FOOD FOR THE NEW YEAR
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
The people who live next door(s) to me are very lucky to be my neighbours *flicks hair*
- Since I tend to deliver some freshly baked goods to their door.
Throughout the year, but especially during the baking-concentrated holidays, I've shared cookies, tarts (butter and cheese), entremets (of all sorts), and the list goes on...
It seems that I've covered quite a variety of desserts, until I fell in love with making these:
A mini croquembouche
So after raving to my neighbours about the many croquembouches I've been making over the holidays, I finally got around to making them a mini version - which they've thanked me for (:
Since it's the new year, I'd like to share a few things I'm thankful for:
1. My parents who seem to no longer care about me as much, but still take care of me a lot whenever I see them.
I like to sleep in during the weekends when I'm back home, and when my parents go out, they leave without me, but make sure that I am left with breakfast -
Mom made some really good gyozas for breakfast
2. Family friends who like to eat together and sing karaoke very often.
Below was a potluck where everyone was told to not bring foods with meat because we've been eating way too much meat during the few days of holiday break. So meat was replaced by deep-fried foods such as vegetable spring rolls, and deep-fried mantou (Chinese plain steamed bun)...
You should eat smoked salmon with apples like we did.
3. Friends who share time to eat food with you and who share food with you.
I like to share meals with friends - either all the dishes for our entire table, or with one or two other people. This way we can eat a more variety of dishes, because we're all pretty indecisive with nailing it down to one.
And food always tastes better when you eat it with people you love.
That just sounded really cheesy. But cheese tastes good.
Sharing food with the best friend/girlfriend at a Vietnamese restaurant
We shared this too: Vietnamese drip coffee with condensed milk - to be poured in a cup of ice
4. People who have a dessert stomach so they can eat my desserts even after a delicious, filling meal.
For new year's eve I wanted to make a dessert with choux pastry again, since I had leftover pastry cream in the fridge. But I didn't want to make a croquemchouche, and I didn't have any puff pastry to make a Gâteau St. Honoré... so instead I made...
A sprial of choux with slivered almonds
Caramelized sugar and almonds, which I learned today, is called almond brittle
Piped in chiboust (pastry cream + meringue), and dipped the tops of the puffs with sugar
... a dessert which I have yet to put a name to:
Insert name of dessert here
I feel like since choux pastry is so light and airy, it's okay to eat a lot - because I somehow overlook the cream that it's filled with. But even knowing it, I still tend to eat more than I should *guilty pleasure*
5. People who make good food so that I don't have to cook all the time.
Besides people I know, restaurants are the best for eating when you're just too lazy to cook - which happened too much to me during the holidays. I visited a Greek restaurant, which seemed to be highly praised for their food, called Colossus.
I prefer pumpernickel rye over white bread at restaurants
The bread wasn't touched at all - until this dish came:
Saganaki - why so blurry ):
It's their famous opa pan seared sheep's cheese, and it comes flaming before your eyes as the waiter brings it out and pours some alcohol over it, with a spritz of lemon. My friend who doesn't like cheese said she loved this one - and I definitely understand why after taking a bite of the oozing cheese.
Beef sirloin souvlaki
Sadly, we didn't finish this dish because neither my friend and I like rice that much, and the potato had a flavour that was hard to get accustomed to... but the salad and beef were finished very well. (:
To make up for the potatoes we didn't eat here, we ordered a side of their Greek fries, which were although deep-fried, were very refreshing (maybe due to the herbs and spices?).
Ferrero Rocher Cheesecake
If you know me, you know that I don't like really sweet things, with chocolate being one of them. However, I eat dark chocolate, chocolate with nuts, and white chocolate just fine. So I was afraid that this cheesecake would be too sweet for my liking. But seeing that my friend was so excited to order it, we ended up asking for one as our dessert.
To my surprise, it wasn't nearly as sweet as I'd imagined it to be when I first saw it! I had a fair share and was really satisfied with the hazelnut - not chocolate - cream that was poured on top (:
6. Buffets and all-you-can-eat restaurants for those random extremely hungry days
I love white tuna = butterfish
Maybe it's the buttery-ness that really entices my tongue, or the fact that it practically melts in my mouth upon the first bite - whichever it may be, I really enjoy eating butter fish. But for me, choosing between salmon and white tuna would be like choosing between your mom or your dad - I can't make a decision.
Coincidentally, I actually just used that "choosing between your mom or your dad" as my answer to my friend's question: Your favourite steak or your favourite seafood? Because I also can't pick one from the two.
More white tuna for me
Both these plates of sashimi were all mine! My friends and I went to eat at an all-you-can-eat restaurant just before the new term started, to eat to our hearts content (though we seem to do that every night...) at Oyummy sushi. We've concluded that Oyummy is one of the better AYCE places in Waterloo and Mississauga.
And I'll end this post with a picture my friend thought looked nice:
I love milk tea with cream crackers
X
MUAH MUAH MUAH
VICKI CHOW
P/S
I've been drinking about three cups of milk a day recently! I'm not sure why I've suddenly fallen in love with milk again - maybe it's because the Lactancia milk (which was on sale so I bought some) just tastes sooo much better than the other milks in the supermarket!
What's the difference? I think it's creamier and has a much more milkier taste. Try it and let yourself decide (:
Some food tastes so good - I sometimes feel like tearing up
It feels nice to be exercising on a regular basis again! But it also serves as an excuse for myself to indulge in more food...
I've been drinking about three cups of milk a day recently! I'm not sure why I've suddenly fallen in love with milk again - maybe it's because the Lactancia milk (which was on sale so I bought some) just tastes sooo much better than the other milks in the supermarket!
What's the difference? I think it's creamier and has a much more milkier taste. Try it and let yourself decide (:
It feels nice to be exercising on a regular basis again! But it also serves as an excuse for myself to indulge in more food...
On a very side note, there happened to be a day where my blog had significantly more USA readers than Canadian readers!
I feel popular now ~
