Chinese Chili-Scallion Oil

I came across the D.I.Y. Cooking Handbook on the New York Times website, and I want to eventually make and blog about all the recipes in it.

I made the chili oil, and it turned out delicious! Here are the ingredients (I put the optional stuff as well) looking all pretty before being fried up in oil:

I used my remote thermometer in the oil, wasn't sure if it's made for that kind of thing (probably not) but it worked fine anyways:

Prawn Chips

Whenever we go to the Hotpot place in Chinatown I always stock up on the prawn chips cause I love them. Recently I found some in a little Asian grocery store near my place and decided to try making them myself for the first time. They look like this when you buy them:

And then you fry them up, I had so much fun doing this for the first time!:



And then I ate them with some spicy dipping sauce which I made from a mix of about 1 part spicy Vietnamese chili sauce and 3 parts mayo, you can also make a sauce with Mam Nem except using about 1 part fish sauce to ~8 parts mayo, depending on preference, and a bit of salt and freshly ground white pepper:

Here's Carlo's giant jar of Tuong Ut Toi that he got for about $15 in Chinatown, he puts this stuff in almost everything he eats:

Pictures at Radisson Metro Station

Two weeks ago I went to visit my parents in the country, and Carlo surprised me by going to meet me at the bus terminal at the Radisson metro station since I had a hour to wait for the bus to Rawdon there. Our friend/old roommate Christelle happened to be there as well on her way somewhere else.

Here's me & Carlo:

Christelle (who likes to randomly dress in medieval clothes:

Some fooling around:

St. Seraphim Cemetary II

our demise. by *FriendlyArt120 on deviantART

Egg within an egg!?

Is my cat plotting to kill me???

St. Seraphim Cemetery

Here's a picture my sister took of the cemetery at St. Seraphim church just down the street from my parents house last week:


arise, awaken wihin. by *FriendlyArt120 on deviantART

Moving

Last weekend (yes I'm finally getting closer to the end of my pictures!) Carlo finally got a friend with a truck to help us move the big stuff over from his grandfather's house. Here's the view of my street from inside the truck:

My friend Stephan (permanently incapable of keeping a straight face for a picture):

Christelle:

Steph trying to imitate a turtle and Cri laughing at him:

Braeden (the friend with the truck), Carlo and Cri:

Braeden just before we started moving out Carlo's massive old 200lb tv:

Moving the tv:

I didn't think to take any pics of the livingroom after that but I suppose it's just as well cause when I do things will be more or less put in order :)

And we finally have a proper mattress to sleep on, my old one was ruining our backs, even with extra memory foam pads on top. Donated memory foam mattresses are the BEST, Carlo was lucky enough to get one for free from his uncle who moved away.

Our livingroom looks really nice and homey now, with bookshelves and a dresser and a giant tv, not just bare walls, a couch, and a computer desk :P All that's left at his grandfather's house now are some boxes and small stuff that can be taken in a car, and there's no rush to get it so I suppose we'll do it sometime over the next few months whenever his mom can help us out. Yay for not having to move everything in one day, and having lots of friends to help move the big stuff! It took us all of 20 minutes to get everything out of the van into the apartment, if that. I'm hoping it'll go as well next time we move!

(Mostly) March pictures

Here's a picture I took of a Facebook fail (and the only picture I took with my camera in Feb.):

Here's the forest of cranes building the new Children's Hospital that can be seen from my job:

Here's St. Benoit de Nursie during the Forgiveness Vespers:

My sister and I in my kitchen:

My sister did her hair up all pretty that day:

Here we found 2 very badly parked cars at 2am on our way back from Steph's place:

Here's some pea soup with baby clams, and toast with marmite. I used canned pea soup, but added a spoonful of margarine, a squeeze of Dijon mustard, and a good sprinkling of thyme, it's soo good like that!:

My cat Licorice being cute:

And the first few rays of sunshine in my kitchen that I saw all winter! :D

Oh, and I put up a new post (or two) on my other blog :)

January pictures

Ok so I'm slowly trying to post up the backlog of pics I have on my computer before I post up the new ones. These are the ones I've taken with my camera in January.

Here is a picture I took at St. Seraphim's in Rawdon when I attended the Old Calendar Christmas there:

Here's the view from the parking lot on the upper floors of Place Alexis Nihon, a mall downtown on St. Catherine St.:

And here's a picture of a sunset I took from my friend Stephan's place where I used to live:

Watered down rainy day

Here's a pic I took last week on a rainy day that I took just so I could use the watercolor effect on it in the crappy Microsoft Photo Editor on my computer at work, click to fullview:

New Cooking Blog

I decided to start a new blog dedicated to cooking French Canadian, Swedish and Filipino food. Here it is if anyone is interested. Still lots of work to be done, don't be surprised if the look keeps changing over the next couple of days.