I don't eat on Denman enough and I don't know why. After eating at Wild Garlic Bistro on Denman, we walked back to my car and as we passed the windows of every restaurant, I started creating a list of places we had to visit. We'll slowly cross them off my list. I wish I could eat out every other day of the week, but my wallet has more say than my stomach.

At Wild Garlic, I ordered the mussels with the white wine garlic and herbs broth. And so my craze with mussels start. Aaron had a seafood medley, a bouillabaisse. Salmon, cod, prawns, scallops & mussels in saffron, tomato, fennel, broth. Our one critique was that the photos on the wall resembled the art placed around a tacky office in the '80s. But we were here for the food, and the food was good.

Point and shoot camera low on batteries, Blackberry low on batteries... I was forced to use his iPhone.
I guess it does take OK photos.

March 25, 2011. My dad's Christmas present from me and Char. He rock and rolled all night.

I made a comfy case for my Kobo today. Flawed. I used this design (can't remember the site) for my notebook and it worked out well. I did lazy measurements this time, so it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. It still holds my Kobo, which means it's good enough for now. By the way, Fabricland on Marine drive is having an Everything Must Go sale. At least 50% off of everything.

I should always have a camera on me. There are too many great things happening every day to not capture some of it. I know, at the least, I'll have my phone camera. It doesn't have the capabilities of my DSLR, but I guess that gives me more practice at taking better pictures without relying on my Canon to do its magic.

Mike directed me to the site [No Recipes] and I went straight for the Bahn Mi. Mushroom onion pot roast, you're next. While the carrots and daikon were pickling in the fridge, I went for a walk with my camera to pick up pate and bread. 20 years in the same neighborhood and it wasn't until this year that I noticed I have a great view of the Lions. Yep. I really need to stop driving and staring at the roads so often. It's boring and I'm missing out on a lot of Vancouver.

I wanted to eat this so badly that I didn't even bother to focus.
Walking by Dolphin Park.

I tried out the bike route from Marine Drive to River Rock along the Canada Line today. A less than eight minute ride. There really isn't any excuse for me to not take my bike if the weather keeps up. I'm not sure I can ride from my house to downtown any time soon, but I can at least bike from my house to Marine Drive station. And if I'm not a lame ass, maybe each time I do this I'll travel a little further from the last and go to the next stop. Okay, slow down. Become a confident biker first.

I'm cold often, so I turn to soups and drinks to warm me up. Stock-like soups are the best. They're easy for me to make and they get the job done nicely.

Oyster mushrooms, fish cake, ginger, salty egg and siu choy.
Char laughs and says, "You're so Asian" when she sees me make stuff like this.

My Kobo's new friend, London Fogs. Magic bullet can foam!

I think laziness has stopped me from seeing that I can make pub food at home. When I try to do it, I always think, well that was frickin' easy. Why do I pay $8 for it, again? I didn't start making chicken wings at home until a couple of years ago. The closest I got to making it at home was baking frozen wings from Costco. I saw Char pull some sweet potato and yam fries out of the oven last week. Peel, cut, oil, and salt. I can't believe it took me so many years to finally make my first batch of yam fries. Come on, Shannon.
I tipped myself. Next step: Aioli dip.

Gas. 133. My bike and my feet have to be my main means of transportation from now on. It's sad that it took money to decide this since the environment should have been my first motivator. Time to get batteries for my flashers. Watch out, cars! Get ready for another wobbly cyclist!

I'm setting up a couple of goals here since I'm pretty proud of myself for accomplishing the "spontaneous trip somewhere" goal so quickly.

1. Leave my car at home. Bike and walk more.
2. Read more books.

I recently watched Waiting for Superman. A second grader in the movie said he read 150 books the previous year and was set on doing the same the current year. Last year I read 1/4 of a book. Sure, maybe he wasn't reading 150 books the size of The Odyssey, but 150 is impressive even if he read a load of Cam Jansen. I finished my first book of the year with my new Kobo. The Hunger Games. I admit, I only choose it because I heard Jennifer Lawrence was cast as the lead character. She was great in Winter Bone so I was curious. When I reached the end of the book, I was disappointed to see that it's a trilogy. My first reaction: Oh eff. I just picked up the next Twilight series. I enjoyed The Hunger Games and my John Grisham level of reading tells me that it was written well, but the thought that this book would have the same type of following as Twilight scares me. I watched the first two movies (required seven sittings in total to complete the two) because I felt left out of the hooplah, and to be honest... I wanted to know what I was talking about if I was going to diss the movie. To me, the entire series feels like studios trying to make fast and easy money, so not much thought put into production. Sure, the book wasn't well written to begin with (it's worse when you hear it read out loud, check it out here), but that's why writers are hired. I guess it is a challenge for even the best writers to not make "sparkling" sound and look hilarious. I should stop now before I go on a wasteful rant on Twilight. Back on track. I'm going to read ten books this year. HEY! It's better than a quarter.

I still don't know how to control the exposure (possible?) on Photobooth. Photoshopped!

A cooking class with Vikram Vij is an experience I'd recommend to everyone. Nevermind that you know you'll be tasting some of the best Indian food in Vancouver, but you also get to hear his stories of Vij the restaurant and how and why he became a chef. I really do recommend this if you can sit through a room with a few people competing to be Canada's Next Pretentious Food Critic. My stomach and I have never been so angry to hear this comment: "Vikram, the portions are way too big. There's too much food. I can't finish this if there's going to be two other main courses. I wish these were smaller." Go home, and take your mouse-sized stomach with you.

Even if classes aren't your thing, South China Seas (where the class was held) is a great place to get spices and fresh chilis not often found in most grocery stores. I like my food hots, but I'm learning that there's no point in having your food so hot that you won't be able to taste any flavours. Bragging rights are filling, but is it worth it when you're patting down sweat from your face and wiping dripping snot from your nose? Okay, yes, sometimes it's worth it. HOT WINGS!

This isn't new news to most, but here are some derishous and cheap eats on Davie.
First: Pho Central. $6.95 for this bowl of pho. Rare beef and brisket. I've been to two other places downtown that serve pho and they serve it with cooked beef. Yeah, why don't they start serving sushi with brown rice? Oh wait, they do? And it's not bad? Fine. So same goes with cooked beef. It's not bad, but that's not how it's originally served.

Always have a napkin ready. Not for your mouth, but because your nose will run from the steam coming off of the super hot broth.
Two: Stephos. This is a familiar one. $9.95 for a kalamari dinner. I always recommend doing take out. There is a line-up daily and they don't take reservations for parties of 4 or less. The line isn't worth it in my opinion, so phone in the order, and laugh as you walk past the line to pick up your garlic and onion smelling paper bag. On a nice day, take it down to English Bay to eat, but stop by the corner store for a pack of gum. The garlic hovers around your entire body for the day. The least you can do is eliminate it from your mouth.
This same day, Aaron got a Vera's (on Davie too) burger with onion rings. $11.98. I won in value.

April 19th at Nokia Theater.


Ticket purchased. I'm a flight booking away from achieving that one goal.

Never Let Me Go. Grab a cup of tea and watch it. I recommend youtube-ing "cute puppies" after the credits roll.

Last week I went to Canucks game and was really impressed with all the flashy changes to the arena. I haven't been to a game this year, but my last game wasn't too long ago and I don't remember seeing Rogers Arena glow with so much Canucks pride. Green and blue lights were swinging all around the outside of the building. There was even effort to lower banners that held projected graphics when the players were introduced. I guess we deserve some extra show on top of the game since the prices are pretty ridiculous now. K, we didn't have to pay for these tickets and I've never bought a single Canucks ticket in my life... but the person in front of me who bought his tickets, doughnuts, beers, hot dog and pretzel deserved some pizazz.


I took a day trip this Saturday to Victoria to visit my cousin at her new home at UVic. I haven't been to Victoria since high school when I'd take the ferry to Vancouver Island twice a year for those five years. Ah, good times playing Big Two, half asleep on the carpet at seven in the morning. We had lunch at Pagliacci's (McConkey recommendation), wandered through their Chinatown (pff) and then Tour Guide Melissa gave me a walking tour of the UVic campus. We spotted one bunny, which is a good turn out considering they recently shipped a load to Texas and had to... discard the rest.

I put my LivingSocial coupon to work today. $35 for two six-course tasting meals (originally $35 pp) at Mis Trucos. I made reservations through OpenTable, which I found out you can use to gather points to convert to dollars for dining! Downside, the reservation times available through OpenTable aren't necessarily all that's available at the restaurant. The only time slots open when I made the reservations online were 5pm/5:45pm/9pm. I went with 9pm, so Aaron and I had time to kill. We went to The Score on Davie for drinks and wings. $3 wings at The Score on Wednesdays! Anyway, after killing time at the bar, we stumbled to Mis Trucos. When you walk down Davie street you'll notice it right away- it's the one that looks like a house. We walk in to a less than 10% filled restaurant. I guess OpenTable only has a few time slots and doesn't have the restaurant's full reservation time table. If I had phoned it in, we probably could have had dinner at 7pm like regular folk. The food was amazing, so I wasn't bothered for long. With drinks and before tip, it came to $108. Thank goodness for the coupon and my remaining lucky money from new years. Unemployment can be enjoyable.

#4 was my favourite.

Joined Twitter yesterday. I felt completely lost. I finally figured out the "@" business, but I'm still clueless with "#" and when I saw "Lists" my brain wanted to cry. I quickly went to Facebook started to click the tabs I was familiar with and read the "@" and "#"-less status updates before my brain exploded. I'm still not into tweeting, but reading celebrity tweets are pretty entertaining, especially during the influx of crazies running around Hollywood.

I've been craving dan tats for a while and I finally got my hands on one. It's been brought to my attention that there is more than one version of the dan tat. There are ones with the flaky crust, the butter crust and the Portuguese style (Po-tat). If I had more money I would have went for the Po-tat, but I stuck with my $1 budget and happily ran to my car with my flakey crusted dan tat. I think I'm on a dan tat craze now. I'll take Joey's advice and trek over to New Town Bakery in Chinatown.

I drove up to a "high point" in Richmond and enjoyed my treat. Ah, what a lovely view off of The Bay parking lot.

Fun times with Koda in the snow.