Moose in the Kitchen: Holiday Baking # 1

I just finished my first massive baking for the holidays and my feet are aching!! I started to work around 9pm - 4 hours and 16 eggs later, we've got 4 cheesecakes, a pan of blondies and a pan of brownies, meringue fingers and a burned and blistered index finger.

Haven't tried the cheesecakes yet, but they sure look prettier than last time. I had used one 9" spring form pan last time and the cake turned out too tall, so this time I split the batter between 2 9" round cake pan which also prevented the problem of soggy cake resulting from water leaking into the cake during baking. I have meant to decorate one for Mom's birthday, but I got distracted with the other stuff in the oven so it will have to wait until tomorrow. One of the mini ones I have reserved for Michelle, and the other for B. I hope they will enjoy it!!

The blondies came out perfect even though it's been a while since I've made them. Crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside with loads of pecans and wonderful butter flavour, this is one of my favorite treats. And it was SO easy to make - melt butter, stir in sugar and vanilla, beat in eggs then add flour and baking powder - viola! It took under 10 minutes to put it together not including the 3o minutes it spends in the oven. As soon as they are all cooled off I will wrap them up for my dear friends - these are always a hit.

Having had numerous complaints of my baking being too sweet, I cut the sugar when I made the brownie batter. However, I must have made a mistake in calculation because I found the brownies not quite sweet enough for my taste. The original recipe called for 4 oz. of unsweetened chocolate and the same amount of semi-sweet chocolate plus 2 cups of sugar, but I had substituted with 6 oz. of unsweetened chocolate + 2 oz. semi-sweet chocolate and also cut half a cup of sugar. I should have stuck with the whole 2 cups. Andy thought they were fine, but I am going to fix them up with a little bit of white chocolate drizzle. Plus, they look prettier that way!



Thanks to the handy KitchenAid stand mixer, I attempted to make meringue cookies because I have always wanted to try. It was a breeze to beat egge whites with the stand mixer - I love it!! I piped the meringue into finger length strips using the star tip and they turned out so pretty! It was so delicately light and crunchy that even Mom couldn't stop munching on them. The only trouble is they are so difficult to remove from the cookie sheet - I lined mine with foil as suggested by the recipe but many of them still broke while I was trying to remove them. Not that I minded too much because it gave me an excuse to pop yet another one in my mouth, but I also wanted to have enough to send to my friends. I wonder if I can triple or even quadruple this recipe.

Sushi Tomato

Moose Reviews: Sushi Tomato

Being an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant with a lower-than-average price tag, Sushi Tomato @ Metro Square (Steeles & Warden) offered a decent variety of soft drinks and Japanese foods to choose from.

The servers were friendly, but they seem so busy all the time that it was hard to get their attention to order something. They also seem to have trouble getting the orders right - dishes would appear even though we have never ordered those particular items, some dishes we ordered never came, or they would give us something we ordered that already came. In the end, the ebi sushi (shrimp atop a ball of rice) never came, and the udon noodles only came after asking the server twice.

The food itself wasn't spectacular. The deep-fried capelin was mouth-burning hot being freshly fried and was the best hot dish they served. The tempura shrimps were not bad either. But everything else has gone wrong. The tempura veggies were not tempuras at all, being simply dipped into a regular batter before they were fried, and came out so greasy that we had exhausted the extra stack of 4-6 napkins in an attempt to blot out the oil. So were the grilled eggplants and enoki mushrooms wrapped in bacon - way too greasy to stomach. The miso soup was overly salty. The teriyaki beef was disproportionately sized - one order was more than enough to share among the 6 of us.

Don't expect too much from the sushi bar either. The size of the piece of ika (squid) was not big enough to cover the tall rice ball underneath. The maki rolls were thick with rice but not enough fillings. The beef sashimi (thin slices of raw beef) came frozen. They didn't bother to thaw the butterfish sashimi either. The red-snapper sashmi was sliced too thin and lost its texture. The only thing they got right was the sake (salmon) sashimi, which they did not seem to want to supply enough of.

Price is right, but the quality of both food and service could use some improvements. Would I go again? Probably not. Even if we have to resort to all-you-can-eat sushi, there are much better ones in Markham for just a buck or two more.

Badminton + Zumba = Aching Calves

I think I overdid it this week - badminton, zumba and then weights in 3 consecutive days. I cannot feel my legs as they have gone numb - especially my calves, which has been aching since Monday. I can only go down the stairs one step at a time now, and it doesn't help that there are stairs everywhere at work - to come into the building there are several steps before you get to the door, to get to my desk I have to climb a flight of stairs, to go to the bathroom I have to go down those stairs (and up again on the way back), to go to other departments we collaborate with I have to go down those stairs and up another set of stairs...

On Monday we skipped Body Combat because Michelle was gonna head out for wings, so I had the opportunity to play some badminton. Boy, was it intense!! Ususally we go to the session from 8pm to 10pm and because there are so many players and only so many courts, we have to take turns to play. Which means for every 15 minutes or so we would get to rest for 5 to 10 minutes. However, this Monday we went to the session from 6pm to 8pm, and there weren't any line-ups at all! We got to play for 2 hours straight and we didn't even have to share the court half the time. It was awesome and I felt great afterwards, except for the numbing pain in my calves and right shoulder the next morning.

Despite the muscle pains, I went to Zumba on Tuesday evening, thinking I've had enough rest. Plus, I really don't want to miss that class - it's one of the only things I really look forward to during the week (the others being Fridays and every other Thursday when the paycheck comes). I thought if it was too much I can always make it more tame, and if I really couldn't stand it I could leave half-way. Wrong! It was so much fun that I had almost forgotten that my legs were hurting, and only after I got home I had realized that my calves were aching even more!

I half limped to work on Wednesday and had to rely on a couple of advils to last through the rest of the day. The only times I left my desk was to grab some coffee in the morning and for lunch. Otherwise, I stayed put, trying to minimize any actions (like climbing stairs) that might further aggravate my aching calves. But since Michelle has missed Zumba on Tuesday, we had decided to meet up and work out. Really, I should have stayed home. My legs were hurting and I almost wanted to take the elevator to go up to the gym. But I wanted to keep Michelle company, since she hasn't even gone to the gym once this week and our goal was a minimium of twice per week. It wasn't a great workout though - I couldn't warm up before going to the weigh machines because it hurt too much to do the bike nor the treadmill. I could only work on my abs and lower back, and in less than 30 minutes we hit the showers. Sauna was nice though, and definitely helped releasing some stress and relieving the muscle pains. I love to be in the sauna. Especially when it's so cold outside.

Moose in Leather Jacket

Thanks to Andy and Michelle who accompanied me to Danier to exchange my white leather bomber for a more fitted and stylish black lambskin jacket - the one on the flyer that I've been eyeing but in black because black is so much more flattering and never goes out of style. I have had a hard time peeling it off because it's so comfy and chic!! And the weather these few days are just perfect for wearing leather jackets, so even if Andy suggested that I stick with jeans I'm going to try to pull it off with dress pants this week.

We had some time to kill before Andy got off work so we went shopping on the other side of the Heartland strip - Garage there has a pretty good sale going on!! Prices were already slashed and on top of that all red-tagged items were buy one get one free!! Sizes are quite limited and I had a harder time finding something that might fit, but Michelle who wears size 0 had plenty to choose from. I ended up with 4 tops for less than $20 - what a steal!! I just love finding deals and bargains and all the more when there's someone who shares the excitement!!

Goodlife = Good workout

Zumba was awesome last night - Goodlife is having an Open House (until Monday) and the gym was packed, but luckily we still had enough room to strut our stuff in the crowded studio. I just loved the music and have this tune stuck in my head now - I have to remember to ask Jewel what that song is called! For the second time in a row we've had about 15 minutes of street-style dance-off and I guess people must have been getting more comfortable with this idea because they were way more enthusiastic this time around and really showed off what they've got. It was hilarious to watch and so much fun to do. And what a good work-out - my hips and thighs are aching but it felt so good!

Tonight we are going to take it easy though - Michelle and I have been quite good this week having done Combat on Monday and Zumba yesterday. We are going to train with machines to build some muscles. No pain, no gain, right? So we will do our best today too!