Yellow Tomatoes

Oh my gosh, I haven't posted anything in a very long time.
I have no excuse. I simply forgot.

Recently, I tried many different kinds of tomatoes: green zebra tomatoes, oxford tomatoes, and, my favourite so far, yellow cherry tomatoes.
Yellow cherry tomatoes are sweet and delicious. They don't have a very acidic taste (at least not the ones I had) and they are a nice bite-sized snack.


I made a salad with them: some herbs, garlic, and mini-bocchini cheese. It was so good, I could have eaten four bowls of it.

Summer Baking--- yuuummmm

So I had a bit of a mishap with my tiny digi camera and it somehow re-set the memory card so that only my camera could read my memory card.
So my photos from the last three months were sort of stuck on there.
BUT my I.T. Support father worked some computer magic and luckily got my 435 photos off of my camera.

What that means for this blog is that I can finally post my summer baking adventures!

My first attempt at baking was Dark Chocolate Mousse with Salted Caramel Sauce.

It was absolutely delicious, easy to do, but greatly in need of constant attention (which is definitely not my forte in any kind of baking or cooking).
But I'd say it turned out rather well.
I had to improvise for a couple things- I ran out of milk chocolate and didn't actually have any baking chocolate. So instead I used some cocoa powder mixed in with the crushed milk chocolate that I did have on hand.Also, I ended up pouring in too much butter milk into the heated butter while making the caramel sauce, so it was pretty runny.
Aaanndd because of these two blunders, the mousse wasn't quite as light and fluffy as mousse typically is. The mousse was a little heavier, and the sauce a little runnier, ergo the sauce actually sunk to the bottom shortly after I took these photos.

But it was delicious just the same!

And now, for the best Banana Bread I've ever made in my life.
Best looking.
Best tasting.
Best texture.
Just The Best.
I think I've finally got the trick. And I think this because I actually replicated the same Best outcome a few weeks later!

Croissant

"Sam, did you eat that croissant?"
"No."
"You know the cat was eating that croissant."
"....."
"You ate it didn't you?"
"Yes."

Germs- ew!

So I was sitting on the subway this morning on my super-long train ride out to Rexdale and this woman in a long floral skirt and clunky black shoes came on and promptly pulled out a hard-boiled egg and ATE IT right there on the spot. Just put her whole hand around it and shoved it in her mouth and took huge bits, and there was egg falling everywhere around her.

Now, I understand eating a bag of chips or an apple on the subway because you're a little peckish. But really, a slippery hard-boiled egg on public transit that is used by thousands of people each day?

I mean, to eat a hard-boiled egg without a bowl and cutlery, you need to grab the thing with your whole hand, so all of your palm and fingers are touching it. That's the hand that you just touched the railing, the door handle and the train poles with.

Don't get me wrong, hard-boiled eggs with a bit of salt and pepper and veggies are delicious and nutritious, but only when you've had a chance to wash your hands and take a seat.

Needless to say, I was a little grossed out. She just ingested way too much of other people's sneezes, coughs and snot.

Photo Credit: the cosmic cowgirl

Wanda's: a work place the size of a closet (Re-posted from school blog)

Sam Nadal, 19, works in the back of the tiny Wanda's Belgian Waffles store building fancy waffles as fast as he possible can. "Everyone is always moving," Nadal says about the tightly-packed kitchen. "It's just a fast-paced environment. Everyone has a station in the back and they stick to it."

Usually, the six-by-eight feet restaurant (if it can be called that) has two or three people working and a line of eight customers spilling onto Yonge Street, waiting for their Liège-style vanilla waffle or their concoction of chocolate sauce, ice cream, bananas and whipped-cream.

People strolling along Yonge are usually drawn to the store because of the delicious, sweet smell wafting from its open window. "Open-window stores like this are really popular in Belgium. They're everywhere," Nadal says. "If one or two people line up, other people will come see too."

On the weekends Nadal, a George Brown culinary student, makes up to 800 waffles. Each waffle is anywhere from three to six dollars. Although the repetitive nature of the job doesn't seem to bother him. "I love it," he says about working in the hole-in-the-wall store. "I love to cook."

While the online community gives Wanda's mixed reviews, mostly agreeing that the plain waffles are delicious while the fancier ones need some work, the line-up out front suggests otherwise.

Photo Credit: Foodhogger