Category: food

DFWBlogs Cocktail Event – January

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

This month’s DFWBlogs Cocktail Event was held at Lakewood Landing:

This upscale dive is roomy enough so patrons can be seen, but cozy enough to remain discreet. You'll find a totally swank jukebox, pool table and random live acts during the week. To keep you sober, the kitchen serves chicken fried steaks, burgers, fries, and amazingly enough — veggie burgers. […]

I was encouraged by the mention of hamburgers, as a good hamburger is still one of my favorties. This user-review at Digital City confirmed that:

Extremely tasty burgers (I highly recomend adding blue cheese to this item) and wings so hot, I blame them for my first stomach ulcer. Irresistable nonetheless. […]

As toppings go, blue cheese is my favorite for burgers. So, upon arriving, I was sure to order a burger with blue cheese (and a Bass). When taking my order, the server gave me the option of mayo and/or mustard, and I opted for “a little mayo”.

The burger arrived shortly, and it was good. The meat was hot and loosely packed (just how I like it). The crumbled blue cheese was sprinkled across the patty; it added a pleasant blue-cheese nature to the burger, though the burger may have been even better with just a touch more blue cheese ;).

The only disappointment in the burger was the bun — it was very McDonald’s-like, as it was just a fluffy white-flour bun. The bun was like a week ending to an otherwise-exciting movie — had they put some more effort into a whole-wheat (or even rye) bun, the burger as a whole could have been elevated to the next level. (Though the bun was a bit of a disappointment, the burger a whole was still very recommendable.)

Lakewood Landing, as a cocktail-event location, worked well. As it was just a Wednesday (as always), the place wasn’t that crowded. And, with the sheer number of bloggers present, it seemed like half the customers were bloggers. So, it was very easy to have conversations, as you could run into another blogger with another step in any direction.

Ed K warned earlier me that Lakewood Landing was quite a smokers-hangout. However, the ambient smoke wasn’t much of a problem that evening (though it may be on weekends). All the same, my clothes still had the aroma of cigarettes by the end of the evening.

I had a good time, and I’d certainly come back to the Lakewood Landing if the Cocktail Event were held there again sometime. All the same, it’s not-quite-a-sports-bar and not-quite-a-restaurant so I’d probably elect to go somewhere else if I were looking for either of those genres (err, do restaurants have gentres?). Best of all, it came up in conversation that Peter may have some front-end web coding available (woo!).

Burgers at Humperdinks

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I went to Humperdinks with Jason and Julie this evening. I ordered a Border Burger, while Jason ordered a Cajun Burger (rather spicy, but in a good way, so he says) and Julie had chicken-fried steak (no surprise there). The Border Burger consisted of:

Border Burger
All-beef [1/2 pound] patty, covered in guacamole, with bacon, Pepperjack cheese, spicy jalapeños and fresh salsa on our bun with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. 8.99

Before ordering, I was slightly concerned that the “spicy jalapeños” might end up being too spicy, but our server assured me that the burger had only a medium-heat to it. As it turns out, that was a good assessment — it had some spiceness, but not too much or too little.

I’ve been disappointed by some burgers elsewhere, but this one was very good. The meat was hot and almost crumbly (but not at all spongey). The guacamole and salsa were piled high along with the bacon atop the patty. Sometimes patties with many condiments have the pitfall of becoming too slippery for their buns, but this one faithfully remained within the confines of its bun.

In the end, the burger was good and I wouldn’t hesitate in ordering one again sometime. However, $9-hamburgers are probably not sensible sustenance for unemployed web developers :(.

Overnight French Toast

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I was in the mood for some french toast, and through searching for a good french toast recipe, I came across this “Best Ever French Toast Recipe” apparently from The Lake House Bed and Breakfast in Granbury, Texas:

Ingredients:

  • 1 loaf King’s Hawaiian Bread, sliced 3/4 inch thick
  • 4 eggs, well beaten
  • 1-1/2 to 2 cups milk
  • 2 Tablespoons orange juice
  • 1 Tablespoon sugar or sugar substitute
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place bread slices in large baking pan (use 2 if necessary). Mix beaten eggs and other ingredients well; pour slowly over bread slices and refrigerate overnight. Heat griddle coated with butter spray or canola oil at “medium”. Cook 3 to 4 minutes on each side until browned. Serve with fresh fruit and syrup or dust with powdered sugar.

This recipe requires preparation the night before, of course, so I had to estimate how hungry I’d be in the morning. Since it was just me, I obviously didn't want to use an entire loaf (as called for in the original recipe). I estimated maybe three-to-four slices worth, but I settled on making four slices as that left a burned-buffer that would ensure at least three edible slices ;).

Not knowing a thing about “Hawaiian Bread”, I had to make an educated guess as to how much I needed to reduce the ingredient quantities. Figuring that a good-sized omelette had three eggs, I decided on a three-egg basis and reduced the other ingredients proportionally.

Inspired by a thread on MetaFilter, I also added 1/2 tsp nutmeg to the recipe (I would have linked to the thread, but I’m getting “Connection Refused” errors from MetaFilter at the moment).

I dutifully chilled the recipe overnight, and prepared to cook the french toast in the morning. I don’t have a griddle, but I figured that a pan would be fine. I preheated the stove to “medium” and set the first slice to cook. Three minutes later (just as the recipe says), I turned it over: complete blackness. Apparently, stoves and griddles don't have compatible heat-settings ;).

For the next slice, I tried two mintues, but even that was a touch on the charred-side. I ended up going about 1 1/2 minutes per side for the rest of the batch. The toasts ended up crispy on the outside and a bit mushy on the side — as the only french toast I’ve had has been made by me, is that how it’s supposed to turn out? Don’t get me wrong, they were still tasty (especially with some sprinkled Splenda and some sugar-free raspberry jam), but I want to make sure that I’m getting the recipe right (especially if I should ever end up cooking it for someone else).

California Pizza Kitchen

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I went to the Linux Meetup last night, which was held at the California Pizza Kitchen (the one at Northwest Hwy and Preston). I hadn't been to a California Pizza Kitchen before, so I wasn’t sure what quite to expect (though I figured pizzas would factor into it somehow).

After looking over the menu and asking the advice of my dining companions, I settled on the Santa Fe Chicken pizza:

Grilled chicken breast marinated in lime and herbs, caramelized onions, Mozzarella cheese and cilantro. Topped with fresh tomato salsa, sour cream and guacamole.

The deciding factor for me, in the end, was the guacamole (I’m an avocado fiend — they’re not only super-tasty but full of the “good fat”). And, from the description, it may sound fancy, but it more-or-less worked out to be a chicken quesadilla on pizza dough (and I don’t say that as a bad thing).

I was a little concerned about the caramelized onions. I didn’t used to like onions, but I don’t mind cooked onions these days (as my taste buds are dying). And, the onions turned out to be fine; they added a pleasant dimension to the dish.

The pizza, over all, was very good. But, the dough was a bit disappointing. I suppose I was expecting more of a crispy Italian-style crust, but this one was doughy and almost chewy. It was also just standard white-flour dough, and I figured that perhaps other doughs may have worked better (such as perhaps rye or wheat dough).

The only other area of improvement for the pizza — off the top of my head — is that I think sliced avocados would have worked out better. I recognize the utility of guacamole, since it can be both scooped and poured, but food textures are significant to me and I would have prefered the texture of whole avocado slices.

I am an Applesauce Machine

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Last night, when I was preparing today’s lunch, I sliced the apples as I normally did (with my apple-divider, a device with knife-spokes to create eight slices) and put them into their Ziploc bag. As an aside, I now make my tuna “sandwiches” (for breakfast and lunch) with apples on-the-side instead of the bread, since apples have a lower glaecimic index than breads (in short, foods with a lower glycemic index are digested more slowly and you feel less hungry over time).

Anyhow, so I tossed the apple slices into their bag and thought to myself, “Well, cinnamon often tastes good with apples and apple dishes; how about I toss some in here?” So, I added a dash of cinnamon and Splenda to the bag, zipped it up and gave it a good shake. I cinnamonified only one bag of apples, just in case it didn’t turn out well (I have two bags of apples — one for breakfast and one for lunch — with two apples’ worth of slices in each bag).

I didn’t want to eat the cinnamon-y bag for breakfast this morning, as I was concerned that I wouldn’t be awake enough to critically judge the creation; so, I just waited until lunch. For lunch, I had the bag of apples next to my workstation and I was just eating and typing along (not thinking much about what I was eating at the time).

At one point, I thought to myself, “Am, I eating applesauce all of a sudden, or where did this sweet cinnamon-y apple flavor come from?”. I then realized that, of course, through the process of chewing the cinnamonified apples I had a personal applesauce-making machine inside my mouth! It was very tasty, and I think I’ll continue to make cinnamonified apples for my breakfasts and lunches.