Curiously Carmen

Korres Pure Greek Olive 3-in-1 Nourishing Oil

April 3, 2019

For the past year or so, I have mostly been repurchasing my trusted Mizon Snail Repair Cream, which doesn’t really leave opportunities for as many skincare reviews. But as usual, my skin gets used to the product and doesn’t work as well as it used to – which is common for a lot of people.

To give my skin a bit of a moisture boost, I was introduced to the new Korres 3 in 1 Nourishing Oil. It is part of their new Pure Olive Oil line that launched this season for the first time outside of Greece.

What it says (taken from press release):

Velvety, luxurious oil without silicones for intensive nourishment of face, body and hair. Rich in organic extra virgin Olive oil and reinforced with a mixture of Vitamins C, E, F and omega-6 fatty acids, to improve the natural skin barrier, ensuring smooth skin with increased elasticity. The unique properties of Olive oil offer shiny, smooth hair, preventing breakage and frizz. Easily absorbed, non-greasy and with a fine scent, the PURE GREEK Olive 3-in-1 Nourishing Oil is ideal for all ages and all skin types.

Application: It is called a 3 in 1 oil because the oil is versatile and could be used in 3 places: face, body, and hair. I have been using this mainly on my face day and night, after applying my regular cream above. I usually put around 3 drops on my palm, rub it between my hands, and then pat it over my face.

The oil absorbs pretty fast and is very light weight, and lacks the heavy oil feeling. There is also a pleasant, neutral scent (not too feminine or masculine) that lingers around for a few hours too.

If you have dry hair or split ends, this would be a great product to nourish your hair with and to give it a healthy shine!

Overall, I like this oil and can’t really think of any negatives about it. If I was being picky, I could say that you have to be careful when dispensing the product because a lot could come out at once! Don’t completely put it upside down to dispense or your hands will get oily!

Yay!

Availability: Select Shoppers Drug Mart locations and online at shoppersdrugmart.ca/beauty.
Price: $60 CAD

Press sample featured. Opinions are own.

Cartems Donuts

April 2, 2019

I remember having Cartems donuts maybe like 6-7 years ago when a friend brought them to an university club event. They were delicious! Since then, I haven’t had Cartems so Latte and I went to go check out the Main Street location one evening!

The Main Street location was quite spacious, with very high ceilings. There was a friendly, good vibe going on in there and it would be a nice place to study or get some work done.

The bottom row of donuts are always vegan, so they do have a large selection of vegan donuts (one of the reasons I wanted to come back since I currently can’t have dairy). I was surprised that Latte wanted a vegan donut, but that’s better for me because it meant we could share!

Tea: We both ordered a tea with our donut. I had the herbal strawberry mint which was fragrant and warming.

Citrus glaze donut: This was my favourite out of the 3 that we ordered! The donut was thick and fluffy. The citrus glaze was subtle and gave it a nice, sweet tang. I’ve never had a citrus donut before but the flavours worked well with each other.

Maple walnut donut: This one was good too, but it was more of a savoury donut. It was topped with crushed walnuts and I tasted a hint of black pepper.

Vanilla bean donut: This donut was also good! It was the simplest one out of the 3, so we really tasted the quality of the donut. The donut was delightfully fluffy and moist.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that citrus glaze donut, so I took the boyfriend here a few days later! We ordered 1/2 dozen to bring back and tried more flavours.

The funny thing was that I decided to keep it a secret that it was vegan, so that he wasn’t bias in his opinions!!! MUAHAHA!!!

From left to right:

Vanilla bean: Reviewed above

Citrus glaze: Reviewed above

Chocolate donut: A classic donut, you can’t really go wrong with chocolate. The boyfriend loved it!

Forgot to take a separate photo of it, so this will do!

Tropical mint: The only donut that we did not like that day. The taste was just odd… it was a bit sweet but you get this minty aftertaste. We ended up scraping off the tropical glaze on top so we could eat it as a plain donut.

Salted caramel: This was the only ‘regular’ donut we had (aka not vegan). Since it contained dairy, I couldn’t eat it. He found it to be a lot more dense and not as fluffy, so he didn’t like it as much.

At this point, I was laughing inside and couldn’t wait to tell him this was the only dairy donut – MUAHAHA!!!

Berry hibiscus: This one was just alright…. it was filled with jam inside. The berry hibiscus donut wasn’t as fluffy as the other ones.

After the boyfriend ate all the donuts, I mischievously told him that they were all vegan except for the salted caramel! He was quite shocked and never would have guessed.

Cartems Donuts are amazing and they have very creative flavours! I would definitely recommend stopping by. They have a huge selection of vegan flavours which are arguably better than the regular, non-vegan ones!

Legend House Chinese Restaurant

March 31, 2019

A couple of months ago, I was on the hunt for restaurants with Lan Zhou beef noodles for myself and dan dan noodles for the boyfriend. I came across Legend House in Coquitlam and we finally checked it out a few months after!

Coquitlam isn’t an area where we normally eat in, but it seems like there are many new restaurants there now that condo developments are popping up like crazy over there. There is both paid and free street parking in this area.

We were expecting the restaurant to be really busy on a Friday night, but surprisingly, it was only half full.

At the entrance of the restaurant, they have a huge window where you can see the noodles and dumplings being freshly made.

Lan Zhou beef noodle: I was really surprised at how HUGE this portion was! Like seriously, for $7 in 2019… this was an absolutely steal.

Despite it being a huge portion, the soup was virtually tasteless… I know on the menu it said ‘clear broth’, but it tasted just like boiled water with a hint of vegetable flavour. I had to ask for some salt to give the broth a tiny bit of flavour.

Tasteless broth aside, the noodles were freshly made in-house and yummy. There was a good amount of seasoned 5 spice beef, wood ear mushroom, spinach, and vermicelli. I would have enjoyed it more if the soup had flavour, but still felt satisfied because the beef was good and so were the noodles.

Dan dan noodles: Omg, I didn’t realize my photo was blurry >=( Ugh!!! Anyways, the boyfriend enjoyed his dan dan noodles. They packed a good amount of spice and had a decent portion of pork.

For those who don’t like preserved veggies, it may seem like their dan dan noodles don’t come with it… but we discovered that they were very finely chopped with the pork. Talk about dedication to the chef who chops that up!

Xiao long bao: The XLB were very juicy and the broth was actually flavourful (unlike my noodle broth). There was a generous filling of pork inside too. The skin to meat ratio was proportionate.

Even though my noodle soup was bland, I wouldn’t mind coming back if I was in the area for their XLB. But I wouldn’t make the drive out here purposely again.

I would also like to highlight the service that day…. it was really good, for Chinese restaurant standards! All of the servers were really friendly. They came to refill our tea every 5 minutes and were attentive.

The XLB and service made up for the super clear and tasteless noodle broth (and the noodle bowl was pretty cheap so I wasn’t upset about it).

DD Mau Chinatown

March 27, 2019

DD Mau Chinatown has been on my radar for awhile now! I went to the original Yaletown location probably over 5 years ago, when they were just starting. Back then, they were only serving banh mi (Vietnamese subs) and I remember they were AH-MAZING.

So, it was time I finally tried their second location, and I brought Latte along with me! She has also been to the Yaletown location and enjoyed it.

DD Mau Chinatown is located on Pender Street, and it is easy to miss without the punny poster board.

The restaurant is quite narrow and dark inside without any windows, so we weren’t really a fan of the ambiance. Their tables were also these metal, stainless steel type tables reminiscent of surgical tables at a hospital.

But, that was quite minor considering how tasty and satisfying our food was!

Iced Thai tea latte: Latte started off with an iced Thai tea. She enjoyed it and had no complaints about it.

BBQ Duck banh mi with a fried egg add-on: For $15, this better be worth it! That’s the most expensive banh mi I’ve ever seen.

Thankfully, it was delicious and Latte enjoyed every bite. It was full of BBQ duck, and lots of fresh veggies inside. She was glad that she ordered this and was very satisfied with it. I’m glad to hear that their banh mi are still delicious (albeit pricey!).

Rice roll: The rice roll came with lemongrass beef, herbs, and vegetables. I had a few bites and it was delicious. The beef was very fragrant and the herbs just elevated the taste. It finished with hints of mango. So good!!!

Pho: For myself, I wanted to see how good their pho was! At $13 (2019 price), it was more than I was used to paying so I hoped it would be good.

And…. It was! The broth had a lot of depth and was savoury and flavourful. It came with a very generous portion of meat balls, rare beef, and flank – more than it looks in the photo!

Overall, we left very satisfied with DD Mau. I would definitely come back.

Elephant Garden Creamery

March 24, 2019

Elephant Garden Creamery has been on my radar for a few months now! It opened up last September, right before it got cold.

One sunny afternoon, the boyfriend and I went to try this place and it ended up being one of our new favourite dessert places (for both regular and vegan ice cream)!

Elephant Garden Creamery is located on Commercial Drive, so parking is a bit hard to find. The decor is white and minimalistic with green plant accents.

It was quite warm in here, they probably could have dialed up the AC a little bit! We did have to wait a bit because there were only two people working.

I was a bit disappointed to see that there was only one vegan/dairy free flavour offered that afternoon when the website had a few more.

It seems like their flavours change a lot, so if you’re really set on one flavour, I would recommend giving them a call first to avoid disappointment. But, the one vegan/dairy free flavour they had ended up being delicious as you’ll read about soon!

Milk tea ice cream (top): The boyfriend absolutely fell in love with the milk tea flavour, and couldn’t stop raving about it. There was a strong, authentic, milk tea flavour (makes sense because this place is Asian-owned). He definitely wants to come back to order this flavour!

Malted chocolate ice cream (bottom): The boyfriend wanted to compare their malted chocolate with Rain or Shine’s much loved version. It was tasty, but the one here doesn’t have any honeycomb in it, so he preferred Rain or Shine’s version more.

Mango coconut sticky rice: My vegan ice cream was delicious! With vegan/non dairy ice cream, sometimes you don’t get that richness because stores don’t use coconut milk/cream. I loved that this was rich but also dairy free.

There was some delicious mango syrup (which did not taste artificial at all) thrown in as well. I loved it and would come back for this flavour! The boyfriend enjoyed this too and said it was quite impressive for a vegan flavour.

Our first visit to Elephant Garden Creamery was a success. I hope that we will be back more in the future, and I’m glad we have another ice cream place added to our list!