Pages

August 27, 2005

Sadies

With the BFF's birthday coming up, and being kid-less this weekend, I figured we'd try something new on the PoGo card. I thought maybe we'd try the cajun place, but he wanted to try the chicken place. (His birthday, his choice--we'll try the cajun place in December)
Sadie's is a bar and restaurant connected to the Villager motel out on "O" street about 52nd, by the Barnes and Noble.
Walking in, it looks like a bar with the restaurant added as an afterthought, but that is definitely NOT the case. The food was awesome and the wait-staff was attentive, even though they were training new staff that night.
They specialize in chicken dinners. And by dinner, I MEAN dinner. You get sides that come to the table family style, so everyone gets to sample everything. They have several chicken dinners, all breast, all leg, (hmm, that sounded like a guy menu), one of each, however you like your meal. I saw something a little different on the menu, and just had to try it: Pistachio Chicken. It was a chicken breast with pistachios in the coating mixture. It was wonderful.
The meal was a bit slow getting to us, according to our wait staff, we really didn't notice, but they were very apologetic, and offered us free dessert. Even though we were using the PoGo card, so only paying for one meal. We did ask if we brought the whole gang some other time, could we use the PoGo card more than once, and they didn't have a problem with that. So we'll definitely do that.
This was one time that we actually brought home leftovers, and they pretty much fed us a whole second meal. That's pretty rare for our large appetites!

August 20, 2005

Supper Thyme Review Part 2

In our last episode, the BFF and I had gone to Supper Thyme and made 12 meals...
We've eaten a few meals so far, and at work I got a visitor from the cinnamon roll fairy!

Meal #1: Sweet BBQ Meatball Sandwich
This was the sample meal they made the night we were cooking, so BFF and I had already tasted it. We both really liked it, but I thought it was too sweet. Same thing when we actually ate it. The kids picked that one as the first meal we'd try together. They loved it, too, but I still think it's too sweet! When we made the recipe, it was like a cup of ketchup and a cup of brown sugar, with other spices. That might not be exact, but it was a lot of sugar. Next time we make this, I will only put about half the sugar, and maybe compensate with some extra spices.
What this is, by the way, is meatballs in sauce, with cheese, wrapped in a bread dough crust. It was hard to get the edges to connect, so it was a bit sloppy. I'm glad they had us put it in a pan rather than the other similar sandwich meal that we just wrapped in foil. I think we just had salad with this when we ate it.

Meal #2: Guadalajara Grilled Shrimp
When we made this one at the Supper Thyme kitchen, BFF and I knew this would never feed all of us. So we cooked this while we were kid-less last weekend. Five skewers of six shrimp each, and we all love shrimp. The sauce was very good, lemon juice, and some pepper. This was meant to be grilled, but we don't have a good grill, so we did it in the skillet. We made some oriental noodles to go with it, and it made a great meal for the two of us.

Meal #3: Cowpokes
This was my favorite from just the description
"Cowpokes - Tender chicken breasts stuffed with a blend of pepper jack and cream cheese and wrapped with bacon. The added kick from the pepper jack will really spice up your dinner table! - 9 x 13 Baking Pan"
It did not disappoint! All meals were advertised as feeding 4-6, and this meal and the other meal that has individual servings, each had 5. Also, when we were making the meals, there were stickers to put on each meal, with baking instructions. This one said to mix ranch dressing and salsa for a sauce for the cowpokes, which BFF did. To go with it, he made cornbread stuffing with corn added. It was a good side dish. Probably my favorite overall. Also, good recipe to try at home or modify. Maybe at home, I'd just put the chicken breasts in the pan, put the cheese mixture over top, and then sprinkle with bacon bits.

Meal #4: Baked Spaghetti
We just ate this one last night. It was very tasty. In the cooking process, we mixed the plain, cooked noodles with garlic, parmesan cheese, and an egg, and put that into the pan first. We mixed the sauce and meat, and put that over the noodles, and topped with cheese. The layering made it a bit like a lasagna, and everyone loved it.

Extra Special Treat:
When we went to Supper Thyme, they had us write down our names and where we worked, so they could bring cinnamon rolls to our work. It's pure advertisement for them, pure cinnamony goodness for me and my workmates!
They brought 2 dozen great (although, unfortunately, a tiny bit doughy) rolls, and everyone at work got to hear how much fun it was from me. It's not for everyone, of course, after hearing how it works, one guy said "that's the absolute dumbest thing I've ever heard of." But one couple was excited to try it, and another woman signed up that very day.

August 12, 2005

Food Day

Most folks have pot lucks or food days as a semi-regular part of their lives. I've always enjoyed regular food days at the places I've worked, it has always given me an opportunity to try new recipes, and show off some of my favorites.
Since I've only been at the new job for a couple months, I've only experienced two food days so far, and I just bought stuff so far. So this time, I'm actually going to bring something homemade.
I was thinking about the crowd-pleasing corn salad that my mom makes. Corn, cheese, BBQ Fritos, mayo. But at this job, food day is a rather grazing kind of thing, people eating on stuff all day. Well, I am NOT making something with mayo and have it sit around all day! Also, with this recipe, you mix in the Fritos at the last minute, which is good and crunchy, but we always try to make the batch of salad small enough to not have leftovers, because the Fritos are soggy by the next day, also not good to leave out all day. So I've modified the recipe. Here it is:

Food Day Friendly
Corn Salad
2 cans white corn
2 cans yellow corn
1 can rotel-type tomatoes (with chilies)
1 small can chilies
1 can black olives
2 cups shredded 'mexican' or 'taco' cheese

drain all cans (cut olives into fourths, if you can't get pre-cut) mix with cheese. refrigerate overnight.
*my tip on draining the cans:
dump the corns into a strainer, then you can dump the tomatoes and chilies on top of the corns, that way, the little pieces of chili won't go through the holes in the strainer.

P.S. the modified recipe is sans crunch, because I didn't want soggy Fritos. I had considered putting in a bag of Corn Nuts, but I talked myself out of it. Do you think that might have worked?

August 11, 2005

Supper Thyme Review Part 1

Very fun, good looking food, nice AND helpful staff, clean environment, lots of free soda. Overall, a great experience.
Even though we were early, they were completely ready for us, they gave us the instructions, and two lists, one to take home to put on the fridge, and a checklist to carry around with us while we were making our dinners.

Here's what we made:

Baked Spaghetti
Beer Can Chicken
Chicken Pot Pie
Cowpokes
Grilled Ham
Grilled Pork Chops with Spicy Corn Salsa
Guadalajara Grilled Shrimp
Layered Burrito Bake
Sausage Bread
Sesame Ginger Chicken
Stromboli
Sweet BBQ Meatball Sandwich

More specific reviews as we eat them!

August 08, 2005

Supper Thyme

AND!!!
We're signed up for Supper Thyme this week! We're going to make 12 meals in two hours, while actually being on a kinda date! We're very excited! And I'll let you know how it goes.

August 06, 2005

Good supper

One fun supper we've discovered in our local market is a combo of a big frozen dinner plus a couple free things thrown in. Of course, it's just a sales gimmic, and you only save four and a half bucks, and as always, if you weren't going to buy it anyway, it doesn't matter if you get it free, BUT, the free things are things we would always buy, and the frozen dinners have been pretty tasty.

August 01, 2005

Cookin'

In our new and improved household, the boyfriend and I both do the cooking.
Since we have opposite days off, we each basically do the planning/shopping/cooking of supper on our days off. (and just FYI, it was totally his idea!)
We have different ideas about how to do it, of course. I'm more in the plan-ahead-and-buy-all-the-groceries-you-need-for-several-days camp, while he's from the go-to-the-store-every-day-and-figure-out-the-menu-while-you're-shopping school of thought. Both ways work, of course. And a bonus with his plan is getting a little walk out of the deal also, if we go to the store that's only a block away. (although they are probably higher priced on some things than the bag it yourself store, and you can't buy in bulk if you're walking)
The other difference is cooking style, he used to be the bachelor chef, where I was the single-mom cook, cooking kid stuff, and eating cheese and crackers myself.
It's fun this way, we challenge each other. Of course, we both still have the basic burger-helper type meals, but we're both trying to out do each other with new food ideas.