A romantic candlelit… taco?

I was exhausted from working and furniture shopping, but we couldn’t miss this chance to catch up with J, who was leaving in another week. We met up with J along Main Street, intending to go to Burgoo, but because of the 1.5 hour long wait, we went over to El Camino’s instead for a quick bite. I ordered their drink special, because ginger beer was in it. It was too sour for me, which really masked the alcohol.



Then, H and I shared the fish taco, the carnitas, and the pollo. The fish was crispy and the jalapenos in the taco added just the right level of spiciness. The carnitas and the pollo were flavorful, but there just wasn’t that melt in your mouth feel that I’d expect. Chipotle had better carnitas. It’s a cool place to hang out, but I don’t think I’d go out of my way to come back, even for the taco Tuesday deal of $6 for 2 tacos.

Where do people go for good tacos nowadays?

Other than tacos, I've eaten out at a bunch of places because of furniture shopping and preparing to move. There's no time to cook! I’m also starting to get chills down my back, a strong sign that I’m catching some type of illness. The workload at the office hasn’t helped, but I’m getting some great advice from my coworkers. Reminder to enjoy the process.

I’m combining week 42 and 43 because I haven’t been organized enough to make time for blogging. Adulting took up my time, as I hustled to get my banking and legal paperwork done to purchase the condo, which has been 2 years in the building.

I still haven’t really had the energy to go anywhere new, mainly because if I did want to go out during this week, I just wanted to visit places I’m familiar with already and have a quick easy meal. This is actually a breakfast sandwich at Railtown Cafe along Main Street, where I visited a couple of weekends ago with R&B and the puppy they were dog sitting:



English muffin Avocado, onions, fried egg, Jalapeno jack, tomato… A perfect light snack for a walk around the neighborhood with the dog. R&B had the jambalaya bowl and a pork sandwich, which were both on point. I stole a bite from each of these, and almost ordered them for myself. The jambalaya had just enough spices and flavors. The meat to bread ratio of the sandwich was well balanced, meaning there was lots of meat.

The photo below was an attempt at a flatlay with the dog sitting in just the right spot. I don’t know how people do it with animals… Dogs don’t like me. I’m more of a cat person.

I’m really looking forward to the upcoming week – completion of the condo, going to London and Iceland. Mercury, Mars, and Venus in retrograde can’t hurt me now!

The next few days before travelling to Europe will be busy, and we wanted to meet up at least once before I fly. Being busy productive adults, it’s difficult to make time, but we did it. We ended up going to Hou Cai Lei for bubbletea:



This is the brown sugar jelly milk tea, and boy, is it full of brown sugar. The jelly itself is where most of the sweetness comes from, and even at 50% sugar, I think I ordered wrong. If you’re not ready for diabetes, make sure you order it with 0% sugar. Other than that, the milky team is smooth and creamy, and I would definitely come back. It felt like I had just been transported back to Taiwan, from the moment that we saw the sandwich board with the shop's name, all in Chinese.





We got out drinks to go, and didn't stay for too long because there isn't a lot of space inside. The front sitting area had a low coffee table with a few chairs around it, and while it looked like an attractive spot to hang out, the area was a bit messy. This was possibly due to the previous patrons who had just walked outside for a smoke. I do wish people could clean up after themselves.



How do you read the name of this bubble tea shop anyways?

Things are moving fast! The biggest change of the year is in the works, and hopefully, I’ll be able to write about it here in less than a month.

Define a productive day.

Originally, we were going to adventure around the Delta area, but the fog was too thick to fly my drone, so we redirected the GPS to a coffee shop that’s been on my list for a while - Kahve Coffee. They have really pretty latte art. C had a flat white, and I had a latte. I was actually really hungry from only have two little dumplings 3 hours ago at 7AM that morning, but their pastry and sandwich options did not appeal to me, especially for the quantity versus price point (sorry, I’m on a budget now, can only afford expensive coffees).

The walls of the cafe are stocked with coffee accessories that can be purchased, including a wide selction of mugs. They even had a display case for Secrid wallets, which I still want to get. Because there was so much stuff inside, it felt like all the tables were jammed together and counters were packed in close. Luckily, there was plenty of space at the bar by the window, where C and I sat for about an hour, just catching up. He got a new wallet, which I take a s a sign that he’s doing well in his career.



The coffee itself was decent. If it was more convenient to visit, I would probably drop by, if not just for a good photo opp!

I went home after that, had a quick bite, and went back out for a bike ride to visit R&B. Then, dinner with H’s folks. Nice to see all these people and catch up in one day. Even with the setbacks from the fog in the morning and not being able to go out to fly my drone, I think it was still a productive day of seeing the people that I enjoy being around. Not to mention the beautiful autumn colours all around the city, really makes me feel like life is worth living.

What do you do to feel fulfilled?

H and I went to Crackle Crème over the weekend as a break during our walk from Revolver back to where our vehicle was parked, by Main and Broadway. Their selection of flavours has more than tripled since the first time I went, when they opened about 4 years ago. Here are the sesame (on the left, darker colored) and the Grand Marnier (on the right, more orange):

The sesame is one of the original, and still as good as I remembered it to be. It’s creamy and smooth, not too sweet, but full of sesame flavor. The Grand Marnier was a more adventurous flavor for us, and it was interesting, but not something I’d go back for. I can’t wait to revisit and try out all the other ones on the list.



Best of all, the place was completely empty when we got there, around 5PM on a Saturday. It’s so peaceful along Union Street around that time. Actually, when is Union Street really crowded, except with bikers during rush hour?

Even though I’m really enjoying myself this month, it still feels like time is crawling, slower than a snail. Right now, life feels like it’s on pause, while I’m waiting for Audien, for the completion of the apartment, for vacation, for luck to arrive (this phrase makes sense when translated to Cantonese).

My solution to drown out any anxiety and impatience is to watch lots of movies. We went to see Venom last night, great job Tom Hardy, a good mix of laughs and action. I saw Snowden on Netflix tonight, which I thought was very eye opening as it’s based on the true story of the hacker and ex-CIA agent, Edward Snowden. Please send movie recommendations to me so I can distract myself from real life. I’m thinking Ocean’s 8 next.

I was really hungry by the time we met up for dinner, at around 8:15PM on Friday. There were 8 of us celebrating F’s birthday at Jun Yuan:



Sometimes, you pay for what you get. That doesn’t necessarily mean quality, because at a Chinese hot pot place, it usually means quantity. For about $40 each, we had unlimited slices of pork, lamb, beef, meat balls… Basically, whatever was on their menu.

While all the food was very fresh, it was difficult to tell the cleanliness of the restaurant. Our cutlery felt grimy and a few of the bowls appeared unwashed so we asked for exchanges. Then, the soy sauce looked mysteriously oily and had bits in it… That didn’t stop us from just dumping all the food into the communal pot in the middle, to boil away whatever bacteria existed.



Something funny did happen while we were there. We also asked for extra fried chicken wings, which were actually quite juicy and crispy. These were also supposed to be unlimited, but when we asked for 16 wings so that we could each get 2, they came back with a much lower count of only 3 wings. Apparently, these were the last ones and they had run out, but after we paid the bill and were getting ready to leave, we saw them serve more chicken wings to another table that started after us.

Not only are they liars, they’re DIRTY liars. Be aware that their bathroom is pretty intimidating to use, and it takes some navigation to get to the toilet. The floors are slippery and marked with black foot prints, there’s a weird fishy smell, and the walls have strange brown spots and markings…

It was an experience that I don’t think I would choose to try out again.

If you do plan on visiting, make a reservation, because there was a small line up to get in. Why? I don’t quite understand.

This was the start of my food filled weekend. More posts to come! Some people are lucky that they can keep eating and not gain too much weight. I’m not one of those people, so I’m going to go to bed now and wake up early to bike.

This week, I feel like I’ve done a lot, but accomplished nothing. Maybe more coffee will get me through to the next week:



During my last visit to Toronto, D suggested that we walk over to Neo Coffee Bar for a quick breakfast. They make beautiful Asian inspired delicacies, including mochi and cake rolls, with Asian inspired flavours, like matcha and sesame. We had the matcha red bean roll, sesame roll, and the seasonal peach flavor, which were all very good. Really good, filled with cream and paired so well with the latte.



The sesame red bean mochi was the real winner here. It’s a huge ball of soft mochi stuffed to the edges and bursting with sesame and red bean cream filling. So next time, I’m going to get a dozen of these for the plane ride home:



I haven’t found a spot like this in Vancouver yet, with a cozy industrial feel and the same desserts. Maybe La Foret, because they also have roll cake? Let me know if you find any others.

Back to this week… I really haven’t been able to focus very well, my mind keeps drifting. I’ve always been pretty good at prioritizing, but I’m at a point where nothing seems to matter anymore, because everything seems like a big life change. Life changing decisions were made and even more need to be made soon. New apartment, travelling, getting married, career… Where do I put my energy and what’s the next step?

Showed up late for a brunch date with D&M. We were going to Fraser Park Restaurant, which was located by the river in the industrial park by Marine Drive. Definitely a hole in the wall gem for brunch:


I had the English breakfast, which came with a pile of bacon, a sausage, and a deceivingly small bowl of beans (there were a lot). I wonder where they get their beans from… Not sure if they’re Heinz, but anyways, they were perfect for mixing with the egg yolk. I asked for overeasy eggs – these could’ve been “easier” because the yolk wasn’t quite runny enough. Oh well, what can  you expect for $12?


I don't even like bacon, and I ate it all.





I’m glad I had a chance to meet up with D&M, because we never really get to catch up. We all have stuff going on in our lives, for sure.

The other day, I woke up at 5:35AM to go to yoga, and arrived with 5 minutes to spare. Turns out that my pass had expired, by just one day… I did feel like giving up at that point – I put in all the effort to wake up, pack, get over to the studio, and now, it was like the universe was giving me a sign that I should go home and crawl back into bed instead of working out – but I was there already and there really was only 1 solution: pay for another pass and go to class.

It feels like I’ve been running into roadblocks with everything this week. The jacket tore in the wash. My faucet is explosively leaking in the kitchen and still has to be fixed. I have so much to do at work!
I can either give up, or just keep going, and I’ll choose to keep going. Everything is going to be OK… Just need more breakfast.

Imagine 3 of these in a pile, one on top of another:

We had brunch at Mildred’s Temple Kitchen, right after we got off the plane on a Friday morning, a few weeks back with D & B in Toronto. Do people in Toronto actually work? I was amazed at the fact that we arrived right at the time the restaurant opened, and there was already a line up. It wasn’t a long line up, and we were seated outside on the patio area fairly quickly. This gave us a chance to observe all the other people who came after us that had to line up as well. Try to make a reservation!



The food itself was amazing. Mrs. Biederhof’s blueberry buttermilk pancakes were probably the best blueberry pancakes we’ve ever had (see photo above). Definitely listen to the servers’ recommendations too, because I did not regret following their advice of getting the Huevos Monty (refried beans baked in flour tortillas with sunnyside up eggs and all the regular toppings for tacos, like salsa, sour cream, avocado).

I’m lucky enough to have the opportunity to explore Toronto’s food scene a bit, but I’m still hoping that one day, I’ll be able to get out to see the rest of the surrounding land. I’m sure the nature is gorgeous too, but does it compare to the West coast?

I went back to the office for work on Friday, to try to catch up with everything, which was really a good idea. One day of working hard, and then back to relaxing! Since I’ve been out exploring new ground all week, and I missed all my plant babies so much, I spent most of the weekend taking care of them. I did just have some stroopwafels purchased from Costco a while ago, and that reminded me of Johnny Can’t Surf:



I had been following their Instagram account for a while, and loved their laid back tone, as well as their dedication to coffee. Since I work in Richmond, and they mostly travel around Vancouver, it had been difficult to find a time to go visit. When H and I biked to MEC a few weeks ago and the truck was parked right outside the entrance on Broadway, I could not miss this chance to try out their coffee and waffle.



Stroopwafels are made with two thin waffles held together by a caramel syrup filling, and it is always (sickly) sweet. It balanced well with the latte that I had, and which I think might have been made with Phil and Sebastian beans. In conclusion, their Instagram shows them in Railtown now, and I think it will be another while before I can visit again. Unless… I can convince them to come to Richmond… It would be great to have more coffee options than Starbucks and Tim Hortons in the area.

Other than eating stroopwafels and drinking Nespresso today, here’s what I’ve been up to:

• watching Archer on Netflix
• looking up Bullet Journal ideas
• browsing the web for sweaters to wear on my outdoor patio (when I get it) this fall:

Sweater on the left from Everlane. 

Sweater on the right, image from Pinterest. 

Patio on the left from Livabl.

Patio on the right from Pinterest.

The food is not the point of visiting the Lake Agnes Tea House.



The chocolate chip cookie was $3.50, and it was just a hard sugary biscuit with chocolate chips. I probably could have made a better cookie. There was tea that cost $7.00 for a small teapot that served 2 cups. The tomato lentil soup came with a few slices of home made bread, and it was quite hearty and filling for a vegetable soup, but it was still $9.







The reasons to stop here for a bite and visit again and again:

• to warm up after the hour of hiking up from Lake Louise
• to enjoy the feeling of dining in the middle of nowhere
• to experience living in the 1900s (this was approximately when the tea house started, and they don’t have electricity at all)
• for the adventure
• for the views!!!

It was bustling when we arrived around 1PM, and the crowds continued to come up, despite the icy trail. If the trail was clear, it would have been a very easy hike. The weather had suddenly turned cold this week, and snow already covered the ground, even though it’s only September. I think the snow actually makes the lake look even more magical, but it does get slippery. I would plan ahead for at least 4 to 5 hours round trip from the trail head, just to make sure there’s enough time to explore and enjoy the whole lake.

Back to the desk job today. Where did summer go?

D and T got hitched!



The day started off at our AirBNB, in Canmore, where the wedding party nibbled on sandwiches from Safeway while getting ready for the day. I was one of the two bridesmaids, B was the other (as the sister, she pretty automatically became the maid of honor). Nicol did our make up beautifully (it actually did not melt off throughout the day, even after traipsing around Lake Minnewanka for photos), and Christine pulled our look together by putting up our hair into messy buns. H and S went along with us everywhere, as did Joel, our photographer, who had the important task of documenting the day. After a beautiful ceremony, which the elk party crashed and where B and I both had to blink back tears, we went over to the Park Distillery, in downtown Banff for the reception:



I was busy stressing out about the wedding game that I was supposed to host, trying all the cocktails, and actually enjoying the reception, and when I looked back on my phone, I only had this one photo of the food from the evening. The prime rib was amazing! H had the salmon, which was just as delicious, and I had the chicken, which was a tad dry, maybe because I was comparing it to THE BEST CHICKEN I'VE EVER HAD.



Let’s take one step back to the appetizers. H had the pork skewers, which I would recommend over the calamari. I mean, nothing wrong with calamari, pretty standard, but it wasn’t memorable. The servers were all very pleasant and patient with us drunken guests, and it was not hard to get a good warm buzz from all their creative alcoholic concoctions (H had about half a dozen different cocktails, and there were still many on the menu that he wanted to try). The food and drink could really make or break the wedding! I think D & T did a great job of choosing this spot, and definitely made sure it was worth our time to travel out to Alberta for their wedding.

Congrats again, you two, and thanks for giving us this adventure!

Now that I’m back at home, I already feel travel, wedding, and vacation withdrawal… There will be a 2nd part about this extra long weekend, so I can continue reliving it!

The rain’s back, so here we are today, exploring the city instead. There’s a new coffee shop in Vancouver, called The Garden Strathcona:

The interiors were beautiful, and there was actually a garden wall with lots of beauitul plants. Hopefully, those plants are still thriving in a year. Seating was limited though, so if you’re not too enthused about sitting bum to bum with a stranger, then I suggest getting your coffee and pastries go.



I like the aesthetic, and it’s a nice beautiful place to visit. I wish they had more seating, and less retail (there’s a corner with shelves of skincare/beauty products and a table of hand made pottery). I also wish the latte was stronger.



This place reminds me of La Foret in Burnaby. Probably not revisiting this spot in the near future though, because it’s slightly out of the way, but it is exciting to see this beautiful addition to this strip of East Hastings. I’m sure the locals are stoked.

Next weekend, I will be in Banff! Gonna be winging this trip mostly, with car camping and not a lot of research.

Continuing on our Toronto foodventure, we ate bags of popcorn while watching home runs at the Blue Jay’s game. We then wanted real food, so ended up visiting Big Trouble in Chinatown:

The food was greasy, great for soaking up all the cocktails and special drinks we tried:

We had the dumplings, the kimchi brussel sprouts, and the fried shrimp. I can’t wait to start making my own kimchi brussel sprouts, what a brilliant combination.

On the drinks menu, they had “Asian” beers and this cocktail made with baijiu, house made and bottled (bottle on left in image below):

There were 2 flavors of the baijiu, one that was made with a Chinese herbal tea, jiaduobao, and another with mangosteen. We tried both, and I gotta say, both were very bitter and neither of them tasted very good. Alcohol content was very high though, and I’m sure some people would like this type of buzz. They have some sweeter cocktails too, which went down a bit easier.

It was a fun night of loud conversation in an even louder bar, and we got home way past bed time, with our ears ringing. I’m looking forward to more nights like this, in 1 week, at D’s wedding!

Visited D&T in Toronto a couple weeks ago (thanks for hosting!), with B, and I’m still recovering from all the food we ate. My favourite meal was at Kiin, which we stumbled upon while looking for a good dinner spot:

To start, we had the shrimp and pomelo salad (on the right in the image below), and the chor lada (the beautiful purple flower shaped dumpling on the left):

The pomelo was super fresh, not sour at all, and all the flavours of the shrimp were enhanced so well by the dressing (I’m sure there was fish sauce). The dumplings were an interesting texture – chewy exterior with bits of peanut inside. It wasn’t my favourite, because I don’t like that texture usually, but I didn’t hate it.

Next, we had the Khao Yum, which comes in a shiny brass bowl filled with the colours of the rainbow:

The server helped us mix all the different ingredients together (jasmine rice, lemongrass, turmeric, edible flowers, sunflower shoots, and more) with a tamarind and soy bean sauce. Although, I wanted to inhale this whole giant bowl of freshness, the best way to taste all the flavours was to really savor each bite. I’m a big fan of lemongrass, and I could keep eating this forever.

The last of the main courses was the sea bream, called Mieng Pla, which came wrapped up in a leaf of sorts:

I don’t have a photo of the little leaf wraps that we were supposed to eat the fish with, but the idea of this dish was to pick up a portion of fish, put it on top of a little piece of lettuce that was already topped off with herbs and vermicelli (at least that’s what I think it was), and eat it all in one bite.

We couldn’t say no to dessert. Our neighbors at the table behind us ordered it first, and who can resist ice cream? We chose the pandan ice cream (instead of the thai iced tea flavor), which was accompanied by 9 different toppings, including the green and red water chestnuts soaked in syrup, grass jelly, jack fruit, coconut shreds, toasted mung bean:

Thai food brings to mind red, green, and yellow curries, and meat grilled on satay sticks, but this place opened my eyes to a different side of this cuisine. If anybody else knows of a good place for khao yum in Vancouver, please tell me about it so that I don’t have to take a plane across the country to eat it again!

I’m trying to find more time to post, but it’s the  end of summer soon. This means that I’m trying to spend as much time as possible outdoors to soak in more vitamin D. It's good for bone density. Be back soon with another post!

Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry (FSVP) invited me to dinner at Edible Canada to find out what happens when poultry meets wine!

FSVP coordinated this event at Edible Canada with Ripples Winery to share a 4 course meal, designed by Edible Canada’s own Director of Culinary, Tobias Grignon, and wine pairings chosen by Sommelier at Home’s, Ashley West.  Chef Tobias put on a great demo before the meal started, and taught us the best way to make a quick and delicious chicken (250°C for about 20 to 25 minutes in the toaster oven!):

Prior to the demo and the introductory speeches about FSVP, they served a generous amount of crispy duck hearts…

…and duck liver pate on a bit of sourdough…

…which I was very grateful to for, having just rushed over from the office.  The Radiance Blueberry Sparkling Refresher paired extremely well with both of these, and warmed everybody up for the dinner party. H was sitting across from me at one of the long community tables, and we both sat between complete strangers, which made for interesting dinner conversation throughout the meal.

Before the Fraser Valley Smoked Duck Salad, paired with the Cheam Gewurtztraminer Blend (photo above of the flavourful, juicy smoked duck breast slices on top of the endives), we learned a lot about the history of FSVP from their General Manager, Joe Falk himself. He talked about the history of the FSVP farm, which has been a local source of poultry since the 1970’s, and now provides duck, goose, specialty chicken, and squab to the Lower Mainland. They’ve been very resourceful with diversifying their products, and now, they even have their line of ready-to-eat products, including a duck sausage, and of course, the smoked Pekin duck breast, which was creatively paired in our salad with the huge duck egg.

The next course was the squab, which I did not get a good photo of due to the fact that it had been a long day already and the wine was very good. I’ve had squab before at many Chinese restaurants, and usually it is fully roasted. This time, it was a medium rare meat, with honey on top, served with a croquette on the side. INTERESTING…

The wonderful men and women around H and I all enjoyed the squab the most, because it had the most original flavour, and I cleared it off the plate too. However, for me, the best was the chicken breast dish after this one. Even though it looks like just a small piece of white meat, it wasn’t just boring old chicken! It was the juiciest, most perfectly poached free range chicken breast I had ever had the chance to taste.

My knife slid through it like it was butter, there was no resistance from the meat at all. Check out how tender it looked:

Wiped the plate clean, with only a small piece of greenery left behind as evidence that there used to be food here.

The squab and the chicken both went well with Intemperance, the blueberry table wine from Ripples.

To close the meal, they served a butter cake, topped with fresh Okanagan peaches and cream, garnished with basil: 

The sweetness of the dessert was matched by Cupere, a dark blueberry dessert wine:

I know for sure I won’t be able to recreate the poached chicken breast without more work and practice on my end, but I was happy to find out that FSVP’s ready-to-eat smoked duck breast from the salad was available at Edible Canada’s market from Aug. 17th to Sept. 30th. Stocking up on these to throw in my salads for lunch (well probably not mine, because I get lunch from work, but H would love it):

One of the reasons I really enjoyed this dinner was that the sources were all local. It always eases my conscience to be able to contribute to the buying local movement. If you’re interested in learning more about buying local meats from the Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry group, check out their website and social medias.

It was also pleasantly surprising to be able to meet interesting new people at an event like this, and spend just that brief moment of my life with them, learning about their families and hobbies and jobs. I would definitely recommend this type of event, as a way to learn more about your food and meet new people around the city.