Tag Archive | Spaghetti

Annual CNE Visit – August 24, 2013

Sep2

Couple weeks ago, we went to the CNE for our annual visit!! It was a great day filled with lots of walking around and food with my hubby 🙂

We started out with a foot long corn dog each and large fresh squeezed lemonade to share. This is an annual tradition, which we always look forward to!! Ya can’t really screw either up, so it’s always yummy to have for lunch 🙂

Later on, we made our way over to the food trucks, as they were there for the weekend. We first got a Canadian Maple Bacon cupcake, to share, from Sweetness Bakery. We had tried their red velvet, last year, and liked it.  Gotta say…we were disappointed with this one though 😦 The cupcake tasted like pancake batter, with barely there maple infused buttercream icing and a couple of tiny pieces of bacon. Needless to say we won’t get that one again…

We then checked out the Per Se truck. We ordered the shrimp tacos with pico de gallo. It was all right. The shrimp was fresh and grilled nicely, and it went nicely with the greens and pico de gallo. The chips that came with it, looked to be handmade and fried, with a small dollop of garlic aioli for dipping. We didn’t much care for the aioli, but the chips were yummy too 🙂

Last, we checked out the Frankie Fettuccine truck. We ordered Arancini, which was a mozzarella and tomato, stuffed deep fried rice ball. We each had one, and had mixed reviews. I thought it was bland, whereas my hubby thought they were ok. I’ll definitely try it again, somewhere else, in the hopes it’ll taste a lot better!!

For dinner, we went into the Food Building, where we always end up for dinner 🙂 As part of our tradition, we each had $0.99 Primo spaghetti with tomato sauce. It’s nothing special, but it’s good, and that’s all we care about!! We then went our own way, as I just wanted a baked potato with the works, and my hubby wanted bao with a side of sautéed vegetables. My potato was just plain GOOD!! But you can’t really go wrong with a loaded baked potato. My hubby’s bourbon chicken bao, in my opinion, was meh. It just didn’t do it for me, though I thoroughly enjoyed the rice bun, that enveloped the chicken. We ended our evening with our traditional waffle ice cream sandwich…omnomnom!! Unfortunately we devoured them before taking a photo, so the one you see above, is provided by an anonymous person from the web. Thank you, whoever you are!! 🙂

All in all, our CNE experience was yet again, a great experience. There had been some food building issues, but we mostly stuck to what we knew, and didn’t get sick…just happily stuffed!!

Bon Appetit Everyone 🙂

Day at The Ex – August 24, 2012

Aug28

Let’s go to The EX…oh baby!! Where we filled our tummy’s with food along with lots of walking around 😀

We made our way there for lunch, and we started out with an ice cold lemonade and a jumbo corn dog. The EX is one of the only places I have a corn dog, and the fried goodness never disappoints…omnomnom. Just look at the beauty above, and tell me you don’t want to have one yourself?!

After coming down from our corn dog and lemonade high, we chose to go through the Direct Energy Centre to walk them off and make room for more yumminess. Every year they have a sand sculpture contest, and this year’s was no exception. This Grim Reaper was pretty awesome…check out how it was strategically placed so that the eyes were lit by the balloon lamp behind 🙂 The castle was our favourite though, and got our vote. The waterfalls at the bottom were so detailed…and well…I love castles!!

The Friday we went, food trucks were there for the whole weekend, for our nomnoming pleasure – called the Food Truck Frenzy!! Once we were done walking through the Direct Energy Centre, we went outside to get our food truck food on 🙂 We started at the Pretty Sweet truck, where we got a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting. The cupcake was really moist, with a cream cheese frosting that wasn’t in your face sweet.

The trucks were lined along the front of the Automotive building. If you’ve ever been to the CNE, you’ll know what I’m talking about. So, we walked along checking all the trucks out and deciding where we wanted to eat 🙂 After the cupcake we came across the Gourmet Gringos truck. We’re ALL about Mexican food, so we definitely wanted to try them out!! We decided on having the mole braised short rib tacos. They were pretty good as well. The short ribs were perfectly braised and melted like butter in my mouth. The best part of the tacos was the green salsa. It definitely brought out the flavour of the ribs.

We ended up chasing the tacos down with another cupcake LOL As we came across the Sweetness Bakery truck, and I can never pass up a good cupcake!! We had the key lime cupcake, which was another winner!! There was a key lime centre, that was a nice surprise…omnomnom…key lime 🙂 Again, the cupcake itself was moist and the key lime butter cream was the perfect topper.

When we finally made it to the end of the caravan of trucks, and came across Hank Daddy’s Barbeque. We knew we didn’t want the chicken or pulled pork sandwich, but the cowboy fries peaked our interest.  It consisted of sweet potato fries, with pulled pork and coleslaw on top. The sweet potato fries were crispy, the pulled pork was tender and perfectly sauced, and the slaw was lightly dressed which was a great contrast to the fries and pulled pork…omnomnom!!

After our food truck caravan experience, we went to ride the Sky Ride, that was put up this year. Years ago there was a ride called the Alpine Way, which lasted from 1966-1994 at the CNE. Back then it was a gondola style ride that stretched across the grounds over 100ft up. This year they brought back something similar, but now they’re using ski lifts instead, at 40ft above the exhibition and I was SO happy to see this ride back!! Anyway, my hubby and I went on it, at sunset, and even though it was a 10mins ride, it was great 🙂 It took us back to the other end of the CNE, where we walked through the Arts and Crafts building before finally hitting the Food building!!

Ah…the Food building…how we love thee!! In the food building is a smorgasbord of Bob’s Shack style food stalls, dotted with a few well known stalls, such as Swiss Chalet and Pizza Pizza. In my opinion, it’s sacrilege to eat at the well known stalls, as this is an opportunity to try a new place and new food out. But, I do understand that people have or know picky eaters. Anyway!! We started our Snack Time off with our old faithful…99c spaghetti and tomato sauce from the PRIMO stall!! It’s literally just plain spaghetti and plain sauce, but I don’t care – I love it 🙂 We then ended with the 99c chicken tacos, we found, at a stall I cannot remember the name of!! Which is okay, because the tacos were just SAD. You can see from the photo above, that I speak the truth. Barely any chicken, which was greasey and hardly any lettuce or anything else to compliment it. We won’t ever have those again. Kind of sad that we ended our night with those, but what can you do, when you try out a new place right?!

Other then the tacos we had in the Food building, we had a great day of sampling all the great fare the CNE has to offer, as well as walking around checking out all the buildings. We go to the CNE every year, and we never get tired of it. It’s a wonderful tradition, that our parents shared with us growing up, and hopefully we can do the same with our own kids one day…

Bon Appetit Everyone 🙂