Saturday, 1/1/2011

Welcome to 2011!

We planned to meet Kate and Spencer at Buddha Ruksa for dinner tonight.  It was closed.  Our backup, Cactus, was also closed.  We ended up meeting at Hi-Life in Ballard and had a good meal.  Hi-Life is managed by Chow Foods, which also manages Endolyne Joe's in West Seattle. 

Kate had a butternut squash pizza, which both she and Spencer liked a lot.  Spencer ordered the hickory smoked spareribs, but they were out of them.  His ravioli backup wasn't as good as he hoped it would be.  Ben and I both ordered cast-iron bronzed rockfish-- spiced & seared Pacific rockfish over smoked polenta & adouille hash with sauteed kale.  We both loved it.  It was our first time trying kale.  Ben really liked it.  I liked it okay, but mainly because it was tossed in some yummy dressing.  The texture was a little difficult for me.  We ordered Katie a plate of grilled chicken and carrots.  She ate a few carrots, but wouldn't take a bite of the chicken.  She mainly wanted to drink water and color:)

Tuesday, 7/20/2010

It was a hamburger kind of night. I wanted to try something different with our burgers. I took a pound of lean ground beef and added an egg, 1/4 cup of Worcestershire, freshly ground black pepper, and a little kosher salt. In the end, we had pretty ugly, but nicely flavored burgers. The combination of a really hot grill and cold meat resulted in a lot of meat sticking to the grates. We topped the burgers with cheddar cheese and bacon. In the future, I need to make sure to use thick bacon for burgers. The thin stuff just gets lost when paired with flavorful burgers.

To go with the burgers, we grilled sliced yellow squash. The strips of squash were tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper. After they came off the grill, we added Red Robin seasoning salt. I added a bit too much to mine, but could see how that would be a positive flavor addition with the correct amount applied. Katie wouldn't eat the squash, but she did eat some of the hamburger meat. Her favorite part of the meal was dipping her fingers into ketchup.