Father's Day Dinner

This Father's Day marked a first in this house when it comes to cooking dinner. For the first time in the 9 plus years that my wife and I have been together, tonight was the first time she has ever cooked dinner for me. She isn't the most skilled in the kitchen, so it is just better if I handle the cooking duties. That being said, she pulled a rabbit out of the hat tonight and whipped up a very nice meal for her first time out of the box. I let her plan it all, prepare everything, cook it all, and then serve me. I figured of she was doing the first three that she might as well do the latter as well. :)

Here is a run down of what she made tonight:

Publix's recipe for "Party Chicken and Broccoli Salad". We had this a few months ago at my Aunt's house and she told my wife how easy it was to make. My wife insisted she could make it, if it was that easy, so today was her day to put that to the test. She passed.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes with Cheese
You can see the recipe for this dish below in the pictures. I was grab a picture of the laptop screen when she wasn't looking.

I was not allowed in the kitchen, thought I did sneak in to grab a few pictures, so I can't tell you for sure how she made everything. I can tell you thought that everything was cooked, or in the case of the broccoli salad and pie, and mixed very nicely. She earned herself another shot at cooking some point down the line.

Strawberry Creme Pie
I sort of assisted with this dessert as the three ingredients are Cool Whip, Strawberry Yogurt, and a ready to go pie crust.

My wife was going to buy Yoplait's Strawberry Yogurt. I convinced her that the Strawberry Greek Yogurt was the way to go, and it made all the difference in the world. Greek Yogurt is creamier and has a much sharper taste. It lent itself perfectly to this dessert when mixed with the Cool Whip.

Valentine's Day Dinner 2011: Salmon Hearts

I racked my brain to figure out how I could top last years widely popular Valentine's Day Dinner. It took all of about 5 min to determine it would be "Salmon Hearts". No this isn't the actual heart from a Salmon. Instead I decided to cook some Salmon in the shape of hearts. This was a lot easier said than done.

To start off I needed to find fillets of Salmon that were big enough for me to cut hearts out and I decided the best way to accomplish this was via heart shaped cookie cutters. Fresh Market had some beautiful cuts and I decided to get two, one to cook regular and the other one to cut hearts out of. The salmon is "Cuban Style" as it was marinated with Nellie & Joe's Key West Style Cuban Marinade. This stuff is really the best marinade on the market and goes well with pretty much everything. Oh...back to the hearts.

I ventured over to Kitchen Outfitters and luckily they had one box of heart shaped cookie cutters left. This box was perfect because it had various sizes of hearts for me to use. The big debate I had with myself was to cut before cooking or after cooking. I decided to go with before cooking and these cutters went right through the Salmon like a hot knife through butter. That was a good thing, until I got to the skin. With all my good knives, not one of them would cut through that skin. So I ended up pulling the hearts off the skin. My big concern now was would these hearts hold their shape through the cooking process. Luckily for the most part they did hold their shape and worked out very nicely for the presentation. I cut the other fillet in half for us to share after it was done cooking.

As for the rest of the meal:

We started off with a Shrimp Cocktail and had Rosemary & Sea Salt Rolls with a balsamic-olive oil dipping mixture that included several spices. These spices were cracked black pepper, garlic, oregano, and cracked red pepper. The shrimp were fresh Wild Georgia Shrimp that I seasoned with some cajun rub. I also put some of this rub in the water that I boiled the shrimp in. After an ice bath they were peeled and placed on the place with a cocktail sauce heart.

The side items for dinner were garlic red skin mashed potatoes and fresh cut green beans & caramelized onions. I partly peeled the potatoes as I wanted to have some of the red skin in the mixture. I then mashed the cooked potatoes with butter, heavy whipping cream, garlic, and cracked black pepper. The mixture was then transferred to a baking dish and was finished in the oven. The green beans & onions were cooked in a little olive oil, salt, garlic, and pepper. I caramelized the onions and the green beans were still crisp with a great bite to them.

To compliment this meal we drank a bottle of 2009 Don Miguel Gascón Argentine Malbec and for dessert we had Red Velvet Cupcakes from Fresh Market.

I got to say, as good as last years Valentine's Dinner was...this one was even that much better.

Chorizo Omelette from J. Christopher's

Been a while since we have hit up J. Christopher's as it can tend to be pretty pricey for breakfast, but today we decided to head downtown and partake in their brunch menu. I found this little diddy on the "Today's Specials" menu and decided to give it a shot. This omelette was loaded with tons of ground chorizo sausage, roasted red peppers and topped with buffalo mozzarella. I got it with a side of potatoes and it came with an english muffin. I say an english muffin, but for some reason this came out with 2 english muffins. The omelette was very good, but it actually could have benefited from less sausage or having it sliced instead of ground. I enjoyed eating this very much, but I just think it would have been better served with less or sliced.

It was about 25 degrees outside when we got there and had to park a couple of blocks away. Since I mentioned that, a huge negative with going anywhere below Liberty here in Savannah is having to try and find a parking space. It can be quite a challenge and a hassle. Today we were fortunate to find a space not that far away, but yet still far enough that it made for a very cold walk. So I decided to warm my bones with a hot chocolate, since I am not a coffee drinker. This was a pretty run of the mill hot chocolate, but it did hit the spot.

Also, I would like to recommend the Caprese Benedict, for those that like Caprese salads and like Eggs Benedict...this is a match made in heaven for you. My wife got it and enjoyed every bite. Think buffalo mozzarella, tomatoes, basil on top of an english muffin and then topped with your egg and Hollandaise Sauce. I didn't take a picture of it, but it looked excellent.

Hanukkah Dinner

We went to the Synagogue tonight for a Hanukkah Party and Dinner. I finally got to eat some potato latkes and they were ok. Not having a kitchen right now is killing me because I can't make my own latkes, which are outf'nstanding. The applesauce was very good and had huge chunks of apples in it. I had to go back and get seconds of applesauce...that is how much I liked it. The hotdog was a good ole fashioned Hebrew National all beef wiener and you can never go wrong with those! They also had some homemade vegetable beef soup that was decent...not great, but decent.

Citrus Glazed Grilled Chicken & Baked Potato

This is some new item on Longhorn's menu. It was actually pretty good. It was supposed to come with oranges on top of the chicken, but I had them leave them off. It was good call on my part.

Breakfast at Sunrise Grill in Augusta

So for starters I ordered the Northern Omelette. This was 3 eggs filled with bacon, onions, peppers, and cheese. This entire plate was full of meh. In the 2nd picture you will see that this place was voted #1 place for Breakfast 5 Years in a Row. Not sure who was voting on this, but based on this meal I would strongly disagree with that comment. I am sure there are plenty out there that like this place, but don't count me as one of them.

Lunch at Magnolia's in Charleston

Charleston SC is full of great food, but when you are wanting some great food in a causal uptown environment you go to Magnolia's. We started off with the massive plate of Housemade Potato Chips. These chips are covered with warm and gooey crumbled blue cheese and scallions. For my main course I got the Parmesan Crusted Flounder. This was served over Carolina rice and creek shrimp purloo with sweet corn, tomato and asparagus salad, lump crab and a lemon beurre blanc. It was a nice treat to find the rice and shrimp under the corn salad. I highly recommend this restaurant or one of their other 2 sister restaurants on your next trip to Charleston.

http://www.magnolias-blossom-cypress.com/

Steak Dinner

Just a little Steak & Baked Potato dinner with some grilled veggies for an app.

Low Country Boil in Shellman Bluff

Just a little thing we threw together tonight on this new beast of a grill while this monster of a storm rolled through. The last pic is a panoramic shot I took while standing on the back porch during the storm.