Category Archives: Eating Out

Salad Day 2 – Mardi Gras

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Day 2 of the week of salad. Of course, there is less than an hour left in today – so much for eating salad every day and posting about it! But in my defense:

1.) I was tired today and had a nap on my lunch hour instead of making salad.

2.) It’s Mardi Gras and I wanted to go down to see the duelling pianos tonight instead of making salad.

3.) Even though it’s bitterly cold, freezing and icy outside and I wanted some nice warm pasta, or ribs, or…well, pasta – I GOT a salad!

4.) Unfortunately that doesn’t help with the lettuce starting to wilt in my fridge.

But enough of justifications and list-making for now. It’s Mardi Gras today and of course, Fat Tuesdays in the market is featuring a duelling pianos show, featuring the wonderful Tyler Kealey and Dave Kalil (I met the guys on their dinner break; they played from 5-7pm and started again a bit after 9pm, til probably 1am or so).

Only today will you see people wearing feathered masks, and bras and tights as clothes in the chill of winter (ok, maybe on Halloween too…) and after I came out of a stall in the ladies bathroom, I came face to face, well, chest, with a 6 foot 5 drag queen in a bright red, sequined mermaid dress and long bleached blonde wig giggling with her (?) friend, who was equally as tall, wearing an equally as tight and slinky black dress. Needless to say, the night was just beginning as I left and I’m looking forward to some funny stories from Tyler later.

BUT! My salad:

Mediterranean Goats’ Cheese Salad
Baby greens and romaine drizzled with balsamic citrus vinaigrette topped with caramelized onions, fire roasted peppers, sun dried tomatoes and crumbled goats cheese.

Mediterranean Goat Cheese Salad

Honestly, I should have gotten the pasta. I love goat cheese, and the onions were fine, but the red peppers were icky and slimy and large, and the sundried tomatoes on salad are not really my thing, apparently. The whole thing didn’t really come together that well and wasn’t too filling, either.

I will make my own salad tomorrow. Promise. For now, I’m off to rummage through my cupboards for some crackers to tide me over!

Fajitas and Books

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We’ve been going out for dinner quite a bit lately. I love cooking but I seem to want to get out more these days after working at home all day. So, off to dinner! Last night we had planned to go cheer our friend Jeff on as he tried out for this Redbull skating speed thing at the Sensplex.

So we went to Kanata and decided to grab dinner at Lone Star. It may be a chain restaurant and not unique to Ottawa but with their salty chips and delicious fajitas you can’t really go wrong. They were running a promotion where they’d donate 10% of your bill to a local elementary school if the student was there with their parents. Very nice of them but I don’t think they expected to be completely overrun with families on a Tuesday night! The line-ups were an hour long!

lone star chips and salsa

However…most kids come with a parent or sibling or 4, so we were able to get a little table for two pretty quick with a view of the tortilla making machine. Another huge attraction for 5 to 8 year olds, apparently!

We happily scarfed down our steak fajitas and then headed to Chapters to grab a coffee. I also wanted to get a travel book (may be planning a trip this year! Stay tuned!) but of course we ended up wandering for a good hour or so. Sigh. I love books so much. I usually order online to keep the temptation to buy everything at bay (or go to the library). Tyler asked a sales clerk about Japanese samurai and culture and ended up spending half an hour with the guy, listening and having book after book piled on him. You can’t get that online!

As it turned out, our friend didn’t make it to the ice when Redbull ran out of time. But it was a nice way to get out for the evening together and have fun doing nothing that special. Where to go next…?

lone star chips and salsa

Lunch at the Coconut Lagoon

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I headed down to St. Laurent one day a couple of weeks ago to have lunch with my wonderful former colleagues at the Canada Council Art Bank. I can’t say enough about these people – the Art Bank is a great place to work and to do business, and a big part of that is the amazing team of hard working people there.

One of the best places to eat around there is the Coconut Lagoon. It’s an Indian food restaurant that I think is one of the best in the city. They have a lunch buffet for $13.95 that includes soup, lots of lunch dish options, and dessert. So good, and so hard not to over eat! It was tomato ginger soup the day I went.

Tomato ginger soup

And here is my plate. Remember what I said about not over-eating? Forget about it. It is a buffet after all, and I didn’t have a desk to worry about falling asleep at during the afternoon. This was a really filling, delicious lunch!

Coconut Lagoon buffet

I took a picture of the dishes, mostly so I could remember what I ate. I try to take a wee bit of each thing, because I like it all and want to try everything. There’s always the veggie dishes, and the main dishes were butter chicken, chicken masala, potato and spinach puff-like things, salmon curry (it was really spicy!), pepper lamb (that I just love) and different kinds of rice. The naan bread is to die for. And you can have as much as you want!

Indian food buffet

Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the dessert. Usually two choices, one a rice pudding (I think) and the other is a light mango tapioca something. I always take it. If the tapioca dish is empty, wait til they refill it. You won’t be sorry.

tapioca mango

I never liked Indian food until I went there, and now I can’t stop myself from taking bits of each dish and enjoying all of them. Of course I like catching up with my old colleagues, and if it’s done over the food at the Coconut Lagoon, even better!