Walt Disney World Food!

So William signed us up for the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan, which means that we had 9 FULL meals (that's appetizer, entree, drink, dessert) to eat over 3 days. Needless to say, my New Year's Resolution to eat better went out the window for this weekend. Here are some of the highlights.

Via Napoli - Italian restaurant in the Italy part of Epcot, super popular place pretty yummy. We at this right after the Half Marathon.

They had 3 wood-fired ovens with interesting names!



Caprese salad appetizer & my artichoke pizza!



And gelato for dessert!


Le Cellier - Restaurant in Canada at Epcot, some people were making reservations exactly 6 months in advance, that's how hard it was to get in there! William got us in, of course :D Isn't it beautiful??


My appetizer of mussels with their famous pretzel bread (soo good, it tasted just like a hot pretzel!)


Main entree, filet mignon (hey, all dining points are equal so might as well make them count!) with risotto and mushroom sauce


The most delicious dessert, mandarin orange sorbet with whisky (left) and honey mandarin sorbet (right). I really liked the whisky one because it was initially really sweet (in a good way) and light, tasting of orange fruit, but finished bitter because of the whisky, almost like the pith of an orange. William really liked it as well and the waiter brought us a free one!!




Crystal Palace - Breakfast with my favorite characters, Pooh Bear & Eeyore (and Tigger & Piglet)!! I had so much fun at this breakfast, I turned into a little girl when the characters came around, gave them big hugs, and got their autographs. So terrific!! The food was your usual American buffet breakfast fare, but pretty delicious and I ate massive amounts of blackberries & raspberries with whipped cream! The bottom picture highlights my favorite items from the buffet :D



Cinderella's Castle - one of the most amazing dinners of my life. We had the best seat in the house, ate INside Cinderella's Castle, had to go up a stone spiral staircase to a medieval-style dining room, everyone was in old-style costumes... I felt like a princess. The food was also terrific.

My beef (with tomato hollandaise) with these amazing mashed potatoes (crispy on the outside!) and asparagus - that would be William's fork trying to steal some of my food.


View of the carousel from our main window. The center window.


William's fish with pasta (really good!)


The dining room:


Yes, that is where we ate dinner!! See the center window?? Our table was just inside. Absolutely incredible.


What a terrific trip. The rest of the pix will be on my facebook soon, this was just the major meals that we ate! So much fun, I'll remember it forever.

Nom Nom banh mih!

I'm sure you've heard of all the food trucks that are all over LA - since the start of the Kogi truck, they've featured really great specialty foods that you can get from their roaming trucks. The Nom Nom truck is a Vietnamese food truck that features Vietnamese sandwiches. They were on the Food Network's Great Food Truck Race and did fairly well (not sure if that was on when you were still in the US, Breadie!).

In any case, the Nom Nom truck was in Torrance over the weekend and even though I couldn't go, William went and picked it up for me! What a great boyfriend!

I got the tofu sandwich. It was simply delicious.


Strong flavors on everything, strong pickled veggies, well-seasoned fried tofu... mmmmm, so good!



Can't wait until they come back to Torrance!

Dinner with Aaron

We had dinner with Aaron last Friday and I had so much fun - I laughed so much! We had such a great time, I can't wait to have dinner with him again.

Here's the down low on what we ate at Roy's Hawaiian Fusion...

My macademia-nut crusted mahi mahi (in lobster sauce):


1988, a signature Hawaiian martini from Roy's (yup, that IS a lychee in the glass!)


Pineapple upside down cake:


All-time favorite, chocolate lava cake (actually does flow, not all of these kinds do this!):


Yummy dinner, great company, what a great Friday!

Bunco dinner!

Tonight was my night to host Bunco! Here's what I made:

Salad of black mission figs with roasted sweet peppers & shaved fennel (Thomas Keller)

Truffled filet of beef sandwiches with truffle butter, arugula, & shaved parmesean (Ina Garten)

Vegetarian option: sandwich with roasted peppers & tomatoes

Pumpkin roulade (the only thing I took a picture of - the last two pieces, kind of messy, but you get the idea :)

Red wine sangria

Overall, a very successful bunco night. I didn't win anything but everyone liked the food a lot and I had tons of fun :D I especially liked the truffle butter with the beef, that was soo yummy! I also have discovered that I really like arugula - it's got such a nice, spicy-bitter taste that I didn't realize I liked before.

Also, my traveling bunco prize (given to the person who got the last bunco of the night) was a Mr. Potato Head pumpkin kit, vampire style. I loved it and almost didn't want to give it up:

DQ's visit!

DQ visited us in LA this weekend - he's on rotations at UCSD. Good to see him! We went out to a Korean bar on Friday, this food item was the star of the show:

Corn cheese!! Omg it was so delicious. Fresh corn, good cheese. It sounded like such a strange idea, but I loved every sizzling bit of it. Koreans totally know what they're doing.

Here's DQ watching the Giants game. At another table. Far from us.


Today we met up again at Dave & Buster's (so DQ could watch another Giants game). Kevin's girlfriend went shopping while we were at D&B. She came back to say "hi" and drop off the bags with him. DQ & I had to take a picture:


I know it's not too food related, but seriously, had to include it.

Urth Caffe & some cute other things :D

First of all, I did some serious shopping last weekend at Target and saw these. I couldn't resist and bought one for my classroom...


I got Sheriff Pig, who collects 25 cents from every student who drops a calculator (mini scholarship for a senior at the end of the year :D). He now has a very happy home on my desk.


These are some pictures from a particularly delicious cafe in Santa Monica called Urth Caffe. It's super hipster, but the food and drinks are amazing. I don't know why I didn't try this place before. This is the Japanese maccha green tea latte!


And omg Breadie, the bread pudding was sooooo good! It's rarely this good. Not too sweet, nice ratio of custard:bread, nice crust, delicious, fresh flavor. I savored every single bite. I loved it.


I miss Breadie & hope we get to chat for reals soon!

discovery

let's see.... what's truly edible on a hot pot restaurant menu.



;D