H & J Bistro

Cross-posted from Calgary is Awesome.

Being from Hong Kong, I grew up eating Cantonese food with my family. While I love Cantonese food, (Dim Sum, Chinese BBQ or Steamed Fish, anyone?) I do have a soft spot for the bold flavours, noodles and dumplings of other Chinese cuisines. Everyone knows my favourite restaurant in Calgary is Szechuan Restaurant, and I also like Han's, except they never seem to be open whenever I'm downtown. I was eavesdropping on a Twitter conversation not too long ago when I heard about Helen's Café.

On Friday night, B. and I drove out to Helen's Café just off 32 Ave, only to find that it was closed! A sign in English indicated that they were only open for weekday lunch... a sign in Chinese pointed us toward H & J Bistro on 16 Ave, across from Peter's Drive-In, where they serve their authentic Northeastern Chinese and Sichuan menu.

Inside, H & J Bistro is your stereotypical hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant, with glaring fluorescent lighting, sparsely decorated walls and cheap furniture. The people sitting at the table closest to the door each had a plate of dumplings instead of rice in front of them. Perfect.

B. and I were tempted to order our favourite Sichuan dishes, like Ma Po Tofu, Sichuan Spicy Eggplant, Dan Dan Noodles and Dry-Fried Green Beans, but we decided to try to order some of the dishes we were less familiar with.

We started with the Northern Style Potato Jelly Curd ($8), which I'd read about in Miss Foodie's blog post.

The wide noodles, made with potato flour, were on top of a neatly arranged bed of julienned carrot, cucumber, wood ear fungus and bean curd. As she brought it to the table, the waitress dumped on a bowl of a sesame dressing that seemed to hit all the flavours - sweet, savoury, tart and just a little bit spicy. The noodles were soft, with just a bit of chewiness, and the vegetables added a nice crisp bite to the dish. Definitely a great dish to whet the appetite.

Of course we had to get the signature handmade dumplings (20 for $10) - we chose the ones with the pork, cabbage and carrot filling. Pork with shrimp and chive, pork with pickled cabbage ("Chinese sauerkraut") and beef with celery were also available. The dumplings were served simply with Chinese black vinegar and chili oil on the side for dipping.

The skin on the dumplings were a little thicker and doughier than I would've liked, but of course we couldn't help popping these in our mouths! I loved the colour and the crunch that the carrot added to the filling.

Last but not least, we tried the Fried Eggplant with Garlic, Chili and Black Bean ($10.95)

The name that they used to describe it in Chinese ("Bi feng tang" or typhoon shelter), means that the dish is more Cantonese, but my eyes just can't seem to stop gravitating towards eggplant on menus! This dish did not disappoint - the batter on the eggplant was light and crispy and the eggplant itself was soft and tender, without being greasy. B. and I loved the flavour from the fried garlic chips, peppers and fermented black beans scattered around the plate, but would've preferred just a bit more spice.

We probably ended up taking home just less than half of the food because we were so full and the bill only ended up coming to $35... including tip! I'm so happy to find yet another non-Cantonese Chinese restaurant close to my house and am contemplating a side-by-side comparison of their dishes versus Szechuan Restaurant! :o

H & J Bistro
11 - 222 16 Ave NE
Calgary AB T2E 1J8
(403) 277-0908

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Coconut Chili Lime Sweet Potato Red Lentil Soup

I'm sorry.

I was so caught up in sharing my food blogger bake sale recipe that I forgot that you were probably all on your New Year's juice cleanses or detoxes or whatever. Since the evidence for cleanses and detoxes are iffy at best I wasn't on one and I forgot. I'm so sorry.

Please let me make it up to you with this soup. It came from last year's Milk Calendar, but I removed all the milk (because B. is lactose-intolerant) and replaced it with creamy coconut. Yes, coconut milk is high in saturated fat, but it seems to raise mainly good cholesterol (HDL). I don't believe that coconut does all those other miraculous things that some other people seem to, but the good cholesterol thing seems good enough for me. And it's vegan.

    

The one downside of removing the milk from the recipe is that you also remove all the protein, so I added some red lentils to add some protein back in. Lentils are also a good source of fibre, potassium, iron and folate; all good, new year's resolution-worthy things.

Purée it all together for a warm, hearty meal - perfect for the weather we've been having.

Coconut Chili Lime Sweet Potato Red Lentil Soup

Adapted from Dairy Farmers of Canada Milk Calendar (Nov 2012)

Makes 4-6 servings

• 2 tbsp (30 mL) olive oil
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1 medium onion, chopped
  
• 1 tsp (5 mL) chili powder
  
• ½ tsp (2 mL) smoked paprika
  
• 3 cups (750 mL) low-sodium chicken broth
  
• 5 cups (1.25 L) cubed sweet potato, about 2 large
  
• 1 cup (250 mL) red lentils, rinsed and drained
  
• 1 can (13.5 oz/400 mL) light coconut milk
  
• 1 tsp (5 mL) grated lime zest, plus extra for garnish
  
• 2 tbsp (30 mL) lime juice
  
• Chopped green onion or cilantro, optional, for garnish

1. In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic, onion and chili powder; sauté for about 5 min or until soft. Add broth, sweet potatoes and lentils; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until sweet potatoes and lentils are soft, about 20 min.
   
2. Transfer to blender or food processor, in batches, or use an immersion blender in the pot, purée until very smooth, adding in some of the coconut milk if the mixture is too thick. Return soup to pot, if necessary. Stir in coconut milk, lime zest and juice. Heat over medium heat, stirring, until steaming, but do not let boil. Serve garnished with extra lime zest, chopped green onion or cilantro, if desired.

Nutrition Info (per ⅙ recipe): 334 calories, 12 g fat (7 g saturated, 0 g trans), 0 mg cholesterol, 46 g carbohydrate (8 g fibre, 7 g sugar), 12 g protein, 352 mg sodium. An excellent source of vitamin A, folate (vitamin B₉), iron, magnesium, potassium, copper and manganese. A good source of thiamine (vitamin B₁), pantothenic acid (vitamin B₅), vitamin B₆, phosphorus and zinc.

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Vegan, Gluten-Free Triple Chocolate Nanaimo Bars

Is it too late in the year to still be looking back? Because in all the fuss of looking forward and setting goals, I forgot to mention that 2012 was actually pretty sweet. I went to London and Paris, fell in love with Kelowna (twice!) and nerded it up at the Dietitians of Canada conference in Toronto. In the summer I moved in with B. and finally registered my car under my own name and bought my own insurance. In the fall I signed on as an instructor for Start From Scratch, learning as much about cooking as I taught. A couple months ago, I took on a part-time job, which means more time for the blog and for my other job.

But always, always my proudest achievement, in 2012, my little bake sales (with the help of SO MANY of you, of course!) donated $2,000 each to two amazing local charities - Brown Bagging for Calgary's Kids and Meals on Wheels.

I figure I should share the recipe I contributed to the most recent bake sale in December before it's too late.

This recipe comes from my friend Kristi, who is an amazing artist, photographer and cook. It takes one of my favourite desserts - the Nanaimo Bar - and kicks it to the next level by sneaking in a bit of chocolate into every layer.

There is always a demand for vegan, gluten-free goodies at the bake sale that our supply always seems barely able to meet, so I made a few tweaks to the recipe so that people with most food restrictions (I kept the nuts in, and the cookies contain soy - sorry!) would be able to enjoy it. My Start From Scratch students were more than happy to help me make a test batch! :)

First, in all the layers I swapped in the delicious (but expensive!) coconut oil for butter, which complimented well with the coconut that's in the cookie base, and is more natural, and better for you than hydrogenated margarine. (Given my previous bad experiences with icing I wouldn't trust tub margarine for the custard layer!).

For the cookie base - gluten-free chocolate cookie crumbs. I was looking for wafers, but animal crackers were the next best thing.

Waiting for slaughter

These were from Kinnikinnick, an Edmonton-based company.

    

The custard layer didn't need any tweaking - custard powder is already vegan and gluten-free!

For the top chocolate layer, I actually didn't realize how difficult it was to find dairy-free chocolate chips! Most have milk products in them, so make sure you read the label. Calgary Co-op carries some chocolate-flavoured chips made with hydrogenated oils (read: trans fats) which is not ideal. Fortunately I found these Enjoy Life! chocolate chips, which are pure chocolate.

    

Vegan Gluten-Free Triple Chocolate Nanaimo Bars

Adapted from Cakespy via Kristi Millar

Makes an 8" square pan (serves 16)

Bottom layer

• ½ cup (125 mL) coconut oil
  
• ¼ cup (60 mL) brown sugar
  
• 5 tbsp (75 mL) cocoa
  
• 1 cup (250 mL) shredded sweetened coconut
  
• 1½ cups (375 mL) gluten-free chocolate cookie crumbs, about 200 g
  
• ½ cup (125 mL) finely chopped peanuts

Middle layer

• ½ cup (125 mL) coconut oil
  
• 3 tbsp (45 mL) coconut milk
  
• 2 tbsp (30 mL) custard powder
  
• 2 cups (500 mL) icing sugar
  
• 2 tbsp (30 mL) cocoa

Top layer

• 180 g semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (or chocolate chips)
  
• 1½ tbsp (7 mL) coconut oil

1. Line the bottom of an 8” square pan with parchment and leave edges hanging over the rim.
   
2. Melt the coconut oil, sugar and cocoa together in a pan over medium heat. Remove from heat, stir in coconut, cookie crumbs and nuts then press into prepared pan. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to set.
   
3. Cream together coconut oil, coconut milk, custard powder, icing sugar and cocoa until fluffy. Smooth the chocolate custard over the bottom layer and return the pan to the fridge while you prepare the top layer.
   
4. In a microwave-safe bowl or double boiler, melt chocolate. Stir in coconut oil until smooth. Pour over your prepared bottom layers and smooth carefully until even. Return the pan to the fridge until set (about 2 hours).
   
5. Lift parchment paper with bars out of pan and cut into bars with a very sharp knife.

Nutrition info (per 2"-square piece): 408 calories, 24 g fat (18 g saturated, 0 g trans), 27 mg cholesterol, 47 g carbohydrate (2 g fibre, 30 g sugar), 4 g protein, 120 mg sodium. An excellent source of manganese. A good source of magnesium.

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Han Corea

Cross-posted from Calgary is Awesome.

A couple months ago I posted an Instagram photo of an "authentic" Korean dinner that B. and I were whipping up - tteokbokki and pan-fried tofu with spicy sauce. My friend Terry saw the photo and decided to invite me and a few others to a truly, authentic Korean experience - Han Corea, located on the ground floor of the Calgary Korean Community Centre in the industrial part of Fairview, near Chinook Station.

Han Corea is your stereotypical hole-in-the-wall, with fluorescent lighting, cheap tables and chairs, a small computer in the corner, and a three-man staff that does everything from cooking to serving. Rice, tea and instant coffee are complimentary and self-serve. What made Han Corea so authentic was they didn't really have an English menu. Our original plan was just to randomly point at things and hope for the best, but Terry invited his aunt, who invited her Korean friend Yuri, who did some translating and also some explanation behind some of the dishes for us. While most Korean restaurants in Calgary specialize in bulgogi, or barbecued meats, here they specialized in different stews, as well as a dish called "Sun Dea", pork intestines stuffed with clear noodles, pork blood and other ingredients.

After some back and forth with the cooks, we ordered a few dishes and were served an array of banchan while we waited.

There was the usual kimchi (from cabbage and daikon) and sweet daikon pickles, but there were some dishes that we don't see as often as well - thinly sliced onions pickled in a sweet and vinegary soy sauce, fish cakes (odeng) and little crispy silver fish with sesame and seaweed.

    

We started with the two soups first - Kimchi Chi Gae ($10.95) and Pork Rice Soup ($10.95).

The kimchi chi gae (kimchi stew) was loaded with vegetables and tofu and was very flavourful, but not too spicy. The pork rice soup was much more milder in flavour, and came with sides of green onion, finely chopped jalapeno, soybean paste and little shrimps so that you can adjust the flavour to your liking. The soup had a creaminess from the collagen released from the pork bones, and had lots of pork er... variety meats in it. I enjoyed it, but it might not be for the squeamish.

For our main courses, we ate everything "ssam" style - wrapped in pieces of butter lettuce with slices of raw garlic, jalapeno peppers and soybean paste. We started with something a little more familiar - LA Galbi ($11.99) or marinated beef short ribs.

The beef short ribs were marinated in a simple soy-based sauce, which really let the flavour of the beef shine through, but I would say I missed the bolder, sweet-and-savoury flavour of beef ribs I've had at other Korean restaurants. Still, the beef was moist and tender and I would say this was one of my favourite dishes of the night.

Next we had the O Sam Bulgogi ($14.99), which was a mix of squid and pork in a spicy sauce. I liked the contrast of the chewy squid with the tender morsels of pork, but despite the colour, flavour-wise this dish was a little bit bland to me - I expected more sweetness, more saltiness, more spiciness.

Last, we ordered Pig Skin in Spicy Sauce ($14.99), which had a similar sauce to the O Sam Bulgogi. I'd expected the pig skin to be crispy, but instead it was soft, and a little bit fatty and chewy.

Although we were all quite full, the staff were so impressed that we were eating everything up so they let us try their special, Sun Dea, on the house.

We were originally a little intimidated by this dish because it was pork intestines and pork blood - I'd expected it to be metallic tasting, like liver, but it actually wasn't at all. The intestine casing was a little chewy, as expected, and the noodles inside gave it a bit of a "meaty" texture. By itself it actually tasted a little bland, but with a sprinkle of the salt that came with it, it was perfect.

We left with full tummies and a little more knowledge of Korean food! While I prefer the bolder flavours of other Korean restaurants around the city, I would go back to Han Corea to try some of their more unique, traditional dishes.

Han Corea
7008 Farrell Rd SE
Calgary AB T2H 0T2
(403) 255-6542

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2013 New Year's Reflections & Resolutions

B. says we need to take more photos of us this year.

Happy New Year!

So I ended 2012 with scrapping my goals in a rage - I've been "working on" getting more sleep and drinking more water for three years and I still can't do it (I think I was doing OK on the "be a tourist in my own city" thing but I wasn't really going out of my way to do stuff), so I think it's time to set some goals that I'm excited about.

In my last post, I talked a bit about Mike Morrison's goal of trying to be happy every day, and how I tell my clients to be self-compassionate and to move away from the negative self-talk and the all-or-nothing thinking, yet those are things that I struggle with myself! Now, I'm a huge proponent of "fake it till you make it" in many other aspects of my life (see: speaking Chinese) but I just don't see myself as one of those people who gets up in the morning, looks themselves in the mirror and says, "Today is going to be a good day! I'm going to choose to be happy!" I know it works for a lot of people, but it's not me. I'm not there yet.

I've been intrigued by Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project. (I first heard of Gretchen a couple years ago when I was doing that #reverb10 thing... I've flipped through a few in my "reflection" process - apparently I haven't really changed in two years!) Anyway, I'm totally going to buy the book once I figure out how to spend the rest of my $50 Chapters gift card (for free shipping purposes) but for now her blog is good food for thought. She posted two articles about new year's resolutions that I've taken into consideration when setting my resolutions/goals for this year, and of course, I also read the blurb I wrote two years ago.

So to bring it all together, I think there are some broad resolutions that I would like to work on, but each month I would like to put that into a SMART goal (we do a lot of SMART goal setting with our clients at work, and also talking about confidence in achieving those goals) to work on for the month. Then hopefully every month those goals will be expanded upon or changed as I work toward/achieve those goals, and focus on other aspects of the broader resolutions.

My 2013 New Year's Resolutions
Be happier
To break this down, I want to be better at appreciating the small things and be more self-compassionate. I first heard the term "self-compassion" from dietitian, author and HAES practitioner/advocate Jacqui Gingras at a conference a couple years ago, and it's been a term that's stuck with me yet not something that I always knew what to do with. It came up again recently at a continuing ed session I went to and it's actually a whole philosophy that I should probably read more about. To briefly sum it up, it's being kind to yourself, especially in moments where things are not 100% as opposed to stubbornly moving on, or worse, beating yourself up (both things I do a lot of), and accepting that it's normal and human to be imperfect and sometimes unhappy.

I've been trying to work on this a little bit over the past year what with the being better at saying "No" to things. One of my favourite changes that I've made is to my to-do lists - I've caught myself many times where I would've had a busy day but if I don't finish a certain thing on my to-do list, I go to bed feeling like I've done nothing (I know, I'm totally crazy, right?) So, I've now taught myself to split my "to-do" list up into "Must Do" and "Nice to Do" and to cap the "Must Do" section at three or four things, so that even if I don't get through the entire to-do list, as long as I have the "Must Do" things done, I don't go to bed telling myself I've done nothing!

This month, I was inspired by the "Happiness Jar" that I saw on Facebook.

The idea is that every day of the year you write a happy moment on scraps of paper that you put in a jar, then on New Year's Eve you dump the jar out and reflect on all the happy things that happened over the year. All warm fuzzies and awesomeness, right?

Realistically I'm organized enough to have little scraps of paper on hand to throw in a jar, but since I'm always on my phone I thought maybe I could do this on a note on my phone before bed. But I do like writing stuff down by hand, so to start I'm going to put my journal and a pen on the nightstand and write at least one happy moment that happened during the day every day. Apparently I attempted to do something similar (I wrote at least three things I was thankful for at least three things I accomplished) in October 2011 and I was successful... for three non-consecutive days :S So, this may either devolve into an entering-into-my-phone thing or evolve into cutting up my journal and putting it in a jar - we'll see!

Be stronger/healthier
To be honest this isn't really a priority for me because I am pretty happy with where I am in terms of health and fitness, but a two-year-old Men's Journal article has been making the rounds and it is making me think I should probably be lifting things.

The take-home message is that you can keep your workout to just simple, free-weight exercises that work your entire body (versus machines, which isolate parts of the body; an inefficient way to work out, really) - he mentions squats, dead lifts and bench presses, which are coincidentally the three events in powerlifting - you can work strength, power, muscle-building or endurance depending on how much weight you use and how many reps you do. It is a little "too good to be true" sounding, but the only strength exercises I'm doing are mainly whatever body-weight exercises we do in class during the warmup so for me there's nothing to lose.

For a year and a half now I've been coming to the gym about half-an-hour to an hour earlier than when class starts - it started one summer when our instructor/coach told us to go run outside before class. But in the fall/winter/spring it's cold and dar so we have to run inside on the treadmill. Last year I was fine for the most part but this year though I've really been dreading the treadmill, and for the entire month of December I only ran on the treadmill once. So I figure, instead of staying later at the office, playing on my phone in the parking lot or seeing if I could become friends with the elliptical/rowing machine, why don't I just try lifting stuff before class? My cardio's not that bad anyway, and lifting things still gets my heart rate up a little bit, so this month, I am going to do squats, dead lifts and bench presses at least once a week before kickboxing class... I should probably get my powerlifting cousin to teach me so I don't hurt myself :S

This "at least once a week" thing is going to be interesting - Gretchen talks about making your resolutions something you do every day (or in this case, at least every time I go to the gym) so it keeps it consistent. On the other hand, when we set goals with our clients, if they say they are going to do something every day we actually talk them out of it so that "if something comes up, you don't feel like you failed for not having done it every day" So it'll be interesting to see if there's a difference between this goal (at least once a week) versus the previous goal (every day).

Reconnect
My friend Kristi reminded me that this is something that I would like to work on.

I've already started a bit - I've been trying to get my family (all the cousins) together more often - I had them over for dinner for one of my cousins' birthday, and then again as the start of a (hopefully) monthly family dinner. The initial goal was to give the opportunity to my sister and one of my cousins to eat/cook healthier things, but everyone sort of took it and ran with it, so it's probably going to be more social with potlucks and the like. We are going to have hot pot later this month.

Towards the end of my old job, I started going downtown on my days off to have lunch with B. Now that I'm off/"working from home" two days per week I figure I should use that time to reconnect with other people as well. (Which I did once in December.) So this month, I would like to make plans with at least two friends. I figure one social thing every two weeks is a good start.

Get organized
Right now I am typing this with a mountain of papers to my right. (That is February's goal.) There are also other things that I need to tend to, like cleaning up/setting up the spare room, finishing the kitchen re-org (really I need to just find a utensil caddy that doesn't cost $15), organizing the files on my computer, etc. etc.

But the thing I started during the holidays that I hope to finish this month is move this blog over to Wordpress - it is taking much longer than anticipated as the import wasn't clean and the formatting is all wonky and I've had to go back to every single post to fix things, but it's also been good because I've been able to go back and edit some posts/delete some I'm utterly embarrassed of.

Random Fun Stuff
Last night at the bar (before joining in the countdown at Olympic Plaza) B. and I made some predictions for 2013, as inspired by my friend Samantha.

I won't share them because some of them are a little personal but they're way more fun than resolutions because you don't have to do anything :)

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