A Spot of Tea

I am sitting on the couch, waiting on the high-pitched whistle of the tea kettle to announce that my water is ready.  I rarely drink tea, reserving it for days that I just don’t feel well or have a sore throat.  Today – a sore throat.  I have been feeling a bit run down since Sunday night.  I’m not sure if it was the weekend away, the lack of a good night’s sleep, or running 35 miles in the last seven days.  My guess is a combination of all.

I’m not sure exactly what it is about tea that I find so comforting when I’m not feeling well.  I think it’s just the process of getting out the tea-pot, filling it with water, and waiting for the whistle.  I love pouring the hot water over the tea bag, smelling the fragrant aroma, and watching the tea bag expand.  I like the anticipation of waiting for the tea to steep to the perfect strength.

Tonight’s selection is ginger peach green tea with a bit of honey.  I don’t know that they honey actually does anything for my sore throat, but I like the idea of it.  And it makes the tea just a little bit sweeter.  I don’t know that I fully subscribe the to the healing powers of green tea yet, but the hot liquid is definitely soothing.  I’m hoping that the sore throat doesn’t turn into anything worse.  A sore throat is often a precursor to a sinus infection and I certainly don’t want to be sidelined by one of those right now.

For now, I’ll enjoy sipping my tea, with the hopes that it and a good night’s sleep will help stave off whatever might be trying to invade my body.  And maybe a scone for breakfast.

Chicken & Waffles

It sounds strange, right?  When I first heard of chicken & waffles, I thought it was weird and I would never try them.  This is my initial reaction to a lot of things.  I need to be more open-minded.  A while back a chicken & waffles restaurant opened up in my city.  I’m not sure when I first became aware of it – whether I drove by or read about it.  It’s attached to a gas station.  Double weird.  It’s not actually connected to the gas station.  It’s not like a McDonald’s or Subway that can be entered through the gas station center.  Which begs the question, what was in this location before the chicken & waffles restaurant?

I have declined suggestions to eat there for quite some time.  Chicken?  Waffles?  I don’t understand how that would even work.  Then I started hearing glowing reports from friends who had eaten there.  Excellent food.  Menu items that didn’t include chicken or waffles.  I was still a little leery of the gas station location.

Over the holidays I was at a state bar reception and someone mentioned the restaurant.  It was decided that we would get together for lunch and try it out (although one of the girls had been before and had high recommendations).  As this conversation occurred right before the Christmas holiday, it had completely slipped my mind by the time I walked to my car after the reception.  Luckily, one of us remembered and sent out an email a couple of weeks ago.  We checked our calendars and decided on a date.  And that date was today.

I checked out the website yesterday (yes, I was a little surprised that there was a website) and looked through the menu.  Very tasty sounding dishes.  I pondered what to order.  Do I just go ahead and try the restaurant’s namesake dish?  Or order something “safe”.  I decided to sleep on it and see what I felt like around lunch time.

I make the four block walk with one of my lunch companions.  I figured walking was necessary if I was going to eat fried chicken.  We walked through the gas station parking lot, around the corner of the building, and into the chicken & waffles establishment.  It was not at all what I expected.  I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting, but not a restaurant with a water feature in the middle of it (albeit non-functioning, or so it seemed).  It was about 11:45 am and the place was already busy.  We were seated and waited for our other companion to arrive.

I looked through the menu and decided I would just go for the chicken & waffles.  Why not?  It’s not like I eat fried chicken wings every day.  And they’re chicken wings.  They aren’t that big.  I was wrong about that, among other things!  One of the girls had heard that they had a delicious sweet potato pancake or something along those lines.  She asked our server, and apparently you can get different flavors of waffle!  Including the sweet potato!  I decided that’s what I would try.  That made more sense to me than a sweet waffle.

I’ll admit – the food was awesome.  The wings were meaty, juicy, cooked perfectly.  The waffle was crunchy on the outside and light and airy on the inside.  It was topped with peach butter.  Mmm…mmm.  I still think the combination is weird, but I’ll go back.  Oh, and I ate everything on my plate (except the bones, of course).

The Best Thing About the Super Bowl? – Food!

No matter whether you are a die-hard football fan or have no idea what a first down is, almost everyone loves the Super Bowl.  What is it is about this event that brings everyone together?  Is it because of the game itself?  Is it because of the commercials?  No.  It’s the food!  People who have not cared to watch one regular or post-season game will party with the best of them, carefully selecting game-day grub recipes.  Food that appeals to everyone and can withstand cheers, tears and jumping up and down while shouting touchdown.

Everyone has a favorite team, but only two make it to the Super Bowl.  The level of interest can wane depending on whether you just love football, or you just love your team.  If it’s the latter, the game might not keep your attention, and food becomes the center of attention.

My husband and I have been watching the Super Bowl together for the past four years.  We have yet to have a party, but we always cook as if we are.  The first three years involved a pork loin chili that he labored over.  Accompanying the second year (along with our parents ) were ribs and a homemade apple pie – made-from-scratch lattice crumb-top crust and all.  It was tasty, but I have not made it since.  Very time intensive.  Last year we embarrassingly spent $70 on football fixings for us only.  Our new additions last year were chicken nachos with a tomatillo cheese sauce and homemade guacamole, and perhaps cheese dip.

This year we moved away from the chili but stayed with the nacho theme – pulled pork bbq nachos.  The first time I had pulled pork on nachos I thought it would be weird.  I’m not sure why I felt that way.  But I was wrong.  So tasty.  These turned out very well, with homemade bbq and nacho cheese sauces.  We made beef brisket sandwiches with an apple chipotle bbq sauce.  The brisket cooked all day and made the house smell so good.  I’m expecting an even higher gas bill than usual this month between smoking and cooking the pork on Thursday and the beef today.  Ah, well, it only happens once a year.  We rounded out the menu with guacamole made with roasted onions and tomatoes (although somehow I was the only one who ate any of it), and dessert (yet to be had) of Blue Bell ice cream with candy bits and homemade caramel sauce that unfortunately did not reach a very caramel-ey color.  However, it tastes like caramel, so I’ll take it for my first attempt.

This likely goes without saying, but I’m stuffed.  That will not stop me from eating my dessert though.  The 4th quarter is about to start, and I’m happy that the Packers have kept their lead, but there’s still a lot of time left.  I’m not so invested in the game that I will be upset or curse if they lose, but if I were forced to pick a team as “my team”, it would be the Packers.  Some might consider this strange considering I live in a city that serves as the home of another NFL team.  Don’t get me wrong – I support my home team.  They are great for the local economy.  But as for Super Bowl XLV…Go, Pack!

Honey, the Joneses Are Here…How Do I Look?

Last night my husband and I had some friends over for dinner (hence the lack of a post yesterday…if I do 2 today, that makes up for it, right?!), and with it being a Friday we were a little rushed for time.  However, the husband of the couple is a surgical resident and has a hectic schedule, so we were happy to accommodate.  We love entertaining and always carefully deliberate over the menu.  We originally started with a simple, quick menu since both of us had to work Friday.  However, that morphed into something a bit more complex when paired with the fact that tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday.  Based upon our Super Bowl menu, we decided to combine recipes and ingredients.

I wanted pulled pork nachos for Sunday, and the recipe for smoking the pork was a lengthy process (not to mention you can’t get a small pork shoulder at the store), so we decided on pulled pork sandwiches for Friday.  We bought our groceries Thursday night and my husband came up with a schedule to get the pork cooked.  His first idea involved keeping the gas oven on while we were at work with the dog in the house.  I quickly vetoed that idea.  Instead, he smoked the pork on the stove for an hour starting at midnight Friday morning.  Surprisingly, the wood chips did not smoke that much.  He came to bed around 1:40 am after putting the pork in the oven.  I had been happily slumbering for about an hour.

I woke up when he got in bed, and the aroma of the pork had already filled the house.  It smelled wonderful and my stomach started growling almost immediately.  However, I started to get a bit paranoid about the oven being on with no one downstairs.  I contemplated getting up to check things out, but dozed off.  I must have started dreaming as I thought I heard an explosion and immediately sat up in bed.  There was no explosion, but I did creep downstairs to ensure nothing was on fire.  All was safe, the oven was on low, and the pork looked delicious.

When we got home yesterday afternoon, in addition to getting the rest of the food ready, we had to chip away at the three inches of ice coating our front walkway and clean up the house.  It never fails that when we invite people over the house is a mess.  I always intend to start cleaning in the days prior, but it never works out.  While my husband labored over the walk, I went to work doing a half-assed cleaning job.  This involves a quick dusting, quick sweep, and water-only mop of the hardwoods (downstairs only), and a more thorough cleaning of our one full bathroom.  I like to pile things up – mail, bills, newspapers, etc. – so the piles have to be hidden.  This always results in the piles remaining hidden until I stumble upon them weeks later.  Always a great plan for keeping on top of stuff!

Regardless of our initial stress, everything came together and appetizers were ready before our friends arrived.  They made it safely into the house (although all of our hard work has been undone with the immense amounts of snow that have been falling for at least the last three hours), and seemed to enjoy our food.  We had great conversation, and it was an overall excellent start to the weekend.  Plus the house is now quasi-clean!

Devour Downtown: An Exercise in Gluttony

Twice a year a good majority of the restaurants downtown participate in Restaurant Week – aka Devour Downtown.  They all have a special three course menu for $30, and it is a great opportunity to try out places that you normally might hesitate to try because of price or cuisine type.  Depending on the price point, some of the restaurants offer three course menus for two diners for $30.  There are also $15 lunch specials.  The menus change each time and new restaurants are added.  See where I’m going yet?

It is such a great deal that I feel this inexplicable need to try to eat at as many of those restaurants as I can in that 2 week period.  It makes no sense.  I would never ordinarily eat multiple three course dinners in any given week, yet I do it without even thinking.  Don’t get me wrong, the food is usually tasty and worth the $30 (especially when you would ordinarily be paying at least twice as much), but eventually I start to feel a little bit bad about myself.

I can’t be the only one, though.  We had talked about going to Fogo de Chao the weekend before Devour Downtown started and figured it made no sense to pay $20 more than necessary.  In case you don’t know, Fogo de Chao is a Brazilian steakhouse that involves eating all that you can of various types of Brazilian-style meats brought to you on swords.  Talk about gluttony!  Since our location opened (2 years ago?), this was only our second time to go.  I think once a year is probably enough for me considering I’m not a big meat-eater, and really don’t like feeling like I need to be rolled out of the restaurant (ala Violet from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory).  I digress.

We tried to make reservations for Friday night and our only options were between 10:00 and 10:30 pm.  We looked at Thursday night.  The options were 5:00 or between 9:00 and 9:30 pm.  None of those were ideal, but we were determined to take advantage of the special.  We arrived downtown and could not find a place to park.  Apparently many others were taking advantage of the special menu week.  We found a place and walked the two blocks (as if we wouldn’t need the exercise!).  The restaurant was packed!  The internet was not lying to me when it provided such limited reservation options.

I tried a different restaurant last night with some girlfriends.  I only ate half of my key lime pie and brought the rest home to my husband.  (Thoughtful…or just trying to save calories?)  Restaurant week only lasts until Friday, and based upon the freezing rain and snow that have been coming down since 5:30  or so, I’m guessing I will be able to resist trying out any other menus.  I’ve got six more months to plan the summer Devour tour.