snowed in...

or should i say, "snowed out?" yip... it's 6:30am... i'm up and i'm ready to head out the door for school. i put on my gear, opened the door and what did i see? a winter wonderland! vancouver's been hit hard overnight and blanketed with at least 5+cm of snow! so mum comes running out of the bedroom and says, "have you heard? the college is closed today!" my reaction? a smile and a pumping fist! wooohooo! don't get me wrong. i love school but whenever you're given a freebie day off during the week, you're definitely going to savour it – even if you're stuck inside all day by the snow! and for some reason, a day off is so much more special when you're not expecting it. the only down side to this is that i wish i could've known last night so that i could've slept in! oh well... i'll still take it... grudgingly ;).

yesterday and sunday, i attended the BC Foodservice Expo, western Canada's largest hospitality trade show at BC Place, to watch the finals of the Iron Chef competition. it hosted many top chefs from around the lower mainland and BC. boy... was i impressed! i was in absolute awe at some of the mystery 'black box' ingredients and the abilities of the chefs to pull out magic from their hats. from python – yes, i said python – to kangaroo and gator, all dishes were mesmerizing. but what really blew me away was the mystery ingredient in the championship round. are you ready for this? are you sure? CAMEL tenderloin and CAMEL sweetbreads! you weren't ready for that, were you? how do you even go about tackling camel??? well, that's what makes these two competitors, professionals. watching these two go at it was inspirational. boy vs girl... hotel vs hotel (Marriott vs Fairmont). and interesting enough, both competitors were chinese. way to represent! ;) both were amazing to watch – so calm and so composed the entire way through. but in the end, only one chef's cuisine reigned supreme and that was Anna Yeh from the Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel. i hope i got her name right. my apologies if i didn't! anyhoo, i learnt a lot from watching this competition and all the different competitors' styles of execution and final presentation. in the end, the winner, Anna, represented best. as the saying goes, she was calm, cool and collected throughout the competition. she even threw in a few smiles every so often. that's when you know that somebody loves what they're doing... even when the pressure's on. as i said earlier... inspirational...