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| At O Shima Restaurant |
For all the Canadians out there, today is the last of a long weekend, as it’s the ‘Canadian’ thanksgiving – and the weekend has been beautiful! We’ve had a lovely amount of sunshine over the last week, so it was nice to be able to wear a dress to celebrate my birthday without shivering to death!
This weekend has been all about food, friends, family, and more food for me 
It was a lovely way to celebrate my birthday!
Except I didn’t actually take a lot of food pictures AT my birthday dinner with my friends! I was too excited for a tonkatsu curry plate, I guess 
. This was the first time I’d ever had all my besties together at once (usually at least once schedule interferes) and it was a lot of fun. The restaurant was surprisingly good! I had booked it wanting to eat sushi, but they had quite an expansive menu (so in the end, only 2/9 of us got sushi, haha)
We did go for dessert afterwards though! This is my mini-trio of birthday cakes. I hate being sung to – especially in public – since I always get embarrassed, so I browbeat the besties into staying silent… no pictures at the second restaurant as the lounge was SO dark (and I haven’t quite mastered the use of my camera yet).
E and I shared this The best part was the first cake (why can’t I remember the name?) though I remember the last cake was supposed to be a sticky toffee pudding, but we both thought it tasted more like warm banana bread. Still good 
Thanksgiving day was all about the food….
Typically I suppose you see turkey and all the trimmings (potatoes, yam, corn, etc) and while we had all that, my family is large and VERY Filipino at times, so we had a combination Western/Filipino feast! I was planning on taking pictures ‘during’ the prep process but we were so busy I forgot. So you’ll have to make do with pictures of our finished table
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| The table before half the food arrived… |
This was in the middle of getting ready… you can see the Palabok has a place front and centre, haha!
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| Homemade palabok - but we forgot the smoked oysters! |
Palabok is my favourite type of pancit… for about a day. Then I realise how much we have left over and I wish to eat something else! My family has a tradition where you MUST eat noodles on your birthday to symbolize a long healthy life – I always want palabok, but as we were celebrating Thanksgiving the day after, I actually had ramen for birthday noodles! The palabok is still amazing though
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| The ‘Filipino’ side of the table: Fresh lumpia, homemade empanada, lumpia filling, pichi pichi |
I love homemade lumpia but the dish is so labour intensive. Currently it’s the only Filipino dish I can do by myself from start to finish, but I am working on it! We make the filling, crepes, and sauce from scratch. The empanada are chicken (a friend made these for us) and the pichi pichi are a glutinous rice cake dessert with coconut – but they aren’t very sweet!
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| Now with cassava, a cake, lumpia sauce, and chicken adobo |
The mostly complete table (after some rearranging) once the rest of my family arrived! So much of this food is still left over…
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| It’s not quite a croque-em-bouche but it’s pretty close… my aunt brought this from work – I love it! |
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| The turkey… 20 pounds! My cousin cooked this – it’s already all gone o_o |
Hope you enjoyed my weekend of food! For all the Canadians out there – Happy Thanksgiving!!
>ok if i EVER get a chance to visit you, remind me to time it with thanksgiving XD drooolhappy belated birthday again BB!i see Kelsie in the pic! miss her too!
>My dream is to dine at your home. I really need to find me some Filipino food to sample.
>The Chinese also believe in eating noodles on your birthday for longevity
Funny how Asian traditions get all mixed up and are quite similar. I read the link on what is a pancit….looks yummy!Btw, happy belated birthday!