Lindt Chocolate Outlet Boutique + Meeting Tessa & Scott

Lindt all started by a pair of father and son in Zurich back in 1845. A few days ago, I had the honour to attend the grand opening event of BC's first Lindt Chocolate Outlet Boutique at Queensborough Landing in New Westminster (805 Boyd St.) and met Canadian's super cute duo, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. I'll let the pictures speak a bit: 

Lindt Outlet in New Westminster

Finger Food

Drinks




  Not only were there boxes of chocolates, but also a ton of  individual Lindor balls that you can buy by weight. I never knew there were so many different kinds;I was only familiar with the red ones - milk chocolate.



Black wraps = 60% cocoa dark chocolate



Gold wraps = Lindor White: white chocolate, Green wraps = Lindor Tulip: milk chocolate shell with white chocolate center

Making fresh milk chocolate Lindors one by one 

They showed us how the Lindors are made by hand. Seems quite tedious and tiring having to hold that thing and slowly filling in the shells one by one!

Lindt is a sponsor of Skate Canada and so 2010 Olympic gold medalists ice skaters, Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, were there. The choreographer of their winning dance, Kurt Browning (four-time World Champion, four-time Canadian national champion) was also present. All 3 of them were very friendly, nice, and funny. It was an honour meeting them as I love watching them on the ice and I love figure skating myself too.

Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue, Kurt Browning

Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue

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New Richmond IKEA



Chocolate covered marshmallow
from Ikea

 April 25th was the grand opening of the new IKEA store in Richmond. That day, Ikea gave out a range of prizes from hot dog vouchers to gift cards of values up to $250 to the first 1000 people in line. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend their grand opening day, but I visited their new store last weekend. It is located next to the old store and upon entering the new one, I was surprised that I was greeted with food sampling! So while you're shopping for furniture, home decorations, and storage ideas, you can do some grocery shopping too thanks to IkeaFood.

I've always loved going to Ikea as it gives me inspiration to rearrange my room in a better way as well as innovative ideas for storage. I actually really like looking at the different show rooms, similar to how I like touring my friends' houses. The new Ikea is definitely bigger, with more show rooms and a bigger restaurant too.

One thing I especially notice during this visit is shown in the picture below. You can take all your light bulbs and batteries for recycling at Ikea. I've always wanted to recycle my dead batteries as they are classified as hazardous waste, but I did not know where to recycle them. So while you're shopping for new items for your home, you can also clear out old light bulbs and batteries.

Later that day, I met with my friends and they had a bar of giant Toblerone. I had to use a real hammer to get a piece. Sugar overload that day!

Giant Toblerone

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T&T Green Tea Cake Pastry

As I've mentioned in my previous post about Bon Crepe, green tea is one of my all-time favourite flavours. My mom surprised me with a green tea cake pastry from T&T today! I think this is one of their rather newer products as I've never seen it before. I have definitely noticed that T&T have been constantly creative with their products and developing new products for consumers.

T&T Green Tea Cake with
pastry surrounding

I don't think I've had cake with a pastry surrounding it before, so I was very excited when I first saw this. It looked extremely good to me and I do really like how its wrapped in a crust-like pastry, which adds a twist to typical cakes. Indeed, this was very good, but I wouldn't say extremely good. Inside, the cake is soft and moist at just the right level of sweetness and a tasty green tea flavour.

The outside of the cake makes the cake more interesting to eat as it adds a bit of crispiness to it. However, I think I would enjoy just the green tea itself without the pastry just as much as the pastry is more on the oily side. I try to limit my consumption of things that make my fingers oily as that adds extra calories. Nevertheless, a slice of green tea cake with pastry once in a while is nice for a change.

Bon Appetit! 

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