圣诞节快乐！

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you're having at least as much snow as we :) And in case you haven't been following - that's not my living room in Nanjing, it's in Montreal. The scroll has been hanging there for two years already.

I arrived here half a day late because I got stuck in Chicago overnight. At least they put me in a hotel. But I didn't make much use of it, because I really wasn't tired. I had managed to sleep on the plane from Shanghai to Chicago. So there I was in my fancy hotel room (without mini-bar! argh) and a $10 dinner voucher that I couldn't spend anywhere. Not that I would actually want the dinner you can buy for $10 at the Chicago airport. The 80yuan coupon I got in Shanghai, on the other hand, was thoughtfully invested in dumplings. So when I finally got to Montreal (funny aside - my plane neighbors on the last leg of the trip had also come from China. Everyone seems to live and study there these days. If you aren't yet, you're missing out on a trend) I was pretty jetlagged and had no concept of time whatsoever, but I had the most pleasant immigration experience ever. I was apparently the first new permanent resident of the day :) The rest of Thursday was spent as usual - planning a dinner, going shopping and ending the evening at BU (our favourite wine bar). Ok, I admit, without a three hour power nap I wouldn't have pulled through this day. Friday evening we had some friends over for Christmas dinner, which involved - of course - a roasted honey-glazed duck (with orange-chocolate stuffing) and, a first-timer for us, pan-seared fois gras. I think we did pretty well, although we got better and better when practising with the leftovers. I have to say, finishing a whole liver is quite a formidable task. I suppose I could also mention the scallops with quince chutney and orange-endive salad or the ginger-honey parfait with rosemary figs, especially the latter one was quite interesting. The figs were caramellized and the whole thing came with a drizzle of pepper-rosemary-honey syrup. The syrup by itself tasted rather awkward, but turned the parfait from nice into surprising.

Anyways, getting to bed at 3am when having been up since 5am (thank you, jetlag) is quite rough on a rapidly aging woman, so I pretty much collapsed after that and spend all weekend doing nothing. Worst of all - my stomach rebelled and I can't really eat anything anymore. Maybe the first two days with above mentioned dinner and a lunch that involved oysters and braised rabbit was a bit too much. It might also have been the cheese, which I'm really not used to anymore. So, we found the perfect cure and that was our Christmas dinner:

Just kidding.



The duck wings, pork tongue with spicy cucumber and steamed dumplings were our lunch. If you are in Montreal, you should definitely check out the new location of Qing Hua on 1676 Lincoln (close to Guy Concordia). The interior is not really authentic Chinese anymore, it's now spacious and cozy, you don't have to share tables with strangers anymore and the waiters are really courteous, but the food still is.