Features

In addition to her mother and two grandmothers, one of Barb's major influences on her cooking is Julia Child. And Julia Child's Kitchen is now on the web at the Smithsonian (link courtesy of dangerousmeta.com, thanks Garret)!

HungryPig.com is another Vancouver related commercial food site.

Like many other sites, it has a directory of restaurants and featured articles. It is new and so may be a little rough around the edges but it does have a nice article about which wines to have with different cuisines. Check it out!

Inspired by last week's cooking class and an upcoming dinner party, I set about to look for some Turkish recipes on the web.

Turkish cuisine is richly steeped in tradition and is highly reflective of sophisticated Turkish culture. This site has an interesting overview of Turkish food and culture. If you'd like to try out recipes, this site lists many authentic sounding recipes.

Via FoodWords, Chocolate is Good for You! Just in time to ease the guilt of eating all those leftover Valentine chocolates and to justify buying Chocolate for Easter. And what's even better is that semi-sweet chocolate, my favourite, is the most nutritious!

Barb and I recently took two cooking classes with Chef Sylvia Molnar at the Cook Shop.

Barb took a Turkish cooking class and I took a Spanish one.

We both recommend Sylvia: she's down to earth, full of knowledge and really loves food especially Turkish! Sylvia does not have a website but you can contact her by phone at 604 224 5444 or by mailing her at 4215 West 13th Avenue, Vancouver, BC Canada V6R 2T7.

One of readers, Susan, asked where you can find Dragon Beard Candy in Vancouver?

We were intrigued because we had no idea what Dragon Beard Candy was. Actually, Barb was a little embarassed because she's Chinese Canadian and therefore should know!

I did a little bit of searching and found out that Dragon Beard Candy is basically crushed nuts wrapped up in thousands of very fine hair-like strings.

Via this week's Georgia Straight, I learned about a bilingual English and Chinese food website, iFoodVancouver.

Updated every Thursday, it contains alot of great food related articles such as this topical article on which wines to drink with Chinese food from Henry Yuen: Pairing with Chinese cuisine.

Every Chinese New Year's Eve, we celebrate it by eating a special meal consisting of several dishes including a cold starter plate, a chicken dish, soup, a fish dish, vegetables (including the "Fat Choy" fungus which has the same pronounciation in Chinese as "Fat Choy" in "Gung Hay Fat Choy" which means happy new year), noodles, fried rice and dessert! And more!

Normally we have it at Barb's parents, but this year because we had a special guest from Hong Kong, we had it at Spicy Court.

Barb and I Lindy Hopped at the Pacific Centre yesterday in support of the CBC Radio 690 Food Bank Day. They are still accepting donations until Sunday February 10 via their online donation form, so please donate if you can!

For those curious about what Haggis actually looks like, here's a picture that we took at Gung Haggis Fat Choy 2002:

Believe me, it tastes better than it looks :-) !