Cafe 222- San Diego

For our anniversary breakfast we went to Cafe 222 in the historic Gaslamp District of San Diego. Such an cute area, we walked there and the restaurant had patio seating, it was a very fun atmosphere. Like most restaurants I seek out I found out about this one on Food Network's The Best Thing I Ever Ate. Bobby Flay went there and ordered up their stuffed french toast with bananas and peanut butter. We thought that sounded like a swell idea, so we did the same. The dish came with three halves of stuffed french toast. They were more like french toast sandwiches, two pieces of bread with bananas and peanut butter in the middle and then griddled to perfection. They were very tasty, but quite filling. I couldn't eat my whole plate, but Brian polished his off no problem. Brian always laughs at me because when we go out to eat I'm constantly looking at the food and trying to figure out what's in it and how they made it, then I tell him, "I could totally make this at home." (I get that from my mom, she does the same thing.) And while I haven't actually perfected any dish I've said that about, I honestly could totally make those french toast at home. Not that theirs weren't good, but I don't think there were any secret ingredients, or anything too special about them. Get some wheat bread, soak it in some french toast batter of eggs and whatnot, spread some peanut butter on the inside, slice some bananas, and throw them on the griddle, throw a little powdered sugar on top, voila! I'm going to try it, and I'll let you all know how it turns out.

We also ordered their biscuits and gravy. Very tasty. The biscuits were cheese and chive and the gravy had chives in it as well. It was a totally different take on my moms classic, and Brian and I both enjoyed it. It was a very good thing we decided to walk around and check out the sites after breakfast because we were stuffed, like those french toast!

Smothered Pork Chops

I have been wanting to branch out and try cooking with different types of meat instead of just the boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I know there are a million ways to prepare chicken, and I'm not even close to trying them all out. But the other day I noticed some trimmed pork loin chops on sale. I decided to buy them and find the recipe later. And boy did I find a good one. Not knowing what kind of recipe I wanted to try, I just searched foodnetwork.com until I found a recipe that looked good, and used ingredients I had already, I did not want to go to the store. I came across a recipe from Tyler Florence called Smothered Pork Chops. This recipe appealed to me because, like I said, I didn't have to go to the store, it used buttermilk, which I had left over from the chocolate cake I had just made, and it made gravy, and how I do love my sauces!

This recipe was very simple to follow. I was so excited I didn't have to go to the store that I didn't realize I only have vegetable stock, not chicken stock. I decided to just use it, and it may have altered the flavor a bit, and I know the color was a brighter orange, but it was still a very tasty dish so it must not matter too much.

I followed the recipe exactly. Dredge the pork chops in a flour mixture, brown them, remove from pan, add liquid to make gravy, put chops back in and cook until done! That's it. A few things, I made four pork chops, like it calls for, but I had way more flour mixture than needed. So next time I might cut that down by half. I'm not the best at cooking pork chops just yet. I had to cut mine open to see if they were done. And I know that's a no no because all the juice can run out, but I didn't want under cooked meat. I also would have liked more gravy, so I'll probably adjust the recipe next time to include more liquid. But this was a great weeknight dinner. It was quick, the husband raved about it, and, like I said, you'll most likely have all the ingredients in your cupboard. (I know most of us don't usually have buttermilk just lying around, so I looked up buttermilk substitutes and it's super easy to make if you have milk and vinegar. Here is a good article with a few different recipes for buttermilk.) I served the pork chops up with rice and asparagus (my husbands go to vegetable).

Smothered Pork Chops

Umami Burger

On Friday Brian had the day off work, so I decided to ditch out of my day job and we spent Thursday night and all day Friday playing in Los Angeles. When we were deciding what to do while we were there I couldn't come up with any specific activities, just a list of restaurants I've been dying to try. So as it turns out, food was the main focus of our quick LA get away.

On Thursday night we hit up our first restaurant, Umami Burger. I've been watching The Best Thing I Ever Ate on Food Network and I practically drool for the 30 minutes it's on. On the show, chefs just sit around and tell you about the best food they've eaten and where to get it. The topic was hometown favorites when Giada was singing Umami Burger's praises. The thing that got my attention, besides how amazing the burgers looked, was that they make their own ketchup. I love ketchup. Brian constantly makes fun of how much ketchup I consume during a meal that involves hamburgers, fries, or quite a few other menu items. If the bottle at the table isn't full when I sit down, I'll always have to ask for more. Umami Burger is a simple, but gourmet burger restaurant, with extremely friendly staff and simple but hip atmosphere. (What is Umami?) Their burgers were a nice size, much smaller than your average restaurant burger, but I liked that. I ordered their Umami Burger, (also what Giada had) and it comes with tomato, mushroom, a thin, crisp slice of Parmesan cheese, and homemade ketchup. It was so soft when I bit into it, it was sweet, salty, juicy, oh so good. Brian got the Manly Burger that is topped with beer-cheddar cheese, smoked salt onion strings, and bacon lardons. He loved it. We also ordered their hand cut fries. They were very thick, which was fun, but we both would have preferred the regular size fries (which they do offer). The fry to ketchup ratio was off since the fries were so thick. Their menu has a lot of other delicious sounding burgers and the price is definitely right. The burgers range from $9-$11. We even got some dessert. I had read that their ice cream sandwiches were very good, so we ordered one up. We got vanilla bean ice cream, which came between two macaroons, with half dipped in chocolate. To die for. I'm still thinking about that one. Bottom line, if you are ever in LA, stop by. They have three different locations plus a burger truck. Visit their website for more info. And if you need a little extra incentive, I read online that a Jonas Brother was spotted eating there.

Balsamic BBQ Chicken

As I was driving home today I was going through my cupboards in my head, trying to figuring out what I could make for dinner with out going to the grocery store. I decided on barbecue chicken. My basic barbecue chicken consists of broiling chicken and basting it with Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue sauce. Now don't get me wrong, it's a tasty chicken, but it tastes very average. So I decided to make my own barbecue sauce tonight. Not having a recipe in my collection, I headed over to Food Network and and searched out barbecue chicken. I happened upon a recipe from Giada De Laurentiis that she made on her Every Day Italian show. It had a different twist on the sauce, and the ingredients were everything I already had in my cupboard. (Which is a huge bonus for me!) The sauce was delicious! It is not your average barbecue sauce. You can most definitely taste the balsamic vinegar and that makes the sauce kind of tangy. Brian really liked it, said it was different than regular barbecue sauce, with a taste he didn't expect. I might like the sauce to be a bit sweeter next time, but overall, an excellent sauce. I followed the cooking instructions as written, and the sauce reduced down, but it definitely wasn't as thick as a store bought sauce.

I used boneless, skinless chicken breasts and grilled them on my Cuisinart Griddler. (That's been getting a lot of use lately) The recipe also says you can bake the chicken, use any part of the bird you'd like, or suggests also using on steak, which I'd love to try. I kept basting the chicken as it was grilling, but I think it could be great to marinate the chicken in the sauce for a bit first. I had plenty of sauce to baste and use some as a side sauce for serving. I'm a huge fan of extra sauce. I served the chicken up with some baked seasoned potato slices. This is quick, easy, and another great way to spice up that average barbecue chicken.

Balsamic BBQ Chicken Recipe

It's easy burrito night!

I've always loved a good burrito, it's what I look at first on the menu of a Mexican restaurant. My mom use to make us a basic bean and cheese burrito growing up, before our tastes grew up! But even through college and living on my own I always found that I had the ingredients to throw something together. My only complaint was that most of the flavor came from whatever salsa I choose to put on them. That has all changed! This summer, when I was watching Food Network all day, all the time, I caught an episode of Cooking For Real with Sunny Anderson. I'd never seen her show before and had no idea what kind of food she cooked. So I watched the episode and she made these easy, but delicious looking quesadillas with this new jazzed up sour cream. I had pretty much everything needed to make them, so I tried them out that night, and have keep trying out variations at least every other week.

I'm actually not the hugest quesadilla fan because of all the cheese, always conscious of the waist line. So the first time I actually made just the mix and put in a tortilla, and it is relatively low fat. Each time I make the mix I tend to throw in whatever I have in the fridge. Had some left over rice from the night before, so that was new this time. Sunny didn't use chicken, but I think it's a wonderful addition. I've used grilled chicken, or when I'm lazy I'll throw in canned chicken and it is still good. When I don't have red pepper I'll use green, and I've used all kinds of beans. I prefer whole black beans. But yesterday I accidentally opened a can of pinto beans with peppers (I think I also bought that on accident) so I used those just tonight! They were actually a nice little addition.

What I love most about Sunny's recipe is the Cilantro Lime Sour Cream. It is amazing. Again, it's very simple, but just something I never did to my sour cream before. But I am hooked. I like it with a lot of lime juice.

We have been loving those fresh tortillas that you cook yourself. Well, I guess if we keep them frozen they're not really fresh. But we get them at Costco, not the most authentic, but they keep forever. And when we cook them up they taste so fresh. (And for dessert we cooked up a few more and spread some homemade honey butter on them. Delish! Thanks Walburger's!)

Now I know this isn't a super fancy, or even hard recipe. And perhaps most of you have already whipped something like this up. But it's what I was cooking this week. And since I've been hit with round two of a cold, I was lucky to make this!

Southwest Quesadilla Recipe

Pecan Pumpkin Crunch: Pie Alternative

I started off my blog talking about how pumpkin obsessed we were, and then barely posted any pumpkin recipes. We were cooking, I just wasn’t posting. In our quest to find more pumpkin recipes I came across this recipe before Thanksgiving, tried it out, and made it twice in one week. It was on an episode of Ask Aida and she was using it as an alternative to pumpkin pie. I loved it for that very reason, you don’t have to mess with the crust and the pecan topping still gives it some texture. It’s creamy, and had all the flavors a good pumpkin pie should have. Husbands, boyfriends, sisters and friends all liked this one. The first one went so fast that I had to make a second one to make sure everyone got the seconds they wanted. I’d definitely try it out. I know Thanksgiving is more of the pumpkin pie holiday, but I’d say it’s still in season! Pecan Pumpkin Crunch Recipe