Oh shoot!

I fell so pressured to keep up blogging on this Seattle series. My memory on this trip is somewhat fading. I had been looking at the screen for the past 5 minutes just thinking of what to share. Sigh … and some of you just gotta say you look forward to this series. Pressure, pressure, pressure! LOL!

We left Richmond kind of late … in the late morning. By the time we got over the border, it was already noon. We drove on and decided to make a stop at Burlington for a quick lunch in a fast food joint. We did not care about what it is except that it should be something we do not have in Canada.

As we drove along the shopping row on S Burlington Blvd looking for a fast food joint we chanced upon the distinctive yellow and red Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits restaurant. Popeyes was one of the places we had on out shortlist of restaurants.

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Alrighty … here I go again with another travel series.

This is the long promised series on Seattle. During the school spring break last month, we decided that we make a short 5-day trip with the primary purpose of checking out a little bit of the food scene in Seattle.

Seattle is sometimes known as the emerald city in reference to the lush green evergreen trees around the area. In many ways, Seattle reminds me of Vancouver. The healthy people and especially the rainy climate are so similar. The big difference is that it the city is much bigger economically than Vancouver. It is after all the home to Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks, Amazon.com, and Costco to name a few.

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Arkensen and Nanzaro love Pineapple Bun, particularly from Lido Restaurant. I got this Pineapple Bun recipe from Helen. Helen has not attempt to make it because the recipe is in grams and cc which is a bit tedious to measure. Morever, Helen said it involves quite a bit of steps which seem quite complicated. Anyway, this is my first attempt making it and it turned out quite ok.

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This version of Light Carrot Cake is taken from Cook’s Illustrated, November 2006. Carrot cake is often thought of as a healthy alternative to other cakes but names can be deceiving. The problem is although carrot cake sounds healthy for its use of vegetable oil in place of butter and use of carrots as a natural sweetener, most versions of carrot cake tip the scales at 500 calories and 31 grams of fat per slice.

This Light Carrot Cake has the natural sweetness of the carrots and has reduced amount of oil and egg. In order to keep the cake light, the eggs and sugar mixtures is whipped to incorporate air in it. This keeps the cake from being too dense.

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Karen demonstrated two carrot cake recipes upon Rowena’s request If I remembered correctly. The first is a Classisc Carrot Cake which was popularized in the 70s. It is an era where people started to reduce the intake of meat and encourage intake of vegetables, grains and fruits. A book called “Diet for a small planet” from the 70s introduced combinations of plant proteins to make a complete protein diet.

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After the Sun Run, we decided to go for sushi. I knew the boys would have loved it and planned to go to the Sushi Garden located along Kingsway across the street from Metrotown. However, the very popular Sushi Garden was closed. Dashed!

So we walked a few doors away and went instead to a smaller Sushi restaurant. It is called Yakko Sushi (located on 4689 Kingsway). There a quite a few sushi restaurants in this stretch of Kingsway … at least four that I can think of.

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We did the Sun Run last Sunday. We being Arkensen, Nanzaro and myself. Suanne opted out from running because it was too much work for her. LOL! I think she is chicken … she thinks that if she can’t keep up with the Kenyans, she won’t even try. So Suanne became the official Sun Run photographer for the family.

Never having ever ran the Sun Run before, we had not idea how bad the transportation could be. Obviously, driving downtown is out of the question. The other choice for us was to take the B-line from Richmond.

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Last Saturday morning, we had to go downtown to pickup the Vancouver Sun Run package. So, we decided that we should just go out for breakfast for a change … and to Vancouver, for a change too. I know, we had been eating out a lot within Richmond.

So, we ended up at Fraser and E 44th. Suanne and I had stumbled upon the the Angel Cake House once before and so this is our second visit.

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I usually park at the Minoru Park parking lot when I go to the Caring Place Community Kitchen. It’s just a short walk away. Today, I was greeted by some awesome full bloom cherry blossoms in Minoru Park. It was a breath-taking sight. The cherry blossoms never fail to marvel me.

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Andrea made this rich dessert which she learned from her sister-in-law who is a Vietnamese. I called it a rich dessert because it is made with coconut milk.

Cassava or Yuca is a very hardy tuberous root. Cassava brings back my childhood memory where cassava grew wildly at our backyard. It is very easy to grow them. You just simply cut a portion of the stem and stick it to the ground and a new plant will grow from there. We simply enjoy the cassava by just boiling them in some salt water or make Cassava Cake.

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