Rosemarie and I had a nice weekend together. Soaking up all the sister time that we can get before she leaves for Fiji. We played Carcassonne (with two expansions), cooked Shepherd’s Pie, painted our nails, did crafts, watched Parks and Recreation, and went to the food convention together! I only heard about the convention on Saturday so I was pretty happy that Rosemarie agreed to go.

Eat! Vancouver was AWESOME! It was $14 to get in (you save $2 if you buy your tickets online) and we stuffed ourselves with zillions of free samples from all sorts of food companies big and small. It was amazing. There were samples that cost money too (from $0.50 to $4) but we didn’t actually buy any because we were stuffed from all the free stuff.

I definitely did not take a picture of every single thing that we tried. We tried 50+ things!!!!!

Some highlights:

• calamari salad
• seaweed salad
• butternut pumpkin and fennel soup (I didn’t taste fennel, it was more curry)
• pomegranate and blueberry smoothie (McDonalds!)
• tofu with a gross hot sauce
• butter pecan fudge
• a million different dips
• a million different salsas
• a million different hummuses
• a million different salad dressings
• olive tapenade
• pistachios
• ice cream and gelato (both salted caramel flavour)
• hot sauce on styrofoam crackers
• corned beef
• salmon jerky (yuck)
• weird noodles made out of tofu (yuck)
• fancy butter
• mushroom cream cheese (one of the most tasty things we tried)
• lots of different types of fancy pop
• lots of different types of juice (Purity Organics strawberry paradise was my favourite)

And MORE!! I can’t believe how many free samples there were!!

I bought some praline fudge. It is really good. People really liked my sushi shirt, if I had some business cards I totally would have made a sale. Rosemarie took this picture of me and my food related items.

They also had some kind of FOOD ART competition going on. I think the first two pictures there were made out of chocolate, and this last one was made of carrot, daikon, ginger etc. SO COOL!!

It was my first time being in BC Place ever. That’s the new roof that they spent 50 billion dollars on that isn’t even that great. The stadium seemed pretty good though, like everyone would have an equal view of the field.

They had Food Network celebrities doing shows around the outsides and we sat to watch one of them but the video screen that showed the counter was too hard to see so it wasn’t very interesting. We left early. There was a cheese seminar too but we missed getting in, bummer!!!

We got tons of swag. Magazines full of recipes, tons of coupons, samples, MORE COFFEE etc etc. We also got free shampoo samples at the Skytrain station! MEGA SAMPLE DAY!

All in all it was an excellent way to spend the morning. I recommend going right for the time it opens because it was pleasant then, but then started to get VERY busy around 12 or 1 PM. The only criticism I have is NEEDS MORE CHEESE SAMPLES!! There were almost none!! Booooo. But anyway we left with very full stomachs and had lots of fun. Definitely worth $14 and I will definitely be going back next year.

Driving up the Sea To Sky Highway up to Squamish. CANADA IS AWESOME AND AMAZING.

Rose and Rob planned an awesome BBQ for last Saturday. They really had everything, delicious homemade hamburgers with tons of toppings including guacamole, delicious kebabs with TWO kinds of halloumi, and a variety of drinks including freshly blended lime margaritas! Rob rigged up a blender to a battery that could be charged from a solar panel. SO NERDY.

My burger. Om nom nom.

Me blending up a margarita (for everyone else, I’M NEVER DRINKING AGAIN).

Also check out that view!! It was a great location and the most perfect day for a BBQ.

Last week I won a vaneats.ca package called Siddhartha’s Nirvana. Scott and I went to redeem it on Friday. Siddhartha’s Indian Kitchen is on Commercial Drive and has super modern and sleek feel.

The server we got had no idea what I was talking about when I said I wanted to redeem the Siddhartha’s Nirvana package I won. I guess not many people have gone in to eat theirs yet? Or maybe she was new. Anyway they did eventually figured it out but only after this very awkward conversation.

The first thing they brought out was a trio of appetizers. That’s not my picture by the way, we ate ours before I realized that I should probably take a picture, so I took the one from the vaneats.ca website. Anyway we got two pieces of vegetable pakora, mine was cauliflower and Scott had broccoli. They were super delicious. We also got a big chunk of chicken tikka masala each, and we split the one scallop. I suppose scallop is a pretty unusual ingredient at an Indian restaurant but it was tasty. It had mango on it. It would have been nice if we got one scallop each though. In general our appetizers were much smaller than those in the picture above.

We each ordered a mango lassi. There weren’t that many drink choices actually, since they are not licensed. The drinks were very nice, mango and yogurt-y.

For the main course we got rice with butter chicken and baigan bharta, a smoked eggplant dish. The butter chicken was extremely good, the chicken was nice and tender, and the sauce was pretty much perfect. I liked that it did not have a lot of oil floating on it, like mine does when I cook it at home. The eggplant dish was also very good, the eggplant was super soft and all the spices were great. This dish was also not oily.

The onion and cilantro naan was good, especially to sop up all the extra butter chicken sauce. Mmm.

For dessert they brought out ras malai which is some kind of cottage cheese dessert with mango. I didn’t like it. There was some spice in it that I knew but couldn’t place, and I didn’t really like the texture. That’s not to say it was bad though, because Scott really liked it and ate the whole thing.

We left the restaurant very full and happy. We didn’t feel gross like after we went to the Indian restaurant near our house, probably because this place didn’t seem to use a lot of oil. Anyway the package is available for purchase for $16 and it’s definitely enough to feed two people.