Wow! We have had a pretty busy week and it is only Wednesday. Yesterday I gave a tour to the two people who won 67 – 8 hour days of attractions in Orlando. Here is where they quoted me in their blog. Wow again. We were part 1 of day 41.
But, tonight I came home and made the garlic butter burger. It is utter simplicity and as probably strong as you might think. I made a thick paste of butter, raw garlic, flat leaf parsley and shallot and cooked the turkey burger in it.
The butter melting down over the burger infusing it with garlic. So great and so easy.
A pile of oven baked steak fries round it out.
Category: orlando
green green green grass
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always greener on the other side
kick it up a notch!
we made it out to dinner for magical dining month/Brian’s birthday last Saturday to Tchoup Chop (pronounced chop chop) by Emeril. We ate there last year for Z’s birthday and at his other Orlando outpost the year before to celebrate his birthday and our engagement. I guess we must like Emeril’s cooking. This restaurant is a play on asian flavors and is at one of the Universal resorts. We got to sit next to the indoor lily pond this time and my pictures didn’t turn out at all. The food was solid and good and had asian flair. I had some awesome pork and lemongrass dumplings with sake soy dipping sauce, beer braised short ribs and a yummy desert trio. Brian had a funny Japanese strawberry soda (pop!), Chickeny eggrolls with sriracha sauce, citrus (couldn’t taste it) pork with noodles and the same desert. It was a fun meal to cap off a long year and let loose a little. I wonder what we will be celebrating the next time we cross his path?
the days of wine and flip-flops
How far would you go to have a glass of wine? Would you stomp and smush grapes with your feet in order to produce juice? Would you have second thoughts with every drop that passed your lips? I have heard what can be cultured from flip flops and my first thought is, ‘heck no!’
We went to the LakeRidge Winery grape stomp and harvest festival yesterday. It wasn’t really anything to write home about. In fact I enjoyed the trip I took through the winery back in July when my girlfriends came for a visit and we did the wine tasting tour quite a bit more. The stomp is just a gimmick to get people out in greater spending exuberant numbers. They give you a few tastes among the vats and herd you through the tour in a sort of half masted way. We wandered for about five minutes through the ‘festival’ where crowds bumped and spilled wine on my flip flops for a glimpse of a few people with their pants rolled up and feet in piles of grapes before we decided to go home and have lunch.
It is a free tour and tasting worth taking most days but a regular old weekday or a Saturday would be just fine, even I might add, more enjoyable. You might even find you like the muscadine, native and locally grown grapes. They have a peculiar musky smell and a taste I find reminiscent of grape Kool-aid.
the sweet life
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Well, last night we went to date night at a local chocolate factory called Farris and Foster’s. For a small sum they will sit you at a big table with 15 or so others and give a short lesson on how to hand pour and dip chocolates. They have a huge array of items that you can mix in, sprinkle on and fill your chocolates with, including coconut dough (think Mounds), truffle dough, various creams that include chile, tabasco along with the standards. You can enrobe items such as Oreos, pretzels & marshmallows on the (remember that I love Lucy episode?) conveyor belt. They outfit you in plastic gloves, apron and a really sassy paper hat and turn you loose like a kid in a candy store.
The bigger story here is the idea of date night. I know they need a moniker to bring in free spending couples and their bottles of wine and freshly made up faces and their air of anticipation but the idea that date night has to be preplanned and reserved for and is an interesting one. I was recently talking to Vicky and told her that everything that I do with Brian feels like a date. Granted, our actual dating experience together was fairly short and over the phone but since we got married I feel like every dinner, walk, movie and grocery store trip is a great date with someone I want to spend my time with. I try to make a habit of letting Brian pay (yes, I know it’s the same $) and saying thank you for taking or coming along with me. A date doesn’t have to be just the two of us either, we are happy to take along a niece, nephew or friend. It is the time spent together sharing adventures that makes it time well spent.
My Urban Pantry 