VanEats

Today, for the first time, we had dim sum at Spicy Court (on Cambie just north of 41st avenue on the east side). We've been there many times but never for dim sum.

We stuffed ourselves (5 people) for $61. We had about twelve dishes. All were good! The highlights were the chickens feet, peppery chicken knees, flakey egg tarts and the Szechuan chili dumplings. And to top it all off, the scallop shrimp dumplings were wonderful: huge scallops with big chunks of shrimp! Yum! Highly recommended. Here's a photo of the Scallop Shrimp Dumplings!

Here's a picture of the awesome crab at Banana Leaf that we enjoyed last Thursday.

Since Roël, my best man, for our upcoming wedding is in town, we have been dining in a fine style as part of our wedding preparations :-) !

Tonight, we went to Vij's and it blew us away again! Check out my new mini-review of Vij's!

Here's a picture of our starters: grilled mutton (the meat was flavourful and the sauce even better), garlic pastries filled with ricotta cheese (an awesome multi-textured delight!) and Crimini mushrooms.

I am happy to report that the food at the Banana Leaf is more delicious than ever and has stepped boldly in to the new millenium!

Tonight we ordered their Thursday night crab special and it was awesome! Just over two pounds of sweet crab in a delicious chili sauce for $24. The Kang Kong with sambal was great; texture and flavour perfect. And their hot sauce was still killer; bursting with flavours and just the right amount of heat!

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!

I found this site on Goan cuisine. Goa is a region in India highly influenced by the Portugese. The recipes look good, but I wonder if they even measure up to Mrs. Papali's (Antonia's mum's) cooking!

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!

In my last newsitem about German recipes, I forgot to mention that Andrea also pointed out Jürgen's website which contains dim sum recipes in German as well as links to a website at chinesefood.org with dim sum recipes and a another dim sum recipe website in Waterloo, the city w

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!