Features

On Saturday, we went to the wedding of our friends, Antonia and Kerrie catered by Rubina Tandoori.

The food was fantastic, the best I have ever eaten at a wedding. The highlight for me would have to be the Prawn Goa curry which was spicy, smooth and perfectly flavoured with coconut. But everthing was good especially the veggies in fenugreek sauce!

This wonderful experience (and their menu online) makes me want to eat at their restaurant at 1962 Kingsway between Beatrice St.

Our friend, Teresa, shares her thoughts about making Barb's Rhubarb Ginger Muffins! Thanks Teresa!

Al talks today about his quest for the perfect pie crust. He states that the two key ingredients are experience and time and also links to Caterina's perfect pie crust quest.

Since I prefer cake to pie and therefore have never made pie crust, I will let Barb comment on this. The crusts on Barb's pies are sometimes so good that I turn ever so briefly into a pie lover as I eat.

My best friend and best man, Roël, just got back yesterday from Umberto's cooking school in Tuscany! And his photos from Umberto's school are fantastic! They make me want to go to Italy tomorrow!

Luckily, we will be there in early October as part of Mama Margaret's tour and also for a one day class with Judy Witts of Divina Cucina! Needless to say we will file a full report here!

If you read German, Pastaweb.de (via Andrea) has lots of great pasta and other Italian recipes! Lecker!

DineBC.com is another commercial restaurant directory website similar to Flavourfinder.com that we featured in May. Patti Lennox of DineBC emailed us that an "exciting new feature will be launched on Aug 1, 2001". So please check out their site and let us know what this is!

A really nice couple gave us a Global cleaver from our wedding registry. It is awesome, well balanced and sharp! Thank-you! Highly recommended!

Al pointed out recently the cool forged knives made by Michael Hemmer, a blacksmith in Oregon. He makes a cool looking black cleaver for $US 60 and lots of other knives.

Unfortunately, my propensity for procrastination when it comes to washing dishes would not be good for these knives since not being made of stainless steel they would rust! Definitely worth checking out, however, for those who take better care of their knives!

On a lark I bought some 1999 Late Harvest Merlot Dessert Wine from Paradise Ranch for my birthday dessert party last week.

Sometimes you get lucky and this time we were very lucky! Sweet but not overly so, this wine was delicious with Barb's desserts. And the bottle is beautiful too! It ain't cheap at $30 for a bottle but it tastes so good! Highly recommended!

Sometimes we forget how lucky we are and the fact that we have so much! This occurred to me as I ate the three delicious desserts that Barb prepared this year for the small birthday dessert party that we had yesterday.

http://downloads.redjupiter.com/users/images/vaneats/threedesserts001.jpg" height="225" width="300" border="0" alt="Three desserts for my birthday: I was blessed with 3 desserts for my birthday in 2001! From left to right: Mango Mousse, Chocolate Caramel Pecan Cake, Banana Cream Pie in a Chocolate Chip Cookie Crust Mmmm!