Thursday, March 29, 2012

Bannock

Bannock - A round flat bread traditionally cooked on a griddle or stone, brought to Canada through Scottish explorers and traders, adopted by Indigenous people and settlers. 

This is another restaurant in the O&B chain.  Food style COMFORT.  Nothing is better than meat and potatoes, unless you're a vegetarian.  For the vegetarian readers of my blog, I did order a Prairie Grain Salad because it sounded interesting.  And I need to have vegetables to complete my meal.  This salad consisted of living sprouts, slegers' greens and tahini.  I would have to say this was the most disappointing dish we ordered.  I expected this to be a crunchy salad, but it wasn't.  The living sprouts were more like beans that sprouted and they either boiled it or steamed it so it was like eating cooked beans.  The dressing was supposed to be a tahini dressing, but I wasn't able to taste any tahini or sesame flavor at all.  All I could taste was mayonnaise.  I did love the pretty looking pink like vegetable in the dish.  Anyone know what it is?  I had that in Japan before too, but never figured out what it was!
Prairie Grain Salad










Best dish of the night in my opinion was the Bannock Boiled Dinner.  The boys would beg to differ I'm sure.  The boiled dinner consisted of 2 LARGE pieces of corned brisket, Montreal steak spice, head cabbage (a generous 1/4 of a cabbage), few pieces of potato, few pieces of carrot and pease pudd'n.  Such a simple dish, but so delicious.  The brisket was nice and tender, had some fatty pieces, but was easily removed.
Bannock Boiled Dinner










The boys favorite dish of the night.......I'M sure this would be EVERY guy's favorite dish......Duck Poutine Pizza.  Yes you heard it right, duck on poutine, on pizza.  This is not a dish for a light eater.  I think this is probably the heaviest dish I've ever consumed.  Carb overload!  Taste and flavor was good, but too heavy.  One possible improvement for this dish would be if the fries were crispier.  Perhaps gravy served table side?
Duck Poutine Pizza










I think I need to make a repeat trip to find out what a bannock tastes like.

Bannock
401 Bay St. Toronto, ON
416-861-6996

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Paese Ristorante

Paese Ristorante has two locations.  We visited the King St. location before the TFC vs LA Galaxy match.  The restaurant was filled with red TFC jerseys.  We got to the restaurant a bit later than we would have liked so our food choices were limited to the 'quick cook' options.  There was no way that I was going to miss my time with David Beckham!  I apologize in advance for the low quality pictures.  The restaurant was quite dark.

We started snacking on some rosemary focaccia with hummus that our server brought over.  The focaccia was good, nice and warm with a crusty outside.  The hummus was horrible.  It was not smooth, no flavour, no salt, no nothing!  Even the hubby thought so!  And he normally never says anything is bad.  He's like a human garbage can.

Focaccia with Hummus










Next up came the Grilled Octopus served with potato salad, grilled escarole, mint, lemon, and chili oil.  The potato salad was not really a potato salad, it was more like 4 slices of potato.  The octopus was grilled nicely with good char flavor and super tender.  My fave dish of the night.
Grilled Octopus










All of a sudden, 3 different coloured jars appeared on our table.  The server mumbled something along the lines of "It's for the pizza.".  Because I was curious, I decided to give it a little taste test.  They turned out to be chili sauces for the pizza.  Thank goodness they were not super spicy!  Our Funghi Pizza arrived.  I was a little disappointed with the pizza.  I was expecting the pizza come with a variety of mushrooms, but it appears that they only use roasted white button mushrooms.  The crust was also a little more bready/doughy than I would have liked. 
Chili Oils

Funghi Pizza
Our final dishes arrived just as I was starting to worry about time.  A side of rapini (forgot to take a picture) and an order of clams cooked in a beer and lots of bacon chunks.  Sorry, I was hoping to find the exact dish on their online menu, but it's not there.  Best rapini I have ever tasted!  Not a single sign of bitterness at all.  And just simply cooked in olive oil it seems.  No lemon, no vinegar, no extras of any sort.  The clams were just that, clams cooked in beer.  I think I enjoyed eating the bacon chunks in the broth more so than the actual clams.  The size of the clams were also very tiny, meaning mini sized clam meat.  Not worth my time and effort.
Clams
Just based on how delicious the grilled octopus was, I think its worth another trip back to give the rest of the menu a taste.  I don't think it's fair to judge a restaurant based on their appetizers.

333 King Street West,
416.599.6585

Joe Yee

I have been meaning to check this place out for the longest time.  But it's hard to convince friends to join me to go and try vegetarian restaurants.  I'm not sure why most people cringe as soon as they hear the word 'vegetarian'.  I love it!  I'm not a full fledged vegetarian as most of you can tell by now, but I do prefer vegetables over meat.

Joe Yee is not just a normal vegetarian restaurant, they also do sushi!  This is NOT a vegetarian restaurant that serves fish as well.  This is what I guess would be called mock sushi.  I was super excited, because for the first time, I can eat all the sushi offered on the menu!  Taste wise, the 'fish' was slightly fishy and had decent texture.  From what I recall from eating toro in Tokyo, the texture of this mock sushi was slightly mushier than fresh fish. 
Sushi Tray

Spicy Salmon Brown Rice Maki












We also ordered BBQ platter which consisted of Chinese BBQ Pork (Char Siu) and Roast Pork (Siu Yuk).  I loved this dish.  So much better than other vegetarian restaurants I've been to.  Usually I find that the BBQ pork has a weird hoisin/ketchup flavor and the worst part is that it's super chewy.  I avoid that particular dish when it's ordered.  But this one was delicious!  It tasted like it was freshly deep fried and made to order.  The outside was crispy and the sauce was very good, like normal char siu sauce.  The roast pork, appearance was very similar to what real roast pork looks like.  It even had a layer of 'fat'.  This fat tasted like it was made with some sort of gelatin.  Again the outside was super crisp.  I think the 'pork' was made with beancurd and taro.
BBQ Platter










Joe Yee's is definitely worth a trip to again.  Prices are more expensive than other Chinese vegetarian restaurants.  But this place definitely seems to take care in both preparation and presentation of their food.

Joe Yee
688 Leslie St
Unit 17-18
Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4C4
(905) 884-6882

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Love/Hate Food: Week 4

The last and final week of the month long detox!  This week is called the Glyci-Med approach, learning to eat glycemic balanced meals.  What this means is eating to maintain stable blood sugar which stimulates less insulin release.  Lower insulin means less fat storage!  Eat frequently, at the right times and consume protein, healthy fat, fibre and low glycemic carbs and this will help you achieve glycemic balance.

Eating the right foods mean eat lean protein and low glycemic carbs and healthy fats for each meal and snack.  Drink 8-12 cups of water a day for women, and 16-20 cups for men, but this is also dependant on weight.

Eating at the right times means aiming to eat every 3 to 4 hours and not to eat anything 3 hours before bed.  Try to eat at the same time each day.  This was a hard one for me, especially on weekends.

This past week, meals have been more 'normal' much less restrictive than the previous 3 weeks.  There were no more limitations aside from the fact that you still should not eat processed foods, keep beef and pork to a minimum etc.  We still had to drink the detox shakes twice a day.  I think I've actually grown to like them.  A good way to keep from wanting to snack on things I shouldn't be snacking on.

Again like previous weeks, I am only posting meals that are new.  No point in posting the same pictures over and over again since some of the meals are repeated.

The final weigh in, down 9.5lbs. 

Week 4 Day 1: Dinner
Curried Ginger Chicken Breast with Quinoa










Day 2: Breakfast
Pancake fail for me.  I don't own a non-stick pan.  I hate them.  Not sure if it's because the batter didn't have any oil and it's full of cheese, oats and egg whites, all of which love to stick to pans, so yes, these pancakes do not look like pancakes.  Taste wise were pretty tasty.


Ricotta Cheese Oatmeal Pancakes










Day 3:  Breakfast Lunch & Dinner
High Protein Muffin was made on a slice of Ezekiel bread instead of Ezekiel English muffin.  I already didn't like the sliced bread, so I didn't want to spend more money buying English muffins that I probably would not like either.  Spanish Chicken Dish very yummy.  The only thing I would have changed was to bake the chicken breast instead of sautee it in the pan since it took longer to cook in the pan than in the oven.  The Greek dipping sauce for the kebabs were delicious!  I could eat this sauce with everything!!!!


High Protein Muffin
Spanish Chicken Dish
Mediterranean Chicken Kebabs wth Greek Dipping Sauce

Day 4: Breakfast & Dinner
I again had yoga at night so I made a smoothie for dinner while the hubby had fish.  Hubby said sweet potato pancakes tasted good but did not stick together well enough, kept falling apart while he was frying it.
Berry Flax Cottage Cheese

Tilapia with Sweet Potato Pancakes


















Day 5: Breakfast Lunch & Dinner
Berry Quick Delight
Low Fat Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken
Almond Crusted Chicken Fingers with Herbed Potato & Asparagus




























Day 6: Breakfast & Dinner
Frozen Strawberry Yogurt

Coconut Curry Chicken


















Day 7: Breakfast & Lunch
Since I am not at home on Fridays, I forgot to take pictures of the meals.  Breakfast was Delicious Apple Dish, essentially an apple cinnamon oatmeal.  Lunch was Toasted Turkey Tomato Mayo Sandwich with Side Salad.

W Burger Bar

Starting the 4th week of our Detox Diet, hubby and I decided we needed a treat.  A while back I got a deal/coupon from FabFind for 'Free beef burger with purchase of side and drink from W Burger Bar'.  This would be our second visit to W Burger Bar, previous visit from what I remember was delicious and worth a visit again.  Having this coupon makes it even more worth it!  But since the coupon expires before our detox diet is over, we again had to order burgers that were allowed to eat.

My order was a Turkey Burger with a side of half sweet potato fries and regular fries.  DRY!  I couldn't figure out the flavor in the turkey burger, all I tasted was a bit of spice.  For my toppings I had alfalfa sprouts, mixed greens, carmelized onions and cilantro mayo.  The cilantro mayo was delicious and with the spice from the turkey meat, it kinda made it taste a bit like an Indian burger.  Fries were good.  Nothing too special.

The hubby's order was a Salmon Burger with a side of onion rings.  I was very surprised to see it came out as a piece of fish, and not mashed up fish to make it look like a burger.  Hubby thought that the fish was cooked perfectly and juicy.  And I was happy not not smell a fishy smell, meaning fresh fish and not frozen? Onion rings looked delicious, reminded me of the Joe's Stonecrab onion rings.  But too bad when you bite into them, it was super greasy.

This time around, nothing special, not sure if I would make another visit to W Burger Bar now that there's so many other good burger joints around.

Turkey Burger with Sweet Potato & Regular Fries










Salmon Burger with Onion Rings










W Burger Bar
10 College Street Toronto, ON M5B 1L2
(416) 961-2227
Monday - Wednesday 11:30AM-11:00PM
Thursday - Friday 11:30AM - 2:00AM
Saturday 12:00PM - 2:00AM
Sunday 12:00PM - 11:00PM
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