Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Bad Food, Then Good Food, But Always Great Company

I haven't posted in a few days, I know. But if it is any comfort to you, I also have not cooked anything since Saturday. Welcome to my real-world life where I go over to my inlaws' for dinner and then out with a friend.

Sunday evening started out wonderfully with our kickball team winning our game and moving to the playoffs! (STEVE HOLT!) The team was all invited over to my inlaws' for a BBQ and to watch the Viking's game. I came prepared to my inlaws with my copy of Gone With the Wind. I rarely watch football. I use that time to catch up on my reading. But, you do not care about what I am reading, only about what I ate, right? Well, the BBQ ended up being dreadful for me. There are very few foods on this planet that I just cannot stand. Sometime this summer I realized that I hate hot dogs. I never go out of my way to eat them, and when I do they have to be burnt beyond recognition for me to even thing about ingesting them. What makes hot dogs even worse? Adding chili on top of it. What was served at this "BBQ?" Chili dogs. Yup, I went over expecting a hamburger, a brat, sausage, something besides just hot dogs. In a situation like this I normally would just eat the chili; however, the chili was just a can of chili heated up. Yeah, I'm not going to eat that either. So, my dinner on Sunday night, was oh-so-healthy - chips and carrots. I survived. Not an eating success, but not every night can be.

Monday night made up for Sunday night. A friend of mine from high school is back in the US for a month and we decided to spend Monday night hanging out. What do people do when they get together? They talk and eat. We did just that. We first started out with coffee, backwards, yes, but we both wanted caffeine and something warm on a blustery fall day. I took her to Anodyne the home of a fantastic latte and a warm environment. If you are ever looking for good oatmeal, go to Anodyne and order their Anodyne Oatmeal. It is fantastic! All of the food at Anodyne looks really good and smells really good. But, all I have had is their Oatmeal and their coffee. After we spent 2 hours drinking coffee and talking we decided to move on to dinner.

I asked my friend what type of food does she not get when she is abroad. Barbecue. Well, I refuse to take anyone to Famous Dave's because that is just ordinary American-eater barbecue. Meaning large portions of just average flavored food. I decided we were going to Brasa. It turned out to be a success. We knew we wanted their pulled chicken and gravy, the baked beans and cornbread special and the jalapeno creamed spinach. We put our second meat in the hands of our waitress. She picked out the pulled pork for us. The chicken and gravy was out of this world good. Normally, I stay away from white gravy, but my friend really wanted it and she does not ever get it. However, the gravy was so light and the flavors were perfect. Just enough heat to not overcome the other flavors. The jalapeno creamed spinach had only a kick to it and no jalapeno flavor. We decided that was a good thing. The cornbread which came with the baked beans was SO good we asked for more. Each piece of cornbread was slathered with a honey butter. To me, cornbread is always better with honey butter. I was not so impressed with the pulled pork. It was missing some flavoring and was fairly dry. Oh well, you can't win on them all. Plus, the chicken was so good it did not matter. Brasa is always a win. If you have not been, you should definitely make the trek to NE Minneapolis or St. Paul and try it out. Be prepared to wait in line most of the time because each restaurant is small.

After the failure that was Sunday night's dinner. Monday turned out to be a win. So, here's to good eating!

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