June 13, 2011- Pizza, Chicken Strips, and Phad Thai

Tonight I got a chance to go out for a movie and dinner with my good friend Melissa.  I realized that we've known each other for 10 years now.  I can't believe it's been that long!  Katie came downtown with me and had dinner with Ben.  They went to Gordon Biersch where he had a pizza and she had chicken strips and carrots.  After dinner, they took the bus back home.  Katie had a blast on the bus!  Ben said she did great on the bus, but wanted to be a bit too independent when walking from the bus stop to the house.  He had to keep moving her back to the side of the road.  Apparently, she prefers to walk down the middle of the street. 

After watching Bridesmaids, which was hilarious, Melissa and I had dinner at Thai Ginger.  I had Phad Thai with chicken while Melissa had a curry dish.  What a fun night!

Friday, 2/11/2011

Ben and I are very fortunate to have friends and family who will watch Katie for us while we go on dates.  Tonight, our friend Shellie took care of Katie while we went out for dinner and a concert at The Triple Door.  We got tickets to sit at a table right in front of the stage.  Other than having to turn to look to the center of the stage, our seats were great.  We saw Susan Werner and David Wilcox.  It was a unique concert experience.  David started with six songs and then Susan came out and they traded off after each song or two.  David stated that they were going to try to have a conversation with their songs.  And, it worked pretty well.  For instance, she sang a humorous song about being bad and doing all the things bad for ourselves and the environment.  He followed up with a song about the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year.  Then she sang "Mercy Me", another song with an environmental conscience.  Anyway, it was a great show.  

The Triple Door serves food from Wild Ginger, the Tom Douglas restaurant upstairs.  We started off with chicken pot stickers.  For our main dishes, we shared Pad Thai with chicken and Seven  Flavor Beef.  Both were quite good.  With our meals we enjoyed wine and a few cocktails.  For dessert we shared a ginger chocolate gelato.  Oh, the food was very good. 

Saturday, 1/22/2011

For a couple years now, Ben and I have been promising to take at least one day a month to go shoot photos.  We take photos of our family all the time, but rarely get out to take non-family photos.  Well, today we finally made it happen!  We went to Seward Park, which is located on a peninsula on the West side of Lake Washington, South of the I-90 bridge.  There is a view of Mount Rainier as you look between Seattle and Mercer Island and over Renton.  Ben got a couple great shots of the mountain while I focused on the park and neighboring community.  Katie was on my back in the ergobaby carrier with the pink camera she got from Uncle Spencer.  Mostly she took photos of my fleece:)

After the sun was done dancing on the clouds, we went to Columbia City to try a new restaurant for us.  We went to Spice Room, a Thai restaurant on Rainier Ave S.   We were a bit hesitant to go in because there was no one else in the restaurant when we first walked by.  But, we decided to be brave as long as they had a booster seat or high chair for Katie.  We are glad that they did, because the food was good.  And, by the time we left, there were many more people seated and happily eating.  When the host brought a booster seat for Katie, he also brought out a bib and kid friendly silverware.  The waitress brought Katie water in a cup with a lid and a straw and asked if she wanted to color.  Katie was immediately satisfied with our choice:)

For dinner, I had to try their Crispy Garlic Chicken to see how it compared to our West Seattle Thai favorite, Buddha Ruksa.  It was darn good.  The chicken was tender and the flavor was bold and delicious.  Ben thought it had a kind of fishy flavor to it that he didn't like, but I didn't notice it at all.  When I looked back at the menu, I saw that it is stir fried in a mix of soy and oyster sauce.  Perhaps that was the source of the fishy flavor. Anyway, Spice Room's Crispy Garlic Chicken reminded us of how Buddha Ruksa's used to be.  Lately, the chicken at Buddha Ruksa has been dry.  So, comparing the current chicken preparation from both restaurants, Spice Room wins on this dish. 

Ben ordered Swimming Rama.  It was a plate of spinach leaves, topped with sliced chicken breast and covered with warm peanut sauce.  The sauce and chicken were great, but neither of us was a fan of the warmed spinach.  I could only eat one bite of it.  Something about the warmed texture wasn't appealing.  For Katie, we ordered chicken satay (skewers) with peanut sauce.  She ate one bite of chicken and then munched on rice the rest of the meal.  The chicken satay was good, but I think one of the skewers wasn't cooked all the way through.  The lights were dim, so it was hard to know for sure, but I did stop eating that one.  

All in all, I think it is a restaurant worth going to again.  There were several other dishes that looked really good that we would want to try.

Friday, 10/22/2010

Katie and I met Ben at Buddha Ruksa, our favorite Thai restaurant, for dinner tonight.  We got there right at 5pm and were only the second party seated for the evening.  The waitresses fawned over Katie.   One helped Katie to buckle the strap on her high chair and then brought her a shorter straw for her cup and a small spoon and fork.  And, when Katie needed to spit out the fried tofu, which she wouldn't swallow, a stack of napkins appeared on the table instantly.  We were definitely in good hands:)

I ordered food for Katie right away, because she was super hungry.  With help from the waitress, I picked Phad See Iew-- stir-fried fresh wide rice noodles plus egg, broccoli, and chicken in blackbean sauce.  When I glanced at the menu, I thought it said "wild rice" instead of "wide rice", and then I completely missed "noodle" in the description.  Katie did eat quite a bit of the chicken and a piece of broccoli, but only had a few nibbles of noodles.  Ben and I helped pick up her slack;)

We also ordered fried tofu with a sweet garlic/chili sauce, cashew chicken, and brown rice.  The tofu was just okay on its own, but the sauce was excellent.  So, I guess I was just using the tofu as a way to get the sauce into my mouth:)  The cashew chicken was alright, but I felt there were too many onions and carrots in the dish and not enough chicken.  When it comes to chicken dishes, I still prefer the restaurant's signature dish--Crispy Garlic Chicken.

Ben concluded the meal with a bowl of coconut ice cream.  I chose to pick up ice cream at Baskin-Robbins on our way home.  I had a few gift certificates to use and thought it would be a good night to cash them in.  I was sad to realize that the ice cream wasn't that good.  I wonder if the quality has changed over the years, or if I have just developed taste for more refined, fancy ice cream.

Thursday, 9/9/2010

My company's annual picnic was this afternoon.  I signed up to bring a main dish to the potluck, because there always seems to be an abundance of dessert and only a few main dishes.  Not wanting to cook, I decided to pick up Thai food from Buddha Ruksa on the way to the picnic.  If you live in the Puget Sound, are open to going out to eat in West Seattle, and you like Thai food, you need to check out Buddha Ruksa.  The food is delicious, the staff is very friendly, and the prices are really reasonable.  Anyway, today I picked up an order of Crispy Garlic Chicken and an order of Phad Prik Khing--stir-fried fresh green beans, tofu, bell pepper, and kaffir lime leaves in curry paste.  When it was time for me to take Katie home from the picnic, I was thrilled to find that there was enough of both dishes to take home leftovers for dinner.  Score!!!

Tonight, I heated the Phad Prik Khing up in a small saucepan and microwaved the chicken.  Ben and I finished those plus the remainder of the Hot Mango Chutney Cashew dip, from his mom's birthday party, for our dinner.  We thoroughly enjoyed our meal:)  Katie was not OK with the spice of the Thai food or the dip, so she ate a hot dog dipped in ketchup.  I think she enjoyed her meal too;)

Tuesday, 5/18/2010

I was going to make Caribbean Pork Bowls tonight, but our afternoon and early evening got away from us. I had a chiropractor appointment in Redmond at 2pm and then stayed on the East side to do some shopping. By the time I got back over to Seattle, picked up Ben, stopped at the grocery store to get some food for my sick friends (hope you are feeling better soon!), and then dropped off their food, we weren't about to go home and wait another 1/2 hour + to eat. So we called in an order to Buddha Ruksa, our favorite Thai restaurant in Seattle. We got our standard dishes:

Phad Prik Khing (green beans, bell peppers, and tofu with kaffir lime leaves in
curry paste.)

Crispy Garlic Chicken (sautéed in a rich garlic sauce, served on the top of crispy
Basil.)

The green bean dish was wonderful, lots of good sauce with it. The crispy chicken was not as great last night as it usually is. Quite a bit of it was over cooked and dry. If this had been my first experience with it, I don't think I would reorder it. Katie was not hungry for dinner tonight. Perhaps it's because she ate a big breakfast, wouldn't eat much for lunch, and then snacked all afternoon on crackers and cheese. Surprisingly, after she was done with dinner and while Ben and I finished, Katie was willing to come over to my chair to get a couple bits of sautéed red pepper:)