Birthday weekend celebrations 2012

This year, I had a great time sharing my birthday with dear friends and loved ones.  First, we kicked off the weekend with some good old Shanghainese food at one of my favourite Shanghainese restaurants in Markham, A La Kitchen, and then we continued the night chilling at the condo playing PS3 and Monopoly Deal.

 

 

Saturday was a day of relaxation at Novo Spa.  Did you know that you can get a free lunch at Novo Spa if you make an appointment on your birthday?  We also got lucky with parking because the parking ticket machine was broken so we got to park on Avenue Rd. for free!  After the spa, we did some shopping on Bloor St. followed by dinner at Ruby Watch Co out in Leslieville.  Guess who was making our dinner at Ruby Watch Co.?  Lynn Crawford herself!  A lot of diners actually went up to take pictures with her and got her autograph which was kind of cool.  I really liked the restaurant's concept in which they have a daily set menu ($49 per person) and the food is served family-style in Le Creuset dishes to be shared amongst the guests.  For our meal, we started off with a salad of winter greens and some "world famous" biscuits.

 

 

Yes, those biscuits were yummy.  They came with freshly churned butter...nothing better than butter on top of more butter...mmm...
Our main was a slow roasted striploin with mushrooms.  The sides included braised red cabbage, potatoes with leeks and prosciutto, and some grilled broccoli with cheddar.

We were able to finish most of the main course, but by that time we were super stuffed.  The next course was the cheese course.  Since we weren't big on goat cheese, they were able to swap out the cheese with a Niagara Gold.

We finished off the meal with a peacan and coconut cake for dessert.  The cake was very soft and 2hung ate the entire piece in a flash.

I would definitely recommend this restaurant to my friends.  For the price of a Winterlicious dinner, you get exceptional quality and quantity for your buck.

Here is my second birthday cake.  We got this salted caramel cake from Bobbette & Belle because we loved their carrot cake so much.  However, this cake proved to be a little disappointing as we found it too sweet and the cake was a little dense, not as fluffy as the carrot cake.

On Sunday, the eating continued.  We walked around Kensington Market a bit and found this pie shop called Wanda's Pie in the Sky.  It's a quaint little place, so we went in and tried a slice of their strawberry rhubarb pie.  The pie was quite good indeed except it cost us $5.25 for a slice!  Definitely buy the entire pie if you have someone to share it with.  It is more cost effective that way.

 

To conclude this post and lovely weekend, here are my birthday gifts/purchases.  Yay!  Three pairs of shoes and lots of makeup/beauty products!