Mothers' Day

We had an early mothers' day visit with my mom the weekend before mothers' day, and it was really nice.  On Sunday we had Christopher's parents over to celebrate with them.

In the morning I made pie, and then got beans in the oven.

It was nice enough to sit outside, so when they arrived we snacked a bit in the backyard.

The appetizer was grilled melon wrapped with endive and prosciutto.

Christopher grilled up jerk chicken and Greek ribs, and then we moved inside to eat.

On the side we had smoked cheddar mac and cheese, bourbon baked beans, and mango salad.

My plate:

Dessert was key lime pie:

It was so wonderful to be outside enjoying the gorgeous weather, and this week has been beautiful too.  We're looking forward to eating many more snacks and meals in the yard in the coming months.

Have you eaten outside yet?  Grilled?  How's your week going so far?

Dinner at my Sister's House

On Saturday evening my sister and Riley had Christopher and I over for dinner.  They made a delicious spread, and we had a great time catching up and seeing our youngest nephew.

When we arrived we snacked on an artichoke dip, that I totally need to get the recipe for; it was garlicky, cheesy, and really hit the spot.

Next they served a beer cheese soup - mmm!

The main course was jerk chicken, coconut rice, and a mango salad.  I loooooved the mango salad, and made sure to leave with the recipe for that (it's just mango, fresh lime juice, red onion, and cilantro).  It paired so well with the spicy chicken.

Dessert was a strawberry, cheese-cakey, pretzel, type dish that we all really enjoyed.

We goofed around in the living room for a while, laughing at what my sister and I would look like as men, hahaha!  That Snapchat filter is so creepy! 

Tonight we're having leftovers from the mother's day dinner we made yesterday (more on that later), and watching Master Chef Canada.  Christopher's friend from high school is on it, and is doing so well!  There are only about 5 or 6 people left, and we're rooting for Josh each week.

How was your weekend?  What did you do?

Did you celebrate mother's day?

The Last of Chiang Mai - The Food!

We ate dinner at Italics, which was in the lower level of our hotel, a couple of times while in Chiang Mai.  One night Christopher had the tuna tartare:

And I had khao soi.

Another evening we ordered the pizza (you can pick four kinds, and they'll do a quarter of the pizza in each of your choices), and the lasagna to share, with bruschetta as a starter.

 

Everything was excellent!

A different day we shared the mango sticky rice for dessert:

Mango sticky rice is a very popular dessert in Chiang Mai, and it's super addictive. You can find it on the menu at most restaurants, and we made sure to get our fill.

We did a lot of walking on this trip, and stumbled upon many ice cream shops.

Durian ice cream!  (It's not great).

On Cloud Nine:

Janie Scoop:

Frozen yogurt from the mall:

This was one of the better walking cities we've been in, if not the best.  No matter where we were in the city, there was always somewhere to stop in for a coffee or a treat to rest our feet, and there was always something beautiful to see.

The streets are really narrow, there are no sidewalks in most areas, and the traffic is crazy, so you have to watch where you are going, but we got used to it quickly.

When we weren't on foot, we mostly used Grab.  I've never used Uber, but I am thinking Grab is similar.  We just got the app. and then entered where we wanted to go, and in under a minute the car would pull up to get us.  They dropped us off at our destination, and none of our rides were more than $4 CAD, even if we drove for 20 minutes.  Nearly everywhere we went had free WiFi, so we were always able to use that to book our next ride.

We also took one tuktuk, and a few rides in the songthaews, although Grab was a cheaper, safer, and more convenient option.  I'm super thankful that one of the hotel employees told us about this app. as it was so useful!

Songthaews (these ride share trucks are everywhere)

We spent an afternoon wandering one of the malls, and ate lunch there.

One evening we went to a Korean restaurant for dinner.

We had a fabulous late-night green curry at Warm Up Cafe, while checking out the band.

We saw a couple of live bands on this vacation; there seems to be a big music scene in Chiang Mai.

Daddy's Antique Cafe was a lovely, charming little place, and it also had excellent chicken wings and house-made pasta (the pasta picture died with my phone).

We snacked on stuffed jalapenos at Rustic and Blue:

Cheesy fries with beet mayo at some over-priced pub:

And all sorts of new and exciting flavours of snacks from good old 7-Eleven.  They have so many 7-Elevens in Chiang Mai; it feels like they are on every corner.

The larb seaweed was really tasty:

But these lemon chips were horrible!  They tasted like Vicks lemon cough drops.  Good in cough drop form, horrendous in chip form.

We were pretty sad to leave Chiang Mai, but we will definitely go back.

Fortunately there was delicious ramen in the Taipei airport, so that helped to make our very, very, long journey home not so rough.

Do you have any spring/summer travel plans?  

Camping?  Road trip?  Somewhere far?