I didn’t have any culinary plans, really.  The conference–and our hotel–were downtown in the thick of everything, and so my only real guideline for the week was “wander around until you find something that looks tasty that doesn’t have a one hour wait.”  And that’s pretty much what we did.  While the downside of just wandering until you find a place is that the place might suck, you also sometimes run into awesome places that make you go, “Mmmm.”

The first night, Saturday, we still tired from traveling down, even though we took the train, which is, in my opinion, the most civilized way to travel short distances in the US these days.  No groping, no pat down, no rifling through my stuff, just get on the train, find a seat, hand over a ticket, relax til you get there.  Divine.  So we basically just wandered until we found a place that had a decent sounding menu but not an hour’s wait.  That place was Bandera, on Michigan Ave.  Dinner was an hour wait unless you were willing to sit at the chef’s counter, which we–and apparently only we–totally were.  In fact, sitting at the counter and watching the cooks prepare the plates was way more awesome than the food, which was pretty good.  We had drinks, an appetizer of a giant roasted artichokes and then Josh got a French dip sandwich and I got this Bandera-style roast chicken with amazing rice that tasted, frankly, like golden chicken fat.

Sunday we made a trip down to Chinatown and picked up a bag of pork buns from one of the bakeries.  Mmm.  Pork buns.

Then we followed that up with dinner at Volare, an Italian restaurant near our hotel.  It was small, and not much to look at from the outside, and rather crowded inside but the food was really pretty good.  Italian and ciabatta bread, good olive oil, salad and Josh got a plate of spaghetti with giant meatballs while I had the chicken vesuvio (chicken, white wine, peas, potatoes).  Actually very tasty.

Monday we had breakfast at West Egg, which we tried to get into on Sunday but it just wasn’t going to happen without an hour wait.  The week day was much more amenable to my unwillingness to wait.  It was a casual breakfast/lunch kind of place, not too expensive and good food.  Josh got a chorizo omelet while mine was stuffed with bacon, cheese and a thick layer of avocado through the middle.  Anything with that much avocado has to be good.  And it was.

Dinner was at q, a barbecue restaurant that really sort of reminded me of this fantastic place I once tried in Stone Mountain, Georgia but have since forgotten the name of.  Decor wise, anyway.  I loved that when we sat down, they brought out baskets of house-made chips and pickles, which were fantastic.  Josh got the kobe beef brisket and macaroni and cheese, which was pretty good, while I got St. Louis style spare ribs and greens.  The ribs were good, not the best I’ve ever had at a restaurant (that’s currently an honor held by Satchel’s here in Ann Arbor), and the greens were passable and full of bacon.  It also came with slices of cornbread that were ginormous.  Still, I’m sad.  I can never find cornbread as good as I can make it. Why?  And don’t tell me it’s the lack of butter.

Tuesday’s dinner was at Pizzeria Due, which is basically owned by Uno’s.  I loved the ambiance, it was very out of the way and full of locals, and the waitress was laid back and fantastic.  The hot wings were also great.  The pizza, not so much.  I’m not a fan of Chicago style pizza most times anyway (sorry, Chicagoans) and the sauce was really lacking in flavor.  There was a good layer of sausage in the middle though.  That helped.

We came back to town Wednesday afternoon, after our last Chicago eating stop–Yolk, which is probably my new favorite breakfast place there.  It was bright, sunny, laid back and had an amazing menu that I wish I’d had more time to explore.  I just had the simple bacon and eggs over easy, but what really caught my eye–though I couldn’t bring myself to eat it that early in the morning–was this French toast dish made of red velvet cake with cream cheese that was dipped in batter and fried and topped with whipped cream.  Like ohmygod.  I think I got diabetes just reading the description.  Someone please try it and tell me how it is.  Please.

So that was the week.  Now we’re back and I’m glad we tried a few new things but so glad to be back in my own kitchen, too!  Eating out gets tiring after a while.  I did get some good ideas though, not the least of which is the pomegranate-vanilla curd that is currently cooling in the fridge.  But more on that later…

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I’m feeling pretty old-school these days.  We bought a house that’s 150 years old.  I don’t have a microwave anymore.  My grandmother wants to give me a butter churn.  And we have a milkman.

Yes, that’s right.  We have a milkman.  His name is Stan.  Stan the milkman.  I’ve never met Stan but I heart him oh so much.  Not just because I enjoy saying that I have a milkman, not just because our weekly dairy delivery is always on time and neatly done, but also because thanks to Stan, I don’t worry nearly so much about running out of butter (a constant trouble previously, what with all the baking I do) and I spend less time battling crowds at the store.  Yay!

How did I arrange this magnificent thing, you ask?  Well actually, Josh arranged it.  Through Calder Dairy.

If you don’t know about Calder Dairy, now is a great time to get educated, especially if you live in Michigan.  Calder is a local, family-owned dairy farm and around here you can often find their glass-bottled (!!!!!!!) milk and delicious stacks of butter in various stores, like the Ypsi Co-op or Whole Foods or Busch’s.  Their milk is delicious, as is their butter.  But they also have home delivery, which means that if you live near a route, you can arrange to have milk, cream, buttermilk, eggnog, butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, bread, even ice cream…and lots more.…delivered straight to your house.

This is how our delivery works:

• Josh called and set up an account and an initial order with Calder.  You can decide what products you want, how much and how often.  Right now, weekly we get 2% milk, a pint of chocolate milk (Josh’s fave), buttermilk, cream and eggs.  Biweekly, we get a pound and a half of butter.
• You can easily adjust your order—just call by at least the day before, or leave a note for your delivery guy for the following week.  I realized after a few weeks that I actually really need a pound and a half of butter every week.  I know that sounds like a lot, but you know, that’s only three batches of cookies.  But I need cream less because I just don’t use it enough.  So we make adjustments as we go along.
• A couple days before our first delivery, Stan called and introduced him to Josh, which was nice.  They worked out the details of where we wanted the delivery placed and anything else he’d need to know.  The delivery guys are basically contractors who sign up for routes.  There just might be one near you too!
• Our delivery comes every Friday, during the day.  Since we’re usually at work, we arranged to have him drop off the delivery in a cooler.  You can leave your cooler on your front porch, back porch, anywhere you want.  Ours is hidden a bit for safety and shelter.  Friday morning, we fill it with some ice packs and put it in its usual location—if we have empty glass bottles from the previous week, we add those in, too, to be returned.  Friday afternoon, we come home and there’s our milk!  Woohoo.
• We get billed once a month; he leaves it in the cooler with our delivery.  We put a check back in there the next week, although there are other ways to pay as well.  There’s a $2 a week delivery fee, which is fine for me because we noticed the prices on each item are a bit less than they are in the stores around us.

it's so cute and little!

So that’s my milk delivery.  I love it.  I should also mention that Calder did not give me anything to write this review, I just adore the dairy delivery thing so much I had to share it.  I love it because:

1. I love Calder’s milk.  It’s good quality milk, and I like supporting local food producers.  Plus you can even visit the Calder farm and see the operation for yourself.
2. It’s retro.  Sure, newspaper delivery has gone, well, off the curb.  But you can still get your milk!
3. It’s convenient.  I like grocery shopping but I hate grocery shoppers.  I try not to do it whenever possible.  I use Alice for household supplies.  I have a Needle Lane farm share that I pick up at the Depot Town Farmer’s Market, which is mere blocks from my house.  I go to the Depot Town, Ypsi, Ann Arbor and Detroit farmer’s markets.  I use Etsy for gifts, personal items and decorations.  And now I have a Calder dairy delivery.

It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Did I mention they also deliver bread? 

No related posts.

threesome?

M is for the many yums you gave me.
A is for the appetite you sate.
R is for the reason I go camping.
S is for the satisfying taste.
H is for the holidays that wouldn’t be the same.
M is for the merry times we share.
A is for the awesome mix of flavors.
L is for the lighting of the flame.
L is for the luscious, gooey texture.
O is for the om nom nom nom noms.
W is for the epic, epic WIN.
Marshmallow.

You probably couldn’t guess that I love marshmallows, could you?  I know.  I hide my obsession really well, right?  I try to keep these things on the down-low.  Maybe it’s because they remind me of my childhood, you know like, ice cream trucks and Fraggles, or maybe it’s that they’re an integral part of s’mores, those delicious, delectable, gooey treats, or maybe it’s because I like to huddle together with my friends and set things on fire.  I dunno.  It’s a mystery for the ages.

Am I the only person who refers to every brand of marshmallow you get in a regular grocery store as “Stay-Puft?”  I don’t think I am.  Am I the only person to try sorcery to bring to life a giant gollum made of fluffy white blocks of gelatin so that I can have a powerful primeval giant to do my bidding?  I really don’t think so.  Am I the first person to try the Heavenly Tahitian Vanilla Marshmallows from Have It Sweet Confections and absolutely love them?  Nay.  Nay, I say!  Neither the first nor the last.

everything is better on a stick

You’ve been to Etsy, right?  Of course you have.  You and Etsy are good friends.  BFFs.  You let Etsy brush your hair.  Once.  In return, you purchased $465 worth of crocheted food figurines.  Well, you should move beyond using Etsy to fund your fabric-fetish and explore the vast array of culinary delights awaiting you at specialty shops across the nation.  I was perusing said collection of delights when I stumbled upon Have It, a small family-owned store, and the listing for the vanilla marshmallows caught my eye.  I figured, well, I’m already spending $10 on heirloom herb seeds (I need my basil, okay)—why not?  Make it so, number two. So shall it be thought in my head, so shall it be done.

Well.

The marshmallows came today.  Wrapped in a cute little bag, safe in a mail package, dropped in my mailbox.  These cute little building blocks of taste.  Josh and I each sampled one right away—and they’re perfect.  Best marshmallows I’ve had so far—in fact, they blew the ones from Zingermans out of the water (sorry, Zing).  The exteriors were sprinkled with sugar and had a great crispy texture, while the insides were pillowy soft and tasted lightly of vanilla.  Perfect for snacking, just popping into my waiting mouth one after another until the sugar coma hits.  But I had bigger plans for them.  Better plans.  MAGNIFICENT PLANS!

Yeah ok I made s’mores, but hey—don’t take that lightly.  S’mores are the completion of a young marshmallow’s destiny.  The s’more will test you.  The s’more will break you.  The s’more will make you a man marshmallow.

Yeah I may have had too much sugar tonight.

But the s’mores were great.  I toasted the marshmallows over our gas stove—and don’t pretend like you’ve never done that.  They took a bit longer to brown than Stay Puft (hee hee) marshmallows, but once they did…oh man.  The difference was amazing.  These did not turn black and crunchy on the outside.  Instead, they sizzled and cracked and turned golden brown and filled the kitchen with the smell of crême brulée.  Squeal.  And then they got gooey.  Really gooey.  Ooey gooey.  Truly.

I paired them up with some semi-sweet Ghiradelli chocolate squares and graham crackers (store bought ones, I was too impatient to wait and try out Noelle’s (from Simmer Down) graham cracker recipe but soon I will.  Soon.  Oh soon.  I may soon try making my own marshmallows as well but…why mess with perfection?

Related posts:

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2. Friday Foodie Finds: the Who Thought of That? Edition
3. Kebabled

I really do.  It seems odd, I know, but it’s honestly one of the greatest things ever, for several reasons.

1. I like supporting and getting food from local and organic farms.
2. I like being kind of surprised and challenged with the ingredients that come in the box each week.  I mean, if I’m buying my own produce, I tend to stick with things that I know and am comfortable with.  Frankly, veggie wise, I’m a little boring.  I occasionally try new things but not very often.  The farm share has introduced me to things I’d never eaten before (like garlic scapes and leeks) or didn’t eat often, and also to find new ways to use ingredients I get a lot, like potatoes and swiss chard.
3. I hate going to the grocery store.  Well, I love and hate it.  I love grocery shopping.  I like looking at food, thinking about ways I could cook it and coming up with meals and let’s face it—if you’ve ever been to a bustling farmer’s market or even in the produce section of a shiny new Whole Foods store, man, they make that look like art.   I love it.  But I hate it.  Because I hate crowds and I hate trying to add up prices and I hate getting up early enough to get a decent spot at Eastern or Kerrytown Market.  I’m lazy.  I just want to spend 5 minutes on the way home running into Morgan and York and getting my farm share box.  That’s it.

And then winter came.  And ruined my life.  (Dramatically flings arm over face.)

It’s been cold.  It’s been dreary.  It’s been veggie-surprise-free.  It’s been devoid of a weekly reason to slightly deviate from my usual route home to stop by M&Y and pick up my box and maybe a couple bottles of Mexican Coke (with real sugar!) and some chocolate almonds that I don’t feel so bad about because hey, I just got a whole box of veggies.  Ying.  Yang.  It’s all about balance.

Indeed, soon I will be turning in my deposit for this year’s farm share and be just that much closer to my weekly full-season produce share from Needle Lane Farm–and maybe a flower share–with the only thing standing between me and my locally grown, weekly antioxidant fix being that stupid groundhog and his bad eyesight (sure, sure he saw his shadow.  In New England.  At 7am.  In February.  HE LIES!).

But for now…nothing.

Except..wait.  What is that?  Is that a faint glimmer of hope I do detect there, off in the cyberyonder?  Wait.  No.  Dead pixel.  Nevermind.

But there is some hope.  Back in the hazy, lazy days of September, I Evernoted an article from Concentrate about being “An Ann Arborvore” and eating locally produced goods.  Some of the places recommended, I already frequent (dear Calder, how I heart your lowfat milk; Zingermans, I wish I knew how to quit you), but a few were new.  Of course, I did nothing about it until last week but hey, progress takes time.  Time and desperation.  While idly perusing my Evernote library, I refound and reread the article and the blurb about Door to Door organics caught my eye.

Door to Door (DDO in this post from now on) is a company that delivers basically boxes of produce to your door.  It’s a lot like a CSA except the products come from multiple places–not necessarily all local farms but all organic sources– and are actually dropped off at your door, or office or garage or whatever and you can customize what goes in the box.  Hmm.  I am intrigued by this idea and wish to subscribe to somebody’s newsletter.

I showed it to Josh.  Pinky.  Mouth.  Interested look.  And so we tried it.  We got a (free) account and signed up to get the smallest box–the “bitty box”–for this week.  It’s $23.  A bit steep but I’m curious, so ok.  They deliver to our area (Ypsilanti–represent!) on Tuesday.  This week’s “menu” so to speak, included a variety of fruits and veggies, like bananas, cucumbers and baby broccoli.  I made a few substitutions–you can swap out items you don’t like for something else, and the variety is really pretty good.  You can also add extra items for a nominal fee, like 50 cents each for Meyer lemons or navel oranges.  In all, our box arrived with the following: 4 bananas, 2 navel oranges, 2 Braeburn apples, 2 avocados, 2 cucumbers, 1 bunch arugula, 1 head romaine lettuce, 1 lb of sunburst squash and 1 bunch of broccolini—and a free couple of extra red bell peppers.  The hell you say!

How was it?  It arrived at Josh’s office before lunch and it all looked pretty good–or as good as it’s going to look this time of year, anyway.  The romaine lettuce, broccolini and cucumbers looked great.  The arugula was a bit o

n the wilted side and the fruit, being organic, was smaller than what I normally buy at the store but still good looking and tasty.  The bananas were pretty green and the avocados definitely not ripe—which isn’t bad, just meant we had to wait a few days before consuming them.  I am really, really looking forward to the avocados I have to say.  I love avocado.

I used the broccoli the first night to make a side dish for my scrambled eggs-and-ham-and-toast-and-veggies dinner.  Tasty and delicious.

DDO delivers weekly, though you can cancel on weeks that you won’t need it.  It won’t replace my regular farm share–I love Needle Lane too much and they ARE entirely local—but it will help me get through this winter.

So…fear not, fellow winter sufferers.  There is hope.  You can indeed be fruitful and lazy.

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Last night, Josh and a couple friends of ours ventured out into the streets of Canton to experiment with something new and fantastic to us: Indian street food.  In Canton? Yeah, I know, right?  Now, Indian food is not new to us…I looooove Indian food.  And I’m blessed that there’s a few good Indian places in town to eat at, but those are the usual sit-down restaurants.  This place, Neehee’s, on the corner of Ford and Canton Center roads, specialized in vegetarian street dishes.  I know some of you might be saying, “Vegetarian?  No thanks.”  But seriously, with flavor and sustenance like this, you won’t even miss the meat.  Instead, your stomach will be thanking you with all sorts of contended feelings and sounds.

So anyway, we walked into Neehee’s.  It’s a small, brightly colored place in a strip mall next to a Bombay grocery store.  Pretty busy and not a lot of space to sit, so we opted to order out.  All along the walls are pictures and descriptions of the types of food they sell and their origins.  The smell was fantastic.

Now, we love Indian food, but we don’t know a whole lot about it so ordering was a little bit, “Well that sounds good…that sounds interesting…I don’t know what that is…let’s take one of those, two of those and one of those.”  Or, “We’ll take a number 7, a number 38 with gravy and a number 54.”  While we were waiting for the food, the owner came out and talked to us, which was great.  They have another location in Birmingham and would like to open one in Ann Arbor some day!  I can only hope.  He mentioned that when he opened the Canton location, he’d thought that Indian immigrants would be the majority of his customers…but that actually Americans were.  I’ll be honest, I was a bit surprised to hear that, since we were the only Americans in the entire place at the time.  But that just made the place seem even more awesome to me.  In my experience, any ethnic food place that ends up being full of native eaters of that food tends to be pretty worth it.

And Neehee’s was.  We all piled back into our cars after getting our bags and headed over to Brian’s condo to chow down on what ended up being a formidable buffet of gastronomic delights.  Now, I’m not exactly sure what all Brian and Rita had ordered, but I will say the mashed potato type dish they had was extremely spicy and super good.  We also shared some samosas, fried pastries stuffed with potato and peas, and there was a great spicy soup.  Josh had ordered puri bhaji, a potato dish that was great, and I ordered paneer chilli.  Paneer is an Indian cheese and in this dish it comes cubed and fried and tossed in a spicy chilli gravy.  I know it sounds weird, but it’s extremely flavorful and has a texture not that unlike tofu.  Seriously, try it.  Everyone loved it.  So will you.

If you happen to be out in Canton sometime, stop by, do yourself a favor.  Oh, and if you could pick me up a number 38, spicy, with gravy, that’d be great.  Thanks.

BTW, Happy Diwali!

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Now, I love Indian food.  Love it.  Indian and Thai food are two of my all time favorite cuisines.  I just love the flavors and the spices.  I’m lucky in that there are a host of good Indian restaurants in town (my favorites are Shalimar and Mahek), but I’ve always wanted to learn to make it myself.

Luckily, the internet is a wonderful thing.  After all, it brought you and I together, didn’t it?  It also brought me to the two wonderful people who made my dinner tonight possible.

First I discovered the Indian Butter Chicken recipe linked below.  I’d seen recipes before but it was the photo here that just made me drool.

You can thank Paul from India.  Paul, you are awesome.  I just want you to know that.
Paul’s Butter Chicken on Flickr.

The other glorious thing the internet brought me was the side dish, which came from an Indian food blog, Sailus Kitchen. Their recipe for a potato dish called Bangaladumpa Vepudu looked just too delicious to pass up, and lucky for me again, we’d just gotten in a generous pound of potatoes from our farm share this week.  Clearly the gods of the internet was willing this to be.
Check out the recipe for Bangaladumpa Vepudu.

I did add my own twist a bit to the dishes, using up extra ingredients from the farm share:

I added diced green bell pepper to the chicken and then finished it off with a bit of chopped fresh parsley.
I used boneless skinless chicken breasts, chopped into large pieces for easier eating.
I steamed the potatoes with a clove of garlic to get in a bit more flavor and to retain the nutrients that would otherwise leak out during the boiling.

I adjusted the seasoning in both dishes to cover ingredients I didn’t have, like methi powder.
I added one jalapeno and one Hungarian wax pepper, chopped, to the potatoes when they started to fry.

It was delicious.  Spicy, flavorful, everything I really wanted.  If you’re not into spicy, you’ll want to adjust the seasonings to fit your tastes.  Either way, you’ll love both dishes.

Related posts:

1. Farm Share Goodies: Sept 4-Purple Mashed Potatoes
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I’m just going to come out and say it.

I’m not a baker. I am a cook.  I love to cook things.  I do not like to bake things.  I do, however, love baked things.  And sadly, sometimes the only way to get quality baked things is to bake them yourself.  So I do.  But deep down I rebel against it and would rather be grilling a pizza.

There’s another thing I’m not.  And that’s an artist. My mother, sister and cousin and grandmother are excellent artists.  I did not get that gene.  I got every artistic gene but that one.  So why I thought I could pull this off, I have no idea.

I blame Josh.  For insisting that some day I’m going to be one of those moms who make little artistic culinary renditions for her kids’ birthday parties.  And I blame Bakerella, for making me want to be one of those moms.  And I blame the Ann Arbor library, for carrying the book Hello Cupcake!, which I inadvertently came across last week and which briefly convinced me that I, too, could create irresistible, playful creations.  Damn you, cupcake book.  Damn you.

So I took the book home and of course, I was immediately enthralled by penguin cupcakes and panda cupcakes and alien cupcakes and adorable little sunflower cupcakes and even a giant crocodile made out of cupcakes.  And the book promised step by step instructions and no artistic talent needed–just used a box mix and some frosting and some edible candy toppings and voila!  Martha Stewart you are.  So I went through the book and made a list of all the cupcake creations I wanted to conquer (ha!)–there’s about 15–and figured I’d work my way slowly through all of them and then one day, I’d be that awesome mom who made adorable little food things for classroom parties—you know, once I mastered the art of cupcakes and uh…well, had kids.  One thing at a time.

So I picked what looked like the easiest ones: the sunflowers.  Okay, maybe not the easiest but I figured, hey I could do that.  I have a cake decorating set that Josh bought me (he’s a terrible influence, you can see, encouraging me to go after my hobbies and dreams and whatnot) and free time and I can buy a box of oreos.  Totally I can do this.

Ha.

Anyway, this was my first try.  The cupcakes themselves are delicious–thank you, Duncan Hines.  (Hey, I wasn’t going to waste the effort of a homemade batch of batter for experimental cupcakes.)  The idea gets across, I think…but clearly my execution of creating “petals” needs serious work.  I think this in part to my frosting being too soft and in part to my v-shaped tip being too large for this particular project.  I wanted to do yellow sunflowers but of course, I couldn’t get the yellow food coloring bottle open.  I know, it’s a sign.  I ignored that sign.  I went ahead and made pink flowers instead.  Because I could.  Because what else was I going to do?

There’s no particular recipe; here’s what I did.

1 box Duncan Hines chocolate cake mix (I just wanted chocolate cupcakes; my “for real” batch will be vanilla cake that I will tint green)
cupcake wrappers (green ones if you can find them…I could not)
1 canister white frosting
green and red (or whatever color for petals) food coloring
oreo cookies

I made the cupcakes according to package instructions, and then set aside half of the frosting.  I colored that half green and frosted the tops of all the cupcakes.  The other half of the frosting I tinted red (well, pinkish).  Then, using my piping set, I piped “petals” around the edges of the oreo cookies and pressed them into the middle of the cupcakes.  I did 7  flower ones total; five are pictured above, 2 were eaten. 

And were delicious.

Josh loved them, of course.  He’s a terrible influence, that one.  Anyway, stay tuned…I’m sure more will come.

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Having skipped lunch, we were having an early dinner (4:30ish) so we beat the Saturday evening crowd and since it was a lovely 81 degrees Fahrenheit, we decided to eat outside (“we” being “me” and “Josh grudgingly agreeing because he knows how much I love hot weather and how little of it I get in Michigan and besides, there was a breeze and thanks to the bevy of tall buildings on E Washington, we’d be in the shade anyway”).  The weather was lovely, the sidewalk seating was great, the staff was excellent and the menu was modest but delicious, which works out well for me because sometimes too many choices is a terrible thing.  Like the cereal aisle of a grocery store.  How can I possibly make up my mind?  More on that another time.

Anyway, what I’ve heard about ABC is that, of course, they also own the Corner Brewery in Ypsi, and that besides having delicious food, they’ve got an initiative going to avoid high fructose corn syrup, additives and hormones, choose organic, local food and make many items from scratch, such as their own tortillas, salsa, spicy black beans, charro beans, enchilada sauce, cilantro-lime rice, desserts and soups.

Speaking of delicious tortillas, salsa, spicy black beans, charro beans, enchilada sauce and cilantro-lime rice…that’s what I got for dinner!

And it was great.  Many people rave about the Prickly Pear but I have to say that this meal easily rivaled anything I’ve gotten from there; all it was missing was the guacamole.  The tortilla was flavorful, the burrito filling (black beans, rice, corn, cheese, peppers) was delicious and spicy, the salsa was great, the charro beans on the side were fantastic; the rice on the side not great, needed additional flavors (like basic pepper and salt) but overall, the meal was a win.  Josh, a big burrito fan, enthusiastically agreed.

Josh had a burger–with onions and barbecue sauce of course–and a side of their special garlic fries, which the waiter told us was “spicy.”  They were definitely…garlicky.  A bit too soft for Josh’s liking though, but better with the organic ketchup.

Don’t ask me anything about the beer–neither Josh nor I like the stuff.  But quite a few people seemed to come and go carrying jugs of it so there’s that .

I’m definitely looking forward to trying it again sometime.  Variety.  Spice.  Life.  You get it.
After that, Josh had the genius idea (he is so smart, that husband of mine) to go next door to Schakolad and get some of their gelato.  Did you know that Schakolad now makes their own gelato with their own delicious chocolate?  They do.  You heard it from me.  It was a bit pricey–$5 for a scoop–but that comes with two free chocolates of your choosing and the best part of gelato is that it’s so dense that you only need a little bit to feel full and satisfied.  That’s definitely the case with Schakolad’s offerings.  If you don’t know what gelato is, it’s basically Italian ice cream–only it’s denser and creamer because it more milk and egg yolks and less cream, fat and air.  It’s also churned slower and stored at a warmer temperature.

Josh and I shared a $5 cup of the triple chocolate–chocolate gelato with a chocolate glaze and large nutty chips of chocolate–and it was more than enough for both of us.  It was delectable.  Succulent.  Luscious.  Exquisite.  And other synonyms for yummy.

Do try.

So what’s the deal with the “Shacko-lattes” in the headline, you may wonder?  Schakolad also does coffee drinks…a poster on the wall proclaimed that lattes were available…Schako-lattes.  Ha.  I love puns.

Related posts:

1. Dinner for one, mmmque?
2. Olé! Dinner out at The Prickly Pear
3. Tomato, Tomahto, Totally Tasty

Bill’s is…well, it’s a little yellow shack, really, on Michigan Ave in Ypsilanti (waaay far in Ypsi) around the corner from where I grew up.  Bill’s has been there…forever, pretty much.  My entire life anyway.  It’s an old school car-hop kinda place and they mean serious business.  They do hot dogs.  And root beer.  And that’s all they do.  Seriously.  You can only buy three things at Bill’s: hot dogs, homemade root beer and Ruffles chips.  And I will be damned if it is not the best root beer in at least the state, if not the entire western hemisphere.

I’ve also noticed that Bill’s is a lot like Dairy Queen…the clientele is a giant cross-section of Americana.  We drive up and park, Winston sitting in the back, and one of the guys comes over to take our order.  The other thing I like about Bill’s, besides being laid back and delicious, is that it is CHEAP.  We can get 4 chili dogs (no onions), 2 bags of chips and 2 to-go cups of root beer for $8.80.  $8.80.  We can barely get breakfast for one at some of the places we frequent in town.  It’s fantastic.  Guy takes our order, comes back in a bit with our food, we exchange money and change, he leaves, the dog lays down in the backseat to sleep and Josh and I are free to savor our chili dogs and root beer and watch the world on Michigan Ave go by.  We certainly aren’t the only ones either–cars come and go as we sit—old, beat up vans, bright yellow mustang convertibles, our hybrid, some small economy Fords, a very expensive looking car of some make and model (hey, I’m a foodie, not a Ford exec) that desperately screamed “Midlife crisis!” (although the convertible also had that going on too), and more.  Because everybody loves hot dogs.  And everybody loves Bill’s.

Related posts:

1. Hot Dawg!
2. This Hot Dog Thing Will Never End
3. Friday Foodie Finds: the Ypsilanti edition

One thing I will say is that Prickly Pear has fantastic homemade guacamole, and their tortilla chips are great; I wonder if they get them from Ann Arbor Tortilla?

Josh ordered a chicken burrito.  Josh is a “burrito connoisseur.”  He loves burritos; he considers them the perfect food.  He says “Wrapping anything in a tortilla automatically makes this better.”  He considered Prickly Pear’s burrito as “okay” but “just okay;” just cheese and meat stuffed messily into a tortilla, lacking in substantial flavor or texture.  He compared it to a burrito from Tio’s.  What would have made it better?  Some crunchy vegetables, like peppers, and cheese with more flavor.  He agreed with me that the black beans on the side, however, were very good and cooked just perfectly.

I went with a chicken empanada with a pepito (pumpkin seed) sauce.  Originally I’d been eyeing the portabello mushroom fajitas but damned if I’m going to pay $18 for fajitas that don’t even come with free-range meat attached.  The rice that came with was ok; lacking in flavor and topped with some pretty forgettable chopped tomatoes.  The beans, like Josh’s, were excellent (especially with the salty, crunchy tortilla chips leftover from the appetizer).  The empanada was…tiny (I got a half but wow) and sprinkled with  chopped zucchini and squash.  There was more pastry in the empanada than actual filling; the pastry was flaky but overwhelming, and the chicken filling pretty uninspired.  The light greenish cheese sauce with crushed pumpkin seeds was light and good, but also lacking in serious, lip-smacking flavor. I do think that Café Habana is light years ahead with the delicious beef empanada on its menu.

So total score: meh.  Not terrible, not great.

However, the night did end on a good note: cupcakes at the Cupcake Station!  More on that another time.

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2. Dinner for one, mmmque?
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