Heavenly Paradise@AdelineAng.com

Source: Canada.com

Living in the small city of Fredericton with the population of 51,000, I’ve been quite blessed with the reasonable cost of housing here. What can you do with $675? Perhaps a monthly rent for a comfy and spacious bachelor apartment, or a decent size two-bedroom apartment. Of course, as you’ve expected, kitchen, living room, bathroom will be included as well.

Imagine… an apartment unit in the above picture is all you can get in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. How big is it? About the size of two parking spaces!! The 270 sq. ft. “micro loft” includes kitchen and bathroom too. Amazing! It really makes me wonder, if we’re now following the footsteps of some congested cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. The whole idea of these “micro lofts” is to allow low-income individuals to be able to afford a place of their own. Nonetheless, living in an apartment about the size of a standard bedroom will certainly drive me nuts!

I came across with this Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe last week and decided to give it a try. This is definitely a keeper! 

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp hot water
1/2 tsp salt
2 + 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:
1. In a mixing bowl, cream together butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla extract.
2. Next, dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to the batter along with salt. Stir in flour.
3. Lastly, stir in chocolate chips. On a ungreased cookie sheet, drop cookie dough by large spoonfuls, about an inch apart.
4. Bake in preheated oven at 350 F for about 10 minutes, or until edges are lightly brown. For crunchier cookie texture, extend baking time for another one to two minutes.

* Yield: ~ 4 dozens

Baked buns (or ” siu pau” in Cantonese, “shao bao” in Mandarin) are Miles’ new favourite. This time around, I made smaller buns (~ 18 buns) with thinner pastry and more meat filling.

Recipe can be found here. I used pork this time, for a change. It tasted just as great!

Here is an interesting article I came across with, about an Australian dentist’s definition of Canadian:

An Australian Definition of a Canadian
In case anyone asks you who a Canadian is . . .
       
You probably missed it in the local news, but there was a report that someone in Pakistan had advertised in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed a Canadian – any Canadian..
   
An Australian dentist wrote the following editorial to help define what a Canadian is, so they would know one when they found one.
     
A Canadian can be English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. A Canadian can be Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, Arab, Pakistani or Afghan.

What’s your favourite chocolate? Smarties? M&M’s? Kit Kat? Lindor truffles? My favourite chocolate is Ferrero Rocher, the milk chocolates and dark chocolates are delicious! By the way, any Toblerone fan out there?

Toblerone chocolates come in white, milk, or dark chocolates. Take your pick!

Too small of a piece? How about turning this chocolate bar 45 times larger?

A Toblerone chocolate bar that weighs 4.5 kg! It’s 45 times heavier than the regular 100g chocolate bar. It’s humongous!

Good news to the Toblerone chocolate fans out there. Your chocolate supply for the year! :P

How did you celebrate Christmas? To me, Christmas a great time for traveling and and having a get-together with friends. Other than that, there is not much to look forward to, since I’ve no family here in Canada. To cheer up my Christmas spirit, I might give myself a gift or two for Christmas. I know, it sounds pretty pathetic…

Last year, however, I celebrated Christmas with Miles and his family. A truly Canadian Christmas celebration; Christmas tree, treats, gifts, food etc.

I couldn’t remember the last time I was excited about Christmas and anticipated for the Christmas morning to come. Even though I never truly believed in Santa as a young kid, I was always looking forward to receiving my stuffed Christmas stocking on Christmas morning.

It brought back my childhood memory when I received a stuffed Christmas stocking in the morning! I’ve never had that many Christmas gifts in the past. Unwrapping each gift brought great excitement. That was one of the greatest fun celebrating Christmas!

Christmas decoration on the dining table.

Turkey and ham, with homemade beets and pickles for on Christmas day.

Homemade minced meat pie.

Plum Pudding. A must-have Christmas dessert in Miles’ family. It has a similar taste to fruit cake.

Hard Sauce, goes with the plum pudding. It is made of butter and icing sugar, and tasted like cake batter.

Christmas tree with gifts from Santa!

Cracking the nuts can be fun; walnuts, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, and almonds.

Let it snow…let it snow….let it snow… The white and fluffy snow is not only pretty to look at, but also fun to play with!

We had joy
We had fun
We had seasons in the snow
But the snow that we played
was just never last too long

* Modified from “Season In The Sun” by Westlife.

The womanized “Winnie the Pooh.”

The cute snowman blushed as being kissed on both cheeks.

There was a group of us who attended a friend’s farewell party at the East Side Mario’s Restaurant. John, who was part of the “gang,” has decided to move to Toronto for a more stable job. John, we shall miss you always :)

Despite the sadness of John leaving us, we had a great meal together. Of course, I had fun snapping pictures too ;)

The interior of the East Side Mario’s.

The signature crispy garlic bread. Freshly baked. Yummm…

Caesar Salad.

Bruschetta. Fresh Roma tomatoes, garlic, basil, olive oil and balsamic glaze served on herbed flatbread.

 Cheese Cappelletti for cheese lovers! Pasta stuffed with ricotta cheese filling, topped with even more ricotta, baked with our Besciamella-Tomato sauce and our blend of Mozzarella, Provolone, Gouda and Parmesan cheeses.

Firecracker Shrimp Farfalle. Large black tiger shrimps sautéed in extra virgin olive oil with fresh green chilies, snow peas, Roma tomatoes and basil. Served with bowtie-shaped paste tossed with herbed garlic olive oil.

Zesty Sicilian Pizza. Italian sausages, Capicolla ham, black olives, pizza sauce, and four cheeses.

 Sizzling Calamary Al Diavolo. It’s the signature appetizer. Lightly seasoned calamari sautéed with garlic, onions, red, green and hot cherry peppers and served sizzling in a herbed tomato broth with lemon.

 The New Yorker pizza. Pepperoni, red and green peppers, mushrooms, pizza sauce and blend of cheeses.

Cannoli.

Cannoli (meaning “little tube” in the Sicilian language), one the most famous Sicilian desserts that can be found in almost all Italian pasticceria. The Cannoli shell is made of flour, sugar, salt, eggs, water, vinegar, and vanilla. It’s traditionally filled with rich and sweet ricotta cheese.

Chocolate Mousse cake.

If there is snowman, there should also be snowwoman! Miles and I found a snowman cake pan from Wal-mart before Christmas. We’ve been waiting for to bake a snowman cake. And guess what, snowwoman is getting into the picture too!

Snowman is dressed in his manly black hat and a red scarf.

Snowwoman is dressed in a girly pinky scarf, with a purple and pink hat.

One year after another, and twenty four hours a day never seems enough; each minute passes by even before we realize it.

Canada, or Fredericton to be precise; a place that I called my second home, for more than a quarter of the chapter of my life thus far. I couldn’t be grateful enough for all the blessings that’ve been showered upon me, in this foreign land that I used to know no one and no one knew me.

Live the life to the fullest, and cherish every moment in life. Welcome to the year 2010! May this year be a fruitful and a blessing one to you and me!