Culinary event in Toronto: Summerlicious 2019

We are the type of family that loves good food,... and we have found good food in restaurants, joints, ribfests, street fests, and street foods.

Have you heard of Summerlicious? This is a food festival that happens each year in Toronto. A lot of great restaurants offer a 3-course-meal limited menu at a "prix fixe". This year the prices for lunch are $23/$28/$33 and the prices for dinner are $33/$43/$53 - drinks and gratuity are separate.

credit: Summerlicious website

There are a lot of options for you to choose from: cuisines and flavours from all over the world, from classic to contemporary styles,... you name it!

Summerlicious website has a list of all the participating restaurants and their menus. Not so sure about which restaurant to choose???,... go to the website and select your preferences from the searching tool: type of cuisine, location, price or even the name of the restaurant. Click here for the website.

This year we decided to go to the Beaumont Kitchen located inside Saks Fifth Avenue at CF Sherway Gardens. The ambience is elegant with whimsical accents.

Look at our choices:

For the first course: Arugula Salad with roasted peaches, candied pecans, mint, feta with honey vinaigrette;

Second course: Baked Salmon with broccoli, chickpeas, tzatziki, pickled turnips and puffed rice;

Credit: Beaumont Instagram 

Dessert: Caramelized banana stuffed crepe with Haagen-Dazs extraaz banana peanut butter chip ice cream, candied peanuts and a chocolate drizzle.

Needless to say that the food was scrumptious and we had a great time at the restaurant. Isabella went with us and she behaved beautifully (one can't predict when a toddler will decide to have a melt down, right?), she had pasta with tomato sauce. She was wearing her birthday dress (click here to see Isabella's Birthday party), and she was not messy at all and the dress was in perfect condition after finishing eating - unfortunately there are no pictures of her :(

If you like contemporary Canadian cuisine this is a great option.

Summerlicious 2019 runs until July 21, so there is still time for you to check it out!

Have you already been to Summerlicious this year or in past editions? How did you like it?

Isabella's 2nd Birthday, a Minnie Mouse Party!

Hi there,

Isabella turned 2 in the end of May... can you believe it? To be honest, I can't,... time is going by so fast. I look at my baby (who is no longer a baby) and I see a little girl, a smart, confident, sweet little girl,... that loves to play and take care of her big sister Kiki,...

She is my everything!

Isabella is not allowed a lot of screen time. However she watches a few baby/toddler shows: Wiggles, Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She loves all of them, but lately she's been really excited about Minnie Mouse, or as she says "Mimmie". So for her second birthday I thought that it would be fun to throw a Minnie Mouse themed party. Also, I thought it wouldn't be difficult to find cute and inexpensive party decoration.

With that in mind I started the search for her outfit and once I found the dress I ordered the hair bow from Brazil.

We ordered the invitation from Inspired by You Designs and they did a fantastic job, as always!!!! They created exactly what I was looking for in the perfect color scheme. We didn't print invitations this time, it was all virtual.

I found these water bottle labels online and we customized them for Bella's birthday party,....

We hosted the party at our place, and we ended up preparing most of the food at home; We served pulled pork sliders, vegetarian frosted layered sandwich loaf, veggies (tomatoes and carrots) & hummus. As for sweets we had brownie bites, M&Ms, passion fruit mousse and overnight oats.

You might be thinking: 'it is different (not to say odd) to serve overnight oats in a birthday party!',... and you might be right hahaha,... but we were thinking about the birthday girl -  Isabella has never had any refined sugar or sweets so far (and we intend to keep this way for a bit longer), so we wanted to have something that she really loves eating. We served them in little cups with spoons. It was a huge success: everybody in the party asked us for the recipe. If you guys want the recipe, I am happy to share it with you, jus leave us a comment here!

Isabella's Godmother baked the birthday cake. It was a Kit Kat cake with M&Ms,... OMG,... it was delicious and beautiful. She is not a professional baker (although I strongly advise her to start a business in baking!!!) and she took the time to do it for us. Thank you so much dinda Lu!!!!

Isabella stayed up late that day enjoying her party,... she ended up with tomato seeds and oats all over her dress, but it didn't deterred her from dancing until the last minute. I was not expecting to have a toddler, who didn't nap that day, in such good mood and showing her dance moves by 9pm!

We want to thank our friends that came to celebrate with us and again a huge thanks to Lu and Ana (including husbands) for all the help in organizing and setting things up for Bella's birthday party. We have no words to thank you enough!

This is one of the few pictures with the 3 of us!

The birthday girl and her sister dressed to impress!!!!

This selfie was taken at the end of the party,... when Isabella had her dress (and face) covered in cherry tomato seeds!

Again,... a big thank you to dinda Lu and tia Ana!

Invitation: Inspired by You Designs
Party decoration & balloons: Party City
Isabella's dress: Walmart
Isabella's hair bow: Menina de Laço
Mom's top: Guess