Country Club Pizza

A good night to take a break from cooking. At the Par Lounge down the street, sausage & pepperoni goodness.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s celery vs onion in the Cornbread Dressing Bowl! I posted this same thing last year and I’m probably the only one that thinks its funny. Oh well, Happy Thanksgiving to all, it’s our day to eat way too much…

Embassy Suites

This time at the Dulles Airport Embassy Suites in Virginia. Older and more dated than my usual ES in CA. Here my Denver omelette had properly sautéed vegetables, although the egg part was quite over cooked, as you can see by the brown. It tasted about as bad as it looks. If I could get Virginia vegetables married with California eggs, I think it would be perfect.

Cracker Barrel

Right here in beautiful Manassas, VA. One of my favorite restaurants outside of California (because there are none in CA). A great way to put a bow on my business trip before heading home, and it’s close to the airport hotel I’m staying at. This is the Cracker Barrel Sampler which consists of a hearty sampling of their chicken and dumplings, meatloaf and country ham. I chose two of my favorite vegetables to accompany, macaroni & cheese and hash brown casserole.

Captain’s Table

Here’s another neat little restaurant in Solomon’s Island, nestled in southern Maryland. This one is decidedly more of a dive than the last one, but I like the food here better. You have to drive through a gravel lot, past a seedy motel to get here. It is the perfect setting though, right on the water. This time I got the crab cakes broiled, and added a cup of their excellent cream of crab soup. I could take a bath in this it’s so good!

Hilton Garden Inn

Here at the the Solomon’s Island HGI, missing my Embassy Suites happy hour. Anyway, I have to pay for my beers here, but oh well, could be worse. I really need to find this blueberry brew in California. It’s really tasty! I’ve had witbiers from Sam Adams that are similar, but this is just a whole new level of flavor. Maybe it’s the 8% that helps…

Stoney’s Kingfishers

Every now and then I make it to southern Maryland on business and always have my favorite crab cake spots. There is a small touristy town called Solomon’s Island that have two of my favorite places. This is part of the Stoney’s family of restaurants, the Kingfisher. Here’s two fried crab cakes with fries and slaw. Next place I’ll order them broiled, I think the pic will turn out better.

United Airlines

Airline breakfasts are love and hate with me it seems. This is a Ham & Swiss Baguette from their “Bistro on Board” collection of food items. It’s a pretzel baguette with ham, hard-cooked egg and Swiss cheese with light mayo on the side. I’m really not liking the whole pretzel bun/baguette phenomenon that seems to be taking place right now. I’ll tell you, the pretzel has nothing on a good ciabatta. I just don’t get it. It’s always bland and tough. There wasn’t enough mayonnaise to keep it tasty. All in all it was decent, just wish it was made with a tastier bread. It was definitely a protein rich breakfast which carried me non-stop from San Diego to Washington DC.

Homemade Meatballs

For some time I’ve been wanting to make homemade meatballs. I preferred to wait until I had more of a meatloaf mixture on hand of ground beef, veal and pork. Well, that never materialized so I just did it with all ground beef. Mixed with all the basic meatball goodness, like breadcrumbs, egg, Parmesan, seasoning and whatnot. Then into the oven for about 10 minutes at 400 to develop a nice color. Finally, into the sauce to finish cooking. Served over al dente spaghetti. Turned out really good for my first time…

China Fun

This is a new place I tried for lunch. I got the Lo Mein, house special style of course, with chicken, pork, beef and shrimp. I don’t understand the difference between Lo and Chow mein, but after this, I definitely prefer Chow…