Vietnamnese Banh mi!

Love it when there are nice vietnamnese places around work.  This was my lunch:

I accidentally left the rolls at work, which would become my snack for tomorrow :). Life is good!

Horten and his 'Picasso' portrait

During pickup at his school, HT showed me his latest artwork :)

Haha he is such a funny boy!

Hovan has no school oops!

I have not posted for the longest time so this is more like a tryout to see if my blog still works!

Poor HV has no school due to the ministry closing down that temp church site.  He spent a day with grandma before heading to public JK the next day poor baby!

He seems to be doing ok?  i hopr he wasnt bored.

Not bad for doing homework eh? :)

Heading to Iceland

It was such a rush and did not have enough time to pack but here we are! Finally going to the land of saga :)




you can see the kids happily pulling the suitcases (which did not last long)

Location:Toronto Airport

Vince's Birthday Dinner 2012

I was lucky that a few students could not come for their piano lessons today so that i could prepare a surprise dinner for my hubby this year. Not on his birthday but the day before.... Oh well can't complain coz i don't have the luxury to take time off anymore from teaching. Getting so busy lately!

The theme is Japanese this year and as usual, I prepared too much food that 6 people could be fed! I was lucky to have made arrangements that we could have candlelight dinner alone sans kids :)

I made a menu for him hehe.... Nothing fancy but all Japanese...

I had to start teaching at 3pm so i rushed out at noon to get everything... When i came back it was already 1:45pm! Back into 'high stress' mode trying to get everything done plus a new student starting at my studio today that I had to prepare for. My kitchen at 3pm was like a tornado!!

I called hub to tell him to drop off HT and come home for dinner at 6pm, when he was at school with HT. He sounded surprised :)

After my last student finishing at 7pm, I did had to get his help to fry the tempuras so we could only start our dinner at 7:45pm. Need to manage my time better next time!

Onto the food....

Tako Wasa from Hokkaido.

His comments: THIS is the real deal! It really is. Very Wasabi, very flavorful. But a little really goes a log way. Should have portion it smaller for each.

We opened a bottle of Izumi sake which is brewed in GTA. It was only so-so.....

Three types of oysters...

There were Blue point, Virginica and Beach Angel. I think the winner was beach angel and the weakest was blue point (also the cheapest)!

Miso soup (organic white and red blend) with wakame, tofu and okra. My typical soup.... He loved it :)

Chawan mushi with crab meat and mushrooms. Again my typical dish so no surprised but i sneaked in some chived minced fish and Vince thought was a nice touch!

THE Sashimi platter!

Ok i do not have to make this :). There were organic salmon from Ireland, Torched tai, Ika 'thick' somen, scallops from hokkaido, Yellowtail from Japan, hirame, sweet shrimp. It was quite a lot and we could not finish all. I think vince is packing his 'chirashi' lunch for tomorrow in the kitchen now haha

How can you have sashimi without REAL wasabi? :)

Tempura platter with giant shrimp, squid, lotus root, sweet purple yam, burdock and carrot.

Served with homemade tsuyu and grated daikon

To finish off, we had some Japanese mountain rice.

We finished our dinner at 8:40pm and picked up the emperors after. Although it was short, i think his satisfactory level is higher than eating outside, which you only get a dinky amount of food and had to stress about parking and so on..... I am dead tired though and i left all the cleanup for him to do LOL!

Happy Birthday old geek!

Sprungli's luxembergerli vs Laduree's macaron

This is what i wanted to do when i transitted thru Zurich and Paris during my trip to Nepal back in 2011, but could not find a Laduree stall at CDG. Luckily my friend needed to goto Europe for a business trip and offered to bring BOTH goodies back! I was so excited! Really liked luxembergerli when I had it last November so was really eagar to see the difference.

Look at the huge Laduree box! This one can sit 40 of them!

Here is my collection of luxembergerli from Sprungli (left) and macaron (right) from Laduree! So many eh!! Thanks so much to my friend! Although they are so fragile that some of them broke but that is ok! I am after the taste, not their looks :)

Look at the size difference between luxem and macaron! I could not really taste what flavor it was on the left but the macaron is orange blossom

This is orange blossom macaron... Very fragrant! But my hubby thought it was too fragrant.... I guess this flavor is not on top of my list...

I have rearranged the remainder and see the size difference again. See I still have a lot left!

Here are the salted caramel! Totally looking forward to them! The luxembergerli has salt on the shell but macaron is more subtle.... Which one is better?

The Luxembergerli version is nice, but I think it has lost a lot of its flavors already after a few days out. Also the filling is caramel cream, which makes it just 'meh' for me.

It is true that Laduree's macaron is sweeter, but the caramel filling is very complex and it is the kind I like! The shells are too thin though for me...

The left is raspberry luxembergerli and right is rose cream macaron

The rose cream is very fragrant again, but cant say i am too wow'ed by it.

Here are the raspberries side by side. Lots more coloring on the luxembergerli!

Look at the inside of luxembergerli! It actually has a jam center! But i feel that it is a bit over powering.... And somehow too too sweet for me.

The raspberry macaron is more subtle with flavors, less sweet and clearly the winner!

The pistachio macaron is pretty good, very nutty! But I think I prefer the luxembergerli version that i remember from November 2011. Wish i have one to try this time around!

Blackcurrent and violet macaron. A bit too sweet and strong.... Can do without

Chocolate face-off! The luxembergerli version is just plain chocolate.... But the macaron version is really more complex! Again i prefer the Laduree version

Lemon luxembergerli.... Meh!

Vanilla luxembergerli .... Okay i feel that if luxembergerli is on day 1 then it should be better... Feel that it is not too fair to compare Day 4 luxembergerli to Day 2 macaron...

Coffee luxembergerli.... Vince did not think it was that great.... Again i think it could be better if it is on Day 1.

What is my verdict?

Size: Luxembergerli
Much prefer smaller size! Macaron is waaay too big for me!

Texture: Luxembergerli
I do prefer the tougher shell there and when it was on Day 1, it still feels soft inside but slightly crunchy. I think the macaron is a bit too dense to my liking

Shell: Luxembergerli
i prefer the flavor in luxembergerli coz diff shell has diff flavor. Too bad i cannot taste the same at this batch but last November, it really had the diff taste at each shell! Looking forward to try that again soon.

Nose: Both are fine. They both smell similar

Filling: Laduree
It is definitely more complex and fine... Obviously with secret ingredients and techniques. Luxembergerli I found is more down to earth with the taste but not as fine and detailed like Laduree.

There you have it! I am glad i finally got to do the taste test! I am gonna put the remainder the the freezer and see if they would hold up like the ones i made :)

Visit to Dondon Izakaya

There is a new izakaya in town! It is called Dondon (means more in Japanese). It is on the 2nd floor though at Dundas and Bay so I wonder how well they will do.

I called their number at around lunch and was told that they do not take same-day reservation. I wonder why that is? But I guess they are still at their soft opening stage so they wanna limit the amount of people who go there. We took our chance and still went downtown and see whether it would worth a visit on a Saturday night.

There is about 5 half-flights of stairs to get to Dondon. But they do have an elevator as well. I did not realize it is so close to Kenzo the ramen place and Japango! Their entrance has a drum which they would hit to announce when every visitor comes. Kinda cool but also LOUD....

They must have spent a lot to decorate the room coz it looked very nice. I did not take a photo from outside but it looked quite stunning with all the sake tub. I still think it would be better to have the restaurant on ground level though....

Vince ordered a small bottle of unfiltered sake （東西雪娘）and I ordered a 3 oz glass of Takara umeshu. I kinda like how Fin presented the sake in a nice Japanese style holder than a cold looking metal one used here :P

They have their menu stapled on photocopies right now, like when we visited Juu Izakaya a long while ago. I hope they have a decent printed version soon!

Our first round of food is below:

Edamame with friends $3
Soymilk tofu with soy skin $4
Takowasa $3.5
Buns wish melt-in-the-mouth pork $8
Yakitori set for $6 (bacon wrapped asparagus, bacon wrapped king mushroom, quail eggs, chicken....but look at the middle piece it was quite burnt, and gizzard)

So far so good. The Soymilk tofu is a signature dish of Daisuke-san from Keiseki Sakura. He is the head chef at Dondon now I believe. The Takowasa is on the small size though. But there is never enough takowasa for me haha!

Vince's unfiltered sake....

I have not had kushiage for some time and here they offer a set which is $12. I find it a bit pricey but you do get a variety of items like cheese, sausage, even cherry tomato here!

The warayaki salmon is pretty good. I find the size of the fish small though so at $11.9 it is not cheap. Though I have to say the quality is good.

The saba is blowtorched by the table, just like Fin Izakaya. I do find the portion small again but the quality of the fish seems to be fresher.

The kitchen is on fire! I think it is pretty entertaining and the room decor is very nice, comfy and welcoming. It has not be overly loud and disturbing for me like the second location of Guu was. OMG I swear I would not walk into the Guu on Bloor anytime soon. That place was too loud for me my ears were ringing for a long time afterwards.

Our second round of food above!

Another yakitori set. Forgot to mention we chose tare for all. We also got their wasabi flavored seaweed chips but I could not taste any wasabi there. I find a bit overly salty but may be it is good to go with beer. We ordered another warayaki dish but this time it was hamachi and was tasty too. It is more expensive thou at $13.9. And the last dish to come was the pickled salmon which was just meh.

We also ordered a bowl of Gyudon but it was a bit dry....so nothing to write home about and it was $5 I believe.

We had the black sesame ice cream to finish off. It is not your usual Hime-brand of black sesame ice cream and it is almost pitch black! Nice sesame flavor but just wish it is a bit less sweet. Also seems like they have pre-scooped them to the bowl so it came a bit hard and hard to dig in at first.

Since Dondon has not had their grand opening yet, there are still things that I believe they could do better. But their service has been pretty good. The menu does not have a lot of items which can fill you up though (the pork bun is pretty small...we did not try their tokyo hotdog though). I think they should include some filling food in the menu because I think my husband felt as though he ate nothing after the meal haha.