Winnie and Jason

Friday, March 9, 2012 – Firefly; Pyramid of Giza Documentary; Jason’s Spicy chicken thigh, quinoa, and broccoli

Saturday, March 10, 2012 – Sporting Life — Happy to have finally used my gift card on hydration belt for Jason.

Sunday, March 11, 2012 – Both of us started training for our coming 10K race.  We ran/walked (2min:1min) around my neighborhood for 37 minutes.  About 5k.  Jason covered a very good distance considering that he hasn’t been running for awhile.  Jason also formatted my old computer from 2006 and I gave it to Chris.  He also installed and fixed my Blackberry as it has a JVM error.  We were very hungry after the run so I made chili and minced chicken, soup, noodles, and seaweed.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 – Imperial Buffet dinner coupon, food ok, not that much selection.

Friday, March 16, 2012 – Amazing JC roasted chicken with stuffed onions inside and black forest cake from Metro.  Payroll Fundamental Midterm week starts for me.

Saturday, March 17, 2012 – Volunteered at the tax clinic and submitted 4 returns.  We watched the Firefly movie.  Glad about the ending but sad that there are no more Firefly to watch.  We played the Broken Sword adventure game.

Sunday, March 18, 2012 – We ran in a nearby park for 41 min, 5k run/walk same as last week.  More Broken Sword.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012 – Kenny’s Noodle; Gazing under the stars with sunroof open in the car and listening to the radio; Jason helped me install Black Mirror adventure game as it was giving me a starforce installation error.

Friday, March 23, 2012 – JC pan fried steak delicious.  Broken Sword.  Bollywood and star constellation movie.

Saturday, March 24, 2012 – Jason got us Science Centre dual membership.  We visited the planetarium.  It is very intersting and informative.  The universe is very large beyond the unthinkable.  I also learned about star formation, cosmic rays, and space junk.  We did not have time for other exhibits but we managed to look at the tree exhibit.  I got a perfect score on guessing the type of tree just but looking at the sliced trunk.  Looking forward to future visits.

Sunday, March 25, 2012 – 5k run/walk (3min:1min) around the park.  We enjoy running in the park.  Hosu bimbimbop and spicy korean chicken.

Friday, February 24, 2012

• Chipotle burritos, chips, and guacamole takeout, delicious!
• Firefly, an amazing space Western television series

Saturday, February 25th, 2012

• Xtreme Snowshoe & Hummer Ride at Petun Conservation area – a fun adventure near Blue Mountain in Collingwood.  We took the Greyhound bus at 8:30am took more than 3 hours to get to Blue Mountain.  Had a quick lunch at the Pita Pit.  Heavy snowfall the day before.  We were on time and two families from Oakville and Pickering.  8 of us fit in the Hummer.  We were lucky that our group made it to outlook point on top of the big hill.  Weather was great as well.  We had hot chocolate afterwards.

A panorama at the outlook

• Dinner – we made Bake potato skin with yogurt and J’s homegrown chives, crispy and tasty

Sunday, February 26, 2012 – We made gnocchi from yesterday’s potato flesh boiled and pan fried with garlic and chili flakes

Wednesday, February 29, 2012 – Leap day.  W’s Spanakopita and Campbell”s lentil soup with extra cremini mushrooms and spinach

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

• W’s Homemade Blueberry Custard tart
• J’s Chocolate Quinoa Cupcakes with 4 cherries and icing
• Vietnam Noodle Star – XL House Noodle and spring rolls
• Received my embroidered headset

Friday, February 17th, 2012

• W’s Red Quinoa and Kung Pao Chicken
• W’s Vegetable Soup

 Saturday, February 18th, 2012

• W and J’s Jerk Chicken breast with Cool Running Jerk Spice
• W and J’s Rice and Pigeon Peas
• Rona – Copper Wire

Sunday, February 19th, 2012

• W and J’s Pizza
• W and J’s Soup
• Walking at Markville Mall
• Bubbletease – Blueberry Green tea and milk tea with bubbles
• Jason’s Cadillac $25 gift card – Winner’s – shadow box for me and he got a glass coffee press
• Settlers of Catan – Jason won the game against Janet and I

Monday, February, 20th, 2012

• Family Day
• Wonton Chai at Sheppard – Gigantic wontons ran out of flat rice noodles
• W’s oatmeal, egg, milk, and honey
• J’s Fractal wire assembly
• Studying CMA
• Higgens and Burke – Earl Grey

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

• Visit Jason
• J and W’s vegetable soup
• Watched TVO – My Street documentary
• Chocolate Quinoa cupcakes

Bashu Ren Jia Sichuan Restaurant :

• Gong Bao Chicken – cubed chicken, peanuts, red & green bell pepper, chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns with steamed rice
• Cold Slice Beef variety – variety of beef slices, tripe and peanuts marinated in chili oil and soya sauce
• Hot Squid – On-the-table hot metal plate frying of squid with cumin seeds and chilli flakes (tastes like curry)

I always get the General Tao and Kung Pao chicken dishes mixed up, lol.  It turns out I like Bashu’s version of the Kung Pao chicken.  It is interesting how this restaurant uses different spices to create varying hot flavours.  Jason likes this restaurant’s cooking a lot.

Sapporo Sushi:

• 2 Person Combo – variety of sashimi (15 pieces), salad, miso soup, wrapped noodles in a small cup, spicy salmon (6 pieces), variety of sushi (6 pieces), Korean BBQ ribs, tofu and seafood broth, 2 pieces of fried calamari, variety of tempura, and green tea icecream
• Eel (Unagi) maki with Kabayaki sauce – 6 pieces

It was a lot of food and we finished it all .  We got to sit in the little house again.

Phil’s ORIGINAL BBQ:

• Hush Puppies – 4 pieces, looks like it fried a bit too long, the oblong cornmeal ball tasted good though
• BBQ Combo – 3 rib bones, chicken breast with wing, and 4 slices of pork brisket, slices of bread, potato salad, and BBQ beans

Food tastes good.  Smoke flavour in all the meat is overpowering at times.

La Boheme Patisserie Cafe:

• Spinach quiche with goat cheese topping, Americano (Espresso shot with hot water), Cappuccino, Almond croissant (not a lot of filling), Tarte aux Poires (puff pastry base, poached pear and almond cream)

Food is wonderful, especially the spinach quiche.  Nice artworks on display.

From Chef Jason:

• Cottage cheese, Irish oatmeal, quinoa, and berries bowl brunch
• Boiling chicken bouillion soup poured over garlic and soya sauce chicken roasted with mixed veggies

He comes up with unique techniques and combos.

Exit From the Giftshop: A documentary about graffiti artists, Banksy, and Mr. Brainwash.   It’s neat to learn that graffiti can be in a form of a sculpture.  After watching the documentary, we have several questions: “Is stenciling a form of graffiti?”; “Is graffiti art or vandalism?”; and “How do you value found graffiti and who gets the proceeds at the auction house ?”

Wordplay: A documentary about The New York Times’ crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz and his fan base.  I liked the beginning part of the film about how the crossword originated, how rules were established in making a crossword puzzle, and how the editor uses ideas from the public to create varying levels of crosswords.

Our experiment on the popcorn pens with the hair dryer.  This time I checked the website for English instructions, because previously, I used an embossing tool and it burned the stuff quickly.  However, the dryer took up a lot of time.  See below for the effect.  It reminds Jason of mold.

Creative custom embossing by Jason on an Artist Trading Card.  He used a HI-TEC-C Pilot 0.4 gel pen and it took him a long time to draw and heat up each section.  A tedious effort but the results are amazing.

January Week 3:

Jason created a new blog for me, it is winniewyu.com.  It was very cold and snowy outside, so I ordered KFC online for my brother, Jason, and myself.  We had the Streetwise 8 piece bucket with medium fries, 10 piece Hot Wings, large popcorn chicken, and poutine.  The delivery driver gave us a free box of large fries.

On Saturday, Jason drove to Woodside Square so I could pick up my hold at the library.  Afterwards, Jason, my parents and I went to Market Village to try Station Asia’s special combo pulled noodles and a drink.  Jason was lucky to find a parking spot right away since it was the weekend before Chinese New Year, Year of the Dragon.  There was no lineup at around 3:30pm at the restaurant.  My Dad had the satay beef pulled noodles, my Mom ate the usual pork chop with pulled noodles, Jason got the Beef brisket with mushroom and broth soup pulled noodles, and I ordered the Curry pork chop pulled noodles.  It was very delicious!  After our mid-afternoon meal, my parents went to find firecracker decorations while Jason and I went to get our pictures taken at Pacific Mall.  It is a very nice picture of us together.  The photographer did not let us know that he will be doing some photo-shopping on our portrait.  We got bubble tea watermelon and mango real fruit juice.

Sunday, Jason and I played on the Wii.  We played Archery, Table Tennis, and Frisbee.  We also tried the Kinect game that my brother got.  Jason looked very funny and cute when he kicked in the game that looked like squash except we didn’t have racquets we used our arms and legs (and sometimes head by accident).  We held hands on the river rafting, hehe.

Welcome to our updated blog.  Thank you Jason for the time spent on moving our blog and comments to a new and improved platform.  I notice that the new software has many features and it is easier to use.  In the posting window, it shows word count, spell check, and saves the draft every minute.  Also, more entries could be seen on one page.  It’s great!

Here is a quick highlight of some of the things we did while our blog transformed:

January – Week 1

• Midweek – Jason got me a new lightweight headset.  Now, we speak and listen without having to hold our hot cellphones against our ears.
• Weekend – We went to Canada Computers searching for peripherals and then we went to Sporting Life to check out running shoes for the 10K race that Jason and I are going to participate in this summer.  Later in the day, Jason had an inpiration from the pizza dough recipe that I make from Rocco Dispirito’s “NOW eat THIS! book.  Jason thought of making apple cinnamon pizza for dessert.  It smelled like Cinnabon and tasted good.  It looked like a beaver tail that we had at the zoo in the summertime.  We watched The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a 2007 film documentary.  It was very interesting to see the rivalry and competition for holding a world record score on an arcade game that was first announced 30 years ago and is still going to this day.  On Sunday, we watched Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscape, an award-winning documentary film on the photographer capturing the effects and evidence of China’s massive industrial revolution.  I couldn’t believe how big the factory building in China was (about six to ten blocks in length!).

January – Week 2

• Midweek – We went for Korean BBQ; our quest to try out the different restaurants close to where I live.  I love BBQ food.  I bought Fornetti mini pastries from the Teambuy website.  There were many different savoury and sweet flavours: cheese, apricot, candied orange and raisin swirl, cranberry, apple vanilla pudding, chicken yogurt, chicken and mushroom, and chocolate.  I tried Jason’s Samurai bowl.  It is very healthy and nutritious!  He got the idea while we were getting groceries at Metro and walked by a Freshii counter.  The bowl contains bean sprouts, shrimp, tofu, snow peas, broccoli, cabbage, and edamame beans.  I like it so much that I made my own versions the following week.  I added mushrooms and used oyster and soy sauce .  Another time I made spicy soup with the Samurai bowl mixed with seaweed, very tasty!  Surprisingly, I feel better and I don’t feel hungry as compared to eating just a salad.  We watched a tea documentary called, “All in this Tea”.  I learned that there are many quality teas from China and the leaves are whole and not broken up like the ones we buy in North America.  Making tea leaves is a form of art.  Instead of bagging bulky tea leaves, people started transporting them by preserving the leaves in the form of a disk called, puerh.  Strangely enough, a tea expert in the film was also called Winnie W Yu, haha.
• Weekend – He stuck out his hand, in it is a piece of paper, shaped like a coupon.  I look at it and saw a cute ice cream cone figure.  It is called Menchie.  Jason received this promotion in the mail, a new frozen yogurt (or fro-yo for short) shop (franchise store, originally from California) and each person gets a free 8oz cup of yogurt, including the toppings.  Chocolate flavour stood out the best.  I liked their toppings, not too many fruit selections though.  Missed out on the big sour keys.  There was also a free Polaroid picture with the mascot, a magnetic photo frame that goes with the picture, and a sticker.  I also kept the spoon, so now I have a collection them.  Two unique toppings were mochi and boba (pearl that look like a gigantic sized fish roe, when you bite into it, lychee liquid flavour oozes out of it).  Afterwards, we went to the library for two hours; I studied for my final exam while Jason worked on our new blog.  For dinner, we went to the healthy Tofu place.  We don’t know the name because it is a long Korean alias.  My friends call it the Tofu place as well, hehe.  We decided to walk South and saw the Capriccio pastry shop.  I wanted to see if they had real macaroons because the ones at Metro were too big and did not taste like it.  The macaroons at Capriccio are wonderful!  We had chocolate and rasberry flavour.  I also got a double chocolate tart while Jason got the cranberry cheese tart.  On Sunday, we felt like eating jerk chicken with all the news about the Real Jerk closing its business.  I haven’t personally ate from there but have seen the big Sun with sunglasses logo outside the restaurant when my family and I took the street car to the Canadian National Exhibition.  The closest place for jerk chicken was at the Ritz Caribbean restaurant near Yonge and College.  Jason ordered the goat curry.  Jerk chicken with gravy-pea rice is very good!  We also ventured toward the new Loblaws headquarter that was once the Maple Leaf Gardens building.  It is very nice inside.  Jason noticed that their tea selection was limited.