SusteNation

Las Vegas Restaurants

For the grand finale to our trip to Utah, we spent two days in Las Vegas, a town where it's hard to turn around without bumping into an interesting restaurant.  Here were the highlights of our trip

The first night, we decided to take it easy and just eat at the bar in the lobby of our hotel.  It turns out that in the MGM Grand, the hotel bar is the Wolfgang Puck Bar and Grill.  Takes some of the shame out of "staying in".  I had the Housemade Sausage with Braised Cabbage, Caramelized Apples and Sage Brown Butter.  The sage butter and cabbage were delicious, but most importantly, it was a damn good sausage.

The next day, on a friend's recommendation, we hunted down some lunch at the Burger Bar in the Mandalay Bay casino.  They have very fancy build your own burgers.  They even have a $60 hamburger!  I elected to have a Kobe beef burger with Monterrey Jack, grilled portobello mushrooms, and peppered bacon.  Throw in some Fat Tire Amber Ale (a rare treat for us east-coasters), and this was easily one of the best lunches I've ever had.

The last night we stayed at The Venetian.  We went out to Zeffirino's for dinner that night.  This was our fancy date night, so I tried to behave and didn't take any pictures of my meal.  I had some Cappelletti Romagnoli al formaggio di fossa (Pasta stuffed with chicken and cheese).  It was very good, and there were even some minstrels.  (you're allowed to pull out the camera for things like that!)

All in all, it was awesome, but I am glad I was only in Vegas for two days, or I would have gained 20 pounds that week.

Utah Vacation

For our most recent vacation, my lady and I went out to southern Utah for some hiking.  The only reasonable flights we could find were into Las Vegas, so we were forced to add two days of relaxing to the end of our vacation.  I swear, my arm was twisted!  Details on that portion of the trip will come in a later post.

The first four days of our trip were spent in southern Utah.  First we went to Zion National Park for an overnight hike.  We stayed in Springdale, UT afterwards, and ate at the Zion Pizza and Noodle Company.  They make first rate pizzas, and have some delicious microbrews.  I enjoyed my Squatters Full Suspension unfiltered pale ale and Southwestern Burrito Pizza immensely.  If you're ever in Springdale (and you should be, the park is amazing), make sure to eat there.  We then moved on to spend two days in Bryce Canyon National Park, doing more hiking.  We had many good meals (most of them involving beef jerky and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches), but not too much that was picture worthy.  We did eat at a lovely restaurant called Clark's in Tropic, UT (one of the closest towns to Bryce Canyon).  I'd recommend it, but I don't have to.  If you're in Tropic, it's probably the only restaurant open!

And somewhere along the way, I got engaged to a lovely lady who enjoys adventure and food almost as much as I do!

 

Kielbasa and Onions

I decided to post this meal because I was starting to worry that from reading this blog, one might get the impression that I'm some talented cook who makes really fancy things all the time.  Let me assure you, that would be pretty far from reality.  In fact, frying up some kielbasa and onions is far more my speed.  This dish is great because you saute the onions, cut the kielbasa into strips, throw them in the pan, cover it, and let it cook.  Check it every few minutes and stir it until everything is nicely browned.  Drain off some of the oil, and serve it on a roll.  It's so easy, that you can probably even finish a sinkful of dishes while it's cooking and earn bonus points with your significant other!
 

Valentine's Day Scallops

This post is extremely overdue.  I considered trying to pawn this off, and pretend I made these a few days ago, but I'm going to fess up, and admit this meal happened two months ago!

Not being a huge fan of the commercial nature of Valentine's day, I try to avoid going out to eat.  It is a nice excuse to cook a fancy meal, however.  This year I got a craving for scallops in my head, and sort of fixated on it.  I spent a while trying to find a recipe that really jumped out at me without much success.  Then I ran across this recipe for Seared Scallops over Wilted Spinach and Lemon Risotto.  That jumped!  Never mind that I had never attempted a risotto before in my life, I just had to make this dish.

Fortunately, Marianne described this recipe beautifully, and guided me right through to a resounding success.  Thanks Marianne!  I am not going to list the recipe here because she did such a great job, and illustrated it very well.  Being a risotto novice, I had my hands full most of the time, and didn't take a lot of pictures.

The sour of the lemon risotto and the sweetness of the scallops were an absolute perfect mix, and the spinach was delicious.  I will certainly be making this again some day.

Peppercorns

This idea was first proposed several years ago by a good friend of mine.  He said that he wanted to spend some time learning the difference between the different types of pepper (black, green, white and pink).  I have no idea if he ever followed through on this idea, but I found myself in Penzeys spice store, and decided to try his experiment.  I picked up three types of pepper, green, pink and white.  They sat in my cabinet for a long time, until I finally was able to obtain three clear peppermills (need to be able to tell them apart!).  I will experiment with these through the year, but here's some quick info on the three.

• Green Peppercorns - According to the back of the jar, these are harvested from the same vines as the black peppercorns, but they are harvested before the pepper has fully matured.  The flavor of these is very fresh and clean, and very similar to black peppercorns, but milder.  Green peppercorns are perfect for poultry, vegetables, fish and seafood.
• Pink Peppercorns - (Reunion Pink) The back of the jar doesn't say much about pink peppercorns, but does note that they are not a true peppercorn, but were named that because of their size and flavor.  They have an oily shell, and are actually a bit soft in the middle.  They have a sweet flavor, with a little bit of kick, but not a whole lot.  They are called for in recipes from chicken to salad to seafood.
• White Peppercorns - (Sarawak White)  White peppercorns start out the same as black peppercorns, but then are allowed to ripen more fully on the vine. The black outer shell is then removed.  The Sarawak peppercorns are held under a constantly flowing stream of Artesian spring water, yielding a whiter color, and an extra clean product.  They have a rich, winey, hot flavor.  They have a longer afterburn than the pink or green peppercorns.  They work well in soup or on grilled meats, and are preferred in Southeast Asian, Southern and Eastern European cuisine.

New Banner!

Since I started this blog, I've been wanting to do something more creative with the homepage banner.  Plain text is pretty boring, even when there's a nice color scheme.  Unfortunately, my artistic skills are pretty low-rent, so I've been putting this project off.  I finally came up with an idea that I liked, and one that could be done mostly with photoshop image tricks.  Above, you can see the result of my foray into the design world.  Please, be gentle.

This is the image I started with when creating my banner!

Whole Wheat Banana Bread

I'm writing this as I eat a slice fresh out of the oven, and of course at this moment, I think Banana Bread might be the greatest food in the world.  Tomorrow I might not feel quite as strongly, but I sure do love the stuff.  It's an extremely easy recipe, probably the first baking I ever did that wasn't brownies or pre-made cookies.  I get my recipe from my trusty Betty Crocker Cookbook, with two minor tweaks.  I use regular milk instead of buttermilk, because I never have buttermilk sitting in the fridge.  I also subsititue some whole wheat flour for part of the white flour to give it a richer flavor and make it healthier.

Whole Wheat Banana Bread

• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup stick butter, softened
• 2 large eggs
• 3 overripe bananas
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt

Heat the oven to 350F, and grease the bottom of a 9x5x3 loaf pan.  Mix the sugar, butter, and eggs in a large bowl.  Thoroughly mash the bananas, and add them, the milk and vanilla to the bowl.  Beat until smooth.  Stir in flour, baking soda and salt until thoroughly mixed.

Bake about 75-85 minutes, or until knife inserted comes out clean.  Remove from the oven, and let cool 5 minutes.  Loosen the sides of the loaf with a knife, and remove from pan to cool.  When mostly cool, wrap in foil to save.  (I actually find that this makes it even more moist and delicious the next morning.)

Orange Habanero Marinade

What do you do when you have some leftover Habanero peppers and a craving for seafood?  Well, I suppose there are lots of things you could do.  You could make some hot sauce, and then go eat some crab cakes or something, but I guess that wouldn't make for a good story, and I wouldn't have a recipe for you.  So I decided to make up a good spicy salmon marinade.  I made a quick teriyaki vegetable stir fry and some rice as a side dish, that really went well with the spicy salmon.  All in all a great meal.  Here's the marinade recipe, I haven't tried it but I'm thinking it would go pretty well with chicken too.  (Hint, hint, if anyone wants to try it and report back, that would be great!)

Orange Habanero Marinade

• 1 orange
• 2 habanero peppers
• 3 tbsp chopped onion
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• salt

Finely chop the habanero peppers and onion, like so, and mix together.  Juice the orange, and add to the onion and pepper.  Add the vegetable oil and a pinch of salt.

Ebay success, sort of

My first mix of seeds sold this week on ebay.  Congratulations auctiongal86! I have mixed feelings about this sale.  On the one hand, I'm glad it sold.  On the other hand, it sold for $1.30.  Between the original cost of the seeds, the time and effort I put into bagging and labeling them, and the nice little handout I made with all the planting instructions, it's hard to say I really made anything on the deal.  Hopefully I'm spreading the joy of gardening at least.  I have a few more packets of seeds ready to go, and I just put them up on ebay, here's hoping they make it about $2!

The Seeds are Sprouting

Here's a snapshot about 10 days after I planted my seeds.  So far, the tomato, basil, marigold, and cilantro have sprouted.  The different varieties of pepper, rosemary, and mint are still germinating away.  This is roughly in line with the information listed on the back of the package, so I'm pretty satisfied so far.  The weather here in Pittsburgh went from 77F on Tuesday down to 25F on Thursday, so I'm glad I started them indoors and didn't subject them to the frost.  I'll try to give them a little sunshine if it ever warms up, though.