Archive for September, 2007

I haven’t been to Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill but I would dare say this restaurant is a great find as well.

Stephanie and I got…[Uh, yeah sorry for the interuption.  Here is an update:]

While being back in Dallas for travel we went back to Blue Mesa and now I am glad I just saved this as a draft that I almost never got back to…because this last time was HORRIBLE.

Service, food, everything.

Imagine chicken tortilla soup tasting like a watered down version of campbells vegetable soup.  There was nothing that made it discernable from a bad chicken and veggie soup.  Maybe if you squint and close one eye you can imagine seeing a few sprigs or flakes of cilantro?  Nah, I can’t taste it.

Eat at your own risk.

Earlier I was fooling around and managed to loose/delete (?) an earlier posting of this book…

The Elements Of Cooking, by Michael Ruhlman.

An article/blog by a colleague of his can be viewed at this link -

A Hunger Artist: The Elements of Cooking by Bob Del Grosso…or an Amazon article at this link – Essay.

If you reference my ‘tyrone’ page on the right panel I have a pictorial of a few culinary books I have referenced or read in the past and Michael Ruhlman has wrote at least 3 of them.

I will be excited to read how Michael ‘puts it down’ on paper.

So I (we) was in a couple of stores tonight to buy an external hard drive to backup our laptops on and I turned and said to my wife, “What do you think?  The Seagate, or the WD My Book?”  She looks at the boxes, then she looks at me…then she says, “Give them to me so I can see which one is lighter, thats the one I think we should get!”

No comment.

Jim and Sandy came to our wedding last year…that was really the first time I met them.  Jim is, uh, hmmm…Oh yeah, Mike’s first cousin.  (just couldn’t remember the exact relation when writing this, sorry!) 

We traveled to Green Bay and stayed at Grandma’s house.  Stephanie’s parents (Mike & Judy) were there and Tom (Stephanie’s Uncle) came later…It was great to be able to squeeze it in before the end of the year gets too busy.

I know sometimes you think I (tyrone) always relate everything to food…and you would probably be right.  So…I got to also mention that ‘Grandma’ has some kickin’ chocolate chip cookies in a big tin on top of the refrigerator, they were great!  And for some reason (hmmm, wonder why?) there weren’t any oatmeal ones for me to try even though they were just as great as the chocolate chip, so ‘they’ say…I never got to eat one! 

Which makes me inclined to believe they may have been even better?  If thats possible?

Pictures are on the Pics page!  Click for Pics, then pick the Jim & Sandy Album.

Have patience if it doesn’t work right away…

Whatever you want to call it, specialty places, stores/food services that have been in place for generations…that’s what real food is made from, or at least originally came from. I am glad to see that these days have not gone by the wayside yet.

Although I was a bit disappointed that Krohn Dairy Store would not let me tour the facilities (9/11, regulations, insurance, blah blah blah) I still managed to get my hands on some fresh samples and Judy (my mother-in-law) made sure we went away with a few pounds of their best cheese and cheese curds.

Mark Konop at Konops Meat Market seemed a little taken back that I would actually want to see his families operations…apologizing that the particular day we came there was not a whole lot of ‘excitement’ going on, but come tomorrow…that’s ok Mark, I had to get back to work.

I would have gotten more pictures but I didn’t want to get anyone nervous.

And don’t ya know, after packing all that meat and cheese in my check-in bag I had one of those ‘inspection’ tags in my luggage upon returning home and unzipping it to put it away. It was sittin’ right on top…and luckily for them, nothin’ was missing!!!

Well this week we had quite a challenge at the IOC kitchen.  Our walk-in freezer went down…actually I think by the time we realized it was not keeping temp it could have been down for 24 hours.  We do not frequent our freezer every day, its not necessary.

 We called US Foods & Sysco but to no avail.  Neither could produce a trailer with refrigeration(freezer capabilities) at 4pm in the afternoon (which seems kind of hoky to me), but tried to promise one first thing the next day.  But of course that would be too late…we were a bit dissapointed with the food companies.

But we got it all squared away ourselves and for now our walk-in refrigerator is maxed out.  We’ll just cook/make our everyday menu out of the thawing meats and products as they become defrosted and in order of the most likely to go bad first.  We think we have a pretty good chance at staying one step ahead of having to waste anything.  That was yesterday…

Today I am getting ready to leave work..we (my wife and I) will be attending a marriage up in Green Bay, WI.  This is Stephanie’s extended family(Grandma, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, etc…).  And it will be a good time to spend with them since all her immediate family will be there as well.

We’ll be flying out of Dallas in the morning…(yawn) 4 am comes quick!