Happy Birthday Kathy~

My Birthday Gift to Kathy:
Strawberry Cream Cheese Mousse Cake

Burgoo--- The place to go for comfort food in chilly winter

After a week of crystal clear sky and beautiful sunshine, Vancouver is back to its normal state of light rain with crisp chill breeze. Me and Kathy now have this Friday ritual of going to visit a restaurant that is both edible and affordable for a student budget; yummy food is necessary to celebrate the end of weekdays and the beginning of weekend.

This week, we adventured to a restaurant called Burgoo, right outside of UBC campus on 10th avenue. I heard about this place through various blog entries that mentioned this place for comfort food that warms up your body in chilly winter, by serving hot off the oven stews and soups. What can be better than a cup of hearty hot soup at this time of the year?

By chance all the food we ordered had French Dijon mustard dressing, thus Kathy found it a little too spicy, but after adding the Burgoo stew, the taste balanced out. The sandwich was delicious with a capital D! Same was the stew, with the biscuit sucked in all the juice of the stew, it just melted in my mouth, "Oh Yummy!" Both of us was very happy with the meal. The bill, including tip and taxes came up to $28 for two, which is slightly on the expensive side, but definitely worth every penny.

Burgoo
4434 West 10th. Ave.
604-221-7839

Lamb Dijon--
braised lamb with caramelized onion, chevre and mixed greens with dijon dressing on filone
French Green Salad--
romaine lettuce, little tomatoes, cucumbers and green beans with a maple dijon dressing

Kentucky Burgoo--
slow cooked meats with veggies, tomatoes, cabbage and okra over biscuits

La Petite France

My "La Petite France" is different from Nico's "La Petite France"; mine is really small, a small cafe hidden in the corner of this fusion city, covered by big shiny glass windows instead of bushy greens.

Finding this dessert shop is a truly sweet by-product of my job hunting for my too-much-spare time of last semester of university life, as if I am not busy enough with my thesis writing. They were hiring for counter helper, and attached their website. The pictures of little cakes caught my eyes, and also triggered my "sweet-tooth". I never miss a chance to pay a little visit to every dessert shop I can find. So there I was with my friend Kathy, in a gloomy Friday afternoon hoping the desserts would make my day worthy of all. And, again, beautifully decorated mini cakes never fail me. It always leave me happy with a big smile.

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La Petite France

A French Dessert Café,
10th & Arbutas St., Vancouver

La Citron Créme:
a dome cake with orange jelly coating and orange creme filling


Le Choco-poire:
layers of chocolate mousse, spounge cake, pear chocolate mix and sweet liqueur cake

Me, enjoying a sip of creamy green rooibo tea,
which is a perfect complement of the flavorful cake

Where to shop for the food lovers? Grandville Island is the place to be!

Cherries, fresh cherries. but they are so expensive , I will wait till July, when this red ruby kind of fruit fills up the stands of fruit vender
Bell pepper always reminds me of the opening scene of the "Iron Chef" show, where the Japanese Host bite it as it's the most delicious and juicy food on the planet.

Want something smoking? Try our smoking salmon bits.

Oh~~~ Meat!

Oh~~~ Spicy pepperoni HOT!!!

Strawberry corns? Are they eatable? (?_?)

Dine-out Vancouver: Aurora Bistro

Dine Out Vancouver 2007

Aurora Bistro
2420 Main St., Vancouver

To Begin:
Sablefish Brandade with tomato chutney and daikon, friseé salad

Bison Carpaccio with pickled beets, Parmesan and smoked paprika aioli

Entres:
Vermouth Braised Veal Cheeks, mustard herb spätzle and onion fondant.
wine paring, Mission Hill S.L.C. 2003 Merlot

Roasted White Spring Salmon with lentil and root vegetable ragout, brown butter sabayon and blood orange gastrique

Deserts:
Spiced Blood Orange Crème Brulee with a sesame shortbread


Chocolate Hazelnut Torte with pumpkin chipotle purée


About this meal,

1, the serving portion was quite small, so none of us was full after the meal. I guess the Dine Out menu is really just a teaser to attract people to come back for the full menu. I am generally quite happy with what is served with this $25, although my stomach was crying for more food.

2, I like the appetizers the most, both of them are nicely done, quite refreshing. But I was not sure if I tasted the sable fish (black cod) in the Brandade. They used quite a lot of different kinds of yams and potatoes, and peas. I am not sure if they cheap out because of the budget. The veal was very smooth, and tender, melted in my mouth. The white salmon was less greasy then regular Atlantic salmon, it was finely sealed and caramelized. The deserts were fine, but nothing surprising.

Overall I will give 7.5/10 for this experience. If only they can increase the portion for just a little bit. =P
But I will go back to Aurora Bistro again.

Home Alone Cooking

Day 1: Sweet corn soup with crab meat; organic baby greens with balsamic vinaigrette dressing; pan sealed shark fillet with grilled sliced shitaki mushroom, seasoned with sea salt and black pepper; spinach noodle with peanut butter and soy sauce dressing.

The shark fillet has a rougher texture compare to other fish, I think it's good to slice it and make a soup out of it, just like the traditional way of cooking shark in my hometown. The shark fillet will be sliced and dipped in to a seasoned potato starch coating, then will be thrown into boiling water. The fish slice will be so perfectly cooked that reserves the tenderness of the freshness of the fish. It's one of my favorite dish from my hometown.

Day 2: Sweet and sour potato sauce on snapper fillet saute with diced red bell pepper and Shitaki mushroom

Day 3: slow simmered big-head fish, with rice wine and soy sauce, garlic and star anise.

My sweet tooth fantasy: This is the Copenhagen from the Granville Island. It's my favorite, very moist topping with a crunchy pastry bottom. The one showing in this picture is with Dark Belgian Chocolate filling.

My sweet confection

"Chocolate Dipolmat Cake"

Layers of dark chocolate cake, chocolate custard, puff pastry (puff pastry?! yes!!) and Belgian dark chocolate buttercream.

From Vancouver's best dessert restaurant, True Confections

I just simply LOVE it, so good. I was not sure if puff pastry could go well with the creamy cake, but it turned out to be a teaser of texture. It is a seasonal special for this winter holiday. I will recommend everyone to try it. Especially chocolate and puff pastry lover, you know who you are. ^_^


My Sweet Heaven


Coffee, or tea, or me?

What's the 4-years of study worth?

What does my 4 years' study @ UBC worth of? A picture of my bubbly smiling face on the wall of Buch Tower, among my fellow schoolmates. Yet I've missed out the time to take my graduation photo, thus nobody will know how Lili Mei looked like at the end of her study at UBC. THIS SUCKS!

I am surprised how upset I am feeling right now. Yes, I do know that it is the knowledge I've learned counts the most, but I want my smily face on the wall...... =(

Which country is the most religious of the all?

Here I am @ the middle of nowhere. Technically it's somewhere, called Springfield, of State of Oregon, USA. I found the name of this city cute, I wonder if there's a little boy named Bart Simpson? This is the day one of my seven day tour to Las Vegas. Lili on the way to the famous Sin City with all kinds of fun you can ever imagine.

For the whole day we are on the bus, with our butts glued on the seat. The view on the way is just fine, with crowed cities and lots of traffic going non-stop on the multi-level highway bridges. One thing i noticed is that how US is a religious country with very patriarchal emotion exhibited in many ways. There's lots of churches, crosses, and monuments built for Jesus. When we were passing by a small town of Washington state, on the one side of highway, there's a park with a gigantic Jesus stature on top of a huge pole, looking over the flowing traffic, god like. No wonder they always fight the war under God's name, they truly believed in God just like the Muslims .

Chopsticks, folk, or none?

She open up a box of sushi from the Honor Roll
She skillfully peers off the plastic rapping
She takes out the bamboo chopsticks
She rubs the chopsticks to remove the excessive bamboo pieces
She's ready to dig in.
She holds the chopsticks at the very end
Trying to pick up a piece of roll
She failed.
She pocks the rice
The chopstick pierced through the roll like a needle.
She try to pick it up again
The roll fillings are squeezed out of the rice and seaweed shell
She tries one more time
The tips of the chopsticks cut through the shell
She opens the roll
She sorts the ingredients like a anatomist examining a dead body
The roll now is no longer a roll
It becomes a strip of rice, seaweed
And unknown mushy fillings laying above each other

And I am sitting across to her
Wanting to tell her this real bad, "Please, just use a folk if you don't know how to use chopstick! It's okay to eat Asian food with folk! For God's sake, don't dissect food like this! "


I have no problem with people don't know how to use chopsticks, after all, it took me 18 years to learn how to use it properly. And until now, my grandma still picks on me for my way of holding the chopsticks, because I always have my thumb sticks up. She said as if i am telling everyone i am the number one.
But, I found people sometimes trying too hard to prove themselves can master this Asian could-be weapon. It is used for eating, thus if you are really hungry, pretending know how to use the chopsticks only causes troubles and suppress your appetite. It also causes indescribable pain for people like me, who does not looking at my own plate while I eat.

Learning is a process, not a one day thing. It may look easy, but please learn from someone who really knows. Sometimes I think our ancestor intentionally designed the chopsticks into such simple shape, making it looked so slick and easy to use, yet if not learned, it can make the food on your plate look so gross.

I am bitchy today. =P