Whoo, great start to the day. I'm feeling pumped. Marketing strategies!

Almost time for dinner, time to get serious.

Los Margaritas- Vancouver

Today was a particularly nice sunny day in Vancouver and one of my favorite things to do on such a day is to sit on a patio (especially the patio at Las Margaritas).

I arrived at about 1 just when the restaurant started to slow down after the lunch rush, and unfortunately the patio was closed and will not be open until some time next week.

I sat down with my friend right by the window (at least we could look outside even if we weren't able to sit there), and we got the standard complimentary salsa and chips. Although the portion seemed larger than usual, the salsa still had the same excellence. After debating with a few choices I finally decided upon the tortilla soup and a quesadilla with chicken.

The tortilla soup was fantastic, a very rich but thin chicken/tomato broth, fresh tomatoes that seemed to be added towards the end of cooking that contributed great flavor and texture. The tortillas were fresh and contributed well to the soup. The amount of spice was good, I could have had more, but I'm not very spice tolerant so I may have looked a bit worse for the rest of the day.

The quesadilla was alright, it had good value for the price. I was not totally satisfied though, as I felt the chicken was watery and could have been more flavorful. My friend had the cheese quesadilla and I preferred hers to mine.

In summary I will be returning to Las Maragritas and enjoying some good Mexican food and delicious margaritas on their patio once our summer heats up a bit.

Copa Cafe - Coquitlam,B.C.

Today I thought I would try out Copa cafe in Coquitlam, I have seen it around for a few years now and although the funny looking chef logo they have does not scream good restaurant, it has been in operation for a few years now (and besides I've been craving Chinese for a few weeks now) so I figure, why not?

In entering, I learn that Copa cafe is a Hong Kong style Chinese restaurant, for those of you who like me don't know, that means it's a mix of Chinese and western dishes.

After a busy wait in line and being slightly intimidated that I am the only only white person here in a busy restaurant, I look at the huge menu and decide on shredded beef fried rice. The food arrives within 2 minutes of me ordering it and is quite good, a bit greasy which I expect and enjoy from a fried rice, filled with a fair bit of beef and some very crispy lettuce and green onion, a generous portion for 7.50 with taxes and a Hong Kong style tea.

The service at Copa was not great, but the food was, and for the price I might have to go try some of the more original Western/Chinese dishes.

Starting a business.

Well the last week has been an exciting one, I have started my own business. I have been wanting to do this for years but I have never knew where to start or how, finally I decided to jump in head first.
Things are just getting started but I feel great, I have been working my regular more than full time job and every extra minute of time I have, has been going towards my biz "Food Ninja Culinary Systems".

So far I have done everything with no start up costs other than a few bucks I had in my bank account and no real guidance or info other than what I can find on line, all I have is passion, a belief in what I am doing and a little craziness.
If you are interested in how things turn check back with me every now and then and I will be keeping you updated.

Work, Work, Work. But at least I'm having fun.

A Great Book- The 4 Hour Work Week

 For those of you who havent heard of the 4 Hour Work Week (4HWW), It is a great book written by Tim Ferris, I have read this book about 4 times now and every time I get more inspired to take action and "escape the 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich". I realize upon reading those captions you may be thinking that this book is a happy ending style self help book, but in reality it is full of resources and a virtual community has built around this book and the principals included in it.  It's written in a very entertaining style, and the author has accomplished some amazing things like;

•Princeton University guest lecturer in High-Tech Entrepreneurship and Electrical Engineering


•Finance and Entrepreneurship advisor at Singularity University at NASA Ames, co-founded by Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil.

•First American in history to hold a Guinness World Record in tango

•Speaker of 5 languages (6 if he’s reactivating something previously studied)

•National Chinese kickboxing champion


•Horseback archer (yabusame) in Nikko, Japan

•2009 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute

•Political asylum researcher

•MTV breakdancer in Taiwan

•Hurling competitor in Ireland

•Wired Magazine’s “Greatest Self-Promoter of 2008″

•Actor on hit TV series in mainland China and Hong Kong (“Human Cargo”)
 
 
 

 
 
The basic idea of the book is how to get more out of your life by doing less, and it really
helps you to identify your dreams and start living them now instead of waiting for retirement.
 

Cheap Cooking, The way the world cooked when it was poor.

 Recently I have been cooking quite cheaply, I started thinking what would happen to the world if all our pre made foods were taken away, who could still cook the classics?
 I have mostly been cooking dishes that are flour based, and I have been amazed at how some of these items are  so similar in ingredients and procedure and can yeild different tastes and textures.

 Some of the things I have made in the last few weeks are:
Perogies
Gnocchi
Flour tortillias
Roti
Chinese Hand Pulled Noodles

 To put into perspective just how cheap this has been, a bag of flour is about 5$, I still have a half bag left, and the only other thing I have had to buy has been cheese and potatoes, mostly everything else needed is stuff most people have in their house anyways. Not to mention I got an average of 2-3 meals out of each of these items.

 For the most part these items were very easy to make, sorry I had not yet had this blog up and running yet or else I would have taken note of the quantities I was using and recorded them for your use. All of these except the noodles took around 15 minutes or less of my time to make.

 I found a great site for indian food, she uses videos and she's cute in her own way, the recepie for roti is on here and the site is pretty good in general. http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/

The noodles. If you have not seen how these fantastic noodles are made then I suggest this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auhHl5-6VdY. 

My first attemt at them was all right, by the end of a few hours of practice, I had a few instant noodles sized noodles that tasted pretty good, It's a very hard task to master but I plan on getting better. I found a pretty helpful site for making these noodles as well, it's pretty straightforward and it seems like he has taken a pretty scientific approach to trying to get these right. http://www.lukerymarz.com/noodles/index.html

I also have some pictures of what I made, I can post them if anyone wants to see them, just leave me a comment.

My New Liquid Diet

           For some strange reason I decided this year to come up with a resolution for new year's. This normally is not something I do, I often think that people use the new year as a crutch, "this year things will be better". They often prevent themselves from making real changes by putting it off.

          That being said.

          I have been a long term caffiene abuser for about 13 years now. Yes, since I was 12. I have drank an average of 5-10 cups of coffee a day. Combine that with a high school dabbling in caffiene pills and I was on a bad path.  I have also been drinking profusely since before the age of 19. 

 So I decided that for the first month of the year I would be consuming water as my only liquid drink, no pop, no coffee, no juice, no milk, no booze. As you can imagine my headaches for the few weeks this month were pretty brutal.

Why am I writing this post you might ask. Well since doing this I have been seeing some pretty good and suprsing results. I am on day 26 so far and I am thinking of extending this far longer than a month. So far I have lost 10 lbs, and I have'nt changed my diet or excersize, I am no longer getting withdrawal headaches from missing my sweet coffee, I am sleeping better at night, I have more energy during the day, I have not had crashing energy levels like I did before.

 I am considering adding some healthy beverages in the upcoming months, I have tried an outstanding herbal coffee replacement called teeccino, It has tons of health benefits and is a nice replacement if you think you will miss the taste of coffee.


 The best part? I find that my brain has been working better, I often used to struggle with long term planning, and I have been racking my brain to come up with business ideas for the last few years, this has not been an issue at all lately. I have never felt better about the firection my life is going. 

*Warning! I was an extreme jerk for the first 2 weeks of this
      

First Blog

Hi All,

This is my first blog, I figure I would tell you a bit about what I am expecting to be blogging about.

I am a chef by trade, and I have almost completed my sommelier training, I am currently living in Edmonton, but I am originally from Vancouver and I move back there quite soon. I love reading, mostly cookbooks, business,management, and books about self improvement. I don't need self help but I could use some improvement. I also try to eat healthy and stay in shape.

I will be posting recipes, restaurant reviews, book reccomendations. and anything else I do that I think will interest you.