Boston~Minstral Restaurant

***I was scanning my blogspot dashboard and saw that I had forgotten to post about this restaurant that we ate at in Boston.***

On Sunday morning of our Boston trip we had a delicious brunch at Minstral Bistro in Boston.  How did we select this restaurant with all the numerous eateries available in Boston?  Well, the restaurant "chose us."  The bed and breakfast we stayed at had a deal that if you booked a room for more than 2 nights you could receive a $50 gift certificate for the Minstral.  As Mike has mentioned in previous posts, I like deals. 

The meal started off with a lemon coffee cake muffin. 

 

Thien we ordered:

Sticky Buns

Smoked Salmon, Creme Fraiche Whipped Potatoes and Scallion Pizza.

This was my favorite dish I thought it was unique to hae a pizza "sauce" composed of creme fraiche and potatoes.  I am going to attempt to replicate this one day. 

Lemon Poppyseed-Ricotta Pancakes with Rhubarb and Strawberry Salad. 

This was my least favorite dish. Pancakes are one of my least favorite breakfast foods, but the description of the pancakes sounded delicious. They pancakes were cooked perfectly and I'm sure a pancake-liker would enjoy them; they were just not for me.  It also didn't help that Mike mentioned that the taste of the pancakes was similar to Costco's lemon and poppyseed muffins.

The pancakes were served with Pommes Lyonnaise.

Niman Ranch Bacon, Lambs Lettuce, Oven-Cured Tomato Sandwich on Corn Toast, Rosemary Frites.

This was Mike's favorite dish.

All of the food was delicious and plated in a cute yet classy way.  We loved the ambience and the service at this restaurant and had a great experience.  We ordered WAY too much food and took about half of it home.  We felt like "richies"(reference to a South Park episode) because we rarely order one appetizer and entree per person.  It was nice to live it up for a leisurely brunch on our Sunday morning in Boston.   

Minstral Bistro
223 Columbus Avenue
Boston, MA
(617) 867-9300

How my Mommy Taught me How to Cut a Pineapple

This is a long overdue post for Stephen, who enjoys pineapples just as much as I do.  This post will be viewed in a pictorial essay since I do not have time to write in detail about my pineapple cutting skills.  My mom taught me how to cut a pineapple with minimal waste and maximum edible portion. 

Cut off the crown and the bottom piece.

Slice off the skin. It's okay if the brown "eyes" are still in the pineapple flesh. 

Bevel cut out the eyes in a spiral direction (image on the right).

The cut pineapple. You can then cut the pineapple into rings, or cut it into spears or chunks.  It takes a lot more time (5 more minutes-which is double the time it would take to hack away and cut the pineapple), but look how much less waste you have.

Awesome Dinner at Sean's

This past weekend Mike and I attended a dinner party at our friend Sean's apartment.  After months of harassing Sean about his gourmet lunches, we finally were invited to "Sean's Restaurant." To sum up the evening, Mike dubbed the meal, "the best meal (he) ever ate in Texas." 
Thanks Sean, I guess I've never cooked Mike anything good. 

Here's a picture of the beautiful table setting. There were even cloth napkins in napkin rings.  Mike and I do not even own cloth napkins!

We started the night off with drinks and appetizers. 

This image is of my favorite dish of the night.  Let's just call it "shrimp and garlic yumminess."  This appetizer was composed of shrimp, garlic, olive oil  in a broth of spices.  So good! Mike compared this dish to an upscale version of Bubba Gump's Shrimpin Dippin Broth dish.  Sean emailed us the recipe this week so Mike and I will be eating this in the near future. 

The second appetizer of the night was grilled jalapenos stuffed with goat cheese, cream cheese, and spices.  Again, this was a delicious appetizer and Mike thoroughly enjoyed it.  

Here's a picture of Sean grilling the corn, veggies, steak and salmon. 

Look at that steak and salmon!

The salmon was grilled to perfection.  It was moist and the rub composed of mustard seeds, fennel, and other spices was superb!  On top of the salmon, Sean had grilled steak that had a delicious char to it.  We also had grilled asparagus, corn, and onions. 

Garlic Smashed potatoes.  This was a good side dish, but was overshined by all the other dishes. 

Cucumber and mint salad.  I didn't think that I was going to like this salad, but it paired well with the salmon dish. 

You might be thinking that I am gushing about the food because Sean's my friend. Believe me, if I didn't like the food, I'd mysteriously "lose" the images from the night and "forget" to blog about the dinner.

And for all of you gals in the Dallas area, not only can this guy cook, he's a nice single guy.  I don't think many people in Dallas read this blog, but if you're interested let me know.  :)  He might not speak to me for a few days after he reads this post, but maybe in a few weeks he'll talk to me again. 

***Darn my computer. I had finished posting about this night and then my computer did something funky and I lost the post.  The first post was much funnier, but it's lost somewhere in cyberspace. I also lost the dessert pictures somewhere.  The desserts we had were a key lime pie and a chocolate cherry cake.  Yum!***

Greenz Restaurant

For those of you who don't know my beautiful and wonderful wife yet, let me introduce you to a fun and interesting fact.  Lauren loves deals......loves them! And she is an excellent deal hunter.  She's always finding great ways to eat wonderful food while saving money (see lobster post).  And this my friends is how we found ourselves at Greenz Restaurant.  

You may be wondering why the first picture in this post is one of a wine bottle.  I mean isn't this post supposed to be about a restaurant?   Well, it's kind of about both.  You see, Lauren found a gift certificate online for Greenz Restaurant.  The terms of the deal were as follows: 

      1.  Pay $2 and get a $25 gift certificate. 

      2.  Your total bill must be at least $35 to use the gift certificate. 

      3.  No alcohol (officially speaking) or other discounts.  

Essentially we needed to spend $12 to get $35 worth of food. Sounds good right? .....it gets better......Lauren had us go for happy hour. I don't remember exactly what these deals were, but the appetizers, desserts, and the alcohol we weren't supposed to get was cheaper.   

We soon realized that we'd be getting a ton of food, and since we were meeting up with friends after dinner and had no way to bring leftovers home, I lamented out loud that it was too bad we couldn't use it for alcohol since we couldn't possibly eat all of the food.  The cashier heard me and immediately said that he'd let us do it.  This opened up a world of possibilities.  Doing the mental math I realized that to make up the difference I could either get 2 bottles of beer at $3 a piece, or one bottle of wine for $7 (an amazing restaurant price!).  Lauren volunteered to drive, and I settled on the wine.  After all it was the better value, and this is one area where I've been trained well by my wonderful wife. 

My initial intention was to drink part of the bottle, and take the rest home.  However, things didn't really turn out that way.  After all, it is illegal to drive with an open bottle of alcohol (even if it is in your trunk).  Before I knew it I drank the whole thing!  For a guy who doesn't drink a lot, this is a big feat.  What can I say......it was a fun evening. 

We ended up ordering 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, 1 dessert, and a bottle of wine for only $12!  Amazing!  Our first appetizer was goat cheese purses with a strawberry sauce.  They were basically goat cheese wrapped in phyllo dough and deep fried.  What's not to like?  They were delicious! 

Our second appetizer was panko-fried shrimp.  They were the most disappointing part of the meal.  I was really excited the shrimp, but they were horribly overcooked.  Tough and stringy shrimp was all that waited beneath the crispy crust.  And they would have been so good....... :(   In the chef's defense, we walked in just before closing (as they were cleaning up) and ordered a ton of food.  They must have had to take a lot of things back out and really scramble to cook all of the food at once, so I can understand why some of the fried items were overdone.  I still enjoyed myself.....and I would have enjoyed myself with or without the wine. 

Lauren ordered a warm pear salad with goat cheese and a cup of tortilla soup.  Both were excellent.  The soup was warm, cheesy, and spicy.  I enjoyed most of it since Lauren isn't a big fan of tortilla soup in general.  The pear salad was light and fresh.  The"pears" weren't warm, but they had a very unique flavor.  They tasted strangely like strawberries, which I thought was actually better than pears would have been.  The toasted pecans on top made the salad perfect, and it was Lauren's favorite dish.  Lauren made similar salads for dinner many times that month, and while I'm not a big "salad for dinner" guy, I didn't mind at all. 

My favorite part of the meal was a pulled pork sandwich.  Even Lauren liked it! There was a lot of meat inside, and it was tender and tasty.  The warm toasted ciabatta bun was great too!  The only down side was the sweet potato chips that it came with.  No, it's not poor lighting.....they really were that dark.  I like chips crunchy, but those chips were burnt. 

We got a caramel fruit cup for dessert. I thought it was a good way to end the meal. You can see it in the picture below.  There was a close-up picture of it, but I accidentally deleted it, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

Greenz Restaurant

SE Corner of Beltline and Montfort (New Location)

5290 Beltline Rd. Suite 103A

Addison, TX 75254

972-385-7721

Ice Cream Experiment

Mike was gone for a couple of weeks for a training, so this is how I entertained myself.
A bunch of ice cream was on sale at our neighborhood Kroger, so I decided to try two soy ice creams and an organic ice cream.   I ended up picking up a rice milk ice cream a few days later. 

The organic ice cream tastes like regular ice cream (I wasn't expecting much of a difference). The soy ice cream was good-almost like frozen silk vanilla soymilk, but you could definitely tell the difference between the soy ice cream and regular ice cream.  The rice  milk ice cream wasn't so good.  It had a more icy texture. 

I'm currently in the Boston airport waiting for my flight back to Dallas. Then I'm off to Kansas for a week.  Hmm....I wonder what Mike will blog about when I'm gone.