ohhh baby. It was chewy, a lot like many bar cookie recipes, and packed with salty/sweet yumminess: chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, pretzels, potato chips, graham crumbs, and coffee grounds. The coffee grounds really make it, adding a really good round depth to the cookie. As soon as I had a bite, I turned to Chris and said, "Oh god. We need to go back and get more" and he nodded with his mouth full, even though we still had 4 cookies to go, LOL. So at the end of the day, before we headed back to our car and back to our hotel in New Jersey, we stopped by Milk Bar again to pick up my Crack Pie order and got a full dozen more of Compost & Corn Cookies. Yay!

in Central Park, about to eat my first Compost Cookie

The next day on the drive back home, we ate our leftover sandwiches from Carnegie, and I think they might have been even better after their overnight stint in the hotel fridge and then our cooler. I kinda wish we'd overdone ourselves and ordered another sandwich just so we'd have had more leftovers! Also on the drive home, my brother and I dove into the Chocolate Chip/Cornflake/Marshmallow Cookies. I guess I was a little apprehensive cuz I don't particularly like marshmallow, but these were awesome!! After my first bite I was like "Damn. We should have gotten more of these too!" It was very reminiscent of a Rice Krispie square and had a bit of a salty kick to it too (though not as overtly as the Compost Cookies).

As for the infamous Crack Pie, I didn't dig into that until tonight. I brought it over to Robyn's to share with her and my cousin Kristine, as well as the Compost and Corn Cookies! After a yummy dinner Robyn made for us (tacos and Spanish rice - so satisfying!) we each had a slice of The Pie. I can understand why they call it Crack... I can see myself mindlessly shoving forkfuls of it into my mouth and not realizing I'd eaten like half the pie. It was indeed a lot like a butter tart, as I'd read from several places, but a little smoother/silkier, enough so that Ate gave it a legitimate comparison to leche flan (or just "flan" if you're not Filipino). And the crushed oatmeal cookie crust gave it a nice contrast with its' crunchy texture and slightly salty flavour (again winning me over with the salty/sweet thing).

Crack Pie!

Ate & Robyn then tried the cookies, and Robyn made the very accurate Corn Cookie/Corn Pops observation. Great! I was so glad to share my Momofuku experience with them :)

momofuku = "lucky peach"

To make things even better, Robyn sent me off with a loot bag of gluten-free beer, peanut butter cookie dough, honey & raisin granola, and a book! LOL! I think I should visit more often!

So, that's my debut entry covering our visit to Carnegie Deli and Momofuku Milk Bar, but I think our dinner spot deserves its' own post. Next time!