2008 - 11/11 [Tue] - 10:46

There was this one time I had the opportunity to watch a person putting together a fruit platter for a party.

That person used to do that for airline catering and mainly for first class passengers.

I didn't get to see the whole thing but I did learn a bit on how to cut and present pineapple nicely. I got one the other day and tried it myself. Not as nice as I wanted it to look but rather than the usual pineapple rings this is quite appealing too.

2008 - 09/14 [Sun] - 01:54

My friend had a spare ticket so I got to go to Janet Jackson's concert the other day.
It started at 7pm but the first 90 minutes was just a DJ playing music.

The show itself ran until 10:30pm or so. Pretty good show but then since I don't know a lot of her songs it got a bit boring in the middle. A friend of mine fell asleep for more than half an hour.








These audiences in the middle of the stage had the best view of all! Must have been fun but these are all standing spots.

2008 - 09/12 [Fri] - 12:33

Went to UBC campus the other day.
Still remember these places?

Bookstore



Promotions during the first few days of school.

S.U.B.

Where my friends and I used to hang out during lunch

Blue Chips

and its famous chocolate bun! YUM!!

not exactly my faculty

2008 - 07/06 [Sun] - 01:46

I took a crepe lesson with a friend 2 weeks ago.

It was taught by the very same instructor who taught the French Cooking class that I took previously. As usual, she prepared wine and more than enough food for everyone. It was a fun night experiencing the different types of crepes.

We usually think of crepe as dessert. But there are many different types of crepes, though I'm still not very used to it, savory ones are also very popular.

This is a rye crepe with smoke salmon, red radish and cream cheese with dill filling.


Our instructor prepared 5 or 6 different kinds of batter for us to taste (and make). Each was different and I enjoyed them all very much. The use of not just buckwheat but also corn, rye, whole wheat, orange zest, herbs...etc. in making the batter to match with different fillings was something new to me.

I particularly liked the sweet batter with herbs. It was delicious and went well with simple fillings like tomato and cheese. Other than just wrapping it into a cone (that's the very typical scene we see in Japan), we also baked some with cheese, ate some like an open sandwich, and so on and so on. .

We wrapped spinach and cream sauce(close enough) filling in a buckwheat crepe, rolled them up and topped it with some cheese and baked for 15 minutes.


If you wonder how it looked it, this is it. Rich in flavor so it's really a dinner dish to me.


We had a lot of fun making our own crepes. We started off with some fairly thick and ugly looking crepes but we improved as we made more and were able to achieve making thinner ones towards the end of the lesson. The next thing would probably be to bring home a crepe pan and start making them at home! haha


There were so many crepes that we couldn't finish trying every single type so we brought some home for the next day. Here we have a whole wheat or buckwheat crepe with ham and cheese, the other one is a corn crepe with chicken filling (see below). I also brought home some crepe suzette for hubby.




Actually speaking of the crepe suzette we made, there was a little incident while our instructor was playing with fire. With a bit too much grand marnier in the pan, the flame got a bit aggressive and caught on her hair (just a little bit). So we learn not to be too greedy or we'd have a new hair style by the time we can sit down to taste our crepe suzette.

2008 - 07/03 [Thu] - 21:59

我がキッチンでは３種類の塩を使っています。



普通の塩、海塩、そしてKosher Saltという種類(実はただの粗い塩だけどね）です。

去年フランスに行ったときモンサンミシェルから当地の塩も買ってきました、確かに料理も違う味がしたので、料理によって違う塩を使うと味も奥深くなるんだと実感しました。

しかし・・・種類が多すぎて使い方も全く分からないのでそこまで研究する精神がないと思います。（＾＾；；

とにかくこの3種類で頑張っています。

---

These are the 3 different kinds of salt I've been using at home.

Regular salt, sea salt, and kosher salt.
kosher salt sounds like something that's kosher but it's actually just normal salt that's not as fine (smaller rock salt). They call it kosher in America because they make things kosher.

There are so many different kinds of salt available out there but 3 is enough for me at the moment. I yet have to learn to maximize their flavor in different cookings.