We arrived in Montreal on Friday afternoon, two mom's with two 10 year old boys. Managed to get through rush hour without any problems, and get to our hotel without getting lost.
I have to say, alot of things worked out just right for us, starting with getting to that hotel.
Which was at the edge of Chinatown and across two road from Old Montreal. So we had lots of places to explore and lots of yummy food to try!
After a few hours of walking around and checking out Old Montreal, taking so many pictures I had to switch to my little point and shoot camera to take pictures of food, we hit Chinatown and chose the 3rd Pho restaurant we saw, one that looked bright and clean and had a table or two free.
What a great choice!
I had a spring roll, but my son decided to save his adventurousness for drinks, so we ordered two "funky" to us drinks, not knowing what was in them or what they were: a rainbow jelly ice and a red bean and coconut drink. Both were too strong for us, but at least we tried them.
This is probably one of the best vermicelli plates I've ever had. The pickled daikon and carrots were amazingly good and blended it so well with everything. Right after taking the picture, I mixed all of mine together and dug in!
This is my son's favorite in Vietnamese food, Pho Ga, or chicken noodle soup. While he couldn't finish his bowl, he hmmm'd through what he ate.
We took one more quick walk through Chinatown before we left, a street we had not had a chance to go to (but my son said it smelled so good he wants to go back when he's hungry and try things!) As a quick dinner before leaving, I had a steamed pork and vegetable bun, which cost me a whole $1, and a strawberry bubble tea. The flavor of the bubble tea was chosen for my son, who was sharing it with me, and he loved that, but he did not like the chewy bubbles. At least he tried it!
Oh yes, and I bet you'd like to know how he did at his tournament?
What do you think?
Those medals around his neck are a bronze in patterns and a gold in sparring. He was amazing to watch and earned that smile on his face (plus his t-shirt.)
(Seven students from our Taekwon-Do school attended this tournament, and seven students came home with at least one medal. Our school was well represented, even though our numbers were small.)
Montreal Results are in
POM Winners and one more POM recipe
It has been fun, and tasty, messing around with my little bottles of POM juice. So before I announce my winners, here is one last recipe for you, not from the people at POM Wonderful this time, but from fellow Daring Baker and blogger Elle, of Feeding my Enthusiasms. It is her recipe for Rosemary and Garlic POM Steak.
Wow, was this ever nice and tender and flavorful! I grilled up a couple of steaks for company, and served them up with Caesar salad and rosemary and garlic roasted potatoes. What a great combination. We had very little in the way of left overs when we were done and had moved on to cake.
So good I am tempted to only give away one of my POM coupons and make this again soon, but I did promise two coupons and two coupons I will give away!
So the winners are:
Emily B, who entered by comment on my original post, and Jennifer, who entered by sending me an email.
To choose my winners, I went with the tried and true Breadchick version of writing names on paper, though I did not have a cat to have chase those little papers around, I had to pull them from a bowl to get my random winner. Low-tech, I know, but effective!
Emily and Jennifer, emails going out to you right now to get your mailing addresses! Please respond within 48 hours.
And in the meantime, here is Elle's wonderful recipe:
Rosemary and Garlic POM Steak
from Elle of Feeding my Enthusiasms
8 oz. POM Wonderful pomegranate juice (I had a bit less)
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped roughly
2 cloves garlic, minced (or 4)
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
More POM, and delay in giveaway
I've been swamped for a few days and will be for a few days more, so I've decided I need to extend the deadline of my POM Wonderful giveaway until later next week, Wednesday, April 22nd. So you get more chances to enter to win your own bottle of POM Wonderful juice.
And to give you another reason to want to try this little snowman of juice, get a gander at these brownies, POM Double Chocolate Brownies. I'd love to have given you a better picture but I had to sneak in to get a picture of this one, the last one. The POM juice for these brownies was reduced to a syrup, with half the syrup being drizzled on before baking the brownies and the rest drizzled on afterwards. It resulted in an almost candy-like topping on the brownies, quite good, quite the surprise.
This recipe is a keeper. I like keeper recipes.
POM Wonderful and a giveaway!
You'd have to be very new to the food blogging world to have not noticed an abundance of little snowmen bottles popping up lately. Those adorable little bottles hold POM Wonderful Pomegranate juice and I was fortunate to be one of those bloggers asked to try it out.
I love trying out new products, or old ones I've never had before, and my family has been very tolerant of all my little "experiments" lately, even helpful with some items. So when I came in with a snowman bottle of POM and said I was baking a cake with it, they were all ready to dive in and try the results, POM Velvet cake with a cream cheese frosting and a generous sprinkling of pomegranate arils. (Did you know that the lovely fruit from inside that ugly ball you see in the stores are not seeds but arils? Well now you do!)
Some of the other posts I've read reviewing the POM juice have gone on about how they loved the juice straight and were drinking it so fast they couldn't make anything with it.
I wish I could say the same. I can't. I tried, I really did.
As much as I love to eat the arils (three of the four of us do), I do not like the juice at all.
It is a good thing you don't have to like the juice to bake and cook with it though, cause this cake was good! The rich creaminess of the frosting balanced out the denseness of the cake, which wasn't overly rich but had a nice dense texture and crumb to it. Taking a bite with a bit of cake, a bit of frosting and an aril or two was a delight, the three different textures and flavors mingling together so well.
I liked the results so much I decided to continue on with my little "experiments" and make a few more things! I'll post about them some more over the next few days, but for now, let's get to that giveaway!
I have two, count them up, two coupons left for a snowman bottle of POM Wonderful juice, which also comes in other flavors other than straight pomegranate. So that's two potential winners!
How can you win? Easy, easy, easy....
- Be a Canadian resident, as these coupons are good only in Canada.
- Leave me a comment below telling me what you think you would make with your POM juice. It can be a drink, a dessert or anything. (If you make a mess, though, you have to clean it.) Be sure to include an email address where I can contact you if you win.
- Post a link on your own blog about this, letting me know at allthingsedible (at) hotmail (dot) com, and you will get two chances to win!
I'll randomly pick a winner on April 18th, so be sure to check back to see if you've won.
Wow, where did that come from?
After I posted my menu plan the other day, I happened to be glancing at something in my post list, seeing what I had in draft, and noticed something.... I had just posted my 399th post.
Which makes this one my 400th All Things Edible Post!
I was thinking of doing a photo montage, but am limited on time this week. I wanted to do a give away but can't decided what I'd like to give away: a gift card to an online book store or hit my favorite kitchen store, get some of my favorite tools to give away, or something different entirely? I could not decide!
But rather than wait to figure out what I'd like to do to celebrate 400 posts, which could take quite awhile, instead I bring you a terrible picture of the really good cheesecake my son requested as his 10th birthday cake. He asked, last minute, of course, for blueberries and strawberries to put on the cheesecake, but with maturity and grace, conceded that the white chocolate caramel sauce (from the December Daring Baker's French Yule Log challenge) would work in place of the fruit.
If only he were this easy to please every meal.
This, btw, is the cheesecake I made twice. The first one was still good, once you peeled off the slightly over done top. The second one was better, and ranks up with Dorie's cheesecake.
Eli's Original Cheesecake
4 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened (I used light cream cheese, because I like the extra tang you get from it.)
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
1 egg yolk
6 tablespoons sour cream (I may have used a light sour cream too, I can't remember.)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla (or squeeze some out of the beans you keep in your homemade vanilla)
graham cracker or cookie crust for 9-inch spring form pan
Pour mixture into prepared crust, in un-greased 9-inch spring form pan; place on cookie sheet. Bake until cake is firm around edge and center barely jiggles when tapped, about 45 minutes. Refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight to completely set up before serving.
Crumb Crust (I used this version for the second cheesecake, the one pictured up top)
1 ½ cups vanilla wafers (ground) (I used Nila cookies, which are very good.)
½ cup powder sugar
¾ cup melted butter (this was too much, I used just over half this amount and it was fine)
Mix all ingredients in medium bowl using your fingertips until mixture is well moistened. Press into springform pan.
Graham Crust (I used this with the first cheesecake I made, the one I forgot about.)
1 ½ cups graham meal
½ cup brown sugar
¾ cup melted butter (again, way too much butter - it was dripping out of the springform pan, even with foil around the bottom of the pan.)
½ tsp. cinnamon
Mix all ingredients in medium bowl using your fingertips until mixture is well moistened. Press into springform pan.
The rules of the award are:
1. Put the logo on your blog/post.
2. Nominate 10 blogs which show great gratitude and/or attitude.
3. Link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let your nominees know that they have received the award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to this post from the person who gave you this award.
However while Michelle was kind enough to do this for me last week, I have not yet had a chance to come up with my own nominees! And it will have to wait as I now have one last child to get to bed and swimming gear to get together for the very, very early morning I have coming up soon!
I will think about this and will continue to try and think of what I'd like to do to celebrate my milestone post - hopefully before I celebrate my 3rd year of blogging in June!
I've been tagged and awarded!
What a nice way to start your day, with an award from a fellow food blogger, my new friend Megan, whose blog My Baking Adventures, is on my daily read list (along with her kids blog, Cooking with the Kids.) No cash prizes, or cars, with this award, just recognition, which is a good thing!
Thanks muchly Megan!
A few rules with this ward:
I always have a hard time nominating people for these things, but this award seems to be fairly new, so I have some long time friends I can nominate for this.
Mary The Sour Dough
Ivonne Cream Puffs in Venice
Lis La Mia Cucina
BC - Beans and Caviar
Jasmine Confessions of a Cardamom Addict
Peabody Culinary Concoctions by Peabody
Kelly Sass and Veracity
Helen - Tartelette
Notice a theme going here? These are all fellow Daring Bakers! And blogs I read whenever they show up on my blog reader, right away. All wonderful ladies whom I hope to have a chance to get together with for a big food and gab fest. What could be better than that?
Now to the tag....
Megan actually did this as well, tagged me with 6 Random Things you really want to know about me. This might be harder to pass along, though I might go with some of the same people I tagged with my award.
1. I've just spent a week with no children. Did I take advantage of this and enjoy a spa like week, sleeping in every day and living the carefree life? No, I cleaned my oven, my pantry, my front closet, both my children's rooms, did some touch up painting and other mundane tasks. Sure, my house is cleaner, but did I waste my week?
2. I am the lead singer of our family band on Rock Band for the wii. I don't sing too horribly, though no one will ever offer me a singing contract, but I seem to be able to match the tones well. And I am determined that I WILL survive singing Boston's Foreplay/Long Time on expert!
3. I have not yet started my Daring Baker's challenge for this month. Which is very late for me. I plan to start, and finish it, today. Which means I better check my ingredients and see if I need to go shopping.
4. Last night I swam 1200 meters during swimming, then came home and made a banana milkshake.
5. Last week I had a very quiet birthday, with no cake, no kids and no party. I did get crawfish though. According to the wii fit, I am 26, but really, I just turned 36. As fun as the wii fit is, sometimes it really does not know what it is talking about (like telling me I gained over 20 pounds in less than 36 hours? Or once telling me I'd gained 9 pounds in less than 8 hours. Sheesh!)
You know, coming up with 6 random things is harder than it looks!
6. Even though I will do a blog meme, and pass along awards, I rarely do email fwds, especially the ones that ask you to answer questions about yourself and then forward to so many people before your luck will run out. Once in awhile a really good joke comes along and I will forward it, but mostly I don't.
Hmmm now who to tag....
So double tagging for BC, and for Kelly, and for Lis, and for Jasmine, but I think I will have to let it go at that. Just about everyone else on that list is super, super busy right now with things (and I will do NOTHING to hinder the Tartelette cookbook, so no meme's for Helen!)
Now to go check my recipe and see what I need.
Have a good day everyone!
