Butter Tarts

Have you ever had a butter tart?  Have you ever heard of a butter tart?  I hadn't - to either question.  Then I spent several weeks in Toronto.  And I fell in love with butter tarts!  The flaky crust, the warm, gooey center that sort-of folds out of the tart once I pierced the tart with my fork.  The tart reminds me of a pecan pie without the pecans (not pee-CAN but PAH-chan).

Apparently, these tarts are a Canadian thing.  Several restaurants had them on the dessert menu and I found that I became disappointed when they weren't on the menu.  But NO - I didn't eat a butter tart everytime I saw one on the menu.  Just - 3 times. So, I averaged one a week - not too shabby!  (Twice from Bannock.  Loved, loved, loved this restaurant.) 

So, while I don't have a butter tart recipe for you - yet - I do have a picture of the Bannock tart for you.  Enjoy!!!

Oh Yes!  I also had a great lemonade at Bannock - it was sweetened with pure maple sryup (versus sugar).  It was De-light-ful!!  Can't say enough about Bannock - gotta try it everyone!!!

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A burst of sunshine

It's been cold and rainy the past couple of days.  Dreary, actually.  And depressing.  I'm SO ready for summer - the hot, sunny days.  Therefore, I decided to do something about it - I made a tomato soup!  It was surprising at first how tomato-ee it tasted but then I stepped back and said "what a minute - it should!"  I had used items that I had 'put up' last summer from our first garden.  This soup would be great with any canned tomatoes but with those from the garden (3 miles away), it was incredible!  (and healthy for me)

Tomato Soup

- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

- 1 tablespoon butter

- half of an onion, diced well

- ribs of 2 small (or 1 large) celery stalk, diced well

- 2 28 oz cans of tomatoes (I use 2 quart jars of tomatoes that I canned this past summer)

- 1/2 cup of half and half

- In a large pot, pour the extra-virgin olive oil and place the butter (melt on med-high heat)

- Sautee the onion and celery for about 5 minutes (until the onion is translucent)

- Pour in the tomatoes and let cook down

- Pour in the half and half

- Either using a blender or a food processor (I used an immersion blender) - blend the soup mixture until smooth

- Salt and pepper to taste

(After I had creamed the soup, I dropped in a bag of frozen cherry tomatoes that I had picked last summer.  Perfection!  The heat from the soup thawed the tomatoes but they were left whole and soft so that when I spooned one into my mouth and mashed it to the roof of my mouth, I received a burst of sunshine!!  Just the little bit of happiness I need on this dreary day!)

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FYI

Just wanted to say that I am not ignoring this blog, but I've been traveling the past few weeks in Canada for work.  I will have some good stuff to blog about when I return to the US.  Kind of hard to get pictures and stuff onto my work computer, so look for a long post soon!

I got my fix at Nick's!

Hey, everyone, it's Michael again.  Amy will be back to traveling soon, but for now I'm the one racking up airline miles and eating at different restaurants.  This week I found myself back in Florida.  However, this time I was in Orlando instead of Miami.  Unfortunately, this was a work trip so I didn't get to go enjoy Disney World or anything like that while down here.  Maybe next time.  I did get to eat at a couple of nice restaurants while there, so I thought I'd share my thoughts about them.  

The first restaurant we went to was called High Tide Harry's.  We were driving to our hotel on Tuesday night randomly looking for something to eat when we saw this place while sitting at a stop light.  We decided to pull in and try it out.  This place was right beside a Joe's Crab Shack, so we reasonably assumed they were competitors.  High Tide Harry's is a bit of a different place than Joe's.  First, their menu is much more extensive than Joe's.  Second, Harry's says they are home of the "almost all you can eat policy".  I asked what the "almost all you can eat policy" is, and was told that people are limited to seven pounds of food.  Who in the world could eat seven pounds of food?  I've previously talked about my love of seafood on here, so at a place like Harry's you know I'm going to order seafood.  I ordered the dungeness crab and my boss ordred fried soft shell crab.  We decided to split our plates and try a little bit of each.  I have to say that I wasn't that impressed with the dungeness crab.  Maybe it is because I'm spoiled after going to Joe's Stone Crab in Miami, or maybe it's because they weren't fresh from the water in San Francisco.  Whatever the reason, I wasn't that thrilled.  I enjoyed the fried soft shell crab much more.  We also got an order of crawdads.  I am not a huge crawdad fan, but they were ok.  I didn't take any pictures from Harry's because if you've been to a Red Lobster or a Joe's Crab Shack you kind of get the idea.  It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't seek it out again in the future.

The second restaurant we went to was called Citrus.  it is right outside downtown Orlando, only about a block from the Courtyard we were staying at.  We walked over after a long day of meetings and sat down for what I hoped would be a decent meal.  Citrus was adequate, but nothing spectacular.  Citrus is a pretty typical steak place.  They bring you bread, you get your choice of a wedge salad, house salad, or Caesar salad, and then your main course.  I got the house salad, which I found to be lacking in terms of dressing.  It just felt somewhat dry.  A bit more dressing would've helped a lot.  I typically don't like wedge salads, but the ones that I saw looked much better than my house salad.  If I ever eat at Citrus again, I would get the wedge.  As disappointed as I was about my salad, my entree made up for it.  I ordered the filet mignon (medium rare), and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was just the right size and cooked just the way I like it.  The filet sat atop a layer of mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus.  I thought both of the sides were very well done.  I should note that a couple of other people in our group ordered some sort of fish (I believe it was salmon).  The portion that came out was absolutely massive.  I was, frankly, in shock.  That would've been way too much food for me, but those that tried it said they liked it.  The best part of the night was just getting to talk to all my co-workers in a casual setting, which isn't something that happens too often.  Again, no pics as you get the idea if you've been to a decent steak place (though I will say that Citrus was much better than STK Miami).

The third restaurant that I went to was called Nick's Family Diner.  All I can say about my trip to Nick's is thank goodness for my iPhone!  We finished up our last meetings early on Thursday so I had about 6 hours to kill before my flight and was tasked with finding something to eat close by.  I fired up foursquare and began searching.  I was intrigued when I saw Nick's Family Diner.  I have a fondness in my heart for diners of any type, so I decided to see what people had to say about Nick's.  I was excited when I saw reviews that read like this:  "What to eat??? What to eat??? Everything on the menu is amazing. Best diner in Orlando".  As the restaurant was only 2 miles away or so the five of us that were waiting on flights decided to go there.  Sure enough, it was what I think of when I hear the word diner.  They served all the downhome good food that people love to eat.  When I looked at the menu, I was surprised at how much food you got for the price.  For instance, I got the meatloaf plate that came with mashed potatoes, a bowl of soup, and a bowl of veggies all for about $9.  The menu didn't say this, but you also get complimentary dessert after your meal.  After reading the description, in my mind I was thinking "ok this is going to be a lot of food", but I had no idea what was to come.  When the waitress brought out our tray of food, I nearly keeled over.  These plates were MASSIVE!  I normally resize the pictures I put up on this blog, but just for the sake of scale I'm going to leave the one of the food untouched.  It was crazy.  Two of the others in our group ordered a fish sandwich that was nearly as big as the plate it sat on.  So, with that said, what was the food like?  I bit into my first bite of meatloaf and a curious taste hit my tongue.  I asked the waitress what was in the meatloaf and she said they stuff all their meatloaf with complete bacon slices and cheddar cheese (there was nothing about this on the menu, it simply said "meatloaf").  I could feel the heart attack coming as I sat there and chewed!  It was wonderful though!  I couldn't eat all of what was on my plate because there was just so much.  I had to save a little room for the dessert, which was ok but nothing great.  The main course was where it was at.  Amy likes to get tshirts from all the places she visits, so I picked her up one from Nick's that says "I got my fix at Nick's" on the back.  Truer words were never written!  

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Overall it was a good trip and I enjoyed all three restaurants.  If I'm ever in Orlando again, you better believe I'll be heading over to Nick's!  Until next time...

Miami in January

Hey everyone, this is Michael doing a guest post on Amy's blog.  I had the opportunity to go to Miami for work last week, so I thought I'd write a brief post about my experience...

If you've never been to Miami in January, well, all I can say is that you're missing out.  The weather was 80 degrees and sunny every day I was there.  Now I know why lots of people head south for the winter.  I was in town for a Microstrategy conference, so most of my meals were taken care of at the conference.  However, I had occasion to venture out and try a local restaurant or two while I was there.  I just thought I'd give my impressions of them.

The first restaurant I went to was Joe's Stone Crab in South Beach.  You have to understand something about me...I love seafood.  My all time favorite is crab meat, but I'll eat just about anything.  The reason I went to Joe's Stone Crab is because they are famous for their stone crabs.  Stone crabs are only in season from October to May, so you have a limited time to get your hands on these tasty treats.  I ordered "Joe's Special", which gave me a few crab claws, a sampling of their sides, and a slice of their key lime pie.  Amy had told me that she heard their key lime pie was delicious, so I wanted to try it out for myself.

All I can say is that I had no idea how much of a feast I was in for.  As you can see in the picture below, I had a virtual buffet of food at my finger tips.  Joe's Special consists of 3 crab claws, bread, cole slaw, hash browns, and creamed spinach.  Let's start with the bread since that came out first.  There is no way one person could eat all this bread, but I did try a piece or two of it.  It was simply delicious.  I wanted to eat more, but I also wanted to save room for everything else.  I will skip talking about the hash browns and creamed spinach because they weren't anything special.  However, the cole slaw was honestly one of the best side items I've ever eaten.  They make their cole slaw differently than anywhere else I've ever tried it.  Basically they take cabbage, sauerkraut, and mayo and pile them into different layers.  It is not mixed like at most restaurants.  Then they put a slice of tomato on each side.  It is up to you to decide how exactly you want to attack this yummy concoction.  I wish that more places made coleslaw like this.  

Finally, I made my way to the crab claws.  I've already mentioned how much I like crab meat, so suffice it to say I was ready for this part of the meal.  You eat stone crabs like peeling a hard boiled egg.  Just start peeling off the shell and work your way towards the meat.  The claws I got were the large size (they also had medium or jumbo).  I was delighted to find that this meant there was a lot of crab meat in the claw.  You eat stone crabs a bit differently from other types of crab.  Once you get it peeled down to the meat, you dunk it in a delicious mustard sauce and then put the meat in between your teeth and then run it through your teeth like a sucker.  There is a bit of cartilage in the claw, so running it through your teeth allows you to scrape all the meat off.  The saltiness of the meat combined with the mustard was just phenomenal.  I'm sure you could use butter if you wanted, but the mustard was just what these needed to send them over the top.  It's a shame we don't have stone crab in North Carolina because I would definitely eat them if we did.  I still think I prefer dungeness crab that you can get fresh in California, but these are a very close second.

After making my way through the main portion of my dinner, I was on to the key lime pie.  The waitress said that everything I'd heard was correct about their pie, so I was really looking forward to it.  When she set it down, it looked like an ordinary piece of pie.  Little did I know how wrong I was!  Upon my first bite, I realized that this was one of the best desserts I've ever had the pleasure of trying.  It was unbelievable how good it was.  They served it cold...very cold.  Like almost frozen cold, but not quite.  It was just soft enough to still be able to cut with a fork.  The combination of the crust, limes, and chilliness added up to an explosion in my mouth.  I am now spoiled and will find it very difficult to take seriously key lime pie from any other establishment.  There seriously just is no topping the piece I had at Joe's.  

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I also had a chance to go to STK Miami with some of the guys from Microstategy.  STK is a very ritzy club in South Beach with black lights and funky music playing as you eat.  I don't normally drink a lot, but I thought I'd get one drink since we were waiting for our table to open up.  I sauntered up to the bar and ordered two drinks, one for myself and one for my co-worker.  I nearly fell off my seat as the bar tender told me the total was $32.  I guess I know now why Lebron James needs a $100 million contract to live in Miami.  We finally got seated, and were brought our meal.  There were two things wrong with this meal:  1)  Everything is family style (which I despise) and 2)  the food just wasn't that good.  For a place that looks as swanky as STK, this was very disappointing.  Their steak was decent, but their chimichurri sauce wasn't anything special.  Amy's blows theirs away.  Also, the sides were kind of bland and consisted of mac & cheese, fries, asparagus, jumbo shrimp etc.  I heard one guy raving about the shrimp, but to me they just seemed very chewy and tough. At least it wasn't on my dime.   I disliked their food so much that I didn't even bother to take any pictures.  I don't believe I'd return to STK Miami.

Overall the trip went well, and I am glad to have been able to spend some time in Miami.  If I'm ever back down there, you can be sure I will be making a return trip to Joe's Stone Crab.  STK Miami...not so much.