Feb 15th - Palaak Paneer with Veggie Samosas and Alexandre Bilodeau's Olympic Gold Medal!!!

Veggie Samosas with Spinach and Paneer

Alex Bilodeau's GOLD Olympic Medal!

Dale Begg-Smith, the Big Suck who got the Silver sulking next to Alex in Yellow

We had tickets to a Victory Celebration tonight. Very strange really. We had thought all the medals would be handed out at the Victory Celebrations at either BC Stadium or Whistler but they aren't. We only saw one live medal and four from Whistler. It looks like the skating medals are done right away at the rinks. Booo. Anyhoo, watching the cutie Alex receive his gold medal was pretty thrilling. He marks Canada's first Gold medal won in Canada. Woohoo!

It couldn't have been more inspiring than this diminuitive, young, unlikely Quebecois skiier who looks up to his brother who suffers from cerebral palsy. Well, it would have been even more amazing, I'll admit, if Jennifer Heil had won. Women still don't get the equal recognition or funding in Canada that they deserve. But I'm just as happy that she won her silver! We didn't see her medal though. She received that on Sunday.

I took off early to meet D downtown afterwork but it wasn't early enough to wander too much. I had thought D needed to work longer but he had said that his office was fairly deserted by 4. Oh well. Anyhoo, we walked through Yaletown at he stalls there. Nothing too too exciting, just souvenir stands mainly, no pins :-(. I'm becoming what the media are dubbing a 'pin-head'. Though I don't go out and agressively collect. I keep the ones that come to me. Or as D likes to say 'You mean the free ones and the ones you find.' Yes.

There is stage near Marimekko clothing shop that has live music and dance most of the day. Capones has live jazz all day as well. The ambience is really great though. The streets are full and buskers are capitalising as they should. We decided to eat closer to the Plaza of Nations where we have to enter the security checkpoint for the Victory Ceremony.

On the way, we stopped at La Terazza, an iconic Italian restaurant on the edge of Yaletown. They have an external beer garden from their usual posh restaurant with a BBQ. They were selling Italian Sausage with sauteed onions and fennel. It smelled nice but the hamburger sized bun with the over cooked sausage that D got was not at all worth the 10$

We continued on to the Plaza of Nations where we ate lunch on Saturday. D got another snack. A meat samosa at the Maurya's stall. I love Maurya's restaurant on Broadway. Their curried eggplant is incredible. The food at their stall was not too exciting though but their meat samosa was getting a raving review from a south asian tourist who chatted us up on the topic. He claimed he was picky eater and he loved it. D agreed. It was plump and well seasoned.

I went to the other indian stall for New Indian Buffet. This time I got the Palaak Paneer instead of the curried chickpeas I didn't care for on Saturday. For under a tenner, 2 samosas and a serving of Palaak Paneer is a great deal and perfect for a munch on the run. Palaak Paneer is an aromatic stew of Spinach with Fresh Cheese. It is one of my favourite Indian dishes.

I'm worried I'm going to end up eating like this for the whole Olympics as we run from event to event. Over priced Vitamin water and beer with no gym is brutal.