A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Copycat Ruby Tuesday's Ham & Pea Pasta Salad

 One of my favorite dishes on Ruby Tuesday's Garden Bar is the ham and pea pasta salad.   From talking with friends, I found that I'm not a lone.  Lots of people hit the salad bar for that pasta dish.  Some even confess to skipping the greens on the bar to save room for that pasta dish.  Tickled to have found a copycat home version for it, I ended up taking it as an entree salad for lunch at work two nights in a row.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado

PART TWO

Happy Official Birthday to Barb!  From left around table:  Gene, Me, Birthday Girl Barb, Barb's hubby John, Roseanne, Barb's sister Carol, and Diane, all having the "OMG Fabulous!" Thanksgiving Buffet at the Stanley Hotel.

John's favorite thing on the menu:  Bacon Bloody Mary!  The garnish was a meal itself and the bacon to die for.  The waittress told us the pastry chef coats the bacon with a simple syrup with six secret ingredients to make it the incredible sweet, salty, crispy wonderful it is. We all kept guessing:  "Molasses?  Sorghum? Honey?"  But the secret is still safe, at least from us.

Sigh. The views from our Thanksgiving table.

HappyThanksgiving from The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado

PART ONE:

Celebrating Thanksgiving in Estes Park, Colorado this year to help good friend Barb Schurke (center) celebrate one of those even 10 numbered birthdays that we don't always say out loud!  Barb's been telling me for at least 2 years that she wanted to celebrate this birthday at the Stanley Hotel and had been telling family for even longer that this is where she wanted to be when she turned that certain numbered birthday.

We're heeeeeeeeeere!  And it's gorgeous!  This is the front of the Stanley Hotel a registered Historic Hotel built at the turn of the last century by the man who invented the Stanley Steamer.  It's probably more famous for it's association to Stephen King who wrote The Shining while staying in a room here and built the novel around his impressions of this hotel, supposedly the most haunted hotel in America.  So not only is it one of the most beautifully built places we've ever stayed, it has that fun, grin-worthy quirkiness that lends an extra couple of fingers of fun.

View from the front veranda of the hotel.

And now, since this is a food blog, a little tour via food:

2011 World Series: Yay Cardinals! (And Bumstead's in Nixa reviews)

We watched and celebrated the game last night with good friends Jeff and Dee McKeel down in Nixa at Bumstead's. All of those things together made for a fantastic night!  Great friends, great food, great drinks, great GAME! After the win, champagne was passed out to all the patrons and the owner (?) jumped up on the bar to lead a toast to our favorite red birds.

 

 We all enjoyed being at Bumstead's. At first we thought there was no way we'd be able to get a table but we lucked out to spend a relaxed happy evening together. We'll definitely be going back!   Check out the MENU

 

 

Mexican Villa Fake-out: Home-made Burrito Enchilada-Style

 

Let's start with a HUGE Thank You to Jamie D who read my original post about our hometown Mexican Villa and sent me a taste-alike recipe from the 'net for The Villa's enchilada sauce. Like Springfield-style Cashew Chicken, The Villa is a Springfield original, it's ours, and we're wild about it!

Using Jamie's sauce I created our own Burritos Enchilada-Style last night and we loved them. In a private email Jamie had said "When the chili seasoning hits the sauce your nose will know it's The Villa."  Yup, sooooooooo true!  Not that we won't be ordering from the restaurant itself anymore but it is a nice home-style meal as well that I got a huge kick out of creating. It will be fun to make it for friends or family sometime and see if I can fake them out.

Health & Wellness Done Right: Crapeteria to Healtheateria

I admit, and have often lamented on these pages, that our hospital's cafeteria didn't offer more healthy choices and higher quality food. Everybody I know bitches about  observes the same thing.  You would think a place where they put the patients on health-restricted diets would have plenty of healthy choices available to the employees and visitors but many hospitals offer the same transfat-laden, grease-heavy, processed food items that you can get at any fast food or diner type outlet.  If we're not going to be leaders in healthy eating, we should at least have healthy choices available to those who want them.

Well....

We got a memo today that hopefully proves that those with the power are paying attention to the employee surveys...

As of yesterday, I'm proud to say that my hospital cafeteria is now using only 90/10 lean ground beef, is doing away with hot dogs, doughnuts, pastries, and all but a few fried items (french fries), and will offer at least two entrees a day of higher quality, low processed, healthy meals.  They've also added a new cooler that has tons of house-made grab-n-go items like fruit and cheese plates with cottage cheese or yogurt (I get this all the time! Yum!),  and be-still-my-heart greek yogurt (and in my favorite: plain!  No added sugar!!!), grilled chicken wraps on whole grained tortillas, fruit parfaits, veggie/dip snack plates, etc.

I'M LOVING THIS!!!!!  Thank you!  This is the kind of food I eat at home, want to eat at work, and am proud to be a part of leading the way in healthy wholesome dine-out food. 

Springfield Restaurant Reviews: Riad Part II

 

  Okay, this is the part where I take back my first review and say that I've been back to Riad several times now and have been welcomed, received great service, and wonderful food.  So to all my friends who begged me to "try one more time" I thank you.  Riad's is a wonderful restaurant and now one of my favorite places to run in for dinner.

I would like to say a quick thanks to the first server who changed my mind, Frankie.  The visit where I decided "Just one more time" became the turning point when Frankie was my server/bartender.  She was warm and friendly, and very enthusiastic about her employer.  That says a lot.  The last couple of times I've been in, I've had a different server, just as friendly and efficient, but I've forgotten her name (sorry!)

I've also been much happier with the food the last few times.  I'm not sure what happened between the first couple of times I patronized the restaurant and the last few but whatever it is, I'll take it.  I enjoy the appetizer plates and each dish that I've had recently has been much more what I had expected as compared to my first visit: the pita warm and fresh, the hummus with enough garlic to bite back but soothed by the chickpea paste and tahini, the pizza topped with tender gyros meat, feta, and olives for a perfect taste combination, and the baklava deliciously decadent.

I definitely recommend Riad's now and will continue to dine there as well.

 

 

Kansas City Weekend: The food: Gates Bar-B-Q & The Flying Saucer & My Own Recipe for an Appetizer I Loved

Our hotel, the KC Airport Hilton, wasn't our first choice but since the Cards were playing the Royals...hotels were hard to come by that weekend.  It turned out to be a blessing in disguise since the rooms, food, and service were exactly what we were looking for.  The only ironic twist was that the hotel was hosting a Jesters (supposedly similar to the Shriners but we'd never heard of them) convention and they didn't seem to have a sense of humor which is rather odd.  Maybe the Jesters are the cranky Shriners who got kicked out because all the Shriners I know are fun and love to party.

In the hotel Cafe Weatherby, we enjoyed a wonderful appetizer of pulled pork topped red potatoes that I decided to recreate at home with a couple of substitutions:  mainly omitting the cheese and adding cole slaw for texture and creaminess instead of the sour cream they served it with (recipe and step-by-step photos at the end of the post).

The two most fun meals we had over the weekend were lunch at Gates Bar-b-q near the art museum and a late night appetizer fest at The Flying Saucer near the Sprint Center.

Riad: Still Lukewarm

Tried to try out Riad on Republic Road just East of National last week but it didn't work out so well. 

http://afridgefulloffood.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/06/riad-on-republic-road-have-no-clue.html#tp

Decided to give them another shot tonight with Auntie Miranda after we picked up our Millsap Farms CSA.  Loving Greek food we were both excited about giving them another shot and I talked myself into believing that my last visit there was just a miscommunication fluke with the bartender/server from my first experience.

I wish I could give rave reviews but I have to be honest. The food was good but the service was average at best, so it's not that I'll avoid it but I won't go out of my way to go back. Don't get me wrong. Nothing was specifically wrong but nothing was specifically right either.  Neither Aunti nor I felt welcomed or greeted. Accommodated, but not welcomed. The waiter wasn't rude, just apathetic. There was no "Hi. Welcome to Riad. Have you been here before? Do you have any questions about the menu?" None of that. He handed us menus and  said "What can I get you to drink?"  After he placed the drinks on the table it was  "What can I get you?"  Neither of us even remember him smiling until I whipped out my phone and started taking pictures of the food and then we both noticed he suddenly got a little friendlier for the rest of our meal. It's one of those subtle things that can make or break a dining experience, especially in a smaller family-owned business.

LuLu's Bakery Came Home with the Campbells.

 

The Campbells brought home treats from their Man vs Food food tour (really it was a family trip to attend a graduation) of San Antonio.  I thought Corbin was joking when he said they brought us back one of the LuLu's bakery cinnamon rolls but he wasn't.  It's hilariously huge!  The package above is ONE cinnamon roll, weighing in at 3 1/2 lbs.   See the black bowl behind it? That's the insert to my crockpot!

It's wider than the circumference of the crockpot.

Slicing into it, it's basically a huge cinnamon roll made into a loaf of bread, supposedly the biggest cinnamon rolls made in the US, or at least in the state of Texas.

   

Gene and I sliced off from the middle, since we were told most of the good stuff was in the middle and I was curious to see how the pastry had been put together and rolled up. It was good, a nice challah type bread, very sweet, with lots of cinnamon and sugar in the middle with a powdered sugar glaze.  No fancy ingredients, just the normal sweet cinnamony bready goodness from the microwave you'd expect.  Corbin and Jenn and Gene and I had originally talked about microwaving the whole thing (cinn rolls are always better warm) since they serve them hot at the bakery but when we got home it made sense to me to slice it and heat it as we eat it. Worked perfectly.

For those who would like to test drive one without going to Texas....they do mail these babies:

http://www.luluscafeinsa.com/

Thanks Corbin and Jenn!