The Birthday Treats Continue Into The Olympics

Just when I thought my birthday celebrations couldn't get any better, they did. My boy has really outdone himself this year.

But, first, I had to walk the gauntlet (which to me is just a really long distance being hungry. There's a reason why the Food Bank is my favourite charity to help out with!) But I wasn't hungry for long... my boy got tired of my frequent outbursts about food, and how it would be nice to stop for some food, and how much I like fries with lots of potato in the middle, and... you get the idea.Well, Beard Papa's Fresh N Natural Cream Puffs saved my life. It was big, fresh, and filled with oh-so-yummy green tea cream. My boy doesn't like green tea one bit, so this one was alllllll for me! (No complaints here!)
Then we walked over to see the giant welded men statues. There is a whole group of them and they are all doing different things. It's quite fun.
You can still see them in the distance from the inside of this restaurant called Raincity Grill which, by the way, is excellent. You'll see...
It began with tiny round sourdough rolls (that I wouldn't call home about), followed by giant saucers of creamy squash soup. There's hazelnut shortbread crumbled on top, and that green stuff is parsley. I'm not sure what that mound of brown stuff is, but it was nutty and tasted good. We suspect it's some kind of chopped up hazelnut or something like that. Either way, it tasted really, really good in the soup.

It was such a large serving of soup that I couldn't finish it all! Unfortunately, the take-out containers are biodegradable boxes that are not designed for liquid, so I couldn't take it home. I tried to finish as much as I could before I reluctantly let the rest go to waste. Poor, poor delicious soup!
Next up was the main course. I ordered the mushroom linguine and I was surprised to find that it was not some saucy gloop. Instead, it was a neat pile of linguine bordered on both sides by generous mounds of different mushrooms.

I can't describe to you how delighted I was to see so many different varieties of mushrooms. I go to Granville Island all the time to admire the mushroom varieties on sale, and imagine trying them all one day. Well, today I tried most of them and I can safely say that they are all delicious!
My boy ordered the lamb cheek. It was tender and juicy, and it came with pureed potatoes (soooo good!), pureed carrots (which are surprisingly sweet and reminded me a little of childhood), little golden onions, sauteed mushrooms, tender carrots, and roasted fennel root. He loved it, but he would have preferred a different cut of lamb since he finds the cheek a little fatty for his preference.
This was my dessert. It's hazelnut cake with a poached pear, pear sorbet, a rich alcoholic cream sauce, whipped cream, and a generous topping of walnuts. I couldn't believe I was eating it. I love pear flavoured desserts and this was heaven for me. I'm still surprised I ate it. It doesn't seem possible that such a scrumptious dessert could exist for me to consume. It even had tiny cubes of a red, fruity jello on the side as decoration...
My boy's dessert was an eyeful. It's chocolate mousse, but it's paired with so many other wonderful things that it begins to go above and beyond my wildest expectations. For goodness sake, there's RASPBERRY POWDER on the side! I can only imagine that they freeze dried real raspberries and ground them into a powder form, but I was eating it like a slow motion drug addict. I looooove raspberries and these tasted like concentrated real raspberries in powder form. *swoon*

It's also decorated with a tangy raspberry? cherry? cranberry? sauce, some kind of heavenly creamy nut ice cream, walnut brittle, and some crunchy chocolate crisps? bar? cookie? I don't know what to call it.
After dinner, we headed to Vanier Park to check out the new spotlight attraction. This is one of the recent additions in preparation for the Olympics taking place in Vancouver.
Every ten seconds, the spotlights move into a new configuration. My boy says that you can go online to design your own configuration, and it will be entered into a queue to be used for the actual configurations being shown.
I thought this was a really neat addition to Vancouver night life. It brightens things up, and it's really lovely too- definitely makes for some great photo ops.In Stanley Park, we spotted another Olympic-themed photo op. These neon blue olympic rings look pretty snazzy over the water.The look even cooler when the car is in motion!

Have a great day!