Food mode

(edit: I originally wrote this post by email from my phone, however only 1 of the 2 photos I attached made it to the post.  Probably because I wrote it from a parking lot, then started driving while it was uploading and lost wifi connection!  I love technology, but it does have its limits. LOL)

Recently, my Galaxy S4 gave up the ghost.  Among various minor glitches, the first major thing to go was the default camera software. It stopped saving pictures, with either corrupted files or nothing saved at all.

I started using a purchased software and, while still shots worked fine, it corrupted, then lost, some video I took.

When it came time to choose my next phone, I was in a bit of a quandry; do I do what I usually do and get an older phone for cheap?  Or do I get the best new phone for my needs.  You see, I hardly ever use my phone as a phone.  For communication, I am more likely to text. I drive a lot, so even that is limited.

After examining my usage, it was two things that were the deciding factors.  One of those was camera quality.  It was camera quality that lead me to go with the Galaxy S6.  It got really good ratings, and I have been very happy with it.

It has not been until a few days ago that I finally got around to actually looking at the settings and options.  It turns out that there are modes that came with my old phone that are now available as free downloads.  Looking through the various modes available, I found several others I wanted to try, including a "food" mode.

Here are two photos to compare.

One is of a cheap grocery store stir fry meal, just out of the microwave and still in its plastic bowl.  That one was taken in food mode.

The other is of a Soda Jerks build your own burger.  It was taken with default auto mode.

Both were taken in fairly low light.  The burger picture has been cropped, but no other post processing has been done. These are raw photos.

What do you think?  Can you see a difference?

A.

Meat Nest

Well, it's that time of year again!

Actually, with things being the way they have been, I finally had to acknowledge that I would not be able to do our Christmas tourtiere this year.

So my daughters are doing them, instead.

They're not going to be the same as our usual ones, as we weren't able to get the variety of meats we normally use, but the basic recipe is the same.  We also won't be making as many as we usually do - probably just 3 or 4 pies.  It's still enough to use the big pot, though, which won't fit in our refrigerator.

My daughters made the filling, and now the pot is on the balcony, in its own little meat nest in the snow, to cool down. 

Hey, if we're going to be colder than Mars, we may was well take advantage of the situation!

My favorite restaurant

Pampa restaurant is relatively new in Edmonton, but has successfully established itself as a go-to business lunch location. Frankly, with their food selection and service, I don't really need encouragement to head over :D

Sent from my BlackBerry Z10 which totally doesn't look like an Iphone... totally doesn't

Happy Birthday

My younger daughter turns 17 today. For her birthday lunch, she chose the maki boat at the southside Kyoto.

Mmmmmmm...

Sent from Anna's phone

Checking out Moriarty's

My older daughter wanted to take me out for Mother's Day.  We never go out on the actual day, though, so after some discussion and calender checking, we finally made it out today.

She asked me to choose our destination, and I picked a place we've gone by many times - it's easy walking distance from our home - and have wanted to visit for a while.  We were always on the way to someplace else, though, and didn't have the time.

Today, we made time!

We went to Moriarty's Bistro and Wine Bar, which is right next to the downtown Sherlock Holmes Pub.

Yes, that's awesome.  In fact, it's even more awesome than it seems at first!

For today, we were there for one thing specifically - their charcuterie.  I've heard nothing but great things about it, and have been wanting to try it for a while!

Theirs is a mix and match charcuterie, where you can choose any 2-5 items from a list.  We went with five for the two of us. 

Sadly, my cell phone photo of the board of deliciousness is rather terrible.  It does not do the presentation justice.

I chose the Fairwinds Chevre (the slice on the right) and Sheep Pecorino (the snowy white cheese near the cutlery) for the cheeses.  Along with those, I selected their House Terrine, which included figs and pine nuts, Soppresate (the sliced meat on the top right) and Smoked Brisket Jerky, another house specialty (under the Chevre).  These came with a jalapeno relish, curried cauliflower, clove beets (top left) and wine marinated (?) apples (on top of the clove beets) and spicy carrots - I can't remember what the spice was.  There was also a berry jam (sadly, another name I can't remember the name of) and course mustard, plus two types of crackers on the side.

It was awesome!  All of it. The spices in the pickled vegetables were just on the edge of being too much for me and my notoriously low tolerance for spice heat, but delicious.  My daughter especially loved the Fairwinds Chevre.  I think I liked the Sheep Pecorino better, but I liked both cheeses so much, I find myself vacillating.  The jerky was something special, too.

We'll be back for this again to try some of the other selections!

As an extra snack, my daughter also ordered the Truffle Buttered Popcorn.

Yes, you read that right.  Truffle butter.  On popcorn.

It was sooooo good!

Best of all, we came during Happy Hour, so the Truffle Buttered Popcorn was half price,  plus it was Off the Vine 1/2 Price Wine Thursdays.  My daughter chose the wine for both of us.  I got the Castillo de Monseran Garnacha, and she got the Wine Men of Gotham Shiraz.  Both were excellent, and I'm not a bit wine drinker at the best of times!

As for the bistro itself, it was quite enjoyable.  The aesthetics of the place is really nice, we were comfortable in our booth, the service was excellent and our server was very helpful when I asked questions about different items and asked for recommendations - which I am happy to have followed.

So if you're ever in Edmonton and hankering for a nice, quietly elegant place to indulge, I would definitely recommend Moriarty's!!

Gold?

Trying a La Dolce Vita at Cococo.
I think that's really flecks of gold on there!

Sent from Anna's phone

Update:  I asked and it was verified that the flecks were not gold, but they couldn't tell me what it actually was.  Whatever it was made of, it was very shiny. :-D

For the foodies.

Here's one for the folks who wanted to know how our version of Chevre de Provence in our Easter basket turned out.  I just published a step-by-step over at Squidoo.

If you give it a try, I'd love to hear how it turned out!

Happy Easter!

Wishing everyone a blessed Easter!

Our Easter brunch, made up of the contents of our basket.  We've got:

Bread - shaped by weaving 5 strips of dough, it made for easy tearing apart.
Ham and sausage
Pink pickled quail eggs
Olives - three types; salmon, blue cheese and garlic stuffed
Brie
Marzipan lamb and rose
Eggs - kraszanki, tea dyed and the ones we roasted in the oven, then dyed with shaving cream.
Salt - red wine and black ash
Butter - garlic and herb
Goat cheese medallions - the oil was drained and reserved to use in cooking.
Mustard with horseradish
Beet with horseradish
Rosemary infused olive oil
Fig infused vinegar

What a delicious way to start the day!  The preserved goat cheese medallions turned out fantastic, as was the bread dipped in the oil and fig vinegar.  The vinegar had a very nice sweet and tart flavour that really woke up the taste buds.  Just a tiny sprinkling of salt on an egg was all that was needed - the black salt in particular tasted much more "salty" than regular salt, which is an odd sort of thing!  Both the mustard and beet horseradish had a kick to it, so a little went a long way, and the brie was in the perfect stage of oozing softness.

Glorious!

Something new

Trying something new for our Easter basket.

More photos here!

The Short List

Roast has joined the short list of places all four of us enjoy.
This is their charcuterie. Highly recommended!
Sent from Anna's phone

Early Valentine's date

My darling husband knows, the way to romance me is with charred animal flesh and chocolate.
Recommending Pampa Brazilian Steakhouse, all the way.
Sent from Anna's phone

At the Museum Cafe

Oh, my!  It's been ages since I have had their bison burgers!  With a side of spiced pita chips.  Mmmmmm....
At the Royal Alberta Museum.
Sent from Anna's phone

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian viewers!

While a lot of people have had their big dinners on Sunday, we're waiting until Monday.  We're not going to be doing a turkey or ham this year - the girls asked for bacon wrapped chicken thighs.  I tend to buy bulk at Costco, so I got a 4 pack, leaving us with plenty of extra bacon for other things.

I used 1 1/2 of those for our Sunday supper and made my own version of the Bacon Explosion, using what I had available.  I had some ground beef, which I mixed up with seasonings the way I would normally do for a meatloaf, rather then the sausage they used.  I didn't have the seasoning mix they put on the woven mat of bacon at all.  I also used a mix of shredded marble cheese and dry feta where the Bacon Explosion uses cooked bacon pieces.

 That made for a rather large roll!  After wrapping it in aluminum foil, I baked it for about 2 hours, opening the foil for the last half hour or so to brown the bacon. 

When it was done, my daughter helped me take it out of the foil and transfer it to a dry pan, upside down.  Since the underside had been sitting in rendered fat and was looking pretty pale, we popped it back into the oven under the broiler for more browning.

It was incredibly delicious!  Surprisingly quick and easy to make, too.  I think this is something we'll be adding to our list of recipes for special dinners!

The Beauty of Fungi

My older daughter and I visited the downtown farmer's market today, and we couldn't resist picking up a package of mixed mushrooms.  They were just so beautiful and perfect!!



Such interesting shapes and textures.



I couldn't resist getting in there with the macro setting.



And Finnegan couldn't resist trying to eat some!  I couldn't believe how determined he was to snag a piece while I was trying to take photos!

We have an awesome recipe for mushroom soup that we can't wait to use these for.

Funny.  As a child, I didn't like mushrooms.  Now I love them!

Birthday Girl

My kids have long since lost interest in birthday parties, so one of our birthday traditions is now taking them to the restaurant of their choice to celebrate.  My younger daughter, my baby, turned 16 this year.  Her choice of restaurant this year was Kyoto. We've gone to the one downtown, which is near Philippe's office, a few times.  The food is wonderful, but we've had issues with the service.  This time we went to the location across the river (see link above).  We went in the afternoon, so there weren't many people there and there was only one server, but the service was still much better then the other location!



For an appetizer, we got the pork dumplings, gyoza, which were quite tasty.



All our meals came with a starter soup with bean sprout salad.  My kids normally skip the starter soups, but not here!  We all really enjoy it.  I also got a pot of green tea.



Philippe always orders his favorite, the gyu don.



My older daughter ordered the chirashi, which she absolutely loves.  This is one of those dishes she finds herself craving!  Personally, I don't have the courage to eat raw fish, but she loves it.

The teapot in the background is what they use for tabletop soy sauce pitchers.



Meanwhile, the birthday girl and I both ordered the Bento Box D - this is our dish that we crave!  Their tempura vegetables and seafood are fantastic and comes with a wonderful dipping sauce, the beef and chicken moist and tender, the salad is fresh and crisp, and the pickled radish (?) adds just the right amount of tang.  Also comes with a bowl of white rice.  Delicious!



And here's the birthday girl herself!!

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

Lucky Buddha

This seems somehow sacrilegious.
At the Mongolie Grill.

Red Carpet Affair

The 9th Annual Red Carpet Affair with the Canadian Paraplegic Association.

Pampas supper

Menu 

Roasted chicken drumsticks 

Roast leg of lamb

Pork sausage 

Garlic steak

Parmesan pork loin

Bacon wrapped chicken thighs

Beef ribs

Bottom sirloin 

Rump steak

Ribeye steak

Best so far:

rump steak 

Bottom sirloin 

Ribeye steak

So we've come back to Pampas for a birthday supper. Always a pleasure, I was surprised to find my usual favorite bottom sirloin coming in second behind an outstanding rump steak

Sent from my BlackBerry® PlayBook™
www.blackberry.com

For the foodies...

I had fun with the macro lens while we experimented with a new recipe. 

Family Day

In Alberta, today is Family Day.  There were all sorts of things to do around the city, but we're not crowd people.  Instead, with the incentive of having a guest with us for the next while, we finally had a cookout.

We bought the firewood to do something like this 3 (or is it 4?) years ago!!

After picking up a hatchet to cut kindling and some grillable food, we headed over to a picnic shelter in Dawson Park.  This is an area we used to hike through fairly regularly before we moved to where we live now.  It's a really nice picnic area.  There are a number of bbq grills scattered about with picnic tables near them.  The shelter has a roofed area with a pair of picnic tables and a double grill fireplace.  Inside the building is an open area with seating, and behind the outdoor fireplace is an indoor fireplace as well.  It has doors that are padlocked, though, so I assume there's someplace to call to get access to it.  There's also a water fountain (handy, since we forgot to bring drinks) and bathrooms.  This heated indoor area was much appreciated as we waited for the fire to burn down enough to grill.  It was a warm day, but only when you consider what our February temperatures normally are. *L*

The downside of having such great facilities is that people tend to not treat them very well.  When we got there, we found whole branches - small ones, and very twiggy - in front.  Under one half of the fire area, we could see where someone had tried to start a fire.  The twigs and branches were all quite green.  We figure some less then sober folks had stripped nearby bushes of branches and twigs to make a fire, using magazine pages to try and get it started.  They failed.  It was quite a mess.  We cleaned it up a bit, and found a handy branch we could use to lift the grills and adjust the burning logs as needed.


 (photo set can be viewed here)



I picked up a grill pan meant to do things like veggies on a bbq, so we wouldn't be putting our food directly on the filthy grill.  It's supposed to be a non-stick tray but, by the end of it, I doubt it still was.  ;-)  Not really made to be used over an open flame like this, even though we did let the fire burn down, first.
 We tried two kinds of hoagies on the grill - beerwurst and maple flavoured.  They were both good, but we all liked the beerwurst best.  



For dessert, we split come bananas, stuffed them with chocolate chips, then wrapped them in foil.  The peels were left on to hold everything together.  After the hoagies were done, we put the foil wrapped bananas directly into the hot coals to cook.  They turned out quite nice!  The last time I did something like this, it was using cocoa and an oven.  Tasty, but not as fun as doing it in a fire. :-D

I hope everyone else had a great holiday (whatever it's named where you are) today as well.