Holiday season means lots of cooking, eating and cleaning, as I was in front of the stove most of the time, these photos are taken by my husband on his NEX 5N with a macro lens ^^/

The star of the dinner that night was beef steak… cooked by my sis in law. ^o^

Gosh, it was so good, and you might not believe me if I told you it’s just seasoned with salt on each side and then pan fried to perfection on medium high heat with a little oil on a non stick pan… ^^; A pair of thongs is used to poke/press the surface of the steak as it cooks, to make sure it doesn’t get too hard, as that means a tough piece of meat ^^;

The fat on the meat will melt into the pan, giving the meat more flavor, and you may need to wear a pair of gloves to prevent the fat/grease from spattering onto your sleeves/hand/arms as you cook ^^;

Steak was bought on the same day, taken out of the fridge to reach room temperature — to relax the meat before cooking (don’t leave it out too long tho!), while I prepare the side dishes of mushroom, onion and green beans and carrot sticks.

We have 2 birthdays in the family to celebrate in December, so it meant moar food abuse other than Christmas/New year  lol, but this is definitely a note worthy meal to document :P

After cooking, you let the steak rest for a little bit before eating, as eating it immediately will be a bit too hot, and the juices might run out causing meat to be dry I think?

Nomnomnom!!!

It’s quite a large piece of meat, I end up eating about half and the rest was packed lunch XD

Thanks for looking! :3 Happy New Year!!!

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Getting a 730 yen day pass (which you can get from the ticketing machine — they have an English option as well) was a better option than just blindly swiping our suica lol!

We managed to cover Ueno, Asakusa and then Akihabara then back to our lodgings ^^;

Of course I have to bring a doll with me :P for photos of Aki at Ueno park, check it here. I took her to the Volks show room and had about 10 minutes to take photos before closing lol!

Ginko trees~

Stray cat in Ueno park XD

Delicious Takoyaki snack after Ueno, went to this rather long market street – Ameyayokocho – with lots of shops selling food, fish, clothes, shoes and bags.. ^^; This one has hard boiled eggs topping on it! So good! Very hot inside tho, be careful if you eat it XD

Hard work making them!

Sensouji at Asakusa, husband took some lovely photos there ^^/

Huge egg spotted

Teaser for Akihabara show room ;D

ok gotta get ready to head out, laters!

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I guess the punishment for this is, having to look at the pictures and be painfully reminded that they close at 6 pm on weekdays :P

I had to run some small errands on Strida mini, and a craving for something sweet came up the day before, so I kinda planned to make a side trip to pick up the mini donuts before I head home ^^

I actually rolled Strida mini into the shop and place my order :P Luckily I wasn’t chased out for doing so :P

I generally like my desserts not too sweet and I was a bit curious how these donuts tasted — haven’t had donuts in a bit and had found Tim Horton’s getting a bit too sweet for my personal preference…

I wanted to bring some back for my husband to try as well, so I ordered a cone size for about $6-ish, it contains about a dozen mini donuts, I ordered assorted flavor as I couldn’t make up my mind what type to get :P

Since I ordered it as a take out, this little cone of donut was placed in a brown paper bag and I put it into a recycle shopping back and cycled back home after my errand was done, hoping it wasn’t a big mess when I reach home ^^; Lucky for me everything stayed in place :3

I couldn’t wait :P I picked one of each flavor to nom on XD

Had them with a glass of water (was thirsty after the bike ride), there’s chocolate icing with sprinkles, powdered sugar, vanilla icing with sprinkles, and cinnamon sugar :) I think I liked the powdered sugar the best (from memory) the ones with icing were a bit on the sweet side for me, cinnamon sugar was pretty good too ^^!

omake: Went to the craft store to get some wooden beads :P

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Had some visitors from Singapore was visiting Vancouver and I hung out with them a little :)

I took them to Meat and Bread, it was my first time there too~!

It was a cloudy and sometimes rainy day, quite windy too, but I was glad to meet them, one of them being a friend from “Friday Weekly”, a student paper’s reporter/editor from my teenage days who watched me grow up :P

We had Pork and bread sandwich, the pork is very juicy, I didn’t like the fatty part tho, and they had really crispy bits — probably the skin lol, mustard on the side is very mild and goes well with the meat and bread was chewy with a slightly crispy skin ^o^

Quinoa salad, it was interesting — don’t think I ever eaten it before!

After walking around and doing some shopping for souvenirs (omiyage) we my friends, we had a short drink break and a Honey cruller from Tim Horton’s — shared between 3 people lol! For some reason it is a lot sweeter from what I remembered ^^; I guess maybe that is why we don’t go there as much as before ^^;

Omake:

Hotel which they were staying at

It was their first time visiting Vancouver, and since it’s autumn, they were very excited about the colourful autumn leaves :D

Chubby sparrows getting ready for winter?

:)

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Have a bunch of food pix to document :3 along with some miscellaneous pix :)

Went to talk to a neighbour when she was having a garage sale to clear old stuff out XD and she gave me this little flower from her yard :)

Meat… was supposed to be BBQ but something wasn’t working so the meat was pan fried

BBQed meat and pan fried tastes different for some reason

Baked potatos nomnom my favorite!

Baked brussel sprouts

Fruity dessert ^o^

Uli’s yummy noms (attended a birthday dinner with family :3)

Crab cakes and cobbs salad to share, love it!

Burgerrr I loved the fries lol

Really good sheared scallops with some kinda green sauce with peas the bits were mutton (goat?) bacon? There’s a slight after taste which I didn’t care for, but the sauce and scallops were excellent!

So good, it deserves another shot :P

Passed by this neat looking japanese restaurant on way back from dindins

^o^

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Ran out of milk today, and decided to go a different way to buy a small pack of milk. Testing out Strida Mini again :3

This little trip took about half an hour for both ways, including stopping to take pictures, unfolding the bike to get into the store and buy milk. Also included stopping for pedestrians etc.

It’s somewhat a bumpy-ish ride, and was a warm/sunny day. I got home sweaty (argh) and feeling my arms got a good work out :P

This plants are so pretty!

Learnt a new Strida “Kung Fu” from my Strida guru in Singapore, to partially unfold Strida Mini so it props itself up like a tripod :)

Really cool :D

Going to include a little documentation of last evening lol, some evil food photos at the bottom ^^; Went to watch a movie :3

Change of pace

All I can think of is crap LOL

Bright orange “joy ride” with a well worn harness ^^

The tag reads Rosemary ‘Barbecue’

Before Movie we went to have Vera’s Burger!

Ready?

…

..

.

Spicy wings… Not really my thing but I had a drumlette lol

poutineeeeeee omg so good ^^;

Really good BBQ beef burger :P

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I got a simple but awesome tip from my mom about pan frying defrosted frozen scallops. I thought I will blog about it and share it with all of you out there who are looking for the perfect way to prepare yummy scallops :D Photos kindly taken by my husband.

I tried cooking the scallops before the results were not very pretty — water kept coming out from the huge scallops as I fry it, and it resulted in small (half or smaller of the original size!) and over cooked scallops. I was a bit wary about trying to cook it again to be honest, but I was glad I decided to try again.

Ingredients:

1) Frozen scallops, defrosted the day before in your fridge section. (we bought the above from Costco, making sure it’s the “no water added” type, it has 12-14 pieces)
2) butter (to fry the scallops)
3) garlic slices or shallots
4) oyster sauce (or teriyaki sauce whichever you prefer)
5) Mirin (Japanese rice wine for cooking)
6) salt

Instructions:

1) Open the bag of defrosted scallops and put it in a clean bowl– preferably glass or metal — Plastic container may have small traces of oil which will apparently affect the results of the pre work.

2) With cold running water rinse  off any frozen ice from the scallops and put enough water to just cover the scallops, add a table spoon of salt and gently mix until salt dissolve and set aside, go prepare other stuff– maybe pasta or other dishes/vegetables which you want to accompany this dish.

3)  About 30-45 minutes later (if any longer, maybe put the scallops in the salt water solution in the fridge — but this may affect cooking time) scallops + salt water solution will probably be almost room temperature or just slightly cooler, put a couple paper towel on a clean plate, scoop the scallops out and using more paper towel, dry the scallops as much as possible – moisture will make oil spatter.

4) When the scallops are pat dry, you’re ready to fry them. Heat up a non stick frying pan to high heat, add some butter, when the butter starts to bubble and turn slightly brown, put some garlic slices in (take them out with chopsticks if they start to brown too much later) the main thing with garlic is to give it some fragrance.

5) Start placing the pat dry scallops into the pan, from the largest pieces first — they will take a bit longer to fry than the smaller pieces, depending on how big the scallops are, fry until the top/bottom sides are caramelised, may take 2-3 minutes each side, smaller the scallops less time needed.  Main thing is do not over cook!  Watch it, if a piece looks like both sides are done/caramelized, take it out quickly with a spatula or chopsticks onto a plate.

6) Sometimes you need to cook the scallops in 2 batches, when the 2nd batch looks done, quickly slide the first batch of cooked scallops onto the plate into the pan again, add a dizzle of oyster sauce(or Teriyaki sauce), a splash of mirin quickly stir it once or twice don’t over cook it! I notice sometimes there may still be some moisture coming out from the scallops after serving but usually it is not excessive. Serve hot/warm on a plate. :)

On this plate of scallops, I also prepared some caramelized shallots ahead of time using microwave. (Photo below was taken with my iphone)

Ingredients:

1) Shallots, thinly sliced (2-3 bulbs)
2) cooking oil
3) microwave safe bowl

Instructions:

1) The thinly sliced shallots must be dry, as moisture cause hot oil to splatter. If you wash shallots after peeling, pat dry with paper towel before slicing. Be warned slicing dry shallots may make you cry :P After slicing shallots put in a microwave safe bowl, drizzle with oil enough to almost cover the shallots, mix shallots and oil together a bit with a pair of chopsticks (dry) to make sure the shallots are evenly coated with oil – take note any excess oil can be kept to be used for cooking later.

2) Microwave on high for 2 minutes, check and gently stir with chopsticks, after that, microwave another minute (or less if you are using less shallots!), gently stir with chopsticks again, the oil will be bubbling and the container will be very hot, so be careful! When the oil is bubbling and shallots slightly changed colour, any further microwaving has to be minimum (by seconds rather than minutes). I burnt some shallots accidently before and they are not edible — super bitter!

3) Stirring/mixing the shallot in between the microwaving will ensure a more even cooking. When the shallot starts to turn light golden brown it should be almost ready, the hot oil will continue to cook shallot a bit more when you take it out from the microwave oven. Make sure to handle the container with mittens or pot holder! Good luck :D

Hope you enjoy this little random food segment :P

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Went on a bike date with Mai chan on a cloudy weekday たのしいかた！Despite how the weather looks kinda yucky, it turned out to be a perfect cycling weather in my opinion!  Thank you for coming out and teaching me the route!!! ^o^

I wish I was able to tie a camera to my head or something, I wanted to take pictures of everything! But I was already slow on the small bike haha! So it won’t work if I keep stopping everytime I wanted to XD Thanks Mai for being so patient >_<;!! Mai’s phone camera took some pretty neat photos I think!

I brought Mokotan and a couple little wandas along with me :P Mai brought a tiny budgerigar figure, kawaii! ^o^

This bike trip was to test how far I can take the Strida mini :P I would say it’s pretty good, I need more practice to gain better control tho ^^;

2nd stop…. toilet break for me LOL

This is not really a break, more like there was a path where we have to dismount :P so I took a chance to take a photo XD

I was in awe of how close we were to the Lion’s gate bridge!

Too bad I was on the wrong side lol

After this we ride a long some more beautiful scenary, but along the way almost to the destination… I fell LOL!!!

It was a stupid way to fall too, not because I was avoiding to crash with someone or whatever, but because there were 3 cyclist (tourists I think) they were stopping on the side, and all three were looking back — perhaps waiting for someone… and I got stressed out, went too fast and fell :P Luckily I only scraped my knee… Sorry to freak Mai out ^o^;;;; I think I felt more bad about that than my scrape LOL! I think Mai will forever see me falling in slow motion off my tiny bike for a long time ^^;

After rather long bike ride, we had to fill our belly :P Thanks for the bandaid Mai! ^^;/

The weather has been strange… the plants are confused ^^; The hydrangeas are blooming like it is spring time!

All in all, the ride was good (until I fell LOL) But I blame my bad skills for falling, the bike ride was generally smooth and fun.  I also learnt that I don’t have enough power to go up hill :P I was able to ride the transit, run errands — mailed a letter before I went to downtown… took the sky train… very little problems in those aspects :)

To see some more doll related pictures, you can check out the related doll blog entry :)

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