Olive Garden

On Tuesday afternoon / evening, I met Jody and Jesse at Olive Garden. Now, I don't see any pics from this, but I could've swore I took some.

I started off with a pick 2 appetizer of toasted ravioli and chicken tenders. I love both of these. The ravoli is usually a little tougher than I like but the flavors are great. Their chicken breading is outstanding. I love the flavor it imparts to the chicken and it gives it a nice crunch to go with it.

Next up I went with their zupa toscana soup, which is a creamy-ish chicken broth, with lots of Italian sausage, potatoes spices and some kind of greens in it. I nice zesty and slightly spicy soup. I went with 2 bowls of it, and should've only done 1.

For the main course, I went with their lasagna. It was good, meaty, cheesy and gooey. The sauce had a nice tangy-ness to go with the meats in it. I couldn't quite finish it, though, hence me saying I should've only gone with one bowl of soup. All in all, it was everything I wanted out of the trip.

Sunday's Hibachi Dinner

I didn't eat much on Sunday, so I hit up the local Japanese place for a big dinner. I started with the soup and salad:

The soup was good, the salad was just ok. Next course, which I forgot to get a picture of, was a crunchy shrimp roll. It was really good, hence me forgetting to get the pic.

The main course was hibachi grilled shrimp, steak and chicken (with zucchini, onions and mushrooms) and an order of fried rice:

You can't really see the shrimp, but it's hiding behind the bowl of fried rice. The shrimp was good, the chicken and steak were outstanding. The onion was pretty good, and the squash was really good. The rice was pretty good as well, it was much better once I got it mixed in with the juices from the steak.

Soup and Chinese

So, for today's culinary adventure... I was going to have the leftover steak from last night for lunch. Until I forgot to take it to work (after reminding myself 1 too few times). Nothing in the cafeteria caught my attention, so I had some soup for lunch:

This was the pre-pic, and trust me, you didn't really wanna see it in the cup I cooked it in. It wasn't that great, but not the worst. I find that the Campbell's chunky soups have way too much carrot in them for my liking. So much so, that the carrot flavor ends up mellowing out the other stronger flavors that should be enhancing the carrots. =/

And for dinner, I went with Chinese, as a buddy of mine had some, and it smelled and looked good. I went to a different place than he did, and got a bunch of appetizers. I had some fried wontons, fried dumplings, shrimp rolls and some wonton soup. It was all pretty tasty, as usual. And as usual for a Tuesday/Thursday night, I forgot to get a pic for you all. Sorry 'bout that.

Dinner for 4/4/2012

Welp, so ends the first day (ok, afternoon) of the blog. Tonight's dinner was originally going to be a roast beef sandwich from Arby's, but I changed my mind on the way home, and stopped at the local Japanese steak house / sushi bar, Kyoto (yes, another finely crafted FB link).

I had a bowl of soup:

It was tasty, as always. And the main course was a crunch shrimp roll and some chicken fried rice:

They were good as well, although I came this | | close to over soy saucing the fried rice.

Chicken dumpling soup

My roommate recently got married. We're from the South, the Memphis area. So, I'm familiar, in fact, a large fan of, chicken and dumplings. His wife, however, is from Wisconsin. So, we went up there for the wedding. One of the days up there, I stopped into a local restaurant for lunch. On their menu was a chicken soup, but instead of the usual (for my area) chicken noodle soup, they had chicken & dumpling soup. I was astonished, never in my 36 years of life had I ever put together chicken and dumplings and chicken soup. These people had, and it was good.

But, I thought it could be better. Had to "southern" it up some, so I did. This is also the point where I should note that I've attempted chicken & dumplings a few times, and only once was it anywhere near good. Edible was probably more credible a description. They would either disintegrate in the broth, or never cook through.

This time though, I was determined. I was sick, and chicken soup always makes me feel better.

So, I left work early, stopped at the local Wallyworld (was closer to the house than the Kroger), picked up some chicken thighs (I'm usually a breast man [haha], but the thighs have more flavor, therefore would do better in a soup. Plus they didn't have any breasts that weren't boneless/skinless and I needed that for the flavor), a couple of potatoes, some carrots (they are only good in tiny doses) and celery.

Got home, salted and peppered the chicken, tossed it in the oven to roast for an hour and change while I took a nap. Woke up, got the chicken out, got a pot, tossed in the veggies (cut up of course) and 2 of the thighs, some bones and the skin, and a bunch of chicken stock. Put it on low heat and took another nap. Next I made some dumpling going by the directions on the Bisquick box, with the exception of adding a bit extra mix. Tore off chunks, and tossed them into the soup and left them alone for about 30 mins or so. And here is the result:

That stuff was so good I had to make myself stop eating. The only thing wrong with it was I had made the dumpling slightly too large, but they cooked through well and were easy enough to cut apart with the spoon.