Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Dinner for 2 - CHEAP!


Last night I came home after work and made a delicious Prime Rib Roast (bought for $17.04) and spiced to perfection by Rich and me, with Roasted Potatoes ($1.95) and Sauteed Mushrooms ($1.99). A super tasty and amazing Dinner for 2 for under $21 (and I didn't have wine so I saved there too!)

This week's cover of Toronto's NOW Magazine proclaims: Eat Well, Spend Less and features TO's Top Mains Under $15. Hey - I'm doin' it! Mock Duck Curry's got NOTHING on my awesome prime rib!

For more on what haikugirl's been up to, visit: haikugirlmovies

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Open Letter to Dori

Bonjour Dori en Australie! Watching the Australian Open and thinking of you! Nadal has not dropped a set! Roddick defeated Djokovic (who retired) and will meet Federer in semifinals. Roddick seems weird in the press conference.

Now that the Obama girls are in the White House, people want to know: Do Sasha and Malia have Wii? I know Tomas and Luisa have Wii. Did it come with you to Australie?

Also watching The Biggest Loser Families with guest chef Curtis Stone from TLC's Take Home Chef - my FAVOURITE! Also an Ozzie - he's showing the participants how to cook and eat right.

Getting together with the Montreal gang on Saturday. We will miss you guys!!! Hope Nouvelle Zelande was AMAZING!!! Love, MM & Rich

Dori is in OZ
Enjoy this new adventure
Salut la famille!

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Movie and Martini lovers UNITE!

Met Les Boys (Keith & Fidel) and Ivana & Antonio & baby Matteo for dinner at the Pure Spirits Oyster House (adjust your audio settings!) in the Distillery District on Sunday Night. Dinner was good but the service was uneven and the martinis were cloudy so kudos to Fidel for letting the manager know. After that, service picked up and our bill went down - hooray! It was so lovely to see everyone. Ivana looks FANTASTIC after giving birth only 12 days before. We have to start planning the festivities for this year's TIFF 2008 which marks 10 years since Ivana and I met the original Les Boys (Keith, Joe & Shawn) in line at Roy Thomson Hall at TIFF 1999. What a wonderful milestone! Such wonderful friends! Come to think of it, our friendship predates both of our weddings - here's to friendship, martinis & movies!!

Sunday, February 17, 2008

The Number 23 and All Bets are ON!

Number 23
kinda spooky, kinda weird,
kinda lame ending

Saw this on Pay-Per-Vu and it was alright - a decent rental. Virginia Madsen looks pretty hot for most of the film and Jim Carrey does a pretty good job. I won't spoil the ending but it was pretty wimpy.

Out to Morton's on Friday night (to quote my lovely husband "Feb 15 is the new Feb 14"). A mighty dinner and bill but then he lost a bet (everyone knows it wasn't Katie Holmes with Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III, it was Michelle Monahan, soon to be in Made of Honor with Patrick Dempsey). We made another bet on Saturday night while watching our Las Vegas Marathon on the PVR. Rich said: it's that guy from Survivor 2nd season and I said Whaa?? Anyway, Rich was right (this time) - it WAS Colby Donaldson playing a dog lover with a giant great dane (this is on Mystery channel folks so it is an old 2005 Las Vegas episode). I would never have remembered the guy's name (my Mom would - she's a die hard Survivor fan) so I had to IMdB him (like Larry Birkhead, whom Sarah just spotted at The Cove Atlantis) but I AM impressed that Rich plucked the reference out of nowhere. So he's getting dinner at the Keg (York St) this month. Congratulations Rich!

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Yay reds and friends! Boo ExpressVu :-(

I love reds bistro. I love those mini sirloin burgers. The snack platter and cod and flank steak with onion rings were also awesome! Tonight I met my friend Keith at reds and we shared apps and caught up and it was sooooo relaxing and fun. Then I met Rich at home and we watched what we had recorded on our NEW PVR - very exciting to be able to pause, get a snack and go back to the tv.

Too bad I almost lost my mind on Sunday dealing with the bozo installer from Bell ExpressVu. At 8am two men rang my doorbell and then walked around to the back to check the satellite on the roof. They seemed nice and professional but they needed a longer ladder so they called for someone else. At 1:00 the guy with the longer ladder shows up. At first he was just quiet but then he proved to be a real jerk. I'll call him Igor because he might as well have been in Eastern Promises which I finally saw the night before. Viggo was great in the movie. Igor was a complete ***hole in my life. He wouldn't confirm the work he was going to do, he interrupted and wouldn't listen. He even was swearing while trying to install his own cable. After getting it to go on the roof, he was going to run it all along the outside of our house when I had said I wanted it through the inside. He said: "I don't fish. Get constructor. I'm satellite installer, not constructor." "You mean contractor?" I asked. "Constructor, contractor, all the same, I no fishy." I said my husband would fish it through I just needed it inside. His continual interrupting and limited language skills meant he was stubbornly going to do it his way and wouldn't hear of anything else. He kept drilling holes in my house without asking and when I objected, he said I could cancel the job, someone else could finish. When I agreed to that, he started to take down all the stuff from the roof that he had spent the last hour and a half putting up - "it's my cable, it's my box". I was livid. I was pleading. His tone escalated and so did mine. I told him to stop right now and asked to speak with the supervisor. Only he couldn't get him on the phone and I couldn't get through to Bell. He just kept retreating to his truck and smoking and refused to look me in the eye. I was in tears with the frustration (Richard was unfortunately not around this afternoon). Dori, bless her heart, came to check on me and she called it: the guy wouldn't listen because I was a woman. Finally, the original guys showed up around 3:30 to finish the job. They calmed me down and explained everything and literally saved the day (and the account) and got things working by the time Rich came home. They were so much more helpful and caring and cooperative than "Igor". Thank you Tigram!

Sunday was certainly my worst customer service experience EVER. It's nice to have a PVR but it's hardly worth what I lived through. I logged complaints with Bell and they gave me a small credit but who cares - it cannot repair the post traumatic stress from this horrible, misogynistic man. They should not be inflicting this lowlife on anybody. SuperBowl Sunday is also a top-five contender for the Worst Day Ever award since, in addition to "Igor", I also cut my thumb with a knife (nice gushing blood for my guests) and gashed my knee on the stairs. Thanks to Dori and Ivana for their quick-thinking first aid treatment for my thumb and to Luisa for all her help in the kitchen. Merci les amies!! I'm on the mend. And of course, HUGE thanks to Antonio for all his amazing hard work on the shower downstairs. It looks awesome! I'll be posting an update on that shortly.

my PVR's HOT!
too bad Bell ExpressVu meant
my Sunday was shot

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Noel 2007


Our Christmas 2007 was nice and quiet. I worked half the day on Dec 24th then headed home to get ready for dinner. Slipped out to the family mass down the street at St. Brigid's at 5:00pm then back to serve my delicious Leek and Potato soup with Black Truffles and Truffle Oil.

Our Christmas tree was lovely. We got it late (Dec 18) but it was the perfect shape and so soft to touch and hang decorations. We traditionally go to the man at the corner store nearby so he gave us a deal as returning customers ($60). Not as great a deal as at IKEA (free because the $20 you spend for the tree is really a $20 credit in store) but better than the $100 my Uncle Wes said fresh trees cost in California.

On Christmas Day we slept in, opened presents then had a visit from Mary. After a late lunch (mussels with frites - both excellent), we enjoyed Chicken Val d'Ostana for dinner. Later on Dori and her family stopped by and brought their Wii game. Lots of fun to play and watch. They even created a custom Wii persona for me.

Afterward we watched one of my Christmas presents: the animated movie Ratatouille - a rat who runs away and becomes a chef in Paris. Loved it!

Which reminds me, I need to post my Top Movies of the Year.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

CTV Christmas Party

Now that Rich works for CTV, this is the first year he could bring a spouse to his Christmas party. I was excited to go on a wintery Thursday December 13th and the party was amazing!!


The theme was Zhivago - A Celebration of Life. Outside there were horse-drawn sleighs and inside there were four themed rooms, each with tons of different food and drinks. When we walked in they handed us a Black Russion (vodka and kahlua) and then we happened to stand just outside the prep room so servers would walk by us every minute, each with a different new plate of delectable hors d'oeuvres: tuna tartare, roast duck on cranberry toast, caviar in phyllo cones, chicken, beef, mushroom bites - all delish.

Next, there was a candy room where the chandeliers were made of lollipops and you could fill gift bags with candy to take home (my favourite were the pop-eye cigarettes). Then we moved into the largest room where there were hundreds of people and several food stations. There was live Russian entertainment onstage and with my new Sony 10x Optical Zoom camera (my fantastic advance Christmas present from my wonderful husband) I could get a clear picture of the performers from 30 feet away!

We even saw the CEO of CTV Ivan Fecan. All the food was delish: coriander tuna on potatoe fennel mash with red pepper relish; creamy beef stroganoff; salmon filet with veggies and caviar! We couldn't even get around to it all. Finally we retired to the quieter Russian Tea Room where we hung out on pillow-covered banquettes and enjoyed the end of our evening together with all our friends.

Truly a memorable and impressive affair. Thanks for inviting me Rich!


Zhivago party
Black Russians and seared tuna
Thank you CTV!