Lunch Date

top left: white shoes weather

top right: sandwiches from meat & bread

bot. left: tomato braised veal, lemon caper, fried onions + pea shoots (sandwich #2: meatball - a little spicy but not over-poweringly so!)

bot. right: flowers <3

It was a good Tuesday.

Met up with D and sat outside Uprising drinking iced tea + hot chocolate + eating our sandwiches in secrecy.

I can honestly say Meat & Bread is currently one my favourite places. Walking in at lunch, it's bustling and unpretentious. Possibly the cutest sandwich spot around with a stellar menu. Oh. And the cute sandwich-assembly-line-worker-formation doesn't hurt either.

But the sandwiches are the real stars - I mean sure, it's a lot of meat but it doesn't make you feel gross afterward nor do you feel super thirsty. The ciabatta was awesome and not chewy like some other versions I've had before (elsewhere, obviously).

D and I both agreed we'd eat more sandwiches soon! Mmm.

Meat & Bread is located on the corner of Hastings/Cambie. 
370 Cambie to be exact. (Next to PUB 340). 
 

Food Overdose

faubourg (pronounced: fo-boor): traditional baguette + pastries + chicken salad sandwich

triple chocolate tower from faubourg

lemon tart from faubourg (it was like an inside out lemon meringue tart)

cheese fondue... so much cheese!

bailey's irish cream truffle pops from sweet e's

Ugh. So much food.

Homework is barely done. So, so full.

I think a run + homework time is desperately needed.

January Pt. 1: Pictorial Depictions of Happiness

mid-day individual kimchi hot pots + presents at pearl castle

milk soft serve + green tea soft serve from mazazu crepe at aberdeen

hot pot at cattle hot pot

bird studs from nise

Corniness

As much as a beautiful shoe, a quirky print, or a buttery soft bag can complete my outfit and make my day --- a soup hits the spot when I've had a long week. Trust me. It has been a long week and I can't wait for a break.

As much as I wanted to make Sophie Dahl's Tom Kha, I lack the proper equipment (food processor) to do so. I managed to borrow my grandma's blender for soup making. There's something unsurpassed about making soup in the fall - especially when it's a simple one.

Toumorokoshi no kurīmusūpu (Japanese Corn Cream Soup)
Adapted from The Well-Seasoned Cook
3 ears of corn, shucked, de-cobbed (is that a word?)
1 tablespoon of unsalted porn butter
1 tablespoon of canola oil
(Roughly) 1 cup of low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup of water
3 stems (?) of green onions, white part only, chopped
1 small onion, diced (roughly)
1 small avocado, sliced
Salt, to taste


In a semi-large sauce pan, melt butter and add canola oil over medium-low heat. Add diced onions and the chopped green onions and cook on medium heat until translucent. Add corn. Cook until corn kernels have cooked through, salt to taste, add broth and water, simmer for a bit. Add mixture to blender and blend until well-blended. Taste mixture, add salt if needed.

Because I didn't have any milk or cream on hand, I added sliced avocados for creaminess.

Autumn Days

(The weather is cooler, so my mind is on cooking lately). I've seen Sophie Dahl's cookbook but there was something about it that didn't intrigue. But having seen the snippets of the 6-part series, it kinda makes me pay a little more attention to The Delicious Miss Dahl.

I know there's a lot of blah blah about how she's this and that and not this and that. I don't think it's necessary to discuss this here. So, let's just enjoy her charm and wit.  The woman is a poet (but whatdoya expect when her grand-dad is Roald Dahl?). 

"total over-kill, like walking into a bordello." -- in regards to adding too much rosewater.

Oh. And I was able to find the first episode on some streaming site.
(The show has a pretty good soundtrack. Seriously).

Sunday Feasts

via jme collection

I'm not the first to be enamored by the JME food collection - the packaging is adorable and simple. Hopefully one of the grocery stores will carry the line and I can buy some beautifully packaged sea salt and hot pepper jelly... because I can't justify $70 for shipping from the UK just to have a nicely decorated pantry.

I could use some fig jam too - to recreate that amazing baguette I had at Little Nest. Mmm.

(Yeah. I'm such a sucker for packaging).

The So Very Famous Tomato Sauce

If you read cooking blogs at all, I'm sure you know that most food bloggers are quite taken by the tomato-onion-butter-sauce. I don't know if I really need to talk about how wonderful it is - I think you need to make it and stuff your face.

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions
(which I adapted from Smitten Kitchen who adapted it from Marcela Hazan)
28 oz of whole peeled tomatoes from a can
14 oz of crushed tomatoes (left over from another cooking adventure the night before)
"5 tablespoons" of butter (I don't think I actually used 5, probably less)
1 medium onion, halved
6 packages of raw Plantation sugar
black pepper to taste

Place tomatoes (whole and crushed) into the pot, with halved onion and add about 1 table spoon of butter on medium heat. I like letting the butter melt and I stir it in with the spoon - I let it simmer on low-medium heat. Stirring every so often. I add 3 packages of sugar (stolen from Starbucks - found at my grandma's... cos I didn't steal it. Just saying) and stir some more, add another 1.5 table spoons of butter. Repeat about 20 minutes in (sugar and butter), cover and simmer until sauce has thickened. After, discard onion and mix with pasta.

I usually use penne or something spirally but I saw the Zita No 10 and thought it was awesome. No, I was wrong. It wasn't and the longness of the pasta didn't work well with the sauce. So I just took a pair of scissors and cut them into a shorter pasta.

Summer + Food

zucchini with fresh ground pepper and chili flakes + scrambled eggs at home

Summer usually means that there are a lot of adventures with friends and most adventures involves food. This summer was a little less about adventures of that nature... but I managed to eat a lot of zucchini and drank a lot of soup. I also ate a delicious baguette. Mmm. 

prosciutto baguette with prosciutto, cambozola, fig jam and arugala from Little Nest

On a lunch break from work, I headed over to Little Nest. It fulfills my occasional baby-fever. The place is always packed with babies and toddlers. Needless to say, you really have to be in the mood for that. I got a whole wheat baguette with prosciutto, cambozola, fig jam & arugala. The picture does not do it any justice. It was deliciousness wrapped in wax paper and twine. (Also: very good value for how much I got. I ate it in 2 parts).