I added another item to my Fred and Friends family of products! Meet Mr. Tea. He is the most awesome tea infuser.
I just love his chillin’ smile.
He comes apart in two pieces and you can put tea in his pants.
As he swims in your water, it turns into tea!
We went to The Emerson a few months ago (the menu has changed since) but I completely forgot to blog about it. That’s sort of how hidden the place is. I would have walked passed it dismissing it for “The Clothing Co.” which its signage seems to imply. In fact we actually walked up to the doors one hungry evening and asked “do you serve food?” In fact they were a trendy place that indeed serve food and drinks. All the food is seemingly ordinary but very flavourful. The first dish we started with was an eggplant with pine nuts and yogurt and peppers that went really well together.
I chose the flat iron steak with fried green tomatoes and chimichurri sauce. It was cooked beautiful and was very delicious but portion-wise an appetizer was very necessary or else you wouldn’t be full off one main.
Nash had the Emerson burger with Beemster sauce. It was chocked full of melted cheese. You can’t be afraid to get messy with this one!
We had a few fruity cocktails but I totally forgot what they were. I just remembered that I could probably drink 10 of these!
Lastly, we split a lovely peach tart for dessert!
The individual items aren’t that pricey, but everything will add up if you want to be satisfied at the end of the meal. While I enjoyed everything I ate, I feel like it has to stand out a little more for me to return and not be lured away but its surrounding neighbours.
I couldn’t resist picking up these adorable turtle bathtub treads. They also come in assorted fish with five in a pack. I don’t actually have a bath mat in the tub so I thought these would be a cute alternative.
I set them up in random directions in my tub.
Now I can have things smile at me as I take a shower. How nice is that?
This adorable Food Face plate is also from Fred and Friends. There’s a Mrs. Food Face too but I couldn’t find it at Marshalls.
I thought the idea of creating faces with food was so adorable that I couldn’t resist. I am a 5 year old kid at heart.
The ceramic plate has a simple face with no hair, allowing you to play with your food and create your own characters.
Here are a few of my own creations:
Now meal times can be super fun!
This month I’m taking part in the 2015 Filler Up Sketchbook Challenge. I’ve started to fill my book up with a bunch of daily sketches. A lot of them aren’t very good but I thought I’d share a few of my favourites.
In today’s video round-up I have…
a Sriracha2Go:
Chinese new year:
and we build a robot:
I found these adorable Russian Doll measuring Cups at Marshalls last weekend! They are originally from the official Fred & Friends website where I want to buy all the things.
There are three dolls included. The top and the bottom half of the doll have different measurements in cup sizes.
The number is indicated on the inside and include: 1/4 cup, 1/2 cup, 3/4 cup, 1/3 cup 2/3 cup and 1 cup.
They are such an adorable addition to the kitchen counter!
Doesn’t this solar-powered kit look awesome? I couldn’t resist this kit for $3. It promised 3 robots in one: regular robot, tank, scorpion.
Inside the box, there was a set of instructions, stickers and the plastic moldings in blue and white. They were labelled with numbers so that you could tell what is what when following instructions.
The instructions were quite complicated. You actually had to build the robot first in order to even understand how to configure it to the rest of the robotic creatures. The solar power panel was attached to a motor and it worked well when not actually attached to anything. There were a lot of bits and pieces to put together.
Sometimes we looked at the instructions and had no idea what hole they were asking us to put things into. Other times pieces of plastic from the molding would just be in the way. It specifies that it is for age 10 and up but I’d be impressed to find a 10 year old who can get this thing working.
Nearly 2 hours later, this is what we ended up with. He was lopsided, and was too heavy for it’s own motor. Or maybe it was midnight and our lamps weren’t generating enough power for the panel. Either way we were left with one sad robot and decided never to touch it again.
You can watch our struggles on video here.
Last night I attended The Drake Hotel’s Chip N’ Dip battle. It was hosted by PEI Potatoes. The event was FREE and we stuffed our plates with chip and dip from 10 different Toronto restaurants.
Some were served traditionally: chips with a side of dip. Others were presented beautifully as a single bite amuse-bouche type thing. There were dips with caviar, french onion, fish foam, bacon and all sorts of combinations you wouldn’t think of. Some chips were waffled, others were wavy, others BBQ’d or coloured differently for presentation.
Nash and I had a shared favourite. It ended up being one of the simpler ones. Plain potato chips with a poutine dip containing cheese curds and mushroom gravy. It was such a classic combination! People underestimate simplicity sometimes. We didn’t stay to find out who was the actual winner but in our eyes it was the poutine dip!
Last week a co-worker and I happened to be at an event across the street from Wahlburgers’ recently opened Toronto location at the SoHo hotel. It’s opening had been hyped considering the ties to Mark Wahlberg so we decided to try it out. I ordered the OFD Burger and Sweet Potato tots (pictured above).
The burger was an 8oz beef patty, housemade tomato jam, bacon, swiss cheese & sauteed mushrooms. I didn’t find it particularly memorable, and it was a little bit oily to hold. The sweet potato tots however were very addictive (as advertised on the menu) and the perfect mixture of sweet and salty. The way they had cut it gave a crunchy outer shell that would reveal sweet and soft insides.
To drink, because I am a cocktail fiend, I had their “Wahlcoction” called The Wahlbanger which was orange vodka, vanilla liquor, peach juice and sparkling wine. It tasted like a creamsicle!
My co-worker had the BBQ Bacon burger and he also agreed that the burgers were nothing special. I had one of his fries and they were okay, but not as good as my sweet potato tots.
Overall, I don’t think the burgers here are worth the hype (and the price tag). There are much better places in the city. But if you find yourself here for some reason go for the sweet potato tots!
Tiana Feng 