VanEats

Every aspect of the Loy Krathong Festival held yesterday at the Asan Centre of UBC was fun. To mention just a few highlights: there was excellent food, first nations drumming, world class folk dancing from northern Thailand by the Lai Muang Ensemble from Chiang Mai, ending with a procession to place the Krathongs on the water outside. The Krathongs themselves glowed softly and beautifully on the water and were fascinating to watch as they gently moved to and fro.

Barb and I are celebrating Remembrance Day by having a belated Thanksgiving dinner (since we were in Italy on Canadian Thanksgiving) with some close friends and family. We need to remember past war to prevent future wars.

I just can't get Wagamama out of my mind. Here's a photo of Barb practising the "Wagamama way of the noodle" with our chili chicken ramen. This will be the final Wagamama item for a while, I promise!

Here's a picture of Wagamama's awesome chili chicken ramen that I mentioned last Wednesday. Fantastico!

DiningOutGuide.com is yet another Vancouver restaurant dining guide. However it looks pretty decent based on their entry for Vij's.

I like the fact that menus are available in Adobe Acrobat Reader form(PDF) and that the restaurant information they give is very useful. But I would classify Vij's as casual as well as Indian and they only seem to classify it as Indian. Oh well, minor quibbles for what looks to be the start of a cool Vancouver restaurant directory.

If you are ever in London, England, then you must eat at Wagamama!

My dad makes great soy chicken and it was always a staple dish around my house. After cooking the chicken, the seasoned soy sauce can be served along side the chicken or used to season other dishes. The sauce can also be fortified and reused to cook the next batch of chicken!

Leftover soy chicken is versatile. One of my favourite ways to use it is to shred the chicken, mix it with thin Chinese egg noodles, shredded green onion and ginger and tossed with leftover seasoned soy sauce and sesame oil.

One of our first stories was about the maze at Cloverdale Produce Farm. Tim from Cloverdale Produce Farm wrote us an email stating that they are always at A Taste of BC (held every summer) at Minter Gardens. They now also have a website of their own and also a website for their corn maze which are both worth checking out along with their food. Thanks for the email, Tim!

Here's my recipe for pumpkin soup. I've tried making this with various types of squash and have needed to adjust the amount of broth in the recipe depending on the squash's liquid content.

This soup is extra special if you garnish it with paper thin shavings of white or black truffles. If you don't have truffles or truffle oil, drizzle the soup with really good extra-virgin olive oil.

For a non-vegetarian version, you can also brown some pancetta and crumble it into the soup just before you serve it.