Thanksgiving Croi-nut-za

Hey guys! I know it's been a while since I've posted but I'm back with another post...this time on something that I ( we) made! I actually I have a post from the summer that I haven't put up yet because I 've been kind of busy. I hope you're all having a lovely Thanksgiving so far :). 

For the past 6 months, we've been holding Friday swim nights at my place. This has also turned into cooking night as well. So Annie posted this video from BuzzFeedFood on my wall the other day and we decided to try it on our Friday swim/cook nights. 

So why did we call it the Croi-nut-za? It's croissants in the shape of a donut that's actually a pizza. Clever right ?:D 

We started out with 2 Pillsbury croissant tubes and laid it out as shown in the video. 

Then we laid on the sauce in a ring and put on our desired toppings. In this case, mushrooms, cheese and pepperoni.

Then we wrapped the whole thing up.

After baking for 30 min at 375F, it comes out looking like this!

We decided to make another one with a hole in the middle like the video shows.

 It turns out the pastry fills up the hole so it doesn't really matter anyways.

the second croinutza

 We used a pizza cutter to cut into it.

Here's our masterpiece!

Would I make it again?

I'm going to say no :(. The recipe was easy to follow but due to how thick the pie was, the bottom didn't cook well so we were kind of sick from eating the uncooked dough :(. With a regular pie, you tend to cook the pie crust first before you put in the fillings and bake it, but you don't get the opportunity to do that in here. However, if you ignore that part, the rest of the croinutza was delicious and it was fun and easy to try the recipe.

Have a great week everyone!

Mysterious Istanbul

Hey Guys! This is the last of my 4 part series on my trip to Central Europe this year.

Part 1 , part 2 and part 3  in case you need to catch up.

Sorry if I've been sitting on this post for a while, I feel like I had so much to say, yet I wasn't sure how to convey everything nor what to show and what not to show so it's taken me a while to put everything up.

Istanbul was an amazing experience, it was a place unlike any other which I had visited in my life. There were so many people and the sights, sounds and smells were all so different to what I was used to! I really had an eye-opening visiting to this city but I don't think I'll be back in the near future. It was very over-whelming and the next visit will probably be in a long long time. 

The Sights

There were so many mosques and historic sights to see, since we were only there for a short time, we visited the most famous Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. 

The first stop of the day was the Blue Mosque.

What a beautiful day

We had to take off our shoes and me and Annie had to wrap our heads in scarves before we got to go inside since it was still an operating mosque. The inside does not disappoint with the soaring domes and intricately carved interior. 

We didn't really stay long at the mosque since there were lots of people milling about. We moved on to the next monument, the Hagia Sophia, a church that turned into a mosque that turned into a museum.

I was even more impressed by the soaring ceilings and impressive architecture. It was the world's largest building for nearly a thousand years before being displace by another church. It was very awe-inspiring to walk inside. Fun fact: the g in Hagia is not silent! I was so surprised when I heard the official tour soundtrack pronounce it!

Our hotel had a very good view of both the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. Here they are at sunset with the Bosphorus in the background. So beautiful.

Blue Mosque

Hagia Sophia

And here they are side by side. So awesome!

The Shopping

Istanbul is also a city famous for its shops. You can literally by anything in this city and someone will be here to sell it to you and haggle with you. I found the Grand Bazaar, the most famous of the Istanbul Bazaar to be too overwhelming. There were sooo many people everywhere, all trying to get your attention and sell you something. Shopping became a whole new level of intense.

On the bright side (no pun intended), the turkish lamps sold were gorgeous! 

Should've brought one back!

There were also these fun decorative dishes everywhere as well! My mom told me I should've brought one back for her. (oops!)

Story time: while we were at the Grand Bazaar, Rowan needed to go to the bathroom so Annie and I decided to stand in one place to wait for him. BAD IDEA! These two Turkish gentlemen quickly came over and introduced themselves and insisted that I take their picture. They then proceeded to ask about our relationship status as well as how they were "rich and single Turkish men" .

Needless to say, Annie and I put away our cameras after that and did not stay in one place anymore for Rowan's next bathroom break.

The Food

Turkey is also famous for their food. I'll be honest and say that I didn't really like the kebobs that I was eating. I did have to say that I really enjoyed the other things that I tried. 

I'm a really big fan of seafood, and streetfoods in general. However, usually the combination of the two means a nasty trip to the bathroom. I did get up the courage to try these stuffed mussels though. They were stuffed with a cooked rice and mussels stuffing and served with a squeeze of lemon. Yumm!

Along the same stretch of the harbour, we found fresh grilled fish! Except you eat it with bread like a sandwich! 

It was actually really good since the fish was so fresh and moist. I wish we had these in Canada!!

The other thing I really loved about Istanbul was that there were fresh, roasted chestnuts everywhere, selling for peanuts (or chestnuts??)! I pretty much grabbed a bag of them every time I saw them. So fresh, so good.

Since Istanbul was a city surrounded by water, fish and seafood is in abundance. The turks are really good at grilling fish so I had a lot of fish on the trip.

Since we were in Istanbul, we had to get some Turkish delight for home. There were many shops specializing in Turkish delights since it's a tourist favourite. The candy was actually not bad and the amount of variety was very refreshing.

Finally, I had a sip of Turkish coffee and not pictured, tea. I have to say that I was not fond of either. The coffee had a lot more grounds then what I was used to and the tea was not my cup of tea either. :\ I do like how the Turks serve the coffee with a bit of Turkish delight since they know it'll be more bitter due to the extra grounds.

Finally I leave you with this image of the Blue Mosque at night. I hope you enjoyed my jam-packed trip to Istanbul. There were other things we did that was not mentioned but this post is already long enough. Enjoy your week!

Beautiful Budapest

Hey guys! It's been a while since I did my last post. Things have been interesting lately but I'm ready to continue sharing our trip with you. So to continue the story, we took another 8 hr train from Poland and got to Budapest early in the morning. On the agenda that day was checking out the chamber music performance at the Opera house and just exploring the city.

The setting for the chamber music was really nice, it was a small room but you can see and hear the musicians perfectly. We got to sit at the front so I had a perfect view of the performers. The best part was that they chose to perform music from Hungarian composers so that was extra nice :D.

Impressive grand piano

I wish I got to go on the tour for the opera house, it seemed like a really cool place with lots of history. Here's another glimpse of the inside.

Budapest is often referred to as the Paris of the East. I can see why since the city is very well preserved and has its own beautiful, romantic charm.

The city used to be two different cities, Buda and Pest, divided by the Danube River.

Here's a rare picture with the three of us all together :)

Definitely one of my favs

Afternoon Tea

So there are lots caves near Budapest and since I'm not really a caving kind of girl, I decided to skip out on the caving adventure that Annie and Rowan went on and take the opportunity to wander around town.

It was such a beautiful day, with the perfect weather. I decided to wander down to the Parliament area to check out the largest Parliament building in the world. 

Streetcars were everywhere too!

The area was really nice and since Parliament was in session that day, nobody was allowed in and the place was quite serene.

After that, I decided to take a stroll along the Danube River and I stumbled upon one of the most famous exhibits in Budapest, the Shoes on the Danube.

This permanent exhibit was to commemorate an event that occurred in World War II where the Jews were killed by Hungarian fascists.  The victims were forced to strip off their clothes and shoes and shot from behind so that they would fall into the river and the river would carry their body away. It was very moving to see all the shoes as a reminder of the event.

I had a bit more time so I decided to go and have Afternoon Tea at the Four Seasons. This particular location was a converted historical building and they used beautiful Herringbone china so it was an amazing experience.

All the pieces were hand painted and amazingly delicate.

The finger sandwiches and pastries were delicious too!

We ended up taking three baths in the three days that we were there. I'll leave you a photo of the largest and oldest of the three baths: Széchenyi Baths

Have a great weekend you guys! Look out for the next post as we explore Istanbul, the link between Europe and Asia.

Bikes & Perogis- Krakow

Hey guys! Hope everybody had a good week. Don't worry, I didn't forget about the blog, I'm just taking my sweet time. Partly because I'm lazy, partly because I'm working on becoming a real engineer (P.Eng experience application).

So where were we? Oh yes, the morning after the train ride. We got to Krakow at around 8 AM in the morning at the train station and funnily enough, it was quite difficult to find someone who spoke english and hail a taxi. At the end, a friendly local helped us get ride to the hotel. Of course, it was too early for check-in so time for some wandering...

Old-Town Krakow is actually a UNESCO protected site. The area is beautifully preserved and includes old-town square, picturesque little houses and churches.

We climbed up the clock tower and got a beautiful view of the surrounding area.

Wieliczka Salt Mine

This was one of the oldest salt mines in the world and was something that I really wanted to come to Krakow and see. As most of you know, I work in the mining industry and in particular, processing so mining and mining related topics are something near and dear to my heart. The mine has been operating continuously since the 13th century until it shut down in 2007 when tourism revenues brought in more money than table salt. Many of the miner throughout the ages left their mark on the mine and carved statues out of the rock like the one below. 

I work with a few geologists so I hope other fellow rock lovers would enjoy this photo of the rock crystals. You could actually lick the walls ( not statutes though) and I believe each visitor gets to lick/take away 3 kg of salt from the ground if they really wanted to.

The mine itself contained many chapels and places of worship and was unlike any mine I had ever heard of.

Took 3 people 67 years to carve this chapel

The chandeliers itself was made of salt too! This was truly a world class deposit. 

Exquisite

Wawel Castle 

We took a trip to the nearby Wawel Castle compound by the Vistula river. This was where for centuries, the kings of Poland lived. The grounds were very very impressive and extensive. 

An overview

The Tower

Rowan was helping me and Annie take pictures, I know he doesn't like it but he does get into it.

Gotta get the best angle

He eventually took one or two pictures of the scenery himself.

Awesome shot :D

The symbol of Krakow is the dragon so there's a statue of a dragon that breathes fire!

Roar!!!!

It was a beautiful day and we ended up renting some bikes to go along the river! So much fun ^^.

The Food

Of course Poland is famous for their perogis so we did try a lot of that in Krakow. Did you know that the usual potato/cheese stuffed perogi at home that we have are known as Russian perogis there? Also, it was nice to find different variety of stuffings, especially game in the perogis.  They were boiled, fried and usually served with sour cream.

Since we are not that far from central Europe, I was able to find pig's feet on the menu. My boss told me to try it so I reluctantly ordered a plate. The meat was actually quite tender and flavourful, it wasn't bad. I would eat it again. They sold it by the 100g, the foot below was only 39g!

Kinda felt like more than 39 g to me

Large sausages seemed quite common too. They were pretty good :)

Alright, hope you liked this entry. I really enjoyed my time in Krakow. The place and people were really nice and given a chance, I would love to go back and explore different parts of Poland. Our next stop will be in Budapest. Enjoy your weekend!