Author Archives: My Infinity and Beyond

Assorted Mini Melon Pan Box? YES! @ef and be Bakehouse

Melon Pan メロンパン is a classic type of sweet bun originated from Japan. I grew up eating quite a lot of melon buns back in Hong Kong but I never had some that were as fine as those from “ef and be Bakehouse”. Maybe it’s because the buns from this shop are produced by an authentic Japanese!

The Japanese sweet bread actually has nothing to do with melon, they are named “melon-pans” because they’re made to look like melons; with the iconic cookie crust topping.

The bakehouse runs mainly on a pick up/delivery basis, they also do pop-ups in cafes during weekends, eaters can easily order their pans (which means bread in Japanese!) from their website.

Since I really wanted to try more flavors with my very limited quota for calories, I ordered their assorted mini melon pan box that includes a mini size of 6 small buns, all with different tastes. And I absolutely loved all of them, the bread was so fresh, the crusts were crispy and rich in each of its respective flavors. My top favorites are the Matcha Pan (the green one) and Kinako Pan (the golden tanned one), as I’m originally a huge fan of matcha and kinako hahaha).

The shop currently only delivers to Vancouver, Burnaby, New West, Port Moody & Coquitlam, with a delivery fee of $5. But for orders more than $50, they would offer free delivery!

This box of sweet treat had definitely made my day and I’m sure that every person with slightly a sweet tooth or favoritism towards baking goods would love them.

Assorted Mini Melon Pan Box - 6 pcs

CAD $14.00

Matcha x 1- Original x 1- Kinako x 1- Chocolate x 1- Lemon Poppy Seed x 1- Black Sesame x 1

Ratings: 9.5/10

Website: https://www.efnbe.com/

Pick-Up Location: A6 – 5279 Still Creek Ave, Burnaby, BC, V5C 5V1, Canada

Community Guidelines of my site.

Process Post.

Overview:
The goals of my community are to share personal wonderful dining experiences from eateries that serve vegetarian or vegan food items, to promote a healthy and non-cruel eating lifestyle, to approach readers who have similar favoritism towards eating (like I do), to tell audiences how tasty the seemingly non-mainstream cuisines could be like and to stimulate their interest towards vegetarian or even vegan cuisines. Of course, I hope that my readers could pay visits to the food places I’ve mentioned in my blogs and enjoy themselves thoroughly.

In order to meet the goals of this community, it’s crucial for audiences to feel like they are in a comfortable and safe place that is populated by people with shared interests. As such, we request that you read and adhere to the guidelines that follow.

Guidelines:

  • Treat others online as you would treat them when meeting them in person
  • Feel free to exchange extra information about food, or even personal interests with other readers with mutual agreement
  • Be tolerant towards other’s viewpoints; respectfully disagree when opinions do not align, don’t force others to agree with your views
  • Respect the privacy and personal information of readers and other stakeholders
  • Communicate with courtesy, patience and respect
  • Have fun!
  • Don’ts:
    • Verbal abuse and personal attacks on anyone are strongly prohibited
    • Never use defamatory remarks or make false statements against others, including readers and eateries
    • Post pointless comments that are unrelated to the community
  • Use the comment functions and other accessible links responsibly. These tools are intended to keep readers in touch with the page, to help facilitate networking and to promote common interests.  
  • When ensuring the contact information that you leave on the page is true, please also be careful not to disclose too much personal information that could cause personal harm or unwanted nuisances, such as mobile numbers or living address.

Consequences:
We would take action if we see anyone violating these guidelines. Sometimes that just means issuing that person a warning through mailbox; other times it means seeking further help from legal institutions. We request that all readers report behavior that violates my guidelines to janecheung726@gmail.com

Agreement:
By joining the community and leaving comments or other information on my page, you are considered to be in agreement with the terms and conditions listed above.

Let’s get cheeesy~@Beecher’s Handmade Cheese Seattle

Who doesn’t love cheese? Beecher’s Handmade Cheese is often crowned as a must-go food place in Seattle, located in the renowned Pike Place Market, the shop is always crowded with people from all over the world. Everyone’s reason here is clear, he/she including me would like to taste the best cheese! From Beecher’s official website, they have also stated that “The enzyme source in our “World’s Best” Mac & Cheese and all of our cheeses is microbial rennet, which is vegetarian and gluten-free!” Therefore, vegetarians can also eat without ease!

Beecher’s Seattle location serves grilled sandwiches, soups, and their signature mac & cheese (which is claimed as “world’s best”!), visitors could also buy different kinds of cheese and related products as food souvenirs. My friend I only wanted to have some instant good food so we had got the “World’s Best” Mac & Cheese and Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

GRILLED SANDWICHES: Grilled Cheese --- $7.99 USD

MAC & CHEESE: "World's Best" --- $6.49 USD - 8oz  

You could watch their cheesemakers at work! So many cheeses, and some gigantic machines are here.

The Mac & Cheese is really, really delicious, you can feel the whole sauce is made mainly by cheese and there’s no dilution by many other ingredients like milk or water.

We even dipped our sandwich into the remaining cheese sauce and god, it’s definitely a hidden way to enjoy their food!

"Handcrafted and grilled to order with American artisan cheeses on locally produced, whole wheat bread."

This is definitely a moment of truth… <3

The sandwich tastes good too, you can see it’s perfectly toasted. However, the taste of the cheese here is milder while compared with that in the mac & cheese. So, it might be better to eat the sandwich before the m&c if you plan to purchase both.

Rating: 9/10

Location: 1600 Pike Place, Seattle, WA 98101

Thoughts on transmedia integration.

Process Post.

Umhmm…transmedia integration, interesting!

Transmedia integration is definitely an important step for website creators to further expand and promote their websites. So, this week I’m going to think about how could I plan to incorporate more transmedia integration into my online publication.

Since my website is about food-hunting and sharing, I will surely plan to focus on channels that enable a wide spread of pictures/videos, and those that allow users to interact easily. The initial ones that pop up in my mind are Instagram and Pinterest, these two are those I consume most aesthetically appealing pictures and posts. I also watch a lot of foodie vlogs from YouTube, so YouTube would be a great choice too!

To talk about the implementation of transmedia integration more pragmatically, take Instagram as an example, I would like to have the images of my blog posts immediately inserted from IG accounts; which means when readers click into the image of my post, they will be immediately directed to my IG account or the restaurant’s IG account. Of course, they could check the location by IG’s map function too. (though I’m not sure if this would somehow violate copyrights if the pictures are from the food places, so I reckon it would be better to communicate with the shops at first hand).

Also, I would like to develop a YouTube channel for my website with videos (aka vlogs) about food tours to the places I’ve introduced in my blogs, but these would take quite a lot of time and energy! But the good thing is, it’ll surely be fun. It’s very difficult for a video channel to attract the first group of viewers so I guess the best strategy for me if I do this is to spread my videos through my family members and friends during the early stage and pray for some good results!

Create a GIF.

  • An attempt to create a gif that summarizes my university life… I mean even food fails to motivate me when it’s near the end of the semester hahaha.
  • The video for this gif is taken in a Cat Cafe in Vancouver, which is named “Cataro Cafe”.
  • The cafe serves different kinds of tea, coffees, etc. (including boba tea) and some mini cakes as well.

Some thoughts on analytics…

I’ve never realized that Analytics (Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.) is such a reliable and valuable tool for building an audience. Before setting up this website, my idea for Analytics was that “it’s only useful for really large corporations or professional scholars”, something like that. But now, I know that even we are just tiny, tiny content creators, analytics could help us to know how our readers behave on our websites and can greatly with the development and transformation of the best content. Everything is simply tracked, in detail. For instance, I could see exactly which city my readers are located when they visit my website and I could know what time (e.g. whether daytime/nighttime) they are clicking in. Therefore, I could adjust my posting time and adopt the most appropriate engagement strategies. Of course, every coin has two sides, for my readers, it could be kind of worrying if they know that every single step of them are recorded clearly. But, I guess this is absolutely unavoidable in the Internet era and it would be better for us to capitalize on it. (especially for me, as the website manager and creator!)

Customize your vegan cinnamon roll! @Cinnaholic Seattle

I couldn’t even remember how many times I’ve seen cinnamon rolls in cafes, grocery stores or fast food places in Vancouver, but I never tried one because I felt like it would be a bit too boring and overly sweet to have a big cinnamon roll on my own. However, I was very attracted by a vegan cinnamon bun chain called “Cinnaholic” since their cinnamon rolls are firstly healthier; and the most important thing is: they offer flavor varieties and customization!

I visited their bakery at Seattle to experience their handcrafted cinnamon rolls; which are claimed 100% vegan, dairy & lactose-free, egg-free and cholesterol-free. The best part for me was being able to choose from more than a dozen decadent topping choices, the process of picking and creating is always fun. And what I got was a cinnamon roll topped with caramel sauce, brownie bites, pie crusts, and some fresh strawberries (in case of being too indecisive or simply lazy, the shop also offers a list of recommended combinations for you)!

  • the surroundings.
  • the counter where you pick your flavors!

The cinnamon roll itself was fresh and yummy, love how they reheated it by oven before serving to customers. While for the toppings, things can’t go wrong with the combinations that I picked (I guess…), the fruits balanced the sweetness and heaviness from the brownies (which are awesome) and the pie crust added some more texture to the whole dessert. I definitely recommend people who have a sweet tooth to pay a visit and have fun there!

Self-customized cinnamon roll

$8.26 (USD)

[4 toppings|without frosting]

[strawberries, brownie bites, pie crust, caramel sauce]

Rating: 8.5/10

Location: 816 E Pike St, Seattle, WA 98122

The best of all worlds!@Vegan Night Market

Recently, articles about the upcoming Vegan Night Market in Vancouver went viral in my personal news feed. This reminds me of my unforgettable gourmet night in the Vegan Night Market held on September 12, 2019; in “At the Waldorf”. I believe it’s now a good time to share my experience since the next night market, which shall be more or less similar, is coming back in December!

This night market I’d been to was organized mainly by “The Vegan Project”, participants could enjoy shopping, eating, listening to music, and more; simply by paying a minimum admission fee (aka donation) of $2. And of course, my focus through the night is on all the scrumptious food!

  • Say Hello Sweets
  • Chickpea
  • Lita's Mexican Food
  • Taybeh Food
  • The Rolling Cashew

These are all the things I had tried (actually there was so much more that I wanna eat!! but I was already full…), and they ALL TASTED GOOD. The ice cream was coconut-based and tasted really flavourful since strawberry and coconut always match well, the ice cream itself is creamy and the cone is crispy. The pita from Chickpea tasted awesome too, the crispy tofu wasn’t oily and you can freely add different sauces provided by the shop; the whole thing was much better than my previous experience in their restaurant. All the other savories are also just as good as they look like in the pictures and I definitely recommend vegans (or even non-vegans) to grab some food there. You’ll surely feel satisfied.

The next Vegan Night Market will be held on 19th December 2019. I want to go again so badly but I wouldn’t be able to make it because I’ll be back in Hong Kong already at that time… Those who are in Vancouver, you better don’t miss the chance!

Rating: 9/10

Location: 1489 E Hastings St, Vancouver, BC V5L 1S4 (At the Waldorf)

There’s a lot of stuff in my Pitaaa@Chickpea

Though my time in Vancouver is short, I still have a strong feeling that Chickpea is one of the most commonly known vegan restaurants in the city. I had actually tried Chickpea’s food from their food truck not long ago, but it was the first time that I actually visited their restaurant, so I was quite excited.

  • Cheers!

The reason I was having dinner in Chickpea is that it was my housemate’s birthday and she’s a vegetarian. As you can see from the snap on the right, most of us had ordered Pitas so I believe these shall be highly recommended for newcomers. The restaurant also serves a variety of cocktails, but I’m not a fan of alcohol so…I haven’t tried any. The portion of the Pita is quite generous and is surely enough to make you feel full; most of us find it difficult to eat by bare hands, you simply have to pour out stuff from the Pita to a plate and use forks and knives to eat.

  • My pita looks like a wide-opened mouth…

So, here’s another picture that shows my weighty Pita.

SABICH (GF) Pita $10.5
[Sabich: fried eggplant, warm yams, & warm chickpeas; Pita: fresh pita along with organic hummus, fresh vegetables tossed in olive oil lemon dressing, some spicy schug sauce and pickles]

The whole thing is quite tasty in general, you can easily have a mouthful of different textures and flavors. However, I feel like there are too many chickpeas and it gets boring after eating 30-40% of the Pita. Also, the sauce all goes down to the bottom of the Pita, which makes part of the bread too soggy and salty. The fried eggplants are also a bit too greasy for me, I didn’t feel very comfortable eating that as a typical weight-conscious girl.

Rating: 7.5/10

Location: 4298 Main Street
Vancouver, BC. V5V 3P9

Korean-Japanese Fusion, heaven!@Green Leaf Cafe

Japanese and Korean food are my two all-time-favorite Asian cuisines. Green Leaf Cafe is a Japanese and Korean fusion restaurant serving dishes that incorporate tastes from a variety of cultures, it’s exactly my perfect choice. The restaurant itself isn’t a purely vegetarian/vegan place, but they have quite a number of vegetarian choices for vegetarian diners to choose from, you can easily have meals with tofu; veggies; or eggs here, and my dining experience there is simply fantastic.

Since it’s my first visit to the restaurant, my approach is to try some of their signature dishes (which also sound the most appealing to me); including their quality aburi-oshis and good looking omelette rice. We also had a salad-pasta, which tastes so good too. Aburi-oshi is a kind of Osaka style pressed sushi, so it’s in a rectangular shape. Our choice today is “Crispy Yam and Avocado Oshi”, the crispiness of yam and creaminess of avocado matches perfectly and the sweet soy paste on top simply tops it off. While for their signature omelette rice, the egg is so rich and soft that it coats the rice very nicely; the garlic flakes just added a bit more layer to the dish and the curry is tasty. Last but not least, the salad-pasta is definitely a surprise, the greens are very fresh and the pasta underneath is linguine and is super yummy as well, they’re using kind of a citrus sauce to mix the two things together and it’s simply refreshing.

CRISPY YAM & AVOCADO OSHI $9
[Yam fritter, avocado, sweet soy glaze]

SALAD PASTA $10.5
[Fresh greens, oriental dressing]

HOUSE OMELETTE RICE $12
[Sweet & savory dem glaze, garlic flakes, tomato, chili]

Rating: 9/10

Location: 9604 Cameron St, Burnaby, BC V3J 1M2