Posts Tagged ‘food’
Too much serious talk lately. Let’s lighten things up by talking about food. I’ve been eating good lately. Maybe a little too good. I don’t want to step on that scale until I fast and exercise some! I cooked some chicken breasts on the grill the other day. Also grilled some poblanos, tomatillos and onion to make a green sauce. Fill ed up some corn tortillas, topped it with Cotija cheese, fresh chopped cilantro and it was great. Had lobster tail for dinner on our 33rd wedding anniversary. Traditional meal with baked potato, asparagus and melted butter. Had a Wedge Salad before that. Wedge of iceberg lettuce, bacon, blue cheese dressing, tomato and a little red onion. Very tasty. Took the leftover lobster and chopped it up and mixed it with my version of elote. I grilled some corn on the cob. Cut off the kernels. Mixed it with some lime juice, mayo, cilantro pesto, and Cotija cheese. Added a little celery and some chopped up grilled veggies from the other nigh. Stuffed it all in a corn tortilla and loved it! I had a hankering for turtles (the candy not the soup) the other night. Made some caramel sauce, chilled it, put it over chopped walnuts, topped that with chocolate ganache, chilled it and they were delicious! But the caramel ran if I didn’t keep them chilled. So, a couple nights later, I made ice cream added the chopped up turtles to it and man, was that great! It was great. Went over to a neighbors house for dinner. He made pork tenderloin three ways, had sweet potatoes with pistachios, a very al dente green been salad, and a Jezebel sauce. Somebody else brought Chicken Liver Pate for appetizer and I brought Crepes Suzette for dessert. There was also Angel Food cake cupcakes with Raspberry cream frosting.
Again, been living it up too good lately. Time to fast and exercise, and then, get on the scale!
I saw an news blurb on TV the other day about how all this committed foreign aid to Haiti has not gotten there yet and I’m thinking to myself “well if we were to give Haiti a billion dollars all at once, how much would actually end up helping the Haitian people and how much would line the pockets of the people in power?”. What if instead of giving aid to countries in the form of cash we give them aid in the form of bulldozers, tractors, trucks, buses, equipment to build roads and pre-manufactured homes equipped with solar panels to generate electricity and hot water? Yes food and water are important, medical help too, but after all this time, the Haitian people are still out of work, living in shanty towns, rubble is still all over the place and there’s really no end in sight to when things are actually going to get better.
So let’s start shipping! Here’s some bulldozers and trucks, get busy. US workers, build some more bulldozers and trucks. Here’s some tractors, get farming. US workers, build some more tractors. Here’s some trucks, take the produce to market. US workers, build even more trucks. Where’s the market that you take the food to? Build some towns with solar homes manufactured in the US by US workers. Lets start building homes even if they’re being shipped overseas! Get some guys together and show them how to build roads, if they don’t know already. Maybe they just need the equipment. Let’s give them road building equipment. US workers, make some more road building equipment. So we’re not just giving them cash. We’re giving them the means to make their lives better.
So, the US government pays our companies the cash for the goods we’re shipping out. Our workers in the US are put to work. Everybody is making money here. Even the government gets some of the money back in the form of taxes! We give the products to Haiti, or whatever country needs them at the moment. The people in those countries get busy with jobs to do the things that need to be done. Everybody wins!
PJs Pub in Oak Creek, Arizona looks just like another bar from the outside and when you first walk inside. So, when I had another hankering for a cheeseburger, that’s where I went because I think they have the best burgers around. But when the waitress mentioned the specials, I decided to switch! The special I switched to was the Macadamia Nut Encrusted Halibut with Roasted Red Pepper Coulis, Couscous, Asparagus and Baby Carrots. Now, when’s the last time you heard a special like that in a bar? Never for me! And because it was something similar to what I would serve in my restaurant back in Chicago, a fine dining white tablecloth Bistro no less, I wanted to check it out and see how it compared. Well, it was outstanding! The fish was cooked perfectly and the presentation was carefully executed, not just thrown together! I ate every last bit and at $14, this was definitely THE buy of Sedona! I always talk about value for your meal in Sedona and this was the best that I can remember in a long time!
By the way, my wife had the Southwest Cheeseburger with Swiss, BBQ Sauce (in house), and Onion Ring and it was good. That’s what I was going to order before I switched. The place was happening. There was a Cowboy with his chaps on with his Cowgirl (I don’t know where there horses were parked), sports on TV, music playing, lots of people going in and out to the outdoor smoking area, happy smiling faces, pretty waitresses and bartenders , etc, etc. If you don’t mind the high seats and bar tables, check this place out for some upscale dining specials… and great cheeseburgers!
These are recipes of customers favorite food offerings from Burgundy Bistro. This restaurant was in business for 16 years in the south suburbs of Chicago before the original owners sold it. Sorry to say it is no longer in business, but the recipes live on! There are videos also available. Some made right in the restaurant’s kitchen!
The Recipe eBook is just $15
Don’t worry if you don’t have a Paypal account. It takes Visa, MasterCard and others!
I recently went to a supermarket and after shopping all around I ended up in the produce department. So, I want to buy 40 poblano peppers for a party I’m cooking for and what do I do? I grab a plastic bag off the roll and try to open it, but can’t. It’s too slippery, so I lick my fingers to add a little moisture and grip to open the plastic bag. When I licked my fingers, I got a most disgusting taste and wanted to spit the taste out. But I was in public and in the store, so just grin and bear it, I said to myself. Well, the next day I got a fever and diarrhea that lasted for 48 hours. Forget the Pepto Bismol. I finally took a couple tabs of Imodium and that locked me up for two days. Hallelujah!
So, what’s the moral of the story? Don’t lick your fingers when your shopping in a food store. I was pushing the cart. I was looking at food products all over the store. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people probably handled these things. And then I go and lick my fingers so I can open a plastic bag. Never again! If you’re in the produce isle, just pat your fingers on some of the wet produce that’s been watered by the sprinkler systems to get the moisture you need to open those slippery plastic bags. Some stores have sanitizer stations. Use them! My wife and I now carry wet wipes in our car and after shopping, wash our hands. And before we eat anything while riding in the car, we definitely wet wipe our hands.
I was standing in a Starbucks one time while my wife was getting a coffee. A woman and her young son came in after us. While the woman was at the counter placing her order, her son licked the handle on the door from one end to the other. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but I’d rather not have to get sick to get stronger. Lot’s of bad stuff going around out there. Be vigilant and be careful!
A Saturday night at Cucina Rustica in the Village of Oak Creek (Sedona, Az.) and it was packed. People filling up the outdoor patio and all the indoor dining and bar as well! And everything was running smoothly on all cylinders! We were seated and within a minute, our water was poured, bread delivered and our waitress showed up to take our drink order and explain the specials. Everything went like clockwork. Drinks, appetizer, salads, entrees and desserts. What more can you ask for? How about live music with a smooth electric guitar and cool vocals playing and singing Eric Clapton and Beatles classics? Yeah, that’s a nice touch!
The drinks were perfect. A Margarita, a Whiskey Sour and a Dry Southern Comfort Manhattan on the Rocks with Olives. After these we switched to beers and wine and everything was good! We selected the appetizer special of Lump Crab Meat with toast points, capers, olives and cocktail sauce. Good! The lump crabmeat was a little shredded, not so lumpy, but still tasted great.
For entrees, my friend ordered a Rib Eye well done. What can I say? The waitress put it in as Medium well and it came out just to my friends liking and he enjoyed it very much! I ordered the Penne de Don Quixote, which was penne pasta in a Chipotle Cream Sauce (spicy) with Chicken and mushrooms. Delicious! Lot’s of chicken and mushrooms and the sauce was spicy, but not overly spicy. My wife ordered the Veal Piccata. Their Veal dishes are very good. The waitress suggested switching the starch to Angel Hair Pasta and that was a good choice. My wife enjoyed her dish and I enjoyed the leftovers the next day!
All in all a great dining experience at Cucina Rustica. Lots of people, so lots of people watching going on. Great ambiance, great food, great drinks. You’ve got to check this place out and once you do, it will become one of your favorites!
My wife and I met 2 couples in the Home Depot parking lot to go to the Walk on Main Street event in Cottonwood. I got to Home Depot early and was sampling the fare from the food vendor that’s set up just outside the store. It was pretty good. Then my friends showed up and we had to leave. We had a great time at the Walk on Mainstreet event which included wine tastings from 6 local wineries, live music, a car show and art vendors. After wards we were trying to decide where to go for lunch. My thoughts were with the vendor outside Home Depot but most wanted to go to Page Springs Restaurant.
So, off we went. Page Springs Restaurant has been in the family since 1974 and its been around long before that! Now the family did sell it a while back. But those owners went belly up and its now back in the original owners hands. So they’re back to doing good and I think they’re going to be around for a long time (unless they sell it again!). We were given lunch menus, but other people at the table knew about things that weren’t on the menu. One of them was the pork ribs. So, I ordered the pork ribs as did two others. Another person ordered the steak sandwich, another ordered the Page Springs Special (a ham, beef and cheese sandwich) and the final order was for a Green Chili Burger. The rib dinners got salads with their entrees. One person ordered the broccoli cheddar soup.Three ice teas, one coke, one water and one beer. A slice of peanut butter cheesecake for dessert. Everything was great. The bill was $93, so with a 20% tip that’s $111 for 6 people and that’s almost $20 per person. For lunch. Wooo! I don’t know about you, but that is not a happy meal!
I figured if we ate at Home Depot, the bill would have been around $50 and would have been every bit as good. Value equals a good price for what you get and nowadays that’s more important than ever. Page Springs Restaurant has a nice view over Page Spring, its in a nice building that’s homey and comfortable, there’s waitresses and bartenders. You gotta pay for all that. So the prices have to be up there. It may not sound exotic, but the next time I’ve got a hankering for ribs I’m going to try the guy by the Home Depot for those Ribs and Pulled Pork, Beef Brisket, Hamburgers and Hot Dogs! When I do, I’ll write a review and let you know how that was!
The best fish and chips in Sedona! Without a doubt! Went there at 1:30pm on a Friday. Crazy busy. What recession? There was going to be a twenty minute wait but two seats opened at the bar and we were there. Got our food fast, even though it was busy. My wife had the Grilled Tuna Sandwich (bread on the side) and I had the fish and chips. Good tuna sandwich as always and the fish and chips were fabulous. I’ve had them all over town and this version is the best. Great batter on the fish, perfect waffle cut fries, great cole slaw, plus the tartar sauce was great too. Not a bad place for beer either!
What a great looking restaurant! I thought I was back in Chicago on restaurant row! But here I am in Cottonwood, Arizona! As you enter the front door, there’s a beautiful, gigantic bar on the right. The majority of the restaurant seating is on the left seperated from the bar by a half height wall that gives privacy, but still keeps the restaurant open. Along the wall are booths and next to them a row of tables for those of us who can’t fit in booths! The kitchen is open. With all this open space and potential for noise, the noise level was just fine and the restaurant was packed! It was a Tuesday… What recession? All the staff were smiling, happy, good looking and well groomed people.
Now for the food. When I opened the menu, I thought holy cow, look at all the offerings! How can they possibly do all this? There were four of us in our party. One ordered the fish special (Snapper), one ordered a pasta dish (Spaghetti with Garlic and Olive Oil), my wife ordered Shrimp Scampi and I ordered the Fish and Chips (Cod). And it was Tuesday night so that means its $9 to add on a six ounce cold water lobster tail to your entree! Two of us jumped on that, me included! I love lobster. So, how’d we do? I’ll get to that in a minute, but first our drinks. They had a good selection of wines and wines by the glass. My wife and I got glasses of wine ($7 and $8 each). Both delicious. A bottle of beer ($3.25) (nothing on tap) and a scocth and soda ($3.75) rounded out the other drinks. All good, reasonably priced drinks. We ordered a Tre Bruchetta appetizer which included three varieties – Shrimp, spinach and regular that came with two sauces – pesto and tomato. Excellent!
Now its time for the main entrees. My wife’s Scampi came with pasta, lot’s of pasta. But it wasn’t listed under the pasta dishes. It was good, but my wife was expecting shrimp in a lemon, butter, white wine, garlic sauce (scampi) with some kind of starch on the side. At least that’s the way we did it in our restaurant! My Fish and Chips were good. One piece of cod atop a bed of fries. The fries were not crispy. They were soft and limp. Not exciting for me. The tartar sauce was more like cole slaw, maybe it was! But you have to have tartar sauce with fish and chips and there was this white sauce and red sauce. So I tried scooping the “white sauce” out with my fork onto each piece of Cod I ate. I ate it all (Cod and Sauce) so it must have been good (It was!). The Snapper special looked great and the person who ordered it, also ate it all. And the other pasta dish was good and so plentiful it will make a couple of more meals at home! And what about those Lobster Tails for $9 each? One word – Fantastic! Perfectly cooked, sweet, delicious! We all split one dessert at the end, the Tiramisu. Instead of being made with the traditional lady fingers soaked in coffee liqueur, we got what appeared to be a pound cake base. Good cake, but kind of dry. Where was the coffee liqueur? But, we ate it all!
So, are you getting the gist of this review? We ate everything (except the fries)! Anything else left, we took home. Any of the complaints I had were petty. This was a great meal and I will be looking forward to going back or trying one of the other three restaurants this guy owns. They would be Grapes, Restaurant and Bar in Jerome, The Tavern Grill in Cottonwood and the Haunted Hamburger also in Jerome. He must be doing something right! Good job everybody!
If you’re looking for more than just eating at a restaurant, there’s always something going on at the Marketplace Hollywood Cafe in the Village of Oak Creek.
Opened in 1997 by Jeff and Michele Moore, both with a background in the film and television industry, Jeff as a prop master and Michele as a make-up artist, the couple used their collection of film and television memorabilia to decorate their restaurant in a Hollywood theme.
The restaurant offers special dinners, buffets for the holidays, group parties, Oscar parties, etc. The Hollywood decor is great and it’s always interesting when there’s live music or a special event happening.
One word sums it up: “Fun!” Although lunch is pretty much just lunch. The memorabilia is great. I like reading about the Twin Peaks stuff and just looking at the old posters can keep your mind going full tilt until the food arrives.
The lunch entrees consist mainly of burgers, BBQ sandwiches and ribs, fish, beef, and chicken sandwiches, pizzas, wraps and salads. For an appetizer there’s calamari, onion rings, and fries, to name a few. Entree prices are generally in the $10-$15 area, and the appetizer prices generally range from $6 – $10.
Include steaks, chops, fish, and Mexican food, a wide assortment of margaritas, martinis and wine; and add $5-$10 dollars and you get an idea of what the dinner menu is like.
MPC says it is revamping its menu to include healthier choices like vegetarian, organic, and negative calorie foods.
My wife and I go in there for lunch on one of your typical middle of the week, nothing going on, a typical lunch shift. It’s still a nice place to go in even if there’s no special event happening. Just look at all the movie posters hanging on the walls. A little eye candy to keep things interesting. The staff was very nice, friendly and very attentive. There were other customers, so some people watching too.
I ordered onion rings to split with my wife as an appetizer.
The onion rings came out first. Really thin cut, breaded of course. Our waitress assured us we were going to love them. Well, we liked them. We ate all of them. The onions rings come with either ranch dressing or cocktail sauce. I asked for ranch and got two dressing containers; way too much dressing for the amount of onion rings you get.
At $6 for an order of onion rings I was waiting for a big, gigantic, blooming onion. That didn’t happen. We got a small paper container of onion rings. They tasted good and dipping them in the ranch dressing was good too.
When I think about it, I’d rather get large onion rings, batter dipped and deep fried, the kind that you can take one at a time, dip and eat without too much fuss. These were kind of a pain to grab and eat, a big clump of them were stuck together, crumbs flying everywhere. But they were good!
For the main course, my wife got her Chicken Sandwich. It was the Apache with bacon, BBQ sauce and Swiss cheese. The bun was a beautiful Ciabatta roll and the sandwich was tasty. It would have been a good choice for a hungry guy. For me that would have been a great, filling, tasty sandwich that I would have had no problems paying $11.95 for, almost.
I ordered the Catfish and Chips. Lots of food. And it was good. They called this tempura battered, but I didn’t get it. Tempura usually means some kind of liquidy batter that kind of puffs up while you’re deep frying it. This just seemed to be breaded catfish pieces. But it was good. The tartar sauce was good and the fries were hot and crispy. The cole slaw was very good. The hint of cilantro in there is perfect. Great cole slaw.
I wanted to order some type of entree dish, but there is nothing like Chicken Marsala, Veal Piccata or a breaded pork chop with mashed potatoes and gravy on the lunch menu.
Overall, this was the best quality lunch I’ve had in Sedona (Village of Oak Creek) in a while. But this lunch, with tip, cost over $40 for two people.
When you have 4 million tourists going through town a year (in the good old days), with many of them never coming back, this might be an okay approach to pricing. But if you want locals to come back again and again, it’s not going to work. But that’s why Michele has a rewards card and offers many discounts. All you have to do is look in the paper, or sign up for emails.
And you can’t beat Wineaux Wednesdays! A free wine tasting and complimentary appetizers from 5 to 7pm. Its fantastic! Plus all the live music happening from Wednesday through Saturday usually starting around 6:30 or 7pm and going to 9:30 or 10pm is great. very now and then there’s a murder mystery dinner or belly dancers. You never know whats going on. So check out there website at www.mpcsedona.com for there calendar of events.