We Did Liquid Yoga at The Westin Bayshore and Stayed Dry H2 Restaurant + Bar opened recently at The Westin Bayshore and I have yet to try their highly acclaimed roast chicken or steak, but I did have a great brunch there the other day and would highly recommend the patio for summer drinks. However, today we returned for a little something other than just food, liquid yoga on mats on the pool. This is not your regular yoga, although the moves are definitely from the practice, as while you are going through the flow, you are atop a mat…
Author: cassandra
Philips Airfryer A New Favourite In Our Crowded Kitchen We’re finally home enough to make a few things in the kitchen and I’ve been testing out the newest Philips Airfryer. I’ve made some crispy fries, pork tonkatsu, zucchini sticks, chick peas and salmon quite successfully now. The Airfryer blasts hot air through the cooking chamber and allows you to crisp food with way less oil than you would with a deep fryer, making healthy meals easy. It sits nicely on the counter top, the latest version is 20% smaller, looking quite slick if you care to leave it there. The…
What To Do In And Around Vancouver Week – Living The Good Life in Vancouver It’s a diverse city we live in and this week you’ll find everything from people dressed to the nines at the race track for Deighton Cup (see you there!) to folks consuming more meat in an afternoon than some do in a year at Brewery And The Beast! There’s an Italian Market, Cocktail Crawls, and Brunch to be had too. Get out there and celebrate summer. Italian Market at the Italian Cultural Center Local organic and artisan products and tastes of Italy collide! Shop for…
Original Daiquiri And a History Lesson The Daiquiri is a member of the sour family of cocktails. A sour is composed of a base spirit, a sweet ingredient, and a a sour ingredient. In the case of the Daiquiri, those elements are rum ), lime juice and sugar. 2oz Bacardi Carta Blanca 1oz fresh lime juice 0.75oz Cocktail syrup (castor sugar, confectioners sugar, hot water) Shaken, Coupe glass The origin of this drink, like many others, is controversial. On theory is that it was invented by American mining engineer, Jennings Cox, in Cuba at the time of the Spanish–American War.…
Drink and Dine #OnRobson This Summer I came home to a cool kit for a Moscow Mule to celebrate to launch of Let’s Patio #onRobson, a cool campaign from the Robson Street BIA. It’s kind of strange that we don’t head downtown to dine more, but in the summer we are hanging out at home more and enjoying the BBQ. I am a super big fan of CinCin for one, so a visit there is long overdue! In any case this campaign is a pretty good reason to get down to Robson Street and enjoy some time in downtown Vancouver.…
Eats, Drinks, And Culture Feature Large in Today’s Squamish It seems this summer is one endless honeymoon as Michael and I have been venturing around BC having a series of fantastic adventures. We’d journeyed through Squamish, perhaps stopping for lunch or a refuel on the way to or from Whistler, but hadn’t actually spent the night there until just last month. This town is well worth putting a night or two aside for it’s got everything from a Distillery to First Nations Cultural Tours. On the way up we stopped at the Sea to Sky Gondola and ventured up for…
What To Do In And Around Vancouver This Week I’ve been away on assignment in San Diego and just catching up to what’s happening a little further north. We’re heading to Chicha Restaurant shortly for their BBQ, and tomorrow another BBQ at a friends house celebrating a birthday. Summer is definitely in full swing and I’ve even got a bit of a tan already! Here’s a couple things to do this week. All You Can Eat Peruvian BBQ Chicha Restaurant 5 pm TODAY July 15 Annual “All You Can Eat Peruvian Street Meat” BBQ! Sample every kind of Peruvian street…
Dinner by the Province’s Best Chefs – Les Dames Summerdine Fundraiser Supports Women’s Education, Project Chef and Growing Chefs I’m part of this amazing organization and each year we present a dinner party across the province created by our region’s top chefs. This year it’ Wednesday, August 16th when Les Dames d’Escoffier BC Chapter presents Les Dames Summerdine – fabulous food and glorious wines on one day only at more than 30 different restaurants, wineries, cooking schools and culinary venues across BC. Most are dinners, with one exception – a very special luncheon at Sea Cider Farm and Ciderhouse on Vancouver Island.…
Tasty Treats Showcase On At Metropolis at Metrotown If you’re a fan of sweets, get down to Burnaby as from August 11th to 20th, Metropolis at Metrotown will be hosting Tasty Treats, a mouth-watering and whimsical exhibit featuring larger-than-life food art displays, sampling from sweet & salty snack retailers, and daily contest giveaways. Looking for something to do with your kids, stuck with someone else’s, or just feel like being a kid yourself? Need a sugar rush? This is the place for you. From the press release….. During the 10-day exhibit, shoppers can snap endless selfies in front of the…
Mix Up a Cardamon Mojito With Bacardi We often mix up Mojito and have mint readily available on our balcony at GLV headquarters! So, what is a Mojito and why do you need one? Mojito’s were born in Cuba, but there’s often arguments over the actual inventor. “La Bodeguita del medio”, a restaurant in Havana, Cuba claims to be the cocktail’s birthplace, the very spot that Ernest Hemmingway’s sipped on this drink. The African slaves working in the Cuban sugar cane fields created the drink from sugar cane alcohol and it made it’s way to the bar. The other story we’ve…
What’s There To Do Around Vancouver This Week? Pig Roast at Library Square – Saturday July 8th Library Square is keeping summer rolling on Saturday with the “Juluau”— a pig roast and Tiki drink party which kicks off on their patio at 3pm. Tickets to the event are $25 and include: Pig Roast and all the fixings A Parallel 49 Filthy Dirty IPA Fun in the sun, with South Pacific décor A menu of delicious Tiki cocktails will be offered for just $9 each including Mai-Tais, Ricky Ricardos, and Daiquiris. Tickets are available here. Fets Pig Roast, Catfish and Whisky Dinner…
Okanagan Wine Country – Naramata and a Bit Beyond Thanks to the ever-charming Chef Victor Bongo, the ever-ready to travel Tess G. and I got an invite to the Naramata Bench for the launch of the chefs new menu and the wines Bongo created in conjunction with Serendipity Winery. We live in delicious times I tell you! You can check out the full story on the launch right here. While we were there we managed to sneak a little bit more into this Okanagan Wine Country visit. The Honda CRV was perfect for cruising up from Vancouver with a ton…
Chef Victor Bongo Launches New Menu at The Naramata Inn and Releases Enchanté by Bongo Wines A few months back we joined Chef Victor Bongo in Vancouver to sample items for his new menu (details here), and now that he’s fully installed in Naramata he kindly asked us to join him for a Bongo-style weekend. Bongo likes to celebrate and does everything with flare, so it was no surprise the weekend was rather special. Tess and I drove up and checked into the Apple d’Or Bed and Breakfast (more on that soon), a spectacular boutique accommodation on the Naramata Inn…
Mix Up Some Absolut – ly Delicious Cocktails For Canada Day To celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday, Absolut collaborated on a limited edition bottle with Canadian textile artist Libs Elliott and I was fortunate enough to be sent one to play with. Through her quilts, she’s revitalizing a craft with a deep legacy by incorporating modern technology in her methods . Through coding, Libs generates random geometric designs –and then manipulates and refines them further to create a quilt design. Each quilt ends up being a one-of-a-kind variation of colour, shape and fabric – a fitting metaphor for Canada. “We’re also all…
Dine Out For a Cause – Les Dames d’Escoffier August 16, 2017 As a proud member of Les Dames d’Escoffier, I’m always eager for each year’s Les Dames Summerdine, a concurrent dinner party held all over the province raising funds for our scholarship and outreach programs. This year the fundraiser is on August 16th and you’ll find fabulous food and wines at more than 30 different restaurants, wineries, cooking schools and culinary venues across BC. Most are dinners, with one exception – a very special luncheon at Sea Cider Farm and Ciderhouse on Vancouver Island. I’ll post more about all of…
Let’s Get Ready to Celebrate Canada in Vancouver – 150 PLUS YEARS I’m tagging this Canada Day #Canada150plus because Canada has been here a lot longer that 150 years! Nevertheless, we’ve got a country to celebrate and more and more reasons to celebrate as we find new ways to unite, merge and define our own versions of this great country. We’re over on Vancouver Island, exploring our province once again, and Michael’s Dad has just returned with fresh crabs from the ocean in Qualicum which we will boil up tonight. Our country is tasty and full of so many offerings…
Honda Accord Hybrid Touring – Touring the Okanagan If you been watching our recent antics, we’ve been on the road a lot lately and this April were cruising around the Okanagan pre and post wedding testing out the newest Honda Accord Hybrid, the 2017. The Accord is roomy and comfortable, perfect for packing everything up we needed for the nearly three weeks away. The rear seats don’t fold, but the trunk is spacious nevertheless. The two-motor system includes both combustion and electric engines, a combination that meant the stops at the gas pump were few and far between. Definitely a plus. There…
Chatting Cocktails With Danielle Jeckel at RauDZ in Kelowna We were up in Kelowna several times this spring for our wedding planning and festivities (no I won’t shut up about that yet) and I met up with bartender Danielle Jeckel of RauDZ restaurant for an interview about their cocktail program. This Kelowna favourite has superb food and a drink list with salutes to locally spirits, wines and beer. Danielle whipped up at Pistachio Rose Gimlet with Long Table London Dry Gin. Simply divine! To listen to the segment on TSN1410 Pistachio Rose Gimlet 2 oz Long Table London Dry Gin…
Fry Bread Recipe With Serving Suggestions Lately I’ve been extremely fortunate to have several experiences where I’ve learned just a little bit more about Indigenous culture. I was first invited to share in a Cooking For Reconciliation Feast at Skwachays Lodge with Chef Rich Francis who had recently spent his first visit in British Columbia’s Aboriginal communities filming a series about the spirituality, culture and history of the Yuquot, a coastal area of Nootka Island where the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation call home. More recently I joined one of the Talking Trees Cultural Experiences at the Sea to Sky Gondola and Michael and I…
What To Do In And Around Vancouver This Week It’s the first day of summer and I’m feeling rather out of sorts for some reason. It’s actually the kind of weather I like today, so that can’t be it, although I know a lot of my friends would be happier with a little more sunshine. However, I’ll soldier through and maybe I just need a night at home or a hug or something. As for my recommendations, there’s lots this week. I’ll be heading off to Chase to a Bison Ranch and catching up with what’s new in Kamloops this…
