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Nectaflor Wild Flower Honey

Lately, I’ve been enjoying lots of honey – with desserts, as a thickener, as a sweetener or just with some tea/water. I have heard of flavoured honey, but I’ve never tired it for myself until now. I’ve purchased a bottle of Nectaflour Honey which wasn’t that much more expensive than good quality honey from the store. I purchased my bottle in Wild Flower Flavour and it really leaves a lovely light floral note!

I really enjoy a nice hot cup of honey water, which is light, and rather refreshing! It’s really good for the throat and it’s just a wonderful wind-down technique at the end of the day. I feel the floral scent and taste really enhances the experience for me, and I can’t wait to try more flavoured honey at this point!

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Clay Oven – Calgary, Alberta

Recently, as the weather has been starting to warm up (well, it’s been a nice and milk winter), I’ve been wanting spicy food – as we normally eat spicy on the coldest days – which we didn’t have too many of. So, we went to and ventured to the northeast, and found ourselves at Clay Oven located in a small strip plaza.

Once we got to the table, some Papadum was given to us (and every table), but it also appeared on the menu for $2.00 which made it confusing… is it a gift or if we eat it, would we have to pay? I must admit, I never did pay attention to the bill when it came, so I still can’t answer my own question. The papadum that was on the table is two thinly sliced wafers toasted on an open flame. This one didn’t taste burnt either, but had a subtle smoke background to it! The sauce that came with the papadum was really tangy with a nice kick to it! It was good!

I’ve really started loving Mango Lassi drinks, and now every time I go to an East Indian restaurant, I would order one. This one is one of the best, as it didn’t separate through the night, and it wasn’t so fibrous making it hard to drink. The mango lassi was full of mango flavour and this location has just made me one of my favourites in the city!

Of course, when you eat curries, you eat it with some sort of Roti! We ordered the Garlic Nan which is leavened bread of fine light flour baked to perfection. The Naan here is huge, and it was baked to perfection. But, the simple fact that their garlic nan was made with a huge taste of “garlic powder” kind of disappointed me a little. The garlic flavour was definitely there, but I was hoping for some fresh garlic infused in oil or something like that. I think next time I’ll just get a plain nan!

We also ordered some Plain Rice which their plain is great, it’s basmati rice richly flavored with spices and saffron. I like using rice for my vehicle to eat curries.

For the curries, we ordered a medium heat level of Butter Chicken which is made of chicken fillets blended in a creamy butter and tomato sauce.

The other curry that we ordered was a Beef Curry, also in medium heat level. This curry is made of fillets of beef cooked in curry sauce and spices

The food and flavours from Clay Oven are phenomenal! The heat level is actually quite spicy, and I believe there were 4 levels of heat, and we’re only at the 2nd heat level! The flavours are bold and strong, and to be honest, the heat actually numbed me by the end – I just continued eating and I didn’t think it was spicy at all! I really enjoyed the food from here, and I am glad I was introduced to it from my friends wedding – as she used Clay Oven as their caterer!

Clay Oven

3132 26 St NE
Calgary, AB
(403) 250-2161

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Superior Tofu – Fresh Soy Milk

I’ve been looking for a great Soy Milk to make some Chinese recipes with. One particular recipe that was a lot more finicky would be making dou fu fa. I’ve tried my favourite brand of soy milk, and it had 3 ingredients on it’s list. I was thinking it would be okay, but it didn’t set.

During my search, I found exactly what I was looking for! Just Fresh Soy Milk! This was Superior Tofu brand that I found at the Asian grocery store. Because it doesn’t have preservatives, it doesn’t last long – so be sure you have something to do with it before purchasing it! Another option of course is making the soy milk at home, which again wouldn’t last long!

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Swiss Chalet – Calgary, Alberta

Over the weekend, we wanted to eat out but didn’t know where to go. I remembered that someone gave me some gift cards to Swiss Chalet, so we decided to stop by the one on 130th Ave SE. We went in during the late afternoon, and oddly, no one was around to greet us or seat us. We were a little confused, but that’s alright!

We started our lunch with Seasoned Dry Ribs and it came with 9 pieces of ribs for about $5.99 which wasn’t the best deal, but still within reason when you eat appetizers out. These lightly seasoned ribs was exploding with flavour and tasted great on it’s own. The pieces weren’t too big, but it was tender and juicy. The sweet chili dipping sauce was really good and tasted good – and just as it was described you get the sweetness and then a nice kick of heat followed!

With our meal, we also ordered a Chalet Chicken Soup which tasted like a regular chicken noodle soup. The consistency was thick and it was really hearty. It appears that the soup is made with their white chicken meat, simmered with vegetables and noodles in a savoury chicken broth.

I ordered their new menu item of Hickory Rotisserie Chicken Flatbread Rotisserie Chicken served hot with Hickory Mesquite BBQ sauce, Monterey Jack cheese, crispy bacon and mayo folded in a Panini grilled flatbread. I ordered this with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy. The smokey barbeque sauce was delicious and the main flavour of the flatbread. This was delicious and the cheese was perfectly melted. The mashed potatoes was gritty and cold, but I didn’t need to eat it since we had some delicious starters, I didn’t need to fill up on that!

Then, from their signature menu, we ordered a Classic Hot Chicken Sandwich – hot Rotisserie Chicken smothered in home-style gravy. This arrived and we looked confused because the actually sandwich was drenched in gravy! It was interesting as nothing could taste bad with gravy all over, however, the chicken meat was cold, and the gravy was really salty. The best thing on the plate was actually the medley of fresh vegetables… even the fries was cold and soggy. It was quite a disappointment as it was what they called a signature dish!

Overall, this was a fantastic lunch – of course not considering the signature dish of classic hot chicken sandwich. I’m really tempted to return to try their actual rotisserie chicken meals as well as their chicken is quite delicious!

Swiss Chalet

4916 130 Ave SE, Unit 300
Calgary, AB T2Z0B2
(403) 216-2557

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Chiu Chow Boy – Toronto, Ontario

We didn’t know where to go for dinner as it was a family dinner with lots of people. It isn’t easy finding place for a large party over the weekend and still during Chinese New Years. We ended up making a reservation at Chiu Chow Boy in Scarborough located in a strip plaza on Kennedy Road. This was one of the best dinners we had as the food was very flavourful and well made.

We ordered lots of dishes, as mentioned, there was an entire army of family for this dinner. We ordered Duck in Marinated Sauce which is like a soy sauce marinated duck. We had a half order and it was still quite large! The lo-sui flavour was infused into the duck meat thoroughly and made it really good.

This is an interesting dish that we enjoyed, it’s a Stir Fried Pig’s Intestine with Sweet & Sour Preserved Vegetable and it was really good. The sweet and sour flavours was balanced really nicely with the preserved vegetables and the intestines. I really like eating the intestines and the texture is really unusual. It’s important to eat intestines only when they’re cleaned properly and they cleaned it thoroughly.

I really liked the dish of Deep Fried Baby White Fish with Spicy Salt from Chiu Chow Boy as the fish was deep fried perfectly. The tenderness of the fish meat and the perfectly crispy coating was delicious. The spicy salt sprinkled on top was so good it was one of my most memorable dishes from this restaurant. It’s soo good that I didn’t even need any other dipping sauce or anything!

An all time favourite dish for me in “late night – da laang” style (which is a Chiu Chow style eating with white congee) is Pan Fried Oyster Patties Chiu Chow Style! This was great because we ordered it as a normal dish and I pretty much ate a quarter of the entire dish! Sometimes, this dish is called an Oyster Omelette, but those tend to be thinner. This omelette has just the perfect amount of oysters and stuff ratio to egg which is a nice treat as most places have an omelette with a few oyster pieces floating around!

Our family loves braised pork belly, and normally with large gatherings, we’d order some. It’s less guilty when everyone has a little bit of pork belly to indulge instead of a big plate to yourselves. This time, we got Pork Belly with Taro Root which is braised slices of pork belly and some fried taro slices and then smothered with some sauce on top. This dish is always an appetizing dish no matter how you make it because the sauce is always delicious over rice!

Anyone who knows me knows I love fish and I eat it no matter how it’s prepared! We ordered Braised Garoupa with Tientsin Cabbage in Hot Pot and this is one of the tastiest fish hot pots! Lots of sauce, deep fried fish pieces, it was just perfect! It’s a great winter dish as hot pots tend to stay hot longer on the table.

Finally, a dish I actually don’t eat since I claim it tastes like “nose bleeds”, but a lot of people in my family likes it… it’s Blood Jello & Chives! Yup, it’s actually what you think it is, and I know the texture as a silken tofu. The texture is great but I can’t get past the taste — the entire plate did disappear so it means it was good, right?

Chicken with Chinjew Sauce which is basically deep fried chicken pieces with deep fried kale. I normally really enjoy this dish, but they over fried everything so the chicken was dry and almost tough. They seemed to have over salted this dish. It was the only dish on the table that didn’t get finished which was really too bad as it’s a simple dish to make – you just got to do it right!

Our vegetable dish was Satay Beef on Gai Lan and the gai lan was cooked perfectly! I never remember how delicious it is to just use plain good quality satay sauce on something like steamed/boiled gai lan! It’s a small picture, but it was pretty much beef in satay sauce poured on top of the gai lan! it was a total hit as you can see, I couldn’t even get a shot of it without chopsticks!

Overall, it was a good restaurant! The service was like any other Chinese restaurant, so nothing special. The rates weren’t too bad either. The food was full of flavour and the quality was really nice! I’d return here as it was a location that I remember a lot from the trip due to the food!

Chiu Chow Boy in Scarborough

3261 Kennedy Rd
Toronto, ON M1V
(416) 335-0336