Pig Tails and Aioli?!

On Friday, we went to dinner with 2 of our newish couple friends – and tried out Feast.  I had always been a bit wary of it – as I had heard they cooked up every part of each pig (or whatever animal).  But Boom had read a good review and it was ranked very high in Bon Apetite Magazine, so we all decided to be adversome and give it a whirl.

The food was quite good, heavy, but good.  I was not very adventurous, and had a salad (which was good and different) and roasted chicken (again, not exactly what I expected, but tasty).  Some of the guys had black (blood) pudding for an app and then the fried pigs stomach for the entree.  They claimed it was all very tasty.  I wanted someone (not me!) to get the pig tails and aioli (mainly to see how the pig tails look), but I had no takers.  Boom had a seafood night – both app and main course were kinda like pot pies full of seafood.  His main course had mashed potatoes all heaped on top of it with cheese on top of that!  Very yummy.

And dessert was good – Boom and I shared the poached pears with clotted cream.  One of the other couples had the molton chocolate cake – both were very yummy!  The last couple had the apple crisp thing, but I didn’t get a bit of that, so cannot comment on how it tasted.  It looked good.

Whenever Boom’s parents come back into town, we’ll take then to Feast.  He thinks his dad will really get a kick out of it.  Although the food was good, aside from taking Boom’s parents, we probably won’t be going back any time soon.  Just too many other restaurants to try…  Must be hard to keep a restaurant running in this city.

One last Restaurant Week visit

A young patron at the Opera told me Brasserie Max and Julie’s was her favorite restaurant in H-town (with so many eateries in this city, I always like to ask where people like to go).  And I was intrigued, as I had never heard of it.

It was on the Restaurant Week list, so R and I decided to give it a try (it was 2nd on the list – the first place did not have any availability).  Good company – celebrating R’s belate bday – and good food, you can’t ask too much else of a Thursday night.

It is kind of a sleeper restaurant – you don’t hear too much about it, but it was really good.  I would definitely go back!

Restaurant Week

(A slight misnomer since it is not just a week long, but I digress…)

We’ve been taking advantage of Restaurant Week this year (since we actually knew it was going on this year, as opposed to our clueless selves last year). We’ve been to Indika – my 2nd time and Boom’s first. It is a yummy place. and we went with a couple we had never been out with before and don’t know very well. We had a really lovely time! Hopefully we’ll be able to do it again.

And this past weekend, we went to The Glass Wall with S & J. They are so cute! We really love hanging out with them.

So we loved the company, but didn’t really love the place. My crab cake appetizer was quite good, but my tandoori chicken was way over-cooked and dry. My dessert was strawberry shortcake, which was good, but again the shortcake part was a little dry. So many people have said they love the place, so maybe it was just a restaurant week Saturday night mishap. I might try them again, but then again, there are so many restaurants I haven’t been to, I probably won’t be rushing to go back there.

Deliciousness

The in-laws were in town for about 6 days.  As I have said before, they are really great, so I can’t complain.  And, a wonderful bonus for me, both my FIL and MIL love to cook!  I guess my MIL is more technically trained in the culinary arts, but my FIL does really enjoy it.  So we ate like kings!  I think we are better staying in that we would have had we gone out…

One night we grilled kabobs – shrimp, chicken, beef and sausage.  and then roasted a ton of veggies – half were roasted with a very hot (spicy) pepper, which gave the veggies a nice heat.

Quite yummy!  My MIL decided to try the hot pepper, and it was really HOT!  She had tears going and everything.  Well, the two other fools (Boom and FIL) decide that she is just a wimp and they had to eat the hot pepper as well.  It didn’t go well for them.  and it was exceptionally funny to watch my FIL, as he was all, you’ve gotten wimpy in your old age, to my MIL.  But when he ate one of the hot peppers, it was teary time for him as well:

The other night we cooked in we made a cioppino – a sea food stew with a tomato-base.  I was in charge of the toast (and mixing the anchovie paste with the butter).  It was really very delicious!

In terms of sea food, it had mussels, clams, salmon, halibut, and calamari in it.  I think Boom and I could edit it (take out the calamari and add more veggies) quite easily.  It had a little heat to it, to where the spiciness hit you in the back of the throat, but nothing compared to the eating of the hot pepper the night before.

I think it is good for my waistline that they in-laws are gone.  I am not used to eating that well, all the time.  We almost did baked stuffed lobsters one night, and I am kinda glad we didn’t.  We can save that treat for when we are up on the Cape for 4th of July.  All and all, quite a nice visit.  But also nice to get back into our (Boom and Ruru and I) normal routine.  I guess sometimes your routine can seem boring, but when it is gone, that is all that you want back!

Sweets

Anyone who knows me knows that I love sweets! and sugar! and I enjoy baking, but sometimes it doesn’t quite as planned…

Earlier in the week, I had found a recipe for cinnamon rolls that looked fairly easy and good. Well, I decided I should try to make the iced cinnamon rolls a bit “healthier” and use half wheat and half white flour. Bad idea – if you are going to make cinnamon rolls, just do it all the way and make them with 100% white flour.

Here is how they looked before I baked them. Not too shabby, but when I was kneeding the dough, it was not soft and lovely to work with, it was rather stiff and hard! I guess that is what the wheat flour brings to the table.

And here they are after – they look basically the same, just with some icing (which was quite tasty) on top. They were kinda like little cinnamon roll pucks – not really soft, per se. Boom was a good sport and ate 2 of them (as did I) but I guess we were also pretty hungry.

Last night I made some brownies (from a box) and made myself a brownie banana sundae!

Under all that whipped cream is a banana and warm brownie – yummy! People who have cut sugar out of their diet have way more will power than me. And no-sugar diets are a sure-fail with me. I think Yarbs is trying not to have sugar as part of her pre – PV (Puerto Vallarta) diet. I think that could kill me, or at least cause me to do bodily harm to myself or some unfortunate bystander. Maybe someday, but I doubt it!

Land of 10,000 Restaurants

Already this week, I’ve been able to try two new restaurants – Dolce Vita and Indika. Very different, but both highly regarded in H-town, where restaurants stretch as far as the eye can see.

Tuesday night I met Jen, my friend from H-town Seals, at Dolce Vita. I hadn’t seen Jen since September, so I was really excited to catch up with her. She is also a crazy traveler – for work and pleasure, so finding a time when she is physically in Houston was quite a challenge. Anyway, she made a few suggestions, and Dolce Vita was one of them.

I had hear so many good things about it (“It is my favorite restaurant ever!” etc) that I was apprehensive that I would be disappointed, or that it just wouldn’t be able to live up to it’s hype. I started with the arugula salad. It was big! and arugula is so peppery that I definitely couldn’t eat the whole thing. Then I had the margherita pizza – it was quite tasty, but I kinda felt like it could have used a bit more cheese on top. And then we shared the baked berry thing a la mode.

And everything was good – but I wasn’t as blown away by it as some are. I guess pizzas seem kinda simple – so not too difficult to make a good one. We also split a bottle of vino – which accounted for not feeling so hot on Wednesday. It was such a nice night and we were able to sit outside – so that was a major plus. [The weather these days is great! I really love that is it cool, but not cold. I wouldn’t mind if it got a little bit colder, so maybe in the next few months…]

It was great to see Jen. She is a talker! I really like her and hope that we can get to know each other better. She is literally traveling all the time. In Oct, she was in H-town for 2 or 3 days total! Next Friday she is off to Peru (I am jealous!) to hike Manchu Picchu and then explore the rest of Peru – for 2 weeks! Fun times!

On Wednesday, I met Linsay at Indika for dinner (incidentally, Dolce Vita and Indika are on the same block!). This place is also highly rated, but I hadn’t hear too many people talk about it. (Another friend, Lori, did say it is a great place for veggies, so I wanted to try it.)

I got the Vegetarian sampler – it was small samplings of some of their veggie dishes. Pumpkin soup, mashed sweet potatoes, a “meat”ball type thing, a corn and spinach samosa (spicy!), and a couple other items. Almost everything I really loved – the goat cheese stuffed dates were the only items I did not enjoy. Everything was so flavorful! And not curry, but spices and just general tastiness. I love when places make veggie dishes as yummy as meat ones.  And of course the naan – it was a little crispier than I would have liked, but delish none the less.

Was really great to catch up with Linsay – she is dating J, a friend of a couple friends in RIC, which is how we got hooked up with them to begin with. She is so cute! She and J just got back from London – and had a great time. They are planning a trip to Panama in Jan – how cool is that?! J’s also remodeling his home – I am hoping it is done by New Year’s Eve so they can throw a party! Anyway, I really like Linsay and J – hope to be able to get to know them better as well (seems like we are always out of town when they invite us to do stuff!).

Tomorrow we are going to Del Frisco’s on a work-related dinner for Boom. Should be interesting – as it is a steak house. I guess I can have some lobster! And it is a mini-chain – looks like there are 7 of them in the nation. Will review that when I get a chance!

Current Obsession

I love these:

I’ve always loved Cheetoes and other type of cheese curl snacks, but these Micheal Season’s Lite Cheese Curls are definitely my favorite by far!

I bet Boom has maybe eaten 10 of these, and I have likely eaten close to 5 bags of ’em since discovering them soon after arriving in H-town.  The other days I really wanted some and didn’t have any in the house, and I found myself “jonesing” for them – like I am a hard core smoker!  I guess I could have a worse vice than pigging out and hording cheese curls for myself.

I am also really enjoying flavored drinks these days.  Honest Teas are awesome b/c they are barely sweet – not syurpy sweet like most teas.  And I am also really liking Wild Oats Limeade.  I think it is the heat (well, duh), but you have to constantly stay hydrated down here, and sometimes water gets a little old.

I am excited for lunch today b/c Yarbs and I are going to heat up some of the choc chip cookies I made yesterday and top them off with light whip cream, sprayed from a can.  That could be one of my most favorite homemade desserts.

Avoid this combo

Lots to post updates on and I guess I never posted past the first day of packing.  I meant to, but just didn’t happen.

We are back in H-town… Yesterday we swept, dry mopped and then wet mopped all the floors in the house.  Fun times.  Not that they were really dirty, per se, but more dusty, especially with Geroninmo coming in and building built-ins as well as changing the fireplace mantel.

(Here are the lovely new cleaning tools we bought – I think they are so nicely branded and pretty, in a way.  Hopefully that keeps me willing to use them…)

We had to clean all the floors b/c we want to paper them tonight before the movers come tomorrow.  I am just really afraid that our new floors will get hacked up with all the furniture and boxes coming in.  So we are gonna do what we can to minimize that.

Anyway, we took a break and had some cherries.  Cherries are my favorite fruit in the world.  Basically, the month that they are in season, I will eat and eat and eat them (washed and cold – I am not a big fan of cooked cherries, like in pies) until I am so sick of them that I can’t put another one in my mouth.  Then by the time they are in season next year, I will have missed them so and the cycle starts again.

So I washed a big bowl of them, and Boom maybe had 5.  I probably had around 50 of them.  Yum.  Delicious.  We did some more work and then decided to have some cheese and bread before dinner.  My cheese tooth was in full effect.  and I had gotten us some 10-grain, very hearty bread from Central Market.  I noticed that my tummy was kinda gurgling, but I ignored and just continued on with my cheese and bread snack.

After showering, my tummy was in full revolt.  I had the worst tummy ache I’ve had in recent history!  I literally had to go immediately to bed, only to awaken a couple hours later with an aching tummy.  I guess my intestines / stomach didn’t like the combination of cheese and cherries.  I was a tooting machine last night.  Good thing it didn’t bother Boom or Ruby – they were sound asleep when awoke again.

Now I am rather wary of cheese and cherries – I will really have to show some self-restraint in the future.  But please learn from my mistake and never mix the two!

Food these days

Although we moved down to H-town will just the bare necessities, we are  getting by.  I am cooking a little, mainly when Boom is around, but also just to eat healthy.

Yum!  A poor man’s succotash over spinach and French lentils… used organic frozen corn and edaname, and just tore up some spinach (the heat from the lentils and succotash wilts the spinach), and put it all over French lentils.  Has been my lunch for the past 2 days!

A day or so before we left Richmond, we went to the local healthy grocery store, Ellwood Thompsons, and grabbed dinner.  I had quinoa topped with their fancier succotash.  Since then, I have been a little bit obsessed with making it – I have already made it once with quinoa for Boom.  I think he liked it, but that it didn’t fill him up all the way.

That is the problem these days – since I am not cooking meat, Boom is growing thinner and thinner.  I feel kinda bad, but I do think he eats meat at lunch and when we go out to eat, which is fairly often.

I wish I would grow thinner and thinner – but my crazy cheese tooth isn’t helping that any…

Today I finished all but a little nub of the cheese.  Figured I could save that for Boom tonight – likely should have saved him a little more – opps!

Why I am not Vegan

I like to cut (and eat) the cheese too much!

Wednesday:

Yesterday:

Lovely hunk of cheddar with stripes of blue cheese. Now whoever came up with the idea of putting cheese inside of cheese was a genius!!