Niagara falls

Hello everyone, I am just working on the pictures and comment for our stupendous weekend at Niagara falls. Stay tuned.

La Luna - Janice's Night

Tonight we met at La Luna Restaurant. It was not very busy and we got a booth all to ourselves. This was important as we needed room for Taster Janice's Birthday. Taster Patti (TP for short) had bought a special hat for Taster Janice and us as well as a goody bag full of cool stuff. You can check out the pictures they speak for themselves. Of course our comedic duo had to fool around with the hats and we were laughing so hard that we disturbed a group of guys in the far end of the restaurant - C'est la vie.

This was a Mediteranean restaurant so we tried the Fatoush salad (I sure hope I'm spelling that right). It was delicious. The main dishes we had were a pepper chicken and I can't seem to recall the exact name of the dishes the others had (I have to add it later). It was all very good albeit a little on the pricey side and I can speak for everyone when I say we were all about to burst. For desert we had baklava and cake - what else were we going to have for Taster Janice's birthday! At any rate Taster Patti went to the kitchen so she could add a candle (by the way the restaurant kept the lighter) on the cake and we sang to our poor little Janice who wanted nothing more than to sink in a hole - any hole and disappear. We actually had our own paper birthday plates for the desert. Geesh I bet you they were happy when we left.

We would also like to say that our waitress did a great job as she had been new on the job for 2 weeks now and we were pretty rowdy as a group LOL.

To sum it up we had good food, good time and we did not get kicked out ...so far!

The Keg

Hello World.

It's amazing, I never would have thought we would have made it this far but yep we made it to the letter K that would be the 11th letter of the alphabet, our 11th restaurant in as many months.

We all had our bellies filled over the Christmas Holidays so we decided to play it a little safer by ordering salads with our steaks rather than taking the Keg-sized potato - I wonder if they are mutant sized?

All of us enjoyed the food but we still needed a little more. So we asked the waitress where the closest Tim Horton's was.

Well..........this was our first Tuesday Taster Tragedy. We all got lost going to the Timmy's and Taster Patti ended up going home. This was entirely my fault as I did not go far enough down the street and I turned into a driveway thinking I did not follow the directions correctly. The other Tasters were following me.....well Taster Patti spotted the Timmy so she went there and Taster Janice took off in her car to round Taster Leslie and I up. When the three of us finally got to the Timmy's, Taster Patti was gone.

It turned out that she left the Timmy's in search for us but did not see us come back so she ended up going home.

Note to self - find out where the Timmy's is BEFORE going to the next restaurant so this doesn't happen again - LOL.

J is for Jack Astor's on December 5

Ahh, our last meeting of the year and before Christmas too. This was the day that we decided to exchange our Christmas Socks (really I don't understand this stocking thing - they are just big socks). I think we should have told them we need alot more room than we were given because our loot took more place than we did. But I digress. The staff were very curious as to who we were and what our presents were. I think some of them just shook their heads in confusion.

Anyways we had a good meal, pasta for me of course, salads and chicken for the others all good food to get us ready for the holidays.

After the food came the Sock Exchange (hee hee). It turned out that Taster Janice and Taster Patti had each other and Taster Janice and I had each other. I had awsome loot but what I loved the bestest is the list that Taster Janice gave me. I had to find the gift that matched with the list before I opened them. Tres Cool. Of course we had a riot when I got my perfect man - a doll with just the right stuff - get your mind outta the gutter people. Just squeeze my perfect man and he would say the right stuff - he was popular with our waitress Stephanie too.

Taster Janice got her bath fizzies (actually we gave each other bath fizzies) and a HUGE - HUUUUGE candy cane for her to suck on **sigh we couldn't stay out of the gutter for this one**. The cane would probably keep her busy through the holidays.

Taster Patti got loads of Lufants (elephants for the rest of us) with their trunks up high and a fish that wagged its tail for use in the bathtub.

The funny part was that Taster Leslie already had some of her presents opened. See it turned out that Taster Patti had given her an advent calendar (I'm sure its an anglophone thing cos I don't remember doing this in Quebec). So she had been opening one present for the 15 days of Christmas. She took very large pleasure in emailing us everyday with details of her presents. Drove Gary (her hubby) absolutely wild as he did not have an advent calendar himself. He just soooooooo wants to join the Tuesday Tasters LOL.

Anways check out the pics below for the good time we had.

Dundurn Castle November 25

I can't believe it its been a year already. Here we are where it all began a year ago at Dundurn Castle - except we were having Tea instead. I guess we should really call it an AGM meeting: mmm lets see present: Taster Leslie, Taster Janice, Taster Patti and Taster Nat; regrets: none.

At any rate, this event was brought to us from Taster Patti who organized this cookie making day at the Castle. We along with other people had signed up for authentic old time cookie/tart baking at the castle. I was going to say medieval but here in North America Medieval is only a few hundred years ago LOL.

We had fun making cookies and tarts using the original recipes from back when. Of course being a complete baking neophyte everything was new to me LOL. Taster Patti even had to take the rolling pin away from me a couple of times!

We definitely enjoyed getting our hands dirty but we did not get our clothes dirty - thanks to Taster Patti who gave each of us a Christmas Apron! Don't we look cute?????

We had two of the Castle staff who were just amazing just running around getting us more flour and butter and trying to prevent us from burning the castle down. As soon as the others give me some pictures I will put them up. I will also put the recipes up as well.

Irie Cuisine October 24, 2006

At long last the eagerly awaited entries and pictures from our epicurious journey through the alphabet. At Irie Cuisine we were greeted by friendly staff who offered us Jerk Chicken and fried Plantains (they look like bananas but they aren't). At any rate the Jerk Chicken was awesome - I like spicy and let me tell you the meal was spicy! We did scare the lady who was serving us though - when we gave her our card she ended up calling the owner who came down to speak with us. He told us of the history of the place and how it was once an "upside down" pizza place. Now just remember we are not "real" food critics we are just a group of friends meeting once a month in a different restaurant.

We did do one important thing at this restaurant though, we selected our victim for our Christmas Sock Exchange!

Hamptons Restaurant & Pub

We went to the Hamptons last night. It was located in a Quality Inn which I suspect had been a Hampton Inn at one point in time.

It was a good restaurant very quiet. Both TasterJanice and TasterLeslie had the chicken quesadillas while TasterPatti and I had the Chicken Greek salad thing. The food was good - no complaints there. Well actually both TasterPatti and myself have been ill since eating the salad must have been the feta... ugh so I guess there is a complaint.

We won't be seeing each other until October 24 as our little TasterPatti will be in England visiting her penpal - have a great time chickie!

On to our next conquest..........the letter I - my turn ladies Ha Ha Haaa...

Green Bean Coffee Roasting Company

We went to the Green Bean Coffee Roasting Company on August 22. Although our group was not formed to critique restaurants we do have to say that this one has some opportunities in the customer service department. We were going to order food at about 5:45pm and the restaurant employees told us that it would take a while and that we could go to other restaurants to eat. Well we decided to wait anyways after all how long could sandwiches take???????? Lets see that time of the day would be considered dinner time and which owners in their right mind would start turning customers away during their busy time? At any rate it turned out not to be a busy night as there may have been up to 3 customers in the joint.........hmmm wonder if more potential customers were turned away.

We ordered sandwiches and these cute little teeny bottles of coke for about $10 each. The sandwiches were actually quite good but left us a little hungry. Buts thats OK cos we found a desert place right next to the place. I forget the name of the place but I'm sure one of our other Tasters would remember. At the restaurant TasterPatti gave us each a package containing a silver spoon pin a monogramed napkin and a Tide pen LOL. That was sooooo coooool - Thanks! The Tide pen really work cos I had to use it on a white shirt the weekend before.

So then we went to the ice cream place next door. The inside was decorated with movie posters so of course we took our pictures next to the ones we liked the most. Check out TasterLeslie with Keanu - nice hand placement there chickie! TasterJanice went with the robust Aragon and TasterPatti went with 007. I actually had to manually erase Halle Berry's head from behind TasterPatti's head. Of course I was going to take Indie home with me but he wouldn't fit in the car.

We walked back to our cars which were parked in the Tim Horton's parking lot. Of course we stopped and grab a Timys and this is when I received my presents for my birthday *sigh*. We were having fun and the two girls in the background were either giggling cos we were funny or they were acutally laughing at us - I don't know which - LOL. Thanks for all the cool gifts Tasters!

Hey Tuesday Tasters

I did this once already, went to edit, and it disappeared??? Oh well
Just wanted to let you know that I e-mailed Dundurn Castle about the baking event and hopefully they will get back to me before I "fly out" With all the news, I'm a bit worried, but I'll just tell them I need to be back for my evening classes Taster Leslie won't take no for an answer.
Looking forward to dinner next week. If we meet at the Tim Hortons on Trafalger, south of QEW, and just north of Lakeshore, we can walk to the Green Bean. Hopefully it will be a nice evening, and we can walk after dinner.
I had the spoons done, but the solder didn't hold, so I'm back to the drawing board trying to find something to make them stick.
I have some pictures from the instructors meeting with Gary and Taster Janice on Taster Nat's bike.
Have a good week, see you TUESDAY !!