Minestrone

Tonight I made Minestrone.  Now there is really no set recipe for this kind of soup, so I looked online.  Found a recipe from Taste of Home that looked pretty good.  Called for beef, carrots, onions, cabbage, rice, and other stuff.  So I cooked it up.  Made some cornbread muffins and a salad too.  Let me just say, the minestrone needed salt!  After adding salt it was pretty good.  Good, but not great.  I think next time I make minestrone I will either find another recipe or just start adding stuff to make it to my liking.

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Meatloaf

I forgot to post this until just now. A week ago or so I made meatloaf for dinner. I used a recipe from Mom's collection and tweaked it to my liking.  I sauteed onions, celery, and peppers, then mixed in the meat and other spices.  Topped it with plain ol' ketchup, and put it in the oven.  I also made apple salad and deviled eggs.  If you remember, a while back i made Spicy Pickled Red Beet Deviled Eggs.  I didn't pickle the eggs this time.  They were good, but not as good as the other ones.  The pickling made them so much better.  The meatloaf turned out great.  The key to great meatloaf is to saute the vegetables before mixing them in the ground meat.  I also made mashed potatoes and gravy.  Num num!

Meatloaf

Meatloaf with ketchup ready for the oven

Apple salad

Deviled eggs

Yummers!

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Restaurant review: Anthony's Restaurant - Manassas, VA

I went with the family for dinner tonight at Anthony's Restaurant in Manassas.  I have been there several times before.  Love that place.  They do Greek and Italian food right.  Most times I get the Gyro Platter.  It is amazing.  Last time I was there I got stuffed grape leaves.  They were quite good.  Tonight I thought about getting the Gyro Platter again, or maybe the Gyro Pita, but I decided to go Italian instead of Greek like I normally do.  Got the Cannelloni.  Tube pasta filled with meat, topped with Marinara sauce and cheese, and baked.  It came with a house salad and garlic bread.  It was good...very good.  I was too full to order dessert or I would have ordered the special dessert, Red Velvet Cheesecake.  It sounded amazing.  Check out their website, http://www.anthonysrestaurantva.com/.  They have two locations, the one in Manassas and the original one in Falls Church.

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Black Bean Chili

I subscribe to Bon Appetite magazine.  In the current issue there is a recipe for Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash.  Dad thought it really looked good and wanted me to make it, so I made it for dinner tonight.  I didn't have butternut squash so I used sweet potato.  And I didn't have bulgur, so I used barley.  That's right...I don't follow recipes.  I worked tonight so Mom made cornbread to go with it.  It turned out pretty good.  Not the greatest chili, but good for vegetarian.  I think the recipe needs some tweaking before I like it enough to call it a keeper.

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Chicken Lasagna

I have perfected the classic lasagna, which I call Five Cheese Lasagna, so I decided to branch out and try chicken lasagna.  I replaced the ground beef with chicken.  However, I didn't let it sit overnight like I was supposed to.  I only let it sit for about 3 hours.  That's not good because after I baked the lasagna it was a bit runny.  The noodles were not quite cooked enough too.  Oh, well.  Now I know I must let the lasagna sit a long time before cooking it.  It still tasted great, though.  Dad said it was the best one I made yet.  Yea, it was good, but it could have been better.   I also made garlic bread and a salad.  It was good, not perfect though.  Next time I make chicken lasagna it will be perfect, hopefully.

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Restaurant review: Siam Classic - Manassas, VA

Friday evening I went with my brother, sister, her boyfriend, and his brother to Siam Classic.  I have been wanting to try it out for a while.  So when Jon and Josh came down from New York to visit Janina we decided to go.  It is a pretty small place in Old Town Manassas.  We got there and the restaurant was about half filled with people.  The kitchen was rolling out the food.  It seems like they do a lot of carry-out.  We were there about an hour and a half and people were coming in left and right to pick up their food to go.

On to what matters...the food.  I got an appetizer, Fried Tofu.  I never had tofu before and wanted to try it.  It was pretty good.  The dipping sauce that came with it made it rather good.  Eaten just by itself was a tad weird.  For an entree I got Flaming Quail.  I don't really know how to explain what it was.  It was good though.  There were some quail eggs in it.  Yum!  The flaming came from some sort of alcohol they poured over it and ignited right before serving it.  Cool presentation.

Austin got the House Seafood.  It looked great.  He said it was awesome.  The rest of them got duck.  Duck is amazing.  I was thinking about getting some sort of duck before deciding on the quail.

For dessert I got the Fried Bananas and Ice Cream.  Two pieces of banana wrapped in some sort of dough and fried.  I forget what the dough was.   Served with a scoop of coconut ice cream.  Yum, yum!  The rest of them got Fruit Cheesecake.  It snuck a taste from Jon.  It was very good!

Again, as in my other restaurant review, I did not take any pictures.  I don't want to be that foodie guy who snaps picture after picture of the food in a restaurant.  I think that is not cool.  Check out their website: http://www.siam-classic.com/.  Nice place.  I want to go again some time for lunch and during the week when they are maybe not so busy.

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Shepherds Pie

I was at a lose for what to make for dinner tonight.  So I took to Facebook for suggestions.  One of the suggestions was shepherds pie, aka cottage pie. Thanks, Karen Czekalski.  I was thinking about making a Cajun shepherds pie, but didn't have the right stuff.  Then when she said shepherds pie I had to make it, even if it wasn't Cajun.  I found a recipe in one of Mom's cookbooks that called for ground beef, tomato juice, carrots, peas, onion, and some seasonings topped with mashed potatoes.  I didn't have enough white potatoes to make mash for the topping so I improvised and made mashed sweet potatoes.  It turned out quite good.  I also made apple salad, which in our house usually consists of chopped apples, raisins, maybe some celery and banana with a peanut butter, mayonnaise dressing.  I didn't have all the right ingredients, like mayo, so again I improvised and made the dressing with peanut butter, some milk, honey, and a bit of molasses.  Put that on chopped apples and raisins, and it was good.

I like to improvise while cooking.  I laugh in the face of traditionally prepared foods. :-D

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