Dan and I have some exciting news, and couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate and share it than by enjoying a box of the classic, iconic food from everyone’s childhood — Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. What does mac-n-cheese have to do with our news? Dan recently accepted an awesome opportunity to work at the in-house legal department of Kraft Foods, and consequently, we are moving to Chicago!
Weekly Menu (Sept. 14)
Saturday
Sunday
- Take-Out
Monday
- Italian Fish, Tomato Risotto
Tuesday
- Mushroom Lasagne, Salad
Wednesday
- Vietnamese Pork Chops, Sesame Slaw
Thursday
- Chicken & Dumplings
Friday
- Homemade Deep Dish Pizza
Friday Favorites
Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:
We are pleased to report that the new location of one of our favorite pizza places has opened up in the complex that includes our favorite local movie theater. Coal Vines is a “pizza wine bar” that specializes in New York-style pizza and has a high-quality, yet reasonably priced wine list. Theirs is among the best pizza we’ve had in Dallas, and we’re happy to have the new location close to home.
In the same complex as Coal Vines is another favorite, Nick & Sam’s Grill, which offers unique bistro-type dishes and upscale comfort food, as well as sushi and several Asian-style appetizers. We recently fell in love with their crispy Asian calamari, with fried calamari, tiny chunks of pineapple and wilted arugula tossed in a black bean chili garlic sauce. It has just the right amount of spicy and sweet. We heard they are re-vamping their menu in the next few weeks, so we hope they don’t get rid of our favorite calamari!
When we’re not hanging out at our favorite theater and accompanying restaurants (which apparently isn’t very often), we manage to branch out to other great local eateries. Princi Italia is one of those places we tend to forget about, but always enjoy so much that we leave saying “we really should come here more often.” We’ve never had a bad meal there — from interesting pasta dishes, to pizza cooked in their wood-burning oven, to flavorful panini sandwiches. And they have the skinniest shoestring fries ever.
We bid farewell to summer and welcome fall (in spite of temperatures in the high 90s still, with no end in sight) by making our final batch of refrigerator pickles for the season. We’ve had a good summer, but fall is a time of change, and we are particularly excited to see what this transitional season has in store for us this year.
Rib Eye w/ Goat Cheese & Lemon-Honey Mustard
Goat cheese on a steak? We too were a little skeptical, at first. But the recipe comes from Bobby Flay’s latest cookbook, “Barbecue Addiction,” so we felt confident that the combination would be more delicious than disaster. We own several of Bobby’s cookbooks (we’re on a first-name basis because we met him once, for 25 whole seconds at a book signing) and we’ve learned that he has a great knack for pairing rather unusual flavor profiles, as well as creating unique sauces and garnishes to perfectly accompany various grilled meats. And this rib eye recipe is no exception. Don’t just take our word for it, take it from Bobby himself: “This dish may sound like a crazy combination, but I have to tell you, it works.” Chef Flay is absolutely correct that the tangy goat cheese and bright lemon-honey-mustard sauce come together to complement the rich beefiness of the marbled rib eye. It’s a match made in steak heaven.
Continue reading “Rib Eye w/ Goat Cheese & Lemon-Honey Mustard”
Weekly Menu (Sept. 7)
Saturday
- Grilled Ribeye w/ Goat Cheese & Lemon-Honey Mustard, Tomato & Onion Bibb Lettuce Salad
Sunday
- Grilled Lamb Chops, Tzatziki, Tabouli
Monday
- Penne w/ Roasted Tomatoes, Chicken & Mushrooms
Tuesday
- Ponzu Fish, Sauteed Baby Bok Choy & Snow Peas
Wednesday
- Take-Out
Thursday
- Pork Carnitas w/ Homemade Tortillas, Avocado and Tomatillo Salsa
Friday
- Dinner Out
Friday Favorites
Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:
Labor Day weekend means our annual tradition of traveling to Houston to close out the summer by enjoying a couple of baseball games with my parents. We started off the trip by touring the recently renovated Love Field airport. Although we kind of miss the small-town, beer-stands-throughout-the-concourse feel of the old Love Field, the new digs are quite impressive. It’s a whole new airport, with great restaurants, some shops and an open layout with tons of natural light. We ♥ the new Love Field.
We also love hot dogs, especially ballpark hot dogs, and even better, hot dogs consumed during a game that the Houston Astros actually won! It hasn’t been their best season this year, so it was great to celebrate a win during our special, end-of-summer weekend.
Speaking of special, the good folks at the Inn at the Ballpark once again went out of their way to make everything about our stay there as outstanding as possible. One of the very best parts of our visit this year was taste-testing a potential new menu item at the Inn — the “avocado bomb.” We were served several different iterations of a stuffed avocado, fried and garnished with sauce. With each serving, they asked for our feedback and opinions — as if we were professionals or something — instead of just people who love to eat (and take pictures of their food.) We were so honored (and well fed!) by wonderful people who we look forward to seeing every year, and without whom our summers would not be complete.
Speaking of summer, the tail end of it seems like a good time to finally get our pool light fixed, at least two years after it floated loose of its housing and was left just sitting on the side of our pool deck like a sad little kid who never learned how to swim. Replacing it is one of those small changes that makes a big difference in a smack-to-the-forehead, why did we wait so long kind of way.
While I slaved away supervising pool work at the homestead, Dan had a glamorous work trip to San Francisco that included an amazing dinner at Waterbar, from which he regaled me with photos of his tableside view of the Bay Bridge and the gorgeously delicious food he was enjoying. But as much as I am I’m not jealous, I’m so proud of the amazing photo he took of his “roasted black mussels” appetizer — rope grown Prince Edward island mussels in a smoked tomato broth, with sorghum molasses glazed pork belly and Anson Mills grits. Now we’re all jealous.
Salad Nicoise
Salad niçoise (pronounced “nee-swaz,” in my best, butchering attempt at a French accent) is one of those menu items that we tend to skip right over in search of something that sounds a bit more appealing on the plate. The idea of lettuce, potatoes, green beans and tuna served together in the same salad always seemed more odd than appetizing, so we’ve never actually ordered salad niçoise in a restaurant (plus, I like being able to pronounce what I’m about to eat, although I’m also a fan of the point-and-mumble style of advising the wait staff of my selection from the menu. Whatever works.) We decided to try salad niçoise at home because we’re always looking for new fish dishes to try and we found a relatively easy recipe in a Cook’s Illustrated magazine, “Modern Classics.” And cooking a new dish at home, then deciding you don’t really like it is preferable to trying (and paying for) something new at a restaurant and deciding you hate it. Luckily, neither scenario occurred here. We absolutely loved this salad and will add it to our regular rotation. The combination of lettuce, potatoes, green beans and tuna wasn’t strange at all, especially with the addition of hard boiled eggs, Kalamata olives and a tomato-onion mixture. The vinaigrette made with olive oil, lemon juice, Dijon, shallot and fresh basil, thyme and oregano simultaneously brings out the best flavors from the different ingredients and ties them all together beautifully. Salad niçoise is a dish that we will crave from now on, even if I still can’t reliably pronounce or spell it.
Weekly Menu (Aug. 31)
Saturday
- Dinner & a Game
Sunday
- Dinner Out
Monday Happy Labor Day!
- Chicago-Style Hot Dogs, Kraft Mac-n-Cheese
Tuesday
Wednesday
- Take-Out
Thursday
- Tuscan Lemon Chicken, Scalloped Tomatoes, Salad
Friday
- Dinner Out
Friday Favorites
Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:
We finally got around to disposing of several old, outdated, heavy and giant-backed TVs cluttering up our garage. We haven’t used them in years, and I think one of them may even belong to my brother (sorry J!), but didn’t really know what to do with them. I discovered that the city of Dallas has a free “e-cycling” program for old TVs and computers, so we loaded up the car and dropped them off. We also got rid of an old desktop computer that hadn’t even been turned on in maybe 10 years. Kind of makes you wonder what will eventually replace the super-slim HD TVs and lightweight laptops, iPads and smart phones we currently use. Microchips in our brains maybe.
The end of summer means the beginning of football season, which also means fantasy football drafts. Dan had his first one the other night (he’s in two leagues) so I was solo for dinner. We happened to have a couple slices of leftover cheese pizza, which I topped with some prosciutto torn into small pieces, then re-heated in a dry skillet on the stove (best method for getting a crisp crust on leftover pizza.) It tasted even better than the original pizza, and Dan drafted a pretty decent team. Win, win.
Dan’s fellow lobster-loving friend (Hi Chris!) and superstar-restaurant-sleuth has discovered the hands-down best lobster roll in Dallas. Chris is great at finding and recommending all the best eateries around town, and 20 Feet Seafood Joint is right up there with some of his other quality finds. Dan says the lobster roll was so authentic that if it hadn’t been 102 degrees at lunch that day, he would have thought he was in Maine. He also said the clam chowder was equally authentic and amazing. With a food friend like Chris around, Dan’s going to have start working out more.
This week marked five years since Dan’s dad passed away after battling a brain tumor. Since then, the National Brain Tumor Society is a charity that has become important to us, as it fights brain tumors through research, advocacy and patient services. Thursday seemed like a good day to honor the Big Guy and help us feel empowered against this terrible disease by making a donation to the NBTS. Cancer sucks, but we will always have an anchor of hope that someday there will be a cure.
Karen’s Stew
We’ve never met Karen, but she is a friend of my aunt and uncle, by way of Albuquerque. And we’ve always heard really good things about this easy and delicious stew recipe she made up using ground turkey, chicken breasts, green chili salsa and white beans. My aunt and uncle made it for my parents, who liked it so much that they make their own version all the time (omitting the chicken breasts for more of a chili texture than stew.) My parents have raved about this dish often enough that we finally had to try it for ourselves, and it will become a regular in our recipe rotation as well. This chili / stew is healthy comfort food that is also light enough to serve during the heat of summer (especially garnished with fresh avocado and a squeeze of lime) and could not be much easier to make. We adapted the recipe a bit (of course we did), but will continue to foster the shout-out to the Karen who created the original recipe by continuing to call it “Karen’s Stew,” even though our version is a little different and is really more of a chili than a stew. It’s the right thing to do.