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You are here: Home / Archives for Recreation / Dining and Restaurants

Pleasantly full

November 22, 2009 by Tricia

We just had a great dinner. I’m full, but not so full that I don’t feel like I can do anything. Just full enough.

We had burritos for dinner. Yum!

My husband and I love Mexican food, but for some reason we don’t eat it very often. It’s probably been a year since we last made burritos or tacos at home. Too long.

Considering how much we both like Mexican food I don’t know why we don’t eat it at least once a month. It’s fairly cheap to make too. At least the basic stuff like tacos and burritos anyway. LOL

When Chris and I lived in an apartment we used to go to this great Mexican restaurant regularly. I can’t remember the name of it right now, but it’s located just south west on Yonge street at Eglinton, here in Toronto.

There are a couple of really good Mexican restaurants on the Danforth as well. Very close to where we live now, but of course we haven’t been to either one in ages and likely won’t be going out to dine for a while since we just don’t have any money to spare on eating out.

I’m going to have to find some good recipes for Mexican food so that we can have it more often and of course have some variety.

I do have a great recipe for guacomole (If I can find it!). Several years ago we went to a Mexican restaurant downtown and we enjoyed their guacamole so much we talked the server into getting the recipe for us. He also got permission from the restaurant to sell us one of those big guacamole dishes that are made out of lava rock (I think).

If you know of a good website for Mexican recipes or if you have some favorite recipes of your own that you’d like to share please let me know.





Filed Under: Dining and Restaurants, Home and Lifestyle, Toronto Tagged With: burrito, full, good dinner, mexican food, mexican recipes, pleasantly full, tacos, tasty, yummy

Grilled Halibut

September 11, 2009 by Tricia

Last Saturday evening we had Grilled Halibut for dinner. It’s very easy to make, and it’s a healthy meal!

Here’s how I prepared the halibut for grilling:

Grilled Halibut Dinner for Two

  • 2 pieces of Halibut (approx 1 inch thick, 1/2 lb per piece)

Marinade:

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp lemon juice (concentrated)
  • 1/2 tsp paprika
  • 1/2 tsp dried dill or 1 tsp chopped fresh dill

Mix marinade ingredients together in a mixing bowl or flat dish (corning ware?) that is large enough to hold the fish.

Rinse Halibut pieces and pat dry. Place the Halibut in the marinade container, turning once or twice to make sure the fish is covered in marinade. Let sit for approximately 30 minutes prior to cooking.

When cooking fish in the oven or on the grill it’s good to keep in mind that it takes approximately 10 minutes to thoroughly cook a 1 inch piece of fish.

Prepare the grill by oiling it and once it’s reached a high temperature place your fish on the grill. Halibut usually has skin on one side so place the skin side down when you first begin to cook the fish. Turn after approximately five minutes and cook the other side for another five minutes (10 minutes in total per inch thickness of fish) or until the fish is opaque and begins to flake easily. (test with knife or fork while cooking.)

Serve the fish immediately after cooking. Asparagus and grilled vegetables are wonderful additions to this meal.

Steamed Asparagus

When preparing Asparagus I rinse the asparagus, then snap off the hard ends on the stalks. I then place the Asparagus spears in a microwave steaming dish and cook them for approximately three minutes.

Once the Asparagus spears are tender I drain any water from the microwave steamer, place the asparagus in the bottom tray with a little bit of margarine (we use canola margarine) and a few drops of lemon juice concentrate. I then toss the asparagus in the margarine and lemon juice and serve. The lemon really adds to the flavor of the asparagus. Delicious.

Grilled Vegetables

Grilled vegetables are easy to prepare and cook on the grill. You can grill just about any vegetable on the grill (onion, eggplant, zucchini, peppers, garlic, tomato etc) – just make sure that you cut your veggies large enough so that they don’t fall through the grill and or use a veggie grilling basket on your barbecue.

The other day I purchased a basket of zucchini and a basket of green peppers – what better than to grill them!

Simple marinade for grilled veggies:

  • two tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp garlic powder or 1/2 tsp finely diced fresh garlic
  • sprinkle of ground pepper
  • 1 tsp Italian seasoning mix

Mix marinade ingredients together in a bowl.

Prepare vegetables for grilling

  • 1 Zucchini
  • 1 pepper
  1. Cut Zucchini in half lengthwise and then quarter each half creating 8 zucchini wedges
  2. Clean and Quarter the pepper removing all seeds
  3. (prepare any other vegetables you might like to try grilling)
  4. Toss the vegetable pieces in the marinade and let sit for approximately 30 minutes before grilling.
  5. grill veggies on medium to low heat, turning often to prevent charring. Serve immediately once done.

If you enjoy grilled vegetables you should look at this grilled veggie recipe!  The recipe above is very simple, but if you want really tasty grilled vegetables or your cooking to impress this grilled vegetable recipe is the one that I’d use! Yummy!

This meal if very quick and easy to prepare and oh, it tastes so good! Give it a try and let me know how you liked it!

Filed Under: Dining and Restaurants, Home and Lifestyle, Nutrition, Recipes Tagged With: barbecue, BBQ, delicious, dill, easy, easy grilled fish, easy recipe, grill, grilled fish, grilled halibut, Grilled vegetables, grilling, halibut, lemon juice, paprika, recipe, Recipes, spice, steamed asparagus, tasty, yummy

We had some delicious meals for my birthday celebration

September 10, 2009 by Tricia

It was my birthday last Sunday. We didn’t do anything extra special like go out for dinner or have a party, but we did have two really great meals over the weekend in celebration.

On Saturday we went out to get our hair cut. My hair grows really fast and I was past due for a hair cut. It’s so nice now that it’s cut and it’s so nice to not have to struggle with my hair being too long!

After Chris and I got our hair cuts I decided that I wanted to buy a cake for my birthday. We haven’t had a cake, pie or really any dessert other than fruit for over a year so it was time to splurge on something tasty.

While we were in the grocery stores bakery picking out a cake I decided that I want to take a look at the fish section to see if they had any Halibut. Halibut grilled on the barbecue is tasty!

In the end we purchased over a pound of fresh halibut (expensive!), two t-bone steaks (they were on sale!), asparagus, a basket of zucchini and a basket of green peppers (on sale – 3.99 for a basket) and a basket of fresh peaches, garlic bread and a cake for my birthday. The cake was (is, there’s still some left) a banana chocolate chip cake with chocolate truffle between the layers and a chocolate cream cheese dressing. Needless to say it’s a rich cake and we’re only having small slices which is why there’s still some left!

So with all that delicious food my birthday was really a two day celebration. The steak and halibut were more expensive than our usual fair, but they made excellent meals, much nicer than the meals we probably would have gotten if we’d gone out to a nice restaurant on Sunday for my birthday.

I expect we’ll have another celebration in a week or two. Not birthday related though. We’re very friendly with our Greek neighbors and one of my neighbors grandsons is going to get engaged this weekend (i just gave him the name of one of my certified diamonds contacts from my time in the jewelry trade) and I’m sure my neighbors will have some kind of big engagement party soon that we’ll end up invited too. I’ve mentioned before how our neighbors give us food all the time (especially when they’re celebrating Greek Orthodox Easter) and inviting us to their special events … so I’d be willing to wager that we’ll get an invite to their engagement celebration. Mmmm more good food!

So … what do you do for your or your spouses birthday. Do you go all out and celebrate with a party and lots of gifts? Chris and I pretty much have everything we need (except more money!) so we don’t really buy each other gifts. We buy things when we can afford it and when we want it not just for special days or holidays.

I’ll post the recipes for the Grilled Halibut and the grilled T-bone steaks in the next couple of posts in case anyone’s interested in how we made our fantastic tasting food!

Filed Under: Dining and Restaurants, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try Tagged With: Birthday, cake, celebrate, celebration, chocolate banana cake, Chris, delicious, dinner, dinners, Gifts, grilled veggies, halibut, husband, special, tbone steak

Hot, humid and Smokey!

August 11, 2009 by Tricia

Guess what – I did feel better on Sunday! So, in the early evening, at about 6 p.m. my husband, our dog Midnight and I headed out to the Taste of the Danforth.

Yeah!

It was hot on Sunday, but not quite as hot as they’d been predicting. Only 27 Celsius or so – but with very high humidity … so by the time we got to the street festival it felt like 37 Celsius or so (98 F)! Hot! When it’s that humid out you just feel sluggish moving around in the heat … yeah, so why not go out into a huge crowd where it was likely even hotter? LOL

We lucked out and got a parking spot near the start of the street festival, so within minutes we were able to walk to the closed off street festival.

The air was hazy – partly due to the humid weather and partly due to all the open grills cooking up Souvlaki and other delectable food items! Oh and it was crowded! News reports estimated that approximately 1.4 million people attended the festival from Friday evening until it’s close at 8 pm Sunday.

Here’s a photo of the crowd:

Crowd at Taste of the Danforth 2

The picture doesn’t really show how crowded it was … basically think about a four lane street crowded with people for several blocks (maybe 2 miles or 5 km of people along the street?), then you’ll get the idea.

As you can see from the picture above there were food stands, amusement rides like a big Ferris wheel, a fun slide, a crazy house ride and more. There was also a rock climbing wall, beer tents, and a few bandstands where Greek and other multicultural bands entertained the crowds.

Fun stuff!

Chris and I and our dog walked about half the street festival as we tried to find food that we wanted to buy. We ended up getting Gyros, Spanokopita (spinach pies in Filo pastry) and several spicy vegetable Samosas. Everyone we passed looked hot and sweaty due to the heat! I’m sure, despite the food that people lost weight as they walked around! I doubt anyone there needed Solo Slim that day! Not me anyway! I was soaked!

Oh and as I waited off to the side with the dog as Chris bought food for us at various vendors I must have stood in a stream of smoke from the grills. When I got home all I could smell was smoke!

I would have hopped in the shower pretty much as soon as we got home, but as it turned out the biggest electrical storm of the summer started up just after we returned home.

I wished I’d thought to take pictures of the lightening! We spent two hours watching the storm overhead. Big thunder and tons of lightening! There was sheet lightening – cloud to cloud, and big solid strikes that looked like the lightening was hitting just behind one of the houses across the street.

I’m surprised that 1. we didn’t lose power and 2. that no big trees in our immediate area came down either from the wind or a lightening hit.

So anyway … I ended up smelling very smokey for a few extra hours – until I felt that it was safe to get in the shower!

Anyone else in the Toronto area go to the Taste of the Danforth this weekend? How did you like it?

Filed Under: Canada, Culture, Dining and Restaurants, Entertainment, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Music, Recreation, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: Culture, diversity, dog, Food, fun, grills, gyros, hot, humid, multicultural, parking, samosas, smokey, smoky, souvlaki, street, street festival, sweaty, Taste of the Danforth, Toronto, Walking

Taste of the Danforth – a food and music street festival Opa!

August 8, 2009 by Tricia

It’s that time of year again when people flock to my neighborhood in droves for tasty Greek food, music and cultural experiences. Yes … it’s time for the Taste Of the Danforth – one of the city of Toronto’s biggest street festivals.

The festival, which started yesterday at 6 p.m. and ends on Sunday at midnight is just blocks from my home. It’s nice to have such a big – mostly free – event so close to my home. Luckily we live far enough away that we hear little noise from the Million or more people that attend the Taste of the Danforth each year.

I wasn’t feeling so hot today … to tell the truth I’ve felt pretty awful for a couple of weeks straight now (thanks Crohn’s!) so as much as I wanted to attend the Taste of the Danforth I just couldn’t. Perhaps I’ll feel more up to going tomorrow, however I’ll have to battle the heat tomorrow as it’s supposed to reach 32 c with high humidity so it will feel like it’s over 40 Celsius (104 f)!

Even though I haven’t gone to the street festival yet this year I’ve still had a taste. My husband was out early this evening with his sister and brother in law who’d come into Toronto to see a Blue Jay’s baseball game. He met up with them downtown for drinks and as he was coming back home by subway I suggested that he stop off on the Danforth on his way home (two blocks from the subway station he got off at) and pick us up some food.

So he brought home 2 Gyros (mixed meat sandwich wrapped in pita), Spanokopita (spinach pie/filo pastry), Baclova (very sweet dessert) and one chicken souvlaki stick. Just a taste of everything. Delicious!

Our dog got so excite at the smell of the food when he came home that she started jumping around and almost knocked over the tv stand. Lucky for us it only teetered a bit before settling.

If I do feel well enough to go to the Taste of the Danforth tomorrow I might try some of the other types of food available. People probably think that it’s mainly Greek or mediteranian food that you can get there, but you can get Thai, Indian, Sushi, Mexican, Spanish …. just about everything. After all, the Danforth is one of the most multicultural areas of the city – so why not experiment and try new foods?

If you are in the Toronto are this evening or on Sunday I strongly suggest that you stop by the Taste of the Danforth festival (on Danforth Avenue from Broadview to Jones). You’ll love the experience!

Filed Under: Canada, Culture, Dining and Restaurants, Entertainment, Items to Try, Recreation, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: cheap, crohns, danforth, dinner, festival, Food, free, greek, Greek Food, gyros, hot day, humid, Indian, largest street festival, mexican, multicultural, Music, Neighborhood, sick, souvlaki, spanish, street festival, Taste of the Danforth, tasty, Thai, Toronto

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