Sunday, June 28, 2015

Weekend Wonders | 003

This was the last weekend before work officially starts. So, I made the most of it!

On Saturday, an old friend came back from Toronto and we reunited with our childhood friends. It's pretty amazing how we're still together after so many years - it's been since elementary school and now some of us are about to graduate from university! Time sure flies!

We grabbed lunch at Jimoco Cafe & Pasta, where I've never been before. The portion size was pretty decent and the food was tasty. I ordered the Linguini Soul and although the seafood was a bit lacking, the noodles and sauce was good!



After lunch, we headed up to SFU's Summer Festival event presented by SFU Anime. There were a lot of cosplayers, vendors, merchandise, and games. I bought a knitted Totoro and now he sits on my shelf with my Instax camera.




Before we left, we watched part of the cosplay contest. There were a lot of amazing cosplayers and costumes.




On Sunday, B came back for the weekend, so we went out on Sunday to catch the new Disney x Pixar movie, Inside Out! The movie was the last thing for the day, so we were planning on getting some brunch first. On the way to brunch, there was an event going on, and we stopped for a really cool (and funny) performance by an international street performer, Alakazam.

Not only was his show intriguing, but very entertaining as well as he had audience participation and great jokes.



After the performance, we finally went for brunch. The place we wanted to go had a long wait time, so we went next door to a Japanese restaurant. The food is just your typical Japanese food. We both ordered bento boxes.


So that was my weekend... I wonder what next weekend will bring.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Food Diary | 002

This diet is harder than I thought. I have tried to eat healthier by eating more fruits, but it doesn't seem like it's doing much. I have also tried to cut down on my portions, but it's always hard to do considering my mom keeps cooking up such yummy things!

Here are some pictures of the food she made recently that were photo worthy.

This is her veggie and clam spaghetti. It's my mom's own version of spaghetti and it tastes just as good as the typical bolognese.


Continuing with the seafood theme, she made clam chowder shortly after and it was really good. I could taste the seafood with every bite and what's nice about cooking food yourself is that you can determine how much of something to put in. As for me, I like to put in more of my favourite foods, and in this case, clam!


Aside from seafood, I also had lots of different meals with noodles. This is my mom's veggie chow mein. Chow mein is usually a bit dry so I had some orange juice to accompany it.


Another noodle meal: beef hor fun. It's one of my favourite type of noodles (after ramyun, of course) - they're like flat rice noodles and are really soft and chewy.


And can't forget about soup! This is a classic - tomato and egg soup.


 Of course, some healthy sugar was also consumed lately. I like to make my own fruit parfait. I use strawberries, plain yogurt, and honey to make it. I use strawberry slices to make the base, then add a layer of plain yogurt, drizzle some honey, and repeat the process until the cup, or bowl, is full. Since the plain yogurt is really plain and a bit sour, adding the honey really helps and adds a bit of sugary sweet to it.




The cherry tree finally grew some cherries this year and exceeded our expectations. There were so many that we had to store them in the fridge and it has basically overtaken the fridge with its high populace. 



Aside from Chef Mom's cooking, I also ate out with some co-workers for dinner recently. I ordered Pho for myself and shared some calamari with a co-worker. It's been a long time since I've had some calamari and it was just as good as I remembered! Or maybe it was because I was hungry? Either way, dinner was lots of fun and I got to tell some of my puns.


My other co-workers shared some nachos with each other. I'm not a big fan of nachos so I didn't have any, but it looked good.


We also had a potluck at work. I brought homemade kimbap to compete with another co-worker's store bought sushi. It was a difficult competition. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the different kinds of food that was brought because I was too hungry, but I did take pictures of the birthday cake! It was one of our co-worker's birthday so we surprised her with some cake!

The cake was really light and fluffy and was just overall yummy in my belly. I need to remember to ask who bought the cake and where they got it from 'cause it was really, really good!


It's weird how every time I write posts with food in them, my nose manages to remember that smell and makes me hungry for it again as a result. I think I should end this post for the sake of my diet.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Outing @ UBC and Downtown Vancouver

On Monday, I took some pictures at UBC seeing as how all the roses have finally bloomed at the Rose Garden.



Don't these flowers (?) remind you of the Truffula trees in Dr. Seuss' The Lorax? They look like this:

(Image taken from here)



After a short meeting with a professor, my friend L and I went downtown to pick up the light stick from Epik High concert (they had some issues with customs so weren't able to get it to us on the day of the concert) and do some shopping.

But, first, we had a quick lunch!



Lunch was at a Korean supermarket called H-Mart. I had no idea they had a mini food court right upstairs! I had japchae, which is Korean vermicelli and a bento box. The bento box contained kimbap (Korean sushi), tteokbokki (Korean rice cake), and mandu (Korean dumplings).

After that, we walked off our lunch and I finally bought runners! Now I'm all ready to go for work! They're from Adidas and not only do they look pretty, but are comfy as well! It's been so long since I've wore runners that I've forgotten how comfortable they make your feet feel - totally different from flats. Now I ask myself why haven't I done this earlier? Oh right - because the runners I've come across are either crazy, neon colours or the front looks way too wide (*cough* Nike *cough*).


They're orange (almost like a pastel orange, between coral and orange maybe?) in colour and the stripes are a nice, light grey colour.

And that was my outing to downtown Vancouver, it's been a while.