Hotel Food and More

From Maryville we headed to Lexington KY to see my folks. We are not from Kentucky nor do my parents live there. My Mom is sometimes wheelchair bound and Columbus is a long drive from Blairsville so my Mom wanted us to meet in the middle. So Lexington it was. All the time leading up to it my Mom complained and fretted that Lexington would suck, there was nothing to do and the hotel would be horrible.

We had a great time.

I've been accused my whole life of being a pessimist. Still don't understand that.

Anyway, Mom booked rooms at a Marriott resort outside of Lexington. The rooms were nothing spectacular but they were nice. They had an expensive breakfast buffet, though I've had more expensive ones, much, much more, while working the past 10 years. It was typical of some Holiday Inns and Embassy Suites. The bacon was better than average. But they had an incredible fresh fruit bar. Absolutely perfect blueberries, humongous blackberries, deep yellow pineapple and three different melons, cantaloupe, honey dew and watermelon (two of which I don't eat). Oh yeah, ripe strawberries too. They also had a phenomenal hash brown casserole. Two things made it special. One, it was peppery. They did not use a light hand on the pepper. Two, crisp, toasty melted cheese on top. Mmmmmm. Those were two excellent breakfasts in Lexington.

The first night my Mom was recommended to eat at Malone's. And again the fretting over would it be any good. "You just never know what your going to get from someones recommendation." She had us look at restaurant descriptions in the travel booklet. My Dad and I were both up for Billy's Bar-B-Q but Mom wanted something nicer. Finally I said that since we didn't know the area, let's just go with the recommendation of Malone's.

It was about a 10 minute drive and we were running late which made me more than anxious. We also thought we were lost but Dinah called while we were en route and smoothed it all out. Nice place. Mom said it was EXACTLY what she had in mind. I thought it was a little pricey, but what Mom wants, Mom gets. I'm not complaining though.

Dinah and I shared some excellent PEI mussels while my Dad ordered some calamari as an appetizer. The calamari was OK for my tastes. I prefer the leg ends and this was just rings. I was thrilled to be able to get a Caesar salad with real anchovies on top. Oh so good. They had fresh bread with a creamy garlic butter on the table. I can't count how much bread Rose ate.

While I stuck with water with lemon since I was driving, Dinah order a local beer from Lexington, Alltech's Kentucky Ale. She deemed it pretty good. As a follow up she tried what was billed as the very popular Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale. This she found repulsive after one sip! I tried it and it tastes just like bourbon. If you like bourbon, this is your beer. I however was not in the mood for bourbon, nor am I a big fan of bourbon, so we just let that glass sit for the rest of the evening.

Dinah got the seared Ahi tuna appetizer for her dinner. It was thinly sliced the way I prefer it. I stole a piece and can attest to its wonderfulness. Mom got some kind of surf and turf, two shrimp stacked on top of a crab cake stacked on top of a Filet Mignon. My Dad and I both treated ourselves to thirty dollar ribeyes. Hey, Mom was buying. I had never thought that "Prime beef from Chicago" ever meant anything that special. I was wrong. My Dad and I both agreed it was the best steak either of us had ever eaten. And we've eaten a couple cows between us in our lifetimes.

Now if you are going to have a fancy dinner like this, you have to have dessert. Rose and Dad had ice cream. Dinah had a creme brule, her favorite but I can't remember what flavor it was. I ordered the chocolate chip cookie. It is worth driving to Lexington to get this cookie. The cookie was about an inch thick, six inches across, hot, half baked in the middle, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and a slight drizzle of chocolate sauce. If it doesn't bring you to orgasm with the first bite it will at least make your eyes roll back.

My God it was a great meal, perfect too because unbeknownst to my parents it was our six year anniversary. Mom kept going on about how she thought it was the following week. I just bit my tongue; that was the last one. As an added bonus, Rose stayed with Grandma and Grandpa, so we were able to continue to celebrate our anniversary with a few drinks at the hotel bar before retiring to our room for a child free night!

A friend of mine once asked, why is hotel sex better? I don't know it just is.

Beef about Beer

Yesterday was a complete loss since I was recovering from a sleep study. I never sleep during one of those. OK, not never, I got 3 hours of sleep. Thus, no post yesterday. Right now I'm resting a little after working in the garden this morning. More on that later, I've still got a little catching up to do.

My neurologist appointment was Friday, May 1st and after that I considered myself on vacation. The next day, Saturday, we headed to Maryville TN to visit some friends for the evening before we headed on to Lexington to visit with my folks.

Maryville had been described to be as being in the sticks. Hah! Blairsville is 650 people, that's the sticks. When you have malls, Target, and every chain restaurant you can think of, you aren't in the sticks. We don't have that many options here in Blaisville for dinner so we were a little excited about dinner. Cinda suggested Texas Roadhouse. GREAT! We don't have one and for a popular chain restaurant's steak, they are one of the better places to go.

Now I have to admit upfront that I do have a history of messing with wait staff. I will tease, flirt, poke fun. All in good taste and good fun though. I'm never mean or rude and if you play along, you will get a better tip.

This night we took two cars because we didn't have enough seats to accommodate Rose's car seat. So Adam drove me in one car and Cinda drove Dinah and Rose in our car. Bonus time! We both get to drink! So taking advantage of the situation I was aiming for a beer or three.

Our waitress came to the table, asked what I wanted and I asked what did they have on tap? She paused. She paused a little too long. So I said, wait, let me guess, the usuals, Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Lite, Coor Light, Mic Ultra, Sam Adams and one other. Big smile.

At this point she got pissy. No, that's not what we have, we have Budweiser, Miller High Life, Yuengling. Stop, give me a Yuengling. I looked at everyone, did she not just list the same beers I listed? Just because you say Budweiser it is still the same as saying Bud. I DO NOT need some 17 year old high school priss getting pissy with me about beer. Please, I went to school in Wisconsin. And after that, our quality of service dramatically decreased. She was polite the rest of the evening except to me. Whatever. She didn't get 25% tip that night. Her loss.

My ribeye was excellent by the way. Little did I know it would be only the first of many ribeyes that week. :)

Benne no Hana

The Thursday before my neurologist appointment I decided to make some cookies. I like to make cookies on Thursday so Dinah can take them to work on Friday. I don't know why because they don't always eat them. Thumbing through my recipes I decided to make Benne Wafers. The recipe I used is here but don't bother with it, it isn't the best written recipe.

While it says that benne seeds are sesame seeds the first thing I had to do was to figure out what parched benne seeds were. I had a gut feeling it meant toasted. Searching the Internet didn't yield much as people just kept repeating this or a similar recipe and never defined parched. Finally I found a web site for a sesame seed importer I think where it more or less described parched sesame seeds as toasted. But then I got confused on whether or not the sesame seeds are supposed to by hulled or unhulled. I decided just to buy whatever the grocery sold and to toast them. Screw it if I'm wrong.

I read that you have to be careful when toasting sesame seeds as they will burn quickly and that they can toast in as little as four minutes. Maybe it is because I was scared about this possibility and kept opening the door to check every one minute but after 15 minutes my seeds had not toasted to my satisfaction. So I put the pan on the lowest rack and turned my broiler on to low. This got things toasting quickly. My seeds didn't burn but I think they may have gone a little past the golden brown I was shooting for. But since it was nearly impossible to get a single layer of seeds I had a wide range of toasted levels and thought the toasted flavor would average out.

I never seem to have any light brown sugar on hand. I put it on today's grocery list. But in all the times I have used dark brown sugar instead I have never had a flavor problem. I think it just made my cookies a little darker. As you may know I am a strong advocate of weighing ingredients, especially when baking. I don't bother packing one cup of brown sugar. It's 200 grams.

I don't know why the original recipe says to flatten the wafers with a wet knife. I tried that on three and it just makes a mess. These cookies spread out on their own into thin crisp wafers so just let the oven do it's trick.

I used my Silpat for these and had no burnt or stuck cookies. I can't say the same of the batch I made with a non-stick cookie sheet sprayed with non-stick spray. If you don't have a Silpat, consider getting one. It is a nice little kitchen gadget to have.

The cookies were a nice change of pace from the standard sugar cookie base one normally has. They were crisp and nutty. I thought my brain was deceiving me when I thought I tasted a hint of toasted popcorn until my wife had one and said the same thing. It reminded me of the popcorn in Cracker Jacks. If you would like to give these a try, here is my write up of the recipe.

A Little Catch Up

Actually I have a lot of catching up to do. Where oh where to begin? Well the next few posts may be out of order but I'll start with last Friday, 01 May.

I had my neurologist appointment and left with a clean bill of health. Nothing even remotely close to a cardio issue. As he said, for the issues I was having, worst case was TIA , best case was migraines. Since I have no pattern of migraines and have not had them before, no need to start any preventative medicines. The third possibility was not discussed on this visit and that was viral meningitis. My gut tells me that's what I had. Undiagnosed and untreated it could easily have lasted four weeks. Meningitis is more likely to cause left sided numbness than migraines. And I find it hard to believe I experienced migraines for four weeks. Even though I never had a fever, meningitis is a better explanation. I think even Dinah agrees.

So good, monkey off my back.

Next I need to talk about the cookies I made the day before my neurologist appointment.

Happy Feeth of May

We're on the road and this keyboard is just too small to do any long post with. So more to follow about today when we get back. In the mean time, Happy Cinco de Mayo and have a tequila on me!