Sweet Love ;

Turkey Long Weekend

Oct 16, 2009 | 1 comments

So it was a very busy weekend for me. The asian equivalent to baby shower, Jonathan's monthly orthodontist and a Thanksgiving Dinner with friends. Yep, so to start off, I decide to do my nails! Yup something that wasn't on the list. It took me about 5 hours to do, due to the fact that I wasn't too sure of what design to do and it has to be something simple since I'm horrible with my left hand. The result came out really nice. Colour used for the pink was OPI - Its All Greek To Me

Yup, I'm spamming you with my nails and there's nothing you can do about it. Except for closing the window. lol

Now onto something food related, on Saturday was my friend Thao's baby shower. When I say baby shower I mean the asian kind, where we celebrate the baby being one month old. I went with Tam and Linh that day. The plan was going up to Pacific Mall and getting a present there, but before that we had to get something to fill our tummies. We left at 11AM so nothing else is more perfect than Dimsum up in Markham; well Richmond in this case. We decided to go try out Ambassador instead. I heard great reviews for this place being even better than Grand so I had to try. Considering that I have been there for dinner once, my expectation was very high.

Ambassador Chinese Cuisine
280 West Beaver Creek Road, Unit #38
Richmond Hill, Ontario

905-731-5570

We did not get there till nearly 1PM so there was no wait at all. Now here's the usual food spam. lol

The image for this made it look a lot more pretty. This was on their special menu since the inside is bbq pork (char siu) and outside is of flakey pastrym it was special; not to me though. I did not like it.

I honestly enjoyed the egg tart best and in fact we had to order a second one. We made them bring it back in since it was more of a dessert and we were no where near dessert at the time. Tam also wanted to pose with the dish but it was too hot for her. lol

Our must have at any dimsum.

So these guys were supposed to look like butterfly, but turned into that. Lazy chef.

False advertisement no?

This was filled with quite a bit of veggies. Linh didn't like eating this at all.

There were a couple more items we ordered but I didn't bother taking a snap of those. The portions were quite big which was a big surprise for us. The deep fried wonton dumplings and deep fried dumplings were much bigger than a ping pong ball. I honestly did not find anything special about Ambassador. The food did not have anything special. Grand Chinese Cuisine is still #1 in all of the dimsum places that I have tried. I would get the same satisfied feeling of Ambassador as I would with going to Emerald in Mississauga but with a much cheaper bill.

After, we went off to Pacific for some asian fun. lol We still had to go get presents for little Elvin's one month. Tam in the end chose some cute chinese outfits and I got him a card with moolah attached. Sigh last minute shopping...
Whille there we did the all time fun fob/asian thing to do at Pacific and went for sticker pics! I would call it purikura but its a chinese imitation of one and not those fun funky machine you see in Japan. The man that owned that moved out already. Bummer...

Bigger version here. I really do like to reuse frames. lol

We arrived just in time for the one month and like Alina's, it was at Star Walks again. And Thao did promise me that it won't be buffet this time.

Honestly, we're all a bunch of camwhores and we're all so tiny except for Linda. lol

After dinner we went back to her house and again did the asian thing, we karaoked. We didn't really sing much since most of the songs were all unfamiliar and we totally forgot about opening up the presents. Only thing we remembered doing was to take more pics. lol

The proud mother of now 2. Her skin looks so nice that I'm very jealous of. Should find out what her skin routine is.

Tam was so proud that she looked lighter than me in this pic. Thao's dad and I kept on making fun of her all night for being so dark.

Baby Elvin. I didn't really get to see him much all night since he was hid away sleeping.

Alina, now a lot more cute and 'friendlier' than before.

The cute cake that we didn't know they ordered. I thought it was going to be the asian fruit/ durian kind so i past on it.

The next day I took Jonathan up to Toronto again for his monthly orthodontist; yeah the month rolls by so fast. While he was off with his business, Andy and I went around shopping for my mom and bought a few baked goodies for ourselves. We first went to the market to get ground meat for my mom. Apparently she wanted ground pork but I got ground beef instead and got an earful. She only told me to get ground meat. Of course she then went off on how much I don't understand her and that I go out too much. Aye Aye...

We then went across the street to the Banh Mi shops and bought a bunch for home. I always go into Nguyen Huong; or something like that, instead of Che Cali. Cheap sandwiches and a whole lot of options. Beat that subway! I did feel a bit stingy when the prices for the sandwiches went up in price though. To about $1.50 - 2. lol Jonathan finished with his orthodontist the same time as we finished with getting the sandwiches so we went and got bakeries together at Ding Dong. We ended up getting a lot as usual and it only came to about $8. I really wanted to get another Japanese Cheesecake but they only had one left and it didn't look all that pretty. I again got myself a milk custard bun; 3 in fact, but I still never got a chance to eat it when we brought it home. I even made sure that my brothers had to save one for me, but sadly never told my dad.

One thing I like about Ding Dong is that they seal each of their bun on purchase. This makes it nice to stuff in bag and bring it around with you, without worrying about it; except for getting smooshed.

After finishing up with Chinatown we decided to head up to Okonomi House; since Naniwa Taro made me crave the latter restaurant, but my mom called to check up on us and asked if we were hungry and if we ate yet. Since she was helping out at a nail shop up in Mississauga and has been hinting to us to try this dimsum restaurant with cheap happy hours, we decided to ditch Okonomi to have brunch with mom. This led to Happy Jade.

Happy Jade Seafood Chinese Restaurant
1425 Dundas St E,
Mississauga, ON
L4X 2W4‎

(905) 625-8188‎

Best spare ribs I have tasted in a while.

Tasted pretty bland.

They did not cut this properly.

Those crab claw balls. Well a piece of it since Andy and Jonathan went at it as soon as the lady placed it down.

The food is nothing special so good thing my mom really wanted to try Happy Hours since the bill came to about $60 instead of their usual price of around $100. I did not particularly like this place as much since:
1. It was dirty. Had to reclean everything they gave us and had to switch a few dishes for a 'cleaner' one.
2. Service was not too great. The ladies pushing the carts were nice. Those waiter guys that walks around very fast as if they have a lot to do or just slowly dragging their feet wasn't. My brother asked for water and he just kind of drifted past us without much acknowledgement.
3. Water came from tap. Nothing wrong with that except I can clearly see chunks of white particles floating.
4. I've been spoiled with all the great places up in Markham and Richmond for a while and its hard to bump down to a place that doesn't focus much on presentation.

Am I willing to go again? It wouldn't be my selection of choices but I wouldn't mind my mom coming home one day with take out dimsum for home. The dimsum is not that bad, just the cleanliness and service I had that day.

This year I was invited to some highschool friends Thanksgiving dinner. There isn't much to talk about since it was a nice quiet friends dinner that those guys had planned. I brought over some ice wine which led to some hilarious event after. My friend Chris was the chef for the night and everything was delicious. Minus the stuffings and I am very much in love with stuffings too. There wasn't enough spices and the bread was very soggy. His mashed potatos were delicious and I found it amusing that his secret ingredient was condensed milk. You couldn't taste the sweetness at all!

Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the dinner, but I snapped like crazy when he was attempting to open the bottle of ice wine. Those guys didn't listen to me and go ask their neighbours for an opener or even google it. Instead, Chris decided to take a hammer and a nail and hammer it down. Laughter ensued and headaches galore.

He tried to use those fondue forks to pull it out.

Jason finally listened and went over to the neighbours. This only took 10 seconds versus Chris' 10 minutes of hammering and it was still unsuccessful. lol