Day Drinking With My Boss - 4.24.2009

My boss, we'll call her The Boss for the sake of anonymity, and I had lunch at Udipi Cafe on Friday. Indira tells me that this is the best and most authentic Indian food in the area. It's all vegetarian, which is an added bonus. We started the meal with a large Indian lager. It was light but not watery. Delicious!



The Boss did all of the ordering. She was born in raised in India, so I trusted that she would make good decisions (or at least better choices than the fish cakes at Mi Mi). I have no idea what this dish is called, but it was delicious. The white things are steamed rice patties, but they aren't "ricey". They are really light and fluffy and have a smooth consistency, not all at all dense or granular like rice. The red sauce was a soup-like mixture of pureed lentils, potatoes, and vegetables. The rice cakes are dipped in the sauce.


This is a paper thin crepe made of rice flour filled with a mixture of potatoes and spices. Awesome!

Another delicious dish - I think that it is called Uthappam (or at least that is what Google tells me). It's a potato pancake with onions and peas.


Here is The Boss eating a big mouthful of food.


And here's dinner... I made chicken enchiladas with Mexican rice and black beans. Not as good as lunch, but still not bad.

Please visit Udipi Cafe! They are located at on East Dublin Granville Road in the Beechwold strip mall.

Going forward, I am boycotting Barley's food but not their beer - 4.23.2009

Snack time - baby carrots. I love baby carrots. They would have been better dipped in hummus but I didn't have any on hand.


Lunch time - Ian and I went to Barley's in Grandview for lunch specifically so that we could pick up a jug of Scottish Ale for Tony. FYI - They sell their draft beers to go in glass jugs that keep the beer fresh for 48 hours. I'm not a big beer drinker but I love the occasional Scottish ale. I've never had a great meal at Barley's but I've never had a bad one either... Until today. I ordered french onion soup. I've had it there before and it's always been great. This could have been great but apparently the cook was too lazy to actually put this under the broiler. The soup was warm, the crutons were still crunchy (gross), the cheese was barely melted.


Mashed potatoes are one of my yop 15 foods and I love the red-skin variety. Barley's serves buttermilk redskins and they are usually good. These were okay, but not really warm. And why the hell is a side of mashed potatoes being served on a lettuce leaf? Really, I have no probably with my potatoes actually touching my plate. I would actually prefer it that way.


Ian got chicken fingers and fries. I usually love Barley's fries. Funny thing is that their fries taste like ass when they are served at room temperature.


At least I had fun with my dining companion, even though the food sucked.


We ordered Flyer's pizza for dinner. I love Flyer's. It's dependably good and it has the "mom and pop" taste that I oh so love. We got cheese pizza and breadsticks covered in provolone.


Tony ordered an Italian sub and commented that he liked the container that it was delivered in. I guess he's getting sick of my hasseling him on this blog because he agreed that I could photograph the food but not him. Tony is a punk-ass.

A Very Important Message From Ian James Stewart

"Hello. My name is Ian James Stewart. I have a deep passion for consuming edible items that result in my tongue turning a different color. These items include (but are not limited to) lollipops, PEZ, popsicles, and gumballs. I recently discovered that green ice cream cones also have this effect. I would like to share with you the results of my having consumed a green ice cream cone recently."

"AAAAAAHHHHHH, SEE MY TONGUE? IT'S GREEN!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! MY TONGUE IS GREEN!"

"I thank you for your time. Sincerely, Ian James Stewart"

Breakfast, Post-Operative Puppy, and Tuna Casserole - 4.22.2009

We adopted our dog, Shadow, from a shelter 9 weeks ago. He went for his first vet visit on Tuesday and got a clean bill of health - except for his teeth. His dental care was obviously neglected for the first 5 years of his lift and he had some major tartar build up. The kids and I dropped Shadow off at the vet again the next morning so that he could have a deep dental cleaning. We had some time to kill before school, so we went to First Watch. Here's Ian with his beloved pancakes. Ian asked for coffee, and I told him no. We reached a compromise and he drank Diet Coke out of his coffee cup.

Connor's not a morning person and you can see it on his face in this picture. Connor had a three cheese omelet with a huge side of bacon.

Here's my breakfast. Two eggs over easy with turkey sausage and whole wheat toast.



I know that there are a lot of food snobs out there who would declare tuna casserole to be "disgusting" or "trashy" but it's one of my favorite foods. I make my casserole new-school style with penne, sharp cheddar, albacore tuna, peas, and sour cream. I have nothing against the old-school style of tuna casserole though. As a matter of fact, my mom makes a kick-ass casserole with chunk lite tuna, roux with milk and velvetta, and mushroom.



I've been married for almost 9 years and in that time, Tony has never consented to take even a small bite of tuna casserole. He has no idea what he's missing!

Here's the end product - with a heavy dose of cracked black pepper.

Shadow had to be put under, tubed, and put on an IV for his dental cleaning (yes - his teeth were that dirty). Once the vet took a good look at this teeth, he saw that one of the back teeth had a fracture and pulled it. Here's post-operative Shadow. Poor guy.

He stumbled around for a while and slept soundly all night.


Okay, this picture isn't for the faint of heart... Here's Shadow's tooth. It's HUGE! I jokingly told the kids that we needed to put in under Shadow's pillow for the Doggie Tooth Fairy.

Tuesday, 4.21.2009

Okay, I didn't take many pictures of food on Tuesday. As a matter of fact, I only took one picture of food and this is it. My mom and stepdad came over for dinner and we ordered food from Iacono's. I love Iacono's pizza. Sadly, we were halfway done eating before I remembered to take a picture so you are basically seeing the leftovers here. We ordred a pepperoni pizza, a second pizza with half cheese and mushrooms and ham on the other half, a veggie basket with fried mushrooms/cauliflower/zuchinni, and chicken fingers.



Three of my favorite goofy goobers in the entire world - Ian, Steve, and Connor.



I'm pretty sure that Connor took this picture of Ian and I'm pretty sure that Ian is getting ready to punch Connor.



Ian took this picture of Tony. I am sure that Tony is trying drop his signature scowl but Ian caught him still grinning a little. One of these days we'll catch Tony actually smiling in a picture...

Sounds Like Someone Has A Case of the Mondays! 4.20.2009

Ian asked to use my camera on Monday and I gladly let him. He knows how to navigate YouTube and several gaming web-sites. He also knows how to open the camera application on my BlackBerry and takes pictures with my phone. He's also quite handy with my digital camera. He told me that he was going to take pictures of "everything in the whole house". The result? He took about 200 pictures in an hour! About half of those pictures were of the episode of SpongeBob SquarePants that he was watching. Here's his picture of a Venom toy and some random LEGOs.


I love to make homemade chicken stock, but it's a little time consuming so I don't make it very often. On Monday, I had the ingredients on hand and some extra time so I made stock. You can throw whatever aromatics and flavors that you like in the pot. I like a combination of onions, carrots, celery, garlic, cracked pepper, and Kosher salt. The most important ingredient is chicken on the bone.


After an hour of simmering, I had boiled chicken and chicken stock so I decided to make chicken and noodles with carrots and peas. Good stuff!



Connor opted for pasta with marinara sauce on his favorite placemat.

Sunday - 4.19.2009

Breakfast with Ian. His is on the left and mine is on the right. I've grown very fond of Thomas' Multi-Grain English Muffins.



Pizza.... I love pizza. I especially love home made pizza. This is one of my favorites - homemade basil pesto with fresh mozzarella and thinly sliced tomatoes.


This pizza was so good that it deserves more to have more than one picture posted.


Tony's pizza... 1/2 pepperoni with tomato and 1/2 extra cheese.


Yummmy!

Saturday - 4.18.2009. P.S. Don't See The Movie Adventureland

I don't know what my problem is. First I bought the Laughing Cow low fat "swiss flavored" cheese, and it was awful. Next, I bought low calorie/low fat Brie at Trader Joe's. Guess what? It sucked. It wasn't as bad as the Laughing Cow fiasco, but it wasn't good either.

In the afternoon, I went to the Movie Tavern in Hilliard and saw Adventureland. Two upsides to The Movie Tavern - they serve "real" food and they have a full service bar. Score! I had an order of Southwestern egg rolls. Yummy!

This is a blue margarita that contains 99% drink mixer and 1% tequila. I could have beer bonged 15 of these and still not have been slightly tipsy. That's my cousin, Olivia, posing with my drink.

I'm going to stray from the primary topic of food to discuss the movie we saw. I could probably write pages about all of the reasons that I disliked the movie Adventureland, but I don't care to relive the experience in that great of detail. I'll just list out my issues with the movie instead:

1. It wasn't a funny movie, despite being billed as a comedy
2. Kristen Stewart (from Twilight) is almost unwatchable. She doesn't act, she just pouts and acts pissy. She's not hot enough to get away with not being able to act while starring in a movie.
   
3. The male lead, Jesse Eisenberg, was almost as unlikeable as his female costar. I think that he was trying to pull of the geekyness and charm of Michael Cera but he just came off as annoying.
4. WARNING: SPOILERS TO FOLLOW! Em (Kristen Stewart's character) is sleeping with Ryan Reynold's character in the movie, but he's married so it's all on the down-low. Why would anyone who could sleep with someone as hot as Ryan Reynolds also be dating the annoying geek character?
5. I love Ryan Reyonlds. That's no secret. But he was horribly miscast in this movie. He was supposed to be the sleazy, older, slacker guy who is too old to be working at an amusement park and sleeping with college aged girls. Ethan Hawke would have been perfect for this role, but Ryan Reynolds just doesn't come off as sleazy or creepy.
   
6. There was too much teenage angst in this movie - especially considering that all of the characters were college aged, recent college graduates, or older.
7. WHY, in a movie full of characters who are 22+ years old, does no one have a car or their own apartment? Only one character in this movie had her own car and everyone lived with their parents.
   
8. In summary - don't waste your money seeing this movie in the theatre. Don't waste your money buying the DVD. Don't even rent the DVD. I won't even watch this again on cable TV.

P.S. Kristin Wigg and Bill Hader were fucking hilarious in this movie. I would have loved this movie if it was only about their characters. They played the wacky couple that owned the theme park. Better yet, if this movie had been boiled down to a 2 minute SNL skit about their characters it would have been genius!

I'm not a Foodie

I am not a Foodie, nor do I pretend to be. I like food and I like to cook and eat. The term "Foodie" sounds pretentious and fussy to me. It seems to indicate that you must find an appreciation for all "fine" or "interesting" foods, even if these foods are simply things that you do not care for. I don't like sushi. I've tried it, many times, and I don't care for it. Fish cakes don't even look appetizing; therefore, I am not even going to attempt to eat it. I don't think that meat and fruit should be mixed in the same dish. I don't enjoy apricot glazed pork chops or any meat that is stuffed with cranberries. I have a deep appreciation for boxed macaroni and cheese and the perfect grilled cheese.

I am an Eater, not a Foodie.

This is a great article and worth a read: A Call For Revolution

Good Times - 4.17.2009

I work at home 90% of the time and it's a luxury that allows be to often wear my pajamas until noon. On Friday I had a meeting at a potential client's site so I had to get up at a respectable hour and wear "business casual" attire. Whammy.

I didn't have time to cook breakfast for myself, so I ate an Egg McMuffin on the way to my meeting. I didn't get a picture of it because I am a bad enough driver in the first place. Adding food and a camera to the mix could have been deadly.

After the meeting, I had an hour to kill before my lunch dates that I had scheduled. There wasn't much open at 11 AM in the area that I was in, so I stopped in a small Vietnamese restaurant. I loved everything about this place, except for the food that was ordered.



Mi Li is a tiny restaurant with a few tables and booths, a pool table, several flat panel televisions and a big screen TV. I didn't use the restroom, so I can't fully rate the cleanliness of the establishment but the dining area was very clean and well-kept. So far, so good!



I gave the menu a quick look, but I wasn't at all hungry and I had a lunch meeting in an hour so I didn't order anything. The menu featured several varieties of "bubble smoothies" which involve tapioca and blended fruits. I've never heard of a bubble smoothie but apparently they have been all the rage for 10 years - or so I was told by my dining companion.


My friend ordered a pineapple bubble smoothie. She tried to get me to try it, but smoothies aren't my thing. I believe strongly that calories should never be consumed in liquid form unless their is alcohol involved.


My friend, ordered this for us to share. I have no idea what it's called but it involves fish cakes, bean sprouts, cucumber sticks, and a pork mixture in rice paper wrapper. The fish cakes looked unappetizing and I refused to try them. I tried the pork wontons and the pork mixture was really great but I really hated the texture of the steamed rice paper wrappers.

All in all, I loved this place even though I didn't really eat anything. I would love to go back and try the Pho next time - when I'm hungry.

I had a lunch meeting at Katzinger's in German Village at noon and I forgot to take a picture of my meal. I had a chef salad with olive oil and vinegar dressing. It was delicious.

Dinner... I was too lazy to cook dinner so we sent Tony out for White Castle. Ian and I had chicken rings. Connor and I shared some fries and he had cheeseburgers. Tony had cheeseburgers, onion chips, and mozzerella sticks. Apparently this combination is a gastrointestinal disaster that later resulted in Tony swearing off White Castle for the rest of his life.

Why, Ian? Why? Thursday, 4.16.2009

On Thursday, I took Ian to a playground. He was the best behaved kid there. He friended several other kids. He even mediated a dispute between two younger children regarding which could pretend to be Red Spider-Man. Ian suggested that they could both be Red Spider-Man and they all three ran off to play.

My well-behaved child and I returned home and Ian sat in the kitchen quietly playing with his legos while I working in the other room - or so I thought.

What Ian was actually doing was drawing his manifesto on the kitchen table in crayon.

On the upside, Ian made great use of the space and his art is a bit reminicent of an early Jackson Pollack. I was also pleased that I didn't see REDRUM scribbled anywhere on the table.