Recently, I've been having two dinners, one with the baby, and one after she's asleep. I do this partly because her bedtime routine completely drains me, and I get so hungry by the time she's in her crib, one hour after we've eaten dinner together. The second reason is that I just want to enjoy my food without a baby asking me for things!

H went to pick up pasta from Anton's the other night, while I finished cleaning up our first dinner, and I think he ordered the Penne Alla Calabrese, except we swapped it for fusili. In my mind, fusili traps in more sauce in the spirals... Does anybody know if that's actually true? 

H also mentioned that they originally weren't going to give him bread and butter (how dare they!), but when he asked, they were very obliging and gave him two large buns to go, with lots of whipped butter packets. This pile of pasta was probably possible to make at home for less than half the price. On the menu, it costs $20 a plate, before tax and tip, which sounds like a lot, but the flavour, the convenience and the volume makes up for it. Although the quantity is slightly smaller when you do take out, we could only finish one bun and maybe 2/3 of the pasta between the two of us. 

The leftovers were saved for the next day, and it was even tastier after the pasta had marinated overnight in the tangy tomato sauce.   

I could probably have finished the whole thing by myself if it wasn't for the first dinner. 

After our brief encounter with pasta at Disney last week, I craved more. This is how H and I ended up at L’Artista, in North Burnaby. We were originally going to visit Anton’s, but they had a line up out the door and we were too hungry to wait. H knew of other less popular Italian restaurants, so we walked over from Anton’s.

I had the carbonara:

H had the seafood risotto. I didn’t like this, because the risotto was slightly undercooked and not very flavourful, but I’m not blaming them. Risotto is hard to cook, I hear, just like fish, so I’ll try to avoid ordering this again in the future.

Fresh baked bread, with whipped butter:


Even after a full meal, we still had tiramisu. This is one of H’s weaknesses, and he deserved it after a whole month of eating healthy:


I don’t think I’ll come back, because the restaurant is a bit out of the way for us, and the food did not tickle my taste buds. There was nothing wrong with the food, and the service was great although a bit slow, but I think I would rather make pasta at home or try other places before circling back to this one.



I’m glad I had all those carbs before starting this week, because it was Bike to Work Week with Hub. I didn’t bike every day, and I used transit when I got too tired, but it’s a start I guess! I don’t disagree with increasing gas prices, because it will encourage people (like me) to use other modes of transportation.

I’m also glad to hear that there will be a plastic straw ban in Vancouver by June 2019!

Invested in these metal bubbletea/smoothie straws this week:

I just got them this morning, after ordering them yesterday afternoon on Amazon Prime, and I’m still super impressed with how fast it got to me. I’ll try these out this week, to see whether the bubbletea pearls can actually fit through the straw.

Straws can be purchased here: https://amzn.to/2JsZ3iv

Last week, I left on a red eye to visit Disney World in Florida for P’s bachelorette, part 1.

We flew with United, who does not have the best reputation for customer service (referring to man who got dragged off the flight a couple of months back), so I was not surprised when one of the staff on the ground checking us in gave us more attitude than an angsty teenage girl who just got dumped. Our layover in Chicago was only about an hour, and the flight was delayed by just over 15 minutes. Considering that we had to go through customs on the Chicago side, United wanted to put us on a later flight for our 2nd flight from Chicago to Orlando. Of course we said no, because we already had tickets to go to the Magic Kingdom right after landing in the morning, and we made the unanimous decision to run from the first gate to our second boarding gate at Chicago. One of the ground crew checking us in was kind enough to offer swapping our seats to the extra leg room seats, right up front, for no extra charge, but when we got to the actual gate and asked about it, another rude United woman bluntly said that it would cost us $60 to upgrade, and that it didn’t matter if those seats stayed empty, the flight attendants might pull out a POS machine and charge us for the seat change. We tried to explain the whole situation to her, of having the short layover, and that it wasn’t our fault the flight was delayed, which might cause us to not make it on the 2nd plane. She would not budge though on the charges. When H tried to ask for her name, she rudely said, with a snide smile, “You don’t need to know my name.”

Luckily, when we went back to the gate a few minutes later, to verify the gate of the 2nd flight, another ground crew member empathized with us enough to switch our seats at no cost, and we arrived at Orlando in time to make our Magic Express bus seat reservation and enter Magic Kingdom by 11AM.

Our schedule was jam packed with rides, seeing shows, and meeting Disney characters. There was some time for snacking:

Mickey pretzel with cheese dip: VERY salty, but once started eating, cannot stop stuffing face with soft pretzel dipped in (VERY SALTY) creamy cheese sauce. Would try to purchase cheese dip separately to take home for mac and cheese.

Dole whip: Refreshing pineapple flavored soft serve, found at all 4 parks (I think). Watch each of the servers at different stands dispense this from their Dole whip machine. Some servers make bigger swirls.

Turkey leg: Flavorful turkey meat, tastes smokey and very tender, falls off the bone. Carrying this around may cause caveman-like behavior. I wanted a 2nd one, but could not find it at the Hollywood park. Apparently only Magic Kingdom and Epcot serve this massive leg of meat now.



Pasta at Tutto Gusto Wine Cellar: We tried to get into Tutto Italia at Epcot, but the hostess told me they were all booked up and that reservations were always required. Not sure if true that they’re all booked, maybe it was because I was dressed in ratty shorts and a tank top, and they had a dress code. We went next door to the more relaxed Tutto Gusto, where luckily, we were seated right away. The server was very friendly and congratulated P on her upcoming marriage. We had the lasagna and the spaghetti and meatballs, shared between the 4 of us. This normally would not have been enough food for me, I admit I’m gluttonous, but after tasting the snacks at each of the different countries around the park all day, I had enough of eating. Despite having very little appetite though, the pasta here was amazing, and we cleaned the plates off.



We also had a bunch of other foods at Disney, but these were some of the most memorable. The Disney standard applies even to their food!

Click here to read about P’s bachelorette, part 2.

After all our hard work this week, H and I thought we deserved a treat. H has been working 12 hour days for about 5 or 6 days a week. I’ve been working probably a bit less than that, but hey, who’s counting? We ended up at Dazzling Cafe:



We arrived right at 6PM, which is the end of their Happy Hour menu (starts at 3PM, I believe), but the server was nice enough to let us order from there. Each dish was under $10, with a drink that could be customized with an increase in cost. I had a milk tea with pearls (+$0.50) and H had an iced longan tea (+2.00), which he said was pretty good. The pearls were decent, but not Gongcha level. We ended up ordering the pesto chicken spaghetti and a mussel risotto. Note that the dish with the mussels in the photo is not risotto.



The nice server punched in the spaghetti by accident, but oh well, no point wasting it. He gave us $2 off our bill instead. The mussels were actually cooked perfectly and very delicious. I will go back to get the mussels with the risotto, during the happy hour, and hang out at this faux French style restaurant.

Did you know that China has a replica Eiffel Tower?

PS - Good luck tomorrow, friends. Another Monday...

I never enjoyed autumn as much as this year. October is usually a cold, miserable time for Vancouver, and it has been flooding all over the city. Good thing I escaped to the East coast (R might say it’s the Central US, but I still think it’s close enough…). We visited Minnehaha Falls after a tough day of hustling, and before dinner. Nature in the city, more beautiful than Central Park, and better than Stanley Park! It’s even got a friggin’ waterfall:

Work hard, play harder. We had a tough day, and now, it was time to find some good grub. We went to Broder’s Pasta Bar, not to be confused with Broder’s Cucina Italiana (the cafe version of the pasta bar), where after a 5-10 minute wait, we landed a seat at the bar. I had the Dragon’s Milk (cut off in glass above plate) and the Papperdelle with Veal ragu:

I think this is the Canneloni, which RK ordered:

I should have eat first before food blogging next time, because thinking back to this meal is making my stomach grumble. The pasta was done perfectly, just enough sauce so coat everything with delicious flavour. It tastes as good as it looks, let me assure you. The beer might also have helped to enhance the taste. If anybody finds Dragon’s Milk here, drop me a message.

 
Visited Olive Garden at Langley on the way to run some other errands with the girls:



We each ordered the BOGO pasta option, where we eat one dish in the restaurant and bring home a 2nd pasta of your choice to heat up at home later for under $20. I had the smoked chicken mozarella dish (add $7.50), and it wasn’t that worth it because the chicken was small and dry. The fettuccini alfredo and spaghetti with meat sauce (marinara? I don’t remember, P ordered it) were quite tasety. The best part of Olive Garden is the unlimited breadsticks, soup, and salad:



I could come here more often, it’s great quality for the amount and the price, so I’m going to try to forget that the chicken was dry and just order the fettucini next time.



Meanwhile… I’ve found another Netflix series to watch – Friends from College. This is my way to save money, because I actually want to stay home and be a hermit.

No, that’s a joke. I really just am too tired after a busy day at work, where I’m doing the job of 2 people. Save me. H tried to take me to a surprise lunch today, but I had to tell him to bring me back to work after we drove out of the parking lot. Poor guy looked so defeated - I ruin all his surprises, including the time we went to watch the Canucks and last weekend when he wanted to surprise me with a visit to the new Cafe La Foret but I'd already made plans to go. Must be tough to have such a smart girlfriend!