Yes it has been a very long time since I last made any post, I don't have any excuses except that I was just purely lazy. Why beat around the bushes? lol Anyways, get ready for a very long update.

First of all, my hunnie came back about 2-3 weeks ago and even though I was hoping for some huge extravagent gift, he brought me back a very pretty bracelet from Swarvoski at HK International.


Pink Heart Lock Bracelet
Very pretty no? Well I like to think of this as a makeup for the one I lost two years ago for my birthday from him. It was called the Ginger bracelet and very pretty. I was really sad when I lost it since I haven't even worn it for 2 days. I really do curse the person that found it. Yeah I'm pretty darn spiteful and hunnie knows that very well.

On a fun note; this takes place a few weeks back, I was craving okonomiyaki and was looking up recipes and videos online, I decided make one for myself. This led to cruising around up in Toronto with Andy to find the ingredients. T&T and other asian shops sold the premade package type, but I didn't feel like spending $5 for it. I'm cheap in a very weird way. lol I had two stores in mind after googling around. The first was called MITS and the other Sanko.

We decided to first try MITS since the website looked nicer. Now this is one of the time that I wished I wasn't so shallow. I found MITS to be such a huge waste of time. From the site, it looked to be a pretty decent size, clean, seems to have the things I need. It took both Andy and I a walk around the building to finally find the place. It looked nothing like the website pictured from both exterior and interior. It was in fact, more like your local 'down the street' convenience store with a nice addition of random japanese items. Very big disappointment.

MITS
Website

202-585 Yonge Street Toronto, ON M4Y 1Z2‎ (416) 962-4860‎

2 Dundonald Street Toronto, ON M4Y 1K2‎ (416) 962-4868‎

These are the supposed two addresses for the store. I went by the Yonge St. address and could not find it at all. Andy and I had to walk around the whole building to find it, so its best to go by the second address since it is not technically on Yonge at all.


A nice little picture of the shop. See? Nothing alike at all. By the way, I did not take this picture but found it on Google Map while looking for the address. A pretty fun feature actually that I'll talk about some other time.

MITS was a major let down so we had to go down to Sanko, which was basically way on the other side. Luckily, it was pretty late already, so traffic was not that bad. Plus, I'd like to say that my skill as a driver has improved immensely due to the fact that I have to drive my dad up there so often. Yeah, off topic again. lol

Sanko Trading Co.
Website

730 Queen St W, Toronto, ON
(416) 703-4550‎

I was very glad that we decided to go here. The shop is situated farther than the core of downtown and there were lots of neat shops around. I parked a bit further away since I was scared that there wouldn't be any parking space and I didn't want to panic with traffic behind me. Plus parallel on a busy street in Toronto is way too nerve racking. The shop was very neat and what I thoughts MITS should've been like but wasn't. Sanko carried a lot of japanese products that I had such a fun time browsing around.

Something amusing that happened there was seeing a white old lady conversing with the equally elderly owner in japanese. She switched inbetween english and japanese now and then. This place seems to be popular since there were quite a bit of positive reviews online that I found and seeing a lady coming in to buy a few rice balls for her kids. One thing that I was kind of annoyed was that I needed to get this certain ingredient called Nagaimo which is basically taro root. I asked the son and it turned out to be a daikon. On that day, I also went to a few bakeries around Chinatown since Ding Dong didn't have much. I'll give some inputs about them some other time.

So with all my ingredients bought, time to make Okonomiyaki!!

I chose to follow; well somewhat, the recipe from Just Hungry. I said somewhat, since Okonomiyaki is basically a 'whatever you like' type of dish. I only followed to get the batter just about right. Now here's the pic spam I took.



All the ingredients chopped up. I have actually never cut a cabbage before and never knew the darn thing was so hard to cut. Hard as in I do not have the strength. lol Yes I am a very weak person when it comes to physical strength.






The batter and the mix. I did not put in a lot of ingredients so the batter is a lot more than the ingredients I put in.


The instruction said to place the meat onto the batter once in the pan, but I prefer to cook the meat first. Just a precaution.


Placing the meat onto the batter. I had to experiment with a lot of the pans and whatnot I had at home. Originally I wanted to use those plug in griller things that came with a flat top, but we couldn't find the flat top anywhere and other equipment I have made it very hard to flip. Also, the pan I decided to finally use sort of malfunctioned since the nonstick coating started to peel off. So had to switch it with my old beloved pan I used when younger to fry eggs and many other weird experiments.

Just a side note: In no way am I a cook. I'm just real good at following the instructions and not a total idiot with the stove.



My first ever Okonomiyaki and japanese dish; either than sushi. Before toppings and garnishes.








Drool worthy no?
It wasn't till a day later that my mom showed me some hot plates she bought. Her exact words:

'I have a lot of fun toys around, it's just that you don't bother to look or know.'

Yeah my mom is much of a pack rat as me.

Fastforward a few days and it's Halloween! We decided to get more costumes for the dogs this year, but sadly only found one for Mochi. Oh well, since lastyear we could only find one for Timmy. So now introducing my lion and Peter Pan! lol






Cutest little thing no? Too bad we decided to go look for costumes last minute again or else Timmy would be wearing a monkey costume.

Lets now talk about these two brats. Mochi(Yorkie) is very much a spoiled pamper brat that likes to be the third wheel; well actually they both are. Whenever Hunnie and I are lying on the couch they would have to squeeze through. Timmy(Maltese) likes to squeeze through from the side while Mochi just jumps right into the centre and wants in on the kissy kissy action.

When doing their business, Mochi has always have a habit of becoming incredibly mopey and a look of complete devestation when he has some stuck on his behind. I always thought that it was the cutest look ever.


Don't you agree?

Lately though, when he knows he did something wrong and I call out to him he does this face as well. He also has this habit of crouching under chairs when he does something bad. Timmy on the other hand is more of a lazy loner type. He likes to go off and ly somewhere on his own and gives you a hmph look when you call him. The only way you can get him to come instantly is to bribe him with food. People tend to like him more than Mochi though since he's not as aggressive to strangers in home.



His way of sitting. The little guy is pretty graceful and stands on his hind legs very well. We all think he was raised by cats in his younger days lol

Because Hunnie's mom likes to spoil these guys rotten, they get a nightly snack of apple slices. If we don't feed it to them she goes bananas; even when she herself said that she won't feed them cause they were misbehaving.



Them waiting




I did say that this was going to be a long one but this post has been sitting in the draft for over 2 weeks now so I am just going to stop here. Hopefully the next one will be up fast.

Ciao~

Labels: cooking, diy, food, life