Christmas Eve

Last night we went out for dinner with my friends Eric and Marian who were in town from St. Paul, Minnesota.  It had been years since I had seen them last, so it was nice to catch up and introduce them to Christopher. 

We went out for dinner to Flip, one of our favourite restaurants in town.  We shared the poutine to start:

I ordered one of my favourite dishes in the city, spinach spaetzle.  I added spicy shrimp to it, because it pairs so well.

It doesn't look appetizing, but it's perfection.

Everyone else enjoyed their food too, and we had a really nice visit.

I can't believe it's Christmas eve!  It doesn't really feel like it, because this is the first year of my life without a Christmas tree up at home, and the first time we'll be away from home for Christmas morning.  Christmas eve today will be very different than last year ... but it's going to be fantastic!  You'll get to read all about it  ... later.

Merry Christmas everyone! 

Korean Family Dinner

We often tell people that we are part Korean. 

I think we actually might be ;-)

Victoria (Christopher's sister), Steve (Christopher's brother), Us

We love Korean food a lot, and cook it a lot, and even make our own kimchi!  Christopher's sister and brother-in-law taught English in Korea, and some of their friends from Korea have become like family.  One of those friends is Jin Sook, who flew to Canada on Friday to spend Christmas here.  She came over to Christopher's parents' home on Sunday to cook dinner for the entire family.



Jin Sook made some of our favourite dishes, including: bulgogi, kimbap, galbi (ribs), and pajeon.

I think I ate non-stop for about ninety minutes straight.  The food was incredible, and definitely the best Korean food we've had.

We also celebrated brother-in-law Will's birthday with some cake, and A LOT of singing, both in Korean and English.

We had so much fun laughing, visiting and carousing.  We ended off the evening in the living room watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, with more laughs, and some baby snuggles.  We're glad that we got to get together with a lot of family before Christmas, since we'll be away for Christmas.

Are you ready for Christmas?

How will you be spending Christmas Eve?

Saskatoon Visit

We had a wonderful weekend in Saskatoon.  After the delicious food we enjoyed on the house Friday night at our hotel, the hotel also bought us breakfast the next morning - we were spoiled!  We visited with my mom all day Saturday, and then went to my auntie Cathy and uncle Derrel's home for dinner and a visit on Saturday evening.

My aunt made a delicious meal of salmon, potatoes with cream and dill, carrots, and bell peppers.

It was fantastic!  The salmon was perfectly cooked, and the potatoes ... amazing!  I am a sucker for potatoes, and if you add cream and dill, well, you pretty much take them over the top.

For dessert, we had one of Christopher's favourites, pavlova.

He ate three giant pieces.  It was sooooo good!

We had a really nice visit with my aunt and uncle, and then visited with my mom again on Sunday before driving home.

You'd never guess it was winter in Saskatchewan!

How was your weekend?

What did you do?

Aroma, Oooooohhhh Mama!

It's no secret we love Aroma, the incredible restaurant in the Saskatoon Radisson hotel.  This is definitely one of our favourite restaurants, and it should be on a list of some sort of one of Saskatchewan's best. 

Chef Trevor invited us in to try some new dishes on the house, and last night we took him up on his offer.  We grabbed our usual table in the lounge, and were pumped to see that Paige would be our server - she's our usual when we come in at night, and we love how she always has a smile on her face, and she's always so cheerful and positive. 

We were given three appetizers to try:

One was a charcuterie board, with a few different kinds of cured meats, cheeses, crackers and housemade brioche crisps, local lavender honey, a tomato fennel jam, pickles, grapes, and golden beet.  The beet was an incredible addition to the charcuterie board, and something we've never had before.  It paired so well with the blue cheese, and the other soft cheeses.  There were so many fun taste combinations to play with.

The next appetizer was a take on shrimp cocktail, with garlic butter prawns, and two sauces to dip them in, Saskatoon berry ketchup, and horseradish mayo.  Umm, horseradish!?  YES!

 

The prawns were perfectly cooked, and full of garlic butter flavour.  Prawn perfection.

The third appetizer blew our minds, and we wondered why we hadn't ever ordered it before.  It was Pineview smashed potato poutine.  Clearly someone must have known how much we love poutine.  And bacon.  And deliciousness. 

This thing was insane.  It is made with smashed, local baby potatoes, chicken, bacon, and cheese curds, and smothered in an incredible gravy.

I tried to hoard it all, but Christopher kept having bites.  He's lucky he's cute!

I loved how crispy the potatoes were.  This was such an interesting twist on the classic poutine, and it was very, very satisfying.  We'll definitely be ordering this dish in the future.

And as if that wasn't enough, Paige brought us out this gorgeous dessert board, with Kahlua pot de creme with fresh beignets, that were so warm and soft.  They took us back to New Orleans.  Also on the board was peanut butter pretzel cheesecake, which was one of the best desserts I've ever had.  I am not big on sweets, but this wasn't overly sweet, and it had such a lovely crust, and smooth center. 

All these incredible dishes ...

And there wasn't a speck of food left.

Thank you to the amazing team at Aroma - you guys are the best!

Needless to say, we went back for breakfast.

And, lucky as we are, Kelly, our favourite day-time server was there to greet us at our table.  We're always happy when we start our morning out visiting with her, and eating the well-rounded breakfast.

If you live anywhere near this place, do yourself a favour and visit it soon!  Order a wood-fired pizza, the best spaghetti and meat sauce ever, any of the food pictured above, or anything else off of the menu, and you won't be disappointed.  If you're feeling saucy, you might want to try one of their caesars to drink too ... it's like a meal in itself.

We're already excited for our next visit to Aroma, which will likely be for a late-night pizza tonight.

What are you up to this weekend?

Ten on Tuesday

1)  We might have eaten an entire back of ripple chips and all of the dip in one sitting. 

'Tis the season!

2)  We made and jarred some kimchi recently.  Yum yum!

3)  If that's not "cabbagy" enough, we also cooked up some cabbage rolls.

4)  I absolutely loved this article.  I don't know about 12 kids ... but I think the parents did a great job! 

5)  We took my dad out for dinner this evening, just because.  We had a nice visit, and some laughs!

6)  The weather has been beautiful the past couple of weeks, which is amazing for Regina in December.  It's also been making Christopher's long delivery days a little better than usual for this time of year.  Regardless of how long his days have been, he still got up early on Saturday and made our breakfast :-)

7)  Homemade perogies with sausage made a great meal recently, and even better leftovers for lunch.

8)  We are so ridiculously excited to skip town for Christmas and see what Vegas holds for us! 

9)  After our dinner guests on Saturday, and our brunch guests on Sunday, we had more guests!  Yay!  We love our family!  My dad, and our favourite little guy came over for coffee and dessert, since they were out and about together that day.  Our nephew is one sweet kid!  I love that he's still snugly with me, and I sure hope he never grows out of it.  Christopher's looking forward to teaching him some drumming in 2015, now that the little guy is just the right height.

10)  There is a new Pho place in town called Pho Milu.  We shared the spicy beef soup the other day.  It was decent, but not the best Pho we've ever had.

What are your Tuesday things?

How is your week starting out?

Family Breakfast

On Sunday morning Christopher's parents came over for breakfast. 

We had breakfast skillets with potatoes, bacon, veggies, cheese, fresh herbs, and egg.

On the side, we had a bit of toasted homemade bread, fruit (kiwi, strawberries, dragon fruit), and a shot glass smoothie.

We sipped on cranberry mimosas (and coffee of course).

The food was good, but the company was even better!  We love hanging out with our parents!

Will you be seeing all your family this Christmas?

Ten Thousand Villages: A Great Place for Gifts

I've always loved shopping at Ten Thousand Villages.  They are the largest and oldest fair trade organization in North America, selling food products, personal items, home decor, and gift items.  Also, they are a non-profit organization.  I bought a great book called "If the World Were a Village" while we were at this store in Montreal in August. 

The kind people from Ten Thousand Villages offered to send me a few products to try this holiday season.  One was Zatoun extra virgin olive oil made in Palestine.

This oil is very flavourful, and was great in the hummus that we made on the weekend.

They also sent a little dish that is really pretty, and would be perfect for displaying Christmas chocolates.  It is a crackle glaze square plate, made in Vietnam.  It is available for $12.

The other product we tried was Za'atar, a beautiful spice mixture that is perfect on our morning breakfast potatoes.  It's also great in the olive oil as a dip for bread, or sprinkled over a salad.

It is a mixture of thyme, roasted sesame seeds, sumac and sea salt.  You can buy the spice mixture alone for $6, the olive oil for $20, and they are purchases you can feel good about, knowing that the men and women of Palestine are getting a fair dollar for their products. 

Have you ever shopped at Ten Thousand Villages?

Do you have one of these stores near you?

*Full Disclosure: The products in this post were provided to me free of charge.  All opinions are my own.