July 14th was Scott and my first anniversary! Scott got me some flowers and candy and I got him some CFL tickets for this Friday. Then we went out for a fancy dinner at Tojo’s. We ordered the 5 course and vegetarian omakase which basically means ‘trust the chef’. It was exciting and delicious. I had been looking forward to this meal ever since we moved to Vancouver. Tojo is one of the top rated restaurants in Canada!

To drink I had a cocktail with sour tangerine and guava that was super tasty.

1st course: I had a tuna tartar thing that was super light and smooth and fluffy and soft and delicious. Scott had a spinach salad that he liked a lot but it was very tiny so he was sad.

2nd course: I had octopus. It was decent, not rubbery whatsoever. I’m sure that is pretty much as good as octopus gets. Not my top choice of seafood really. Scott had a seaweed salad, which was ok, but maybe a little plain.

3rd course: Yellowtail with some stir fried stuff. Quite tasty, but cooked fish < raw fish, in my opinion! Scott had a croquette that I don’t think he liked very much because it was not very Japanese.


4th course. Picture stolen from travelwithamate.com

4th course: OMG delicious tuna thingies. From the menu: Red tuna wrapped in nori seaweed with a light tempura crust, served with sour plum sauce. The slices of tuna were perfect looking: raw in the middle, cooked around the outside. PERFECTLY flakey. Scott got a mushroom dish that he liked a lot (finally).

5th course: SUSHI! Yay! Both of ours were really good. We each got a variety plate, which is what I always wish I could have at sushi restaurants but is usually not an option!

My plate had a raw prawn sushi (blech), yellowtail sushi (om nom nom), a piece each of Great Canadian Roll (Atlantic lobster with asparagus inside with smoked Pacific salmon on top), Spicy Tuna Roll, Golden Roll (crab, scallop, salmon, and sweet shrimp rolled in an egg crepe), and the most delicious piece of sushi I have EVER eaten:

Pacific Northwest Roll (West coast Dungenss crab and avocado inside-out with scallop and flying fish roe on top).

Scott’s plate had two of those bean curd pillows with rice on the inside, a few pieces of a roll with pineapple and lots of other veg inside, and a few pieces of a roll that was wrapped in cucumber instead of seaweed.

Sorry for the terrible pictures, we didn’t bring the camera with us to dinner.

Then for dessert we had ginger ice cream with tasty citrus fruit on the bottom, and a pannacotta type thing that tasted good but I didn’t really like the jelly texture.

Overall I was very happy. Scott’s wasn’t very good value though. We both left full, after about a two hour dinner since you have to wait a bit in between each course. It was a fun experience and maybe when we’re DINKs we can go back. Maybe Scott will eat fish by then.

Can’t believe we’ve been married a whole year! It’s passed by quick.

from tinybites.ca

Last night Scott and I went out with Carleigh for a nice dinner at The Eatery. The place had a lot of unusual sushi, including a lot of vegetarian choices, and lots of crazy giant paper mache decorations hanging from the ceiling. It was awesome.

Scott and I shared tempura veggies, which were gigantic and good, except for the yam that was still kind of raw.

Scott had two rolls:

  • buddha roll – tempura yams, red pepper, asparagus and lettuce, with dragon sauce
  • the moby – shitake mushrooms and kombu, soy sauce, avocado, sesame seeds

And I had:

  • jalapeno popper – smoked salmon, cream cheese, jalapeno – tempura style
  • godzilla – crab crunch topped with avocado and eel

And we shared:

  • mango paradise – avocado, cucumber, mango and agge

I also had a strawberry sake margarita, which was delicious! And much needed because my jalapeno sushi was incredibly spicy. SOOOOO SPICY. They left all the seeds in part of the jalapeno. I was sweating and my mouth was ON FIRE.

All in all, very tasty. Not the cheapest of dinners out, but it definitely was something special. No pictures because it was very dark inside.

Yesterday was such an awesome day!

Well it didn’t start off that way. Work was boring as usual and I still couldn’t get in touch with the BCIT lady. I had to email Toronto by about lunchtime to accept my offer and time was ticking. I never reached her so I had no choice but to accept Toronto.

Scott got an interview this week for a new job that pays quite well. Even more reasons why I desperately wanted to get in to BCIT! Also I’d looked up truck rentals and gas prices the night before and it looked like it would cost $2500+ to drive across to Toronto. Ack.

I actually started tearing up at work because I was so frustrated and anxious with anticipation.

At 4:30PM I left work to head to Brian’s to watch the hockey game. I’d just left the building and saw that I had a missed call and a voice mail on my phone, and it was from the BCIT lady!!!! I went back up to the office to use the phone and hyperventilated! She said that she had been away on a conference and didn’t get back until today and that YES they considered me a strong applicant and wanted to offer me admission! She left me her cell phone number so I called her back and she repeated all that stuff and said she will get my offer sent out on Monday IF I WANTED IT. I was like YESSS YES YES YES I WANT IT!

I was giddy with excitement as I fought through the crowds in the city (CBC.ca says estimated 100,000 people gathered on the streets!!!) We all watched the game at Brian’s. It was incredibly stressful. We were all tense right up to the last second of the game since I think we were all remembering all the other games where horrible things happened in the last moments of the games. Canucks did it though and won! Everyone expects them to lose again in Boston though and then we’ll have game 7 here in Vancouver on Wednesday.

They might lose though because Scott has to shave his playoff beard on Tuesday night now for the interview!! ;)

After the game we went out to the streets for a few minutes but everyone was really moving around a lot and it was a bit rough in the crowds so I didn’t like it. I tried Japadog (and loved it) and then we went home. My mouth is burnt and scraped from the delicious hotdog but I’m so relieved and so much less stressed and feeling a lot better than I have in a long time. Oh and the Toronto dude wrote back and cancelled my acceptance so we don’t have to pay $500.

More later.

Yesterday was really fun! I had such good luck and things seemed to just keep working out!

I had a relaxed morning (although we got woken up by noisy birds, grrrr) and then I went to the Pacific Centre to try and find a decent bathing suit. No more online shopping for me. I couldn’t find anything at first but then at the last minute I did. Good ol’ H&M. I love you H&M.

Then I headed through extreme hockey craziness downtown to meet up for an ultra Canadian girls night. Granville Street was already packed at 4:00PM. We met up at La Belle Patate for delicious poutine, and since it wasn’t too crowded and they had a TV and cheap drinks we stayed and watched the hockey game there.

Burrows scored the first goal. I always say that Burrows is going to score the first goal. Then Boston scored twice and I started to worry that things were going to go very bad for the Canucks. Then a Sedin tied the game and the game went into OVERTIME! Overtime is SO stressful, but this was THE BEST OVERTIME EVER cuz it only lasted 11 seconds before BURROWS scored and won the game!! OMG we were so excited! Everyone was screaming and high fiving, it was awesome. I believe it was all due to the new Burrows t-shirt that Scott bought me on Friday. Lucky t-shirt! I am not going to wash it.

After the game we chilled at Tanie’s house for a bit and then I headed over to meet Scott at Brian’s house. The boys were very silly and I won my first ever game of Wits and Wagers. Brian got a new deck of questions and instead of them all being about 1900-1930 American history they are about things like swimming pools and Rubik’s cubes and I was getting question after question right.

People were still honking and screaming FOUR HOURS AFTER THE GAME WAS OVER! It is intense in Vancouver these days. So much fun.

Oh and I also got 8 out of 8 footy tips right this weekend. I should have bet on my sports predictions this week, jeeze!!

Anyway wow it’s nearly lunchtime already and I still haven’t got up. Time to study some physics. Oh I’m planning on calling BCIT tomorrow to see what’s going on since Friday is my deadline for Michener. AHHH! Cross your fingers for me please!!

Last Friday Scott and I had plans to go do our first yoga class in the early evening. We had bought vouchers for 20 classes for $20, but unfortunately I guess it was actually a scam because the company went out of business. I sent Dealfind an angry email and they are refunding us, which is good, but… I still want to try yoga!!

Anyway we had planned to finally try La Taqueria as a reward after the class… but even though there was no yoga we still had tacos. Guilty.

The tacos were really good, but small. Scott had one of each of the veggie options (mushrooms, tofu, beans, corn). He liked the Tinga de Hongos – sauteed fresh mushrooms in spicy chipotle sauce the most. I had fish, pork cheeks, pork and mole, and liked the Carnitas – pork confit with pickled red onion the most. I did not like the mole but am glad I tried it. We ate them in the park since it was still light and nice out.

We also finally checked out Canada Place.

Here’s Scott with the Olympic torch, hehe.

And here’s me blending into a geometric orca.

The weather has been nice in Vancouver lately. Very sunny and warm! (About 18ºC). Unfortunately it’s not supposed to be nice over this long weekend. We debated for a bit about renting a car and going to Seattle or Bellingham or Harrison Hot Springs or something, but ended up deciding nah because it was too last minute. We definitely plan on taking a weekend trip very soon, but it will probably be better to search out a good hotel deal and do some research beforehand since we’d be on a tight budget.