My Wonderful Kitchen

(Now, just to be clear... this is not my actual wonderful kitchen, but a restaurant in Richmond Hill named, My Wonderful Kitchen. Because, if you know me, you know I hardly spend any time in my actual kitchen. So I certainly wouldn't know how wonderful it may or may not be.)

I met a couple of friends here after work on Wednesday. The restaurant is located on the north side of Highway 7, east of Bayview. Even though it faces Highway 7, the entrance is around back. Kind of weird, but whatever. The restaurant, itself, looks fine. Not fancy, but not too plain either.

It wasn't very busy when I got there. But it was mid-week, so it wasn't surprising. Since it was my late day... I was late. By the time I arrived my friends had already ordered and eaten. They ordered rice soup with minced pork, dried fish and oysters and fried rice noodle with beef. That's one of the dishes I normally order when I got out for lunch on Sundays after church.

I was considering noodles this time too. But, compared to Rol Jui (my Sunday lunch stop), most other places are a good deal  more costly. So I opted for beef and tomato on rice. This restaurant added a nice twist - egg. It made the tomato sauce that much thicker and creamier. Very good. We finished dinner off each with a complimentary bowl of red bean dessert soup.

Badminton and Vegetarian Dinner

My friends and I went to play badminton up in Richmond Hill a few weeks ago. It was at a place on 16th, west of the 404. We booked the court for an hour and played doubles. I have to say, I haven't played in awhile. But it was fun. I do enjoy it.

Afterwards we went to grab dinner at a vegetarian restaurant on Highway 7 and West Beaver Creek. My friend, Gabe, invited his co-worker, Yatin, out. He's vegetarian. So that's why we decided to give this restaurant a try (unfortunately I can't remember the name of it).

I'm not sure what I was expecting out of this particular place, but it wasn't this. I thought they'd just have a lot of vegetable dishes like Chinese broccoli on rice or something.

Instead they had various dishes with tofu shaped like different kinds of meat. There was tofu that looked like beef, tofu that looked like chicken, tofu that looked like pork... you get the idea.

Now, even though the tofu resembled meat, it didn't taste anything like it. I really didn't understand why they even tried. The concept was completely foreign to me. Is this something vegetarians actually like?

Anyway, I can't see myself coming back for a return visit. It's just a little too strange for me.

Curling with Cornerstone

Yes, we did it. We went curling... a true Canadian experience. A few of us from our Cornerstone Church Thursday Sport Night group went last Saturday. Ken organized an afternoon out at the Richmond Hill Curling Club on Elgin Mills, just east of Yonge. Out of the sixteen of us who went only two had gone before. Jennifer had gone once and Chris twice. The rest of us were neophytes.

A young lady, who mentioned she just recently started curling, was our instructor. She had a us walk on the ice and get used to the feeling of how slippery it was underfoot. She then had us practice pushing off the "hack". It's sort of like the sprinter's blocks that runners use at track meets. You use it to push off of when throwing rocks/stones down the ice. We practiced sweeping with the brooms and she told us about scoring and a few other rules then let us play.

I have to say, the most difficult part was judging the correct draw weight. In other words, trying to figure out how heavy to throw the rock down the ice. More often than not, we threw it either too hard or too soft. It was tough getting it anywhere near the button (the circle in the middle of the house/scoring rings).

The second most difficult thing was getting the stones to go straight. It was sort of like bowling. If you were a little bit off-line at the beginning it just got worse as the rock slid down the ice. If it touched the black lines on the side it was deemed out of bounds and taken out of play.

Sweeping was a lot more physically demanding than most of us imagined too. You really have to sweep hard and fast when trying to get the stones to slide further. Especially if someone threw too lightly. You could burn yourself out pretty quickly sweeping vigorously trying to get it to go past the "hog line". That's a line 10 metres from the end of the ice that the stone must pass to remain in play.

Needless to say we were all pretty crappy at first. We did improve slightly after awhile. But, we have a long way to go to to even achieve mediocrity. Still it was fun. I know we all enjoyed ourselves.

After the game we headed over to the nearby Kelsey's on Elgin Mills, just east of Leslie where we had dinner and watched the pro's put on a show at the Tim Horton's Brier (Canadian Championships) on TSN (The Sports Network).

Richmond Hill Gang

This is part of the Richmond Hill crew that went out on the Sandwich Run with Project 417 last Saturday. A few of my friends go to that church. About once a year they'll join us to hand out bag lunches to our homeless friends in downtown Toronto.

All told, about 23 volunteers came out. We divided them into two groups and went to a couple different areas of the city. I'm happy to say our group managed to give out all our lunches by the end of the night. I believe everyone had a good experience. They got to be a little more intimate with a side of society they might not get much of a chance to interact with on a regular basis. That's a good thing. The better we get to know our neighbours the easier it is for us to identify with them. Understanding goes a long way. Not only between people from different neighbourhoods, but people, in general, worldwide.

Afterwards a few of us stopped for a bite at Johnny Rockets across from Dundas Square. Being a tourist spot it was a bit of a rip off. But, that was to be expected so we knew what we were getting into. We just took the opportunity to sit, relax, chat and reflect on our evening.

Happy New Year!

I spent New Year's Eve over at my friend Dickie's place (sitting on the floor on the left). He invited a group of friends from the Richmond Hill Chinese Community Church over. It was a last minute affair organized by Jim (sitting on the floor with the guitar in his lap). He sent an Evite out on Monday inviting people to come out. Perry (sitting on the floor, far right) brought his X-box 360 with Rock Band over, as well as a movie trivia game. That was fun. Some of us played it while others went downstairs to play ping pong. Big Jon was supposed to come over, but he fell asleep at home and missed the countdown.