Disney's Epcot held its annual Food and Wine Festival.

Five years ago, I experienced the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot. It was an amazing experience as you get to try a variety of foods from around selected countries around this world. They had a Pumpkin Mouse Trifle that was a phenomenon. But I'm not here to talk about the Food and Wine Festival of 2011, I'm here to talk about the Food and Wine Festival of 2016.

When you first walk in through the doors to Epcot, you're greeted by Spaceship Earth and underneath that is the display for the Food and Wine Festival. You'll have to walk to the Pavilion to get to the Festival.

Once there, you can pick and choose where you want to start your food adventure. Since I knew we were going for the Food and Wine Festival, I ate a very light breakfast. We nabbed our first ride before it opened, the Three Caballeros boat ride in the Mexico Pavilion. From there, we headed off into a presentation of China. After we got a few attractions out of the way, it was time to go and sample some food.

Our first food stop was China. We were quite hungry by that point, well, I was. The one thing you have to remember about the Food and Wine Festival, they plates are small. It is the proper serving size, not the American serving size in which is triple the amount we're supposed to eat and the dishes run between $5 and $9 dollars a piece.

In China, we tried the Beijing Roasted Duck in a Steamed Bun with Hoisin Sauce. Michael tried it since I'm a vegetarian. I had a piece of the bread, green onions, and the hoisin sauce. His verdict on the Roast Duck, it was good, however, not as spectacular as he would have hoped.

I tried the Black Pepper Shrimp with Garlic Sauce. The shrimp, I gave to Michael. The noodles were delicious and very flavorful. But as you can see, the plates are small. It's the perfect size since you're able to sample the food and not leave feeling fun that you can't sample other plates.

Hello! It's been a while since I've updated the blog and since it's almost Halloween, I've decided to do  a small post on paper crafting.

Just this month, the Sweet Stamp Shop released the most amazing stamp set named Wizards. I've been quite addicted to Sweet Stamp Shop's stamps as they're super cute and super fun to play with and stamp in my Happy Planner. So, I went ahead and purchased the set with the intention of decorating the week I travel to Florida to visit the new Harry Potter attraction at Universal Studios, attend a conference, and visit my cousin who is working for Disney World.

So late last night, I did a little crafting to get my mind off the many maps and ancient texts I have to decipher of the Ancient Near East to determine the factors leading up to the Battle of Qadesh.

I pulled out two of my Sweet stamps, a couple of vintage wood mounted rubber stamps, Memento black ink, acrylic block, and a watercolour pad (I will list the materials I used for this project at the end of the post).

Aloha!

This post is coming to you with love from the island of Hawaii. As a historian, I could give you a full blown lesson on the real history of Hawaii, not the haole version they all want us to know, but I won't. Instead, whilst on my trip, I'll give you guys some tips on restaurants to visit.

We first landed in Kona on October 7 and made our way around the island to stay in the city of Hilo. We could have stayed at our condo/timeshare at Worldmark Kona, but our reservation wasn't until the next day and the reason we flew in early is because of airfare costs. The couple we were traveling with can't travel mid-week and the earliest they can depart was on a Friday. There were a bit of last minute changes, which is one of the reasons why we ended up booking a hotel in Hilo for one night.

If you happen to stay or take a road trip to Hilo, which is only about a two hour drive, take the time to visit Hawaiian Style Cafe. They feature local food in large plates at an affordable price.

We had three different dishes ordered. Since I'm a vegetarian, I ordered the Haupia (Coconut Creme) pancakes. There were two pancakes stacked on top of each other and have taken up the whole plate. It is topped with coconut creme, toasted coconut shavings, and whipped cream. If you're going to order this, I would say share it with another person or two. It's such a big pancake that you can't expect to finish it by yourself.

The next dish that was ordered was called the Mok-A-Saurus. The name of the dish alone told us that it was going to be big. It's the restaurant's take on the local favourite, Loco Moco. This is one of the few versions they had on the menu.

The Mok-A-Saurus is a bed of fried rice topped with Spam, chicken cutlet, kalua pork, hamburger patty, two eggs, and brown gravy. As a pescetarian/vegetarian, this is something I would not order and if I did, I would just be ordering the eggs, rice and brown gravy ... not this meat lover's heaven.

As said, it was quite big. I tried portions of it (without the meat) and it was delicious. It might seem too much with the fried rice and the gravy, but they both complemented each other well. I can't say what it would have tasted like with the meat, but according to Michael, it was heavenly.


Lastly, the other local favourite ordered was the Ahi Poke Nachos. You won't find this on their regular menu, but if you look at the specials, you will find it there. I really can't tell you what kind of sauce they used, what's on top, but from what I saw, the tortilla chips were topped with freshly caught ahi tuna, avocado, tomato, seaweed shavings, green onions, wasabi mayo, and possibly sriracha. I tried a couple of bites.... yes.... I had some meat. I know I said I'm a vegetarian, but I do occasionally consume fish as long as its caught, not farm raised.

The nachos were delicious and also full of flavour. The tortilla chips were crispy and light.