Musings

Is it too late to be posting about 2012 goals?

2011 was one heck of a year for me, I changed jobs and moved to the West Coast. While things have settled down over here, a lot of my kitchen things are still in storage that I miss (e.g. my tart pan).

I didn’t complete much of my 2011 goals, so here’s hoping that 2012 will be a better year.

Start cooking from my Unloved Collection
There is a growing stack of cookbooks that I haven’t even touched. Some have daunting ingredient lists and others just haven’t drawn me in. I’m also going to go back and look at old cookbooks that haven’t been used that much lately and see if I can cull my collection a bit.

Make pasta
I just got a pasta maker and I’m now searching for the best book to go along with it. This gadget has been on my list for years, but never purchased for fear of it being a dust collector. 2012 will be the year of carbs for me!

Croissants
The croissant process requires a lot of time spent in the kitchen. I don’t foresee myself making this regularly, but it’s been on my list of things to do for a few years now.

Bagels
This was on my list last year. If I can bake bread, are bagels just as easy?

In less than 2 weeks, I will be moving to beautiful Vancouver. My husband has got a great gig there so we’re taking the dog and taking the longest road trip I have ever been on.

It’s exciting and nervous at the same time. I’m sad that I can’t visit my favourite food joints whenever I want, but excited to be exploring what Vancity has to offer. Be prepared for a lot more Vancouver focused posts as I try and find fabulous eats.

I had my niece over to do some egg dying. I forgot to take a picture of all the finished eggs, but here is the one I did:

I got the egg decorating tips from Martha Stewart.

Inspired by a food goals post by What’s On My Plate, here’s my list for 2011:

Continue going through my cookbooks and trying new recipes: I’ve got a few books that I bought recently, but haven’t had the chance to go through them. Maybe try 2 new recipes a month?

Try different sourdough breads: After many failed attempts at creating my own starter, I caved and got the classic fresh sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour. I love this starter! It works and I don’t have to tend to it for weeks hoping it will finally become active. I’ve already made sourdough bread and I’m excited about being able to make different kinds of sourdough.

Croissants: These have been on my to-do list for ages and I have not made them.

Bagels: Again, on my list forever.

Pasta: Eventually I will get a pasta machine and make some pasta. 2011 will be the year for it.

Hmm…looks like 2011 will be the year of carbs for me. Good thing I’m a carb addict.

Here’s a look at my 2010 goals:

Eat more fruits and veggies: This did happen, but I still fall very short on the daily fruit and vegetable requirement. I’ll try and buy more of the healthy stuff when grocery shopping.

Bake more bread: At one point I was baking bread weekly but now it’s rare I’ll bake bread. It’s more time consuming than most baking. Unless you count pizza as bread making. I’ve made so much pizza that I doubt it’ll ever fall out of my repertoire.

Start creating/experimenting with recipes: Total fail on this one!

Organize my kitchen better: Done! It still needs tweaking (all that non-stackable tupperware and all those lids!) but my kitchen is much better.

Roast a chicken: I did this and I’d like to try a few different ways of roasting a chicken. Good thing I have all those cookbooks…

Use more recipes out of my cookbooks: I’ve been trying a lot of different recipes, but there are still a few cookbooks that have been neglected.

I had the pleasure of going to Vancouver not too long ago. I have always loved Vancouver and it’s picturesque nature, but I’m more fond of it now after eating amazing food there. R has a temporary job in Van city so it’s me dining solo for the next few months.

There are just too many pictures to fit in one post, so expect more to come.

The first meal we had in Vancouver were…hot dogs. Gourmet hot dog stands seem to be everywhere in Vancouver and I suspect the trend will make it’s way to Toronto eventually. Organic beef hot dogs with sauteed onions? Cheddar and jalapeño hot dogs? Yes, please! The price for an organic hot dog was about $5-ish, but I felt it was well worth the extra cash for an organic (and bigger) hot dog.

Being in Vancouver I also had to try Japadog. The name kind of says it all it’s Japanese style hot dogs. I tried the Kurobuta Terimayo, Bershire pork with Japanese mayo and shredded nori scattered on top. It didn’t blow me away as being the best hot dog ever (I preferred the other hot dog stand), but it was an interesting twist to the regular dog.

I also had my fill of seafood and sushi restaurants in Vancouver. You get huge slabs of sushi for an amazing price. Take for instance Samurai Sushi, a little hole in the wall sushi joint:

Sushi that befits the restaurant’s name. Fish so big it wraps around the rice and at a price point that won’t kill your wallet.

Juno had the best quality sushi I ate while I was there. The fish portions were smaller (and the dollar amount higher), but was balanced out by the quality. They also serve artisan sake from Artisan SakeMaker in Granville Island.

Bin 942 is a tapas bar. The space is a bit cramped, but I’m okay with that because every dish we ordered was fantastic. The braised beef short rib was fall-off-the-bone and melted in your mouth. Of course I have no pictures to show for it. I was too engaged with wanting to eat the food, that R had to step in and take some shots with his iPhone.

We were supposed to go to Guu in Toronto, but on a Wednesday night the 2 hour wait was just too long for us. We were lucky enough to go to the one in Vancouver that had a much shorter wait. Sadly after waiting in the cold for 30 minutes, I found out we could have made reservations like the other people that waltzed right in. The food here is affordable while not skimping on quality, a winning combination for me.

I loved the latte art at Caffe Artigiano. We frequented this place quite a bit. Mmm…Spanish lattes.

2009 was an excellent baking year for me. I got into baking cakes, made my first apple pie, baked cookies for a good cause, and overcame shyness and met food lovers through the cupcake meetup and the foodie bake off.

Some goals for 2010:

• Eat more fruits and veggies. I’m surprised I don’t have scurvy with the lack of fruits and veggies in my diet. Hopefully this powdered drink stuff will help. It’s much easier to drink something down than for me to eat a whole plate of vegetables.
• Bake more bread. I love homemade bread and I need to get back into it again. Sourdough is on my list. I’m at a point where a lot of recipes I want to make require a starter and after making a failed sourdough starter, I’m going to go the easy route and just buy one.
• Start creating/experimenting with recipes. I had a lot of fun making my French lavender butter cookies that I adapted from several different recipes. It’ll be nice to put my own spin on things.
• Organize my kitchen better. It’s a terrible mess and when I do organize it, it always turns to a mess again. Clearly I need a better system.
• Roast a chicken. I’ve done turkey, but I’ve never done chicken. Turkey is supposed to be much harder to make so I’m hoping that roasting a chicken will be fairly easy.
• Use more recipes out of my cookbooks. I’m addicted to cookbooks and while I do use most of them regularly, there are a few that don’t get much attention. My goal is to make at least 3 recipes from the book. If I don’t like it, the book is gone. I’m finally getting short on space and I need to make the most out of my cookbook shelves.

What are your goals?

I’ve been wanting to get these lights ever since I read about them on the Steamy Kitchen website. I don’t have much natural light in my unit. I’ve been shooting outside to get the best pics, but it’s getting too cold to go outside. I finally bit the bullet and bought Lowel EGO lights from Vistek. When I went to Paris for my honeymoon we rented a lens from Vistek and they were super about not charging us an extra day because our flight was delayed and couldn’t make it back in time. Great customer service. I used them again to get the lights and some other things. When I found out they price matched, I saw the items I had just bought were much cheaper at a competitor. So when I inquired about the price match I was treated in a very unprofessional manner. In the end, it took the power of Twitter and some very helpful individuals to rectify the situation. I believe Vistek is the only place in Toronto that sells these lights. B&H has them for much cheaper, but once you factor in shipping, tax, and customs they are about the same price as Vistek. So B&H is probably the better deal if you have other big items you need to buy. I only have one light as they don’t sell the kit with 2 lights that B&H has (another con for Vistek).

Putting the lights together was a bit tricky. The plastic flaps that you’re supposed to fold down are very rigid and I was worried about cracking them if I was too forceful. I talked to Jaden from Steamy Kitchen about it and she had no problems at all. So maybe it was just my kit.

I also bought the sweep which comes with construction paper in a variety of colours. I don’t think I’ll be getting much use out of the papers, but the sweep makes for a good background and as an extra reflector. Much needed for me with my only ego light and dismal indoor lighting.

Here are some test shots.

The most delicious caramels I got from France that I haven’t posted about.

One of the rare times I will use the paper that comes with the sweep.

I still need to fiddle around with the lighting set up as sometimes my photos look blown out from the lighting. I’m wondering if I need a lens that has more zoom so that it’s not too close to the lights.

These lights are great for me because I’m also a night owl. Procrastination may have something to do with that, but for some reason I work better at night. This means a lot of the time my baking starts late at night (around 10pm or so). Many of my pictures need to be taken the next day, but with these lights I can finally start taking some night shots. I can also start taking more dinner photos too if I knew how to make them look more appetizing.

Here are some other food photography sites that I found helpful:

Pioneer Woman Photography a lot of good basics material. I just learned how to change the aperture from this site.

Make a macro photo studio for $10
Food portfolio. Tons of info here on food photography.
VeganYumYum Food photography for bloggers.
Jaden’s review of Lowel EGO lights

And while we’re on the subject of photography I am addicted to Photoshop actions. I will usually run my images using the Pioneer Woman’s action set.

Look at the difference it makes:

The colours pop out much more. I like using the boost and quick edge burn for my food photos.

You can download the action sets here.

If you’re looking for a free photo editing program that’s super easy Picasa is awesome. R uses it a ton even though he’s a PhotoShop wizard because it’s so much easier.

These lights are a great investment for a hobbyist. It’s pretty inexpensive and gives great results. Because my lighting is so dark I think 2 would work much better and will probably purchase another one in the future.

This is a day late, but I wanted to post this up. Every year R has been doing pumpkin carvings and I enjoy them so much. He didn’t want to do any pumpkin carvings because there’s no kids knocking on our door for candy and no one will see them in person except for us. After a bit of pestering, I got him to do a couple.

I love gnomes so I got him to do a Travelocity gnome. The other one we settled on doing Where the Wild things are.

You can see the rest of the pumpkins over at my Flickr here

I have been quiet here for awhile. Part of that is because I’m still editing Paris pictures, but a huge part of the silence is that my family in the Philippines was affected by the typhoon. One had most of their belongings ruined from the flood. As a family we got together to raise some money to send over there to help.

I decided to try and raise money with what I love to do — baking. I sent out an e-mail to a few people which got sent out to more…and more…and more. With me offering a dozen cookies for a small amount of money, I ended up with 33 dozen orders in 2 days. So the last few days I have been baking and baking.

My entire family is amazed at all the support that’s been given and shocked at how many people wanted cookies! I didn’t think my way of contributing would end up being so big. I’m glad that even with the economy today people are still so generous. Seeing as today is Thanksgiving, I’m very thankful about all the help received.

If this scheduled post works, I’m in Paris right now!

I’ve already reserved for a few restaurants there and here are the places I will be going to:

Le Pre Verre
Chez Dumonet
Le Ciel de Paris

I was going to book at Les Papilles, a very recommended restaurant, but when I called they told me they were busy (it was during dinner hour) and to call back tomorrow. I got kind of lazy and didn’t bother. R doesn’t eat mammals and with their fixed menu I’d have to explain that. I also don’t know how open minded I am in trying new things like pig jowls or brains. I’d feel a lot more comfortable doing it if I could share the experience with someone else.

From research it looks like making reservations is the best idea. In my Edible Adventures guide Clotilde notes how it’s courteous to the restaurant. Restaurants work a bit differently where you’re seen as a guest rather than a customer. So I guess it makes sense to call ahead to let them know you’re dropping by. You wouldn’t just randomly drop by a friend’s place without letting them know ahead of time.

Other food stops I have on my list:
Laduree
Pierre Herme
Maison du Chocolat
L’Etoile d’Or (candy shop)
Berthillion (ice cream)