I have been training for the Mississauga half marathon since January. This means that I’ve been huffing and puffing on the treadmill at GoodLife Fitness 4-5 times a week. It also means that I’m more aware of what I’m drinking and eating. In particular I’m super aware of staying properly hydrated.

Please note, that plain tap water will always be my number one choice! But there are moments when I need a diversion. Do you know what I mean? So here’s a list of other beverages that I’m enjoying these days.

O.N.E Coconut Water:

I’m in love with this drink. Especially after a workout due the huge amounts of potassium in this beverage (19% for 670 g). It’s 100% coconut water and when it’s super cold – it’s delicious.

Metromint:

Talk about a refreshing drink!! As their website says “Pure Water. Real Mint”. There’s lots of different flavors – i.e spearmint, lemonmint, orangemint, and more – but I always seem to stick to the peppermint. On a side note:  I love the packaging.

Here’s a list of other drinks that I consume occasionally. Very occasionally.

Boylans:

This soft drink is made with pure cane sugar and not high fructose corn syrup – which means that it tastes WAY better. The rootbeer and the black cherry are my favorites but there’s lots of other great flavors too (grape, vanilla cream, orange, cola, birch, and gingerale). After you drink this brand it’s hard to reach for Crush.

Beer:

Look at these two gorgeous bottles!! (Im a sucker for packaging – have you noticed?)

Great Lakes Brewery makes a refreshing Orange Pale Ale and Beaus All Natural is grabbing my attention too.  I will open one bottle after the Sporting Life 10 and the other bottle will be opened after the half marathon. Nothing like being prepared!!

What are you drinking these days?

Meet Susan and Bruce. Bruce is a busy litigation lawyer during the day, but when he comes home he enjoys watching the Food Network (a lot).  He is such a huge fan that Susan planned a driving trip to visit his favorite  restaurants/chefs that he watches on the Food Network as a birthday gift.

How awesome is that? I met with Susan recently who printed out the itinerary for me. She’s one organized woman!!

Day 1:

New Jersery – Carlos Bakery – featured on Cake Boss.

Manhattan – Max Brenner Chocolate Restaurant – featured on The Best Thing I Ever Ate

Stand 4 – Featured on The Best Thing I Ever Ate ( he had the roasted marshmallow milkshake)

Butter: – Chef Alexandra Guarnaschelli was a judge on Chopped.

Day 2

Bar Americain- Iron Chef Bobby Flays’ Restuarant

Food Network Building

Morimoto – Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto

Del Posto – Iron Chef Mario Batali’s restaurant

Day 3

Maze – Chef Gordon Ramsey

Drove to Balitmore for Charm City Cakes (featured on Ace of Cakes)

Woodberry Kitchen – Featured on the Best Thing I Ever Ate  (they ate the chocolate marshmallow and peanut dessert)

Day 4 – Drove to Washington

Georgetown Cupcake – DC Cupcakes on TLC and part of the Cupcake Wars on the Food Network

Drove to Cleveland

Lola – Chef Michael Symon

Highlights for Bruce: the roasted marshmallow milkshake, dinner at Lola, Morimoto.

Doesn’t this sound like a great birthday gift?

How many cereals are in your pantry? Take a peek…Let me know. I am facinated by this question (and the answers). I am convinced that most households have over 3 different varieties. Am I right?

My household consists of two adults, 1 teenager, 1 tween. The adults enjoy certain cereals (think; ahem – FIBRE), while the teenagers and the tween have requests too.

We enjoy cereal for breakfast, for after school snack, and for late nite snack too. It’s such a versatile food. One has to like it.

A few years ago, I went to a cuzins house and saw this brilliant cereal dispenser that they bought at the dollar store. They knew I loved it so I received a few as a dinner gift one year and we love it. It dispenses ONE cup of cereal. (which is always smaller than I anticipate)

I’m not kidding…I will even go to the States and bring back cereal that you cant find here like this gluten free chocolate chex.

So bring it on..how many cereals do you have in your pantry. I seriously am interested to know.

Disclosure: I am part of the LMD Connector Program and I receive special perks as part of the affiliation with this group. The opinion on this blog our my own.

Here’s three things to do this weekend:

a) Visit Maple Towne at Mountsberg Conservation. Hint: go as early as you can. I’ve been going for years and it’s one of my fav. activities. Spring wouldnt be the same without pancakes and maple syrup at a conservation area. If you don’t have a chance to go – I hear from @hypnoflair that Bisquick makes a mean pancake.

b) Visit the One of A Kind Spring Show and Sale at the Direct Energy Centre (March 30 to April 3rd). I went yesterday to the show and discovered a new food product. Does this surprise  you?  It looks like a candy apple but it’s not…it’s gourmet cheesecake on a stick and then rolled in a topping (over 15 different types). YUM. Hot Lollies are located in aisle C – Booth 38.

c) Visit Yorkdale. Thomas Sabo is opening his Ontario Flagship Store at Yorkdale on April 1st and this is amazing news. I own a little red heart necklace and everytime I wear it, I get tons of compliments.

d) Organize your cupboards..Just Kidding.

Enjoy your weekend. It’s going to be nice and sunny in Toronto …so celebrate.

I’ve organized a few tweet ups in Ottawa over the year so that I could enjoy new restaurants with other foodies. We have enjoyed tweet ups at Ceylonta, at Coconut Lagoon, and at Blue Nile too.  I was kinda having a hard time finding the right restaurant for  the next tweet up but FoodiePrints came to the rescue. While reading their blog entry on Serious Cheese, I said to myself  “aha – a cheese tweet up”.

I immediately picked up the phone to speak to the owner of Serious Cheese and asked him if he would be interested in doing this. He agreed over the phone. I then set up the twtvite and tweeted out the invitation a few times on twitter.

Here’s how it worked: On Sat Night, over 20 people came to the store to enjoy CHEESE – talk about cheese, mingle, eat cheese and eat some more cheese.

It was a perfect tweet up. Lots of mingling and lots of eating.

Many of us enjoyed grilled cheese sandwiches:

Many of us also enjoyed their asweome goo-ey macaroni and cheese.

Jamie put out some lovely samples of cheese along with Dolces’ Gourmet Jam – and everyone was clearly happy.

Tweet Ups are a great way to meet other people with similar interests. Infact the group on Saturday nite, included a foodie from Boston (@GeekBoston).

I can’t wait to organize the next tweet up for my next visit. I’m thinking about a Jam tweet up. What do you think?

Another trip to Ottawa means another opportunity to eat!!  I ate my way thru the following restaurants and my stomach couldn’t be happier.

I started off at Town. It was listed as one of top ten restaurants for 2010 in Ottawa magazine and I can see why. The restaurant was packed but I was lucky and found a spot at the bar. When presented with the menu, it was tough to make a decision what to order.  But I was super happy with my decision.  I inhaled the ricotta gnudi that was served with a walnut pesto and browned sage butter.

The next restaurant to make my stomach happy was Chez Edgar. I asked the waiter what was popular and he replied “a lot of people order the heuvos rancheros”. I replied “ok – that’s what I will have”. I was not disappointed. It was perfect. The restaurant is situated in a house – so there’s a few tables and an open kitchen.  This means that I got to watch the chef make my meal. Total entertainment.

On the way out I grabbed some photos of some baked goods. OMG.!!

Next: The Scone Witch. This restaurant has been around for over 20 years and clearly has a following. It’s a clever concept as you don’t find too many places serving sweet or savory scones along with devon cream and jam. Again, my stomach was happy.

Here’s the details about the restaurants:

Chez Edgar: 60 Rue Begin, Gatineau, QC

Town: 296 Elgin St. Ottawa

The Scone Witch: 388 Albert St. or 35 Beechwood Avenue, Ottawa

The highlight of the weekend, was the Cheese Tweet Up but that will be a separate posting on Tuesday. Stay Tuned.

OK everyone, set your PVR’s and tape CityLine on Tuesday March 29th at 9:00 a.m or at 2p.m. Why? Coz CityLine is airing a segment on “bloggers” and you might even see me in the audience clapping and smiling!!  They invited  beauty bloggers, food bloggers, mommy bloggers and decor bloggers to be part of the studio audience and then did a segment on each topic. I truly love when companies “get” social media..

The beauty blogger: talked about her favorite beauty products. I used one of the products already for the last 20 years (Voluminous mascara by L’Oreal”) and now Im in love with the lipstick she recommended.

The food blogger: made an amazing banana bread with a secret ingredient that I would have never guessed in a million years.

The decor blogger: talked about Canadian furniture, and demonstrated a DIY project.

The mommy blogger; talked about why mommys have embraced twitter and blogging.

It was lots of fun to be part of the audience and lots of fun to meet other bloggers.  Infact, I sat beside a food blogger (foodjunkiechronicles) that I have been following on twitter (@foodieyu) for the past year so it was great to meet her IRL (in real life).

I loved how they told the audience NOT to put away their iPhones and Blackberries as they knew we would want to be tweeting and taking photos. I wish my mom would be so understanding. (she hates when I tweet).

After the taping, we were all treated to a lovely lunch at the new Ritz Carlton. A perfect ending to a perfect event.

Congratulations to Kate Moore (the producer for CityLine) for putting this Bloggers Segment together and for embracing the blogging community.

ps. thank you to @foodieyu and @YYZdesign for the photos.

Entertaining Made Easy…According to momwhoruns:

a) select a date and then invite the guests

b) decide on the menu. I generally do one main course, 3 sides, one dessert. The internet saves me. You can find all the recipes by clicking on the item. I’m pretty sure I found all of them on tastespotting.

c) buy groceries and begin to cook. (often I do this in stages vs. doing it all at once).

d) buy flowers and set the table.

e) ENJOY the good food and the great company.

Here’s what I served to guests a few weeks ago:

Roasted Carrot Cumin Dip

Quinoa and Smashed Herb Salad (sorry no photo – had a senior moment)

Barefoot Contessa’s Basil Mashed Potatotes

Baked Salmon with Kale and Dill with Harissa

www.tastefoodblog.com

Strawberry Raspberry Crisp. (recipe to follow in another blog post)

Another fav. part of having company over is to set the table and buy the right flowers. What do you think?

I cant wait to entertain next month.

There are projects I love doing and there are  projects I hate doing. We all have this problem (I think).

Projects I love: cooking, entertaining, shopping (lol), researching recipes, etc.

Projects I hate doing: putting away the laundry, cleaning my car and PUTTING ART ON THE WALL.

My problems are now solved. All I did was upload a photo, click, click, click and a lovely tube arrived in the mail ready for me to simply PEEL and STICK to a wall. It took just a few minutes and now I don’t have a white wall anymore. WOOT.

The biggest issue was simply deciding which photo I wanted to upload. But once I decided it was a simple process.

I love technology!!

Please visit Posterjack for further information about this great service and this great product.

Now my daughers’ room is looking a bit more complete. Dont you think?

p.s that’s Snuffles on the pillow. He is from the Gund Collection and his tag says 1980!! He was my fav. stuffed animal and now he sits proudly on my daughters bed. But thats another blog post!!

You might be shaking your head (sideways), saying “molecular WHAT”? but when I received an invitation to attend a molecular gastronomy demonstration – I shook my head up and down to indicate YES.

I’m not sure when I was first introduced to molecular gastronomy but I’m pretty sure it was at Charlie Trotters’ restaurant in Chicago many years ago. Or perhaps it was at Joel Robuchons’ restaurant in Las Vegas. All I know is that I think it’s spectacular!

So what is it? Its a method of cooking that I WILL NEVER master. LOL.

However there are some great chefs out there who do an awesome job…including John Placko who is teaching a series of hands-on molecular gastronomy workshops at Humber College.

I was tweeting about the demonstration throughout the evening and received some tweets back that said “I would kill for that machine”. (special machines and ingredients are often used in molecular gastronomy – so I found out). The tweet was in reference to a $4,000 pacojet!

The evening demonstrated a few special techniques including: spherification, reverse spherification, emulsification and more. It was a 3 hour demonstration and I loved every minute.

The photo at the beginning of the blog post is one of the many items that were demonstrated that evening. It’s cereal milk ice cream (made in a pacojet) in a frozen bowl made of coconut milk with raspberry niblets (with the help of liquid nitrogen) on a bed of white chocolate powder, topped with gold flakes. IMPRESSIVE.

There’s a series of workshops taking place each Saturday from March to June at Humber College. For further information,visit the Humber College website or call 416-675-5005.