Adventures in Restaurants: Valentine’s Date.

It’s been a while since hubby and I went out somewhere special for dinner, and Valentine’s Day was the perfect time to do so.

There are a lot of fancy restaurants in our city. Mostly downtown, and we’ve been to this one several times. A big negotiator for where we eat is how many vegan dishes they have on their menu. Hubby doesn’t eat meat, but he does eat fish and seafood (he’s considered a pascaterian), so if there isn’t an option, and you’d be surprised how many places don’t offer a vegetarian option, we won’t go.

For this dinner, our meal consisted of a duck amuse bouche (both samples I ate), appetizers were French onion soup, and escargot in white wine cream, tomato concassé, parmesan puff pastry (description from the menu). You can see by the picture HERE that there were A LOT of escargot. It was not the usual 12 in those little cups topped with melted cheese. Our entrees being (for me) braised beef, cheese tortellini, tomato & pepper broth, pecorino, walnuts, cured egg yolk, and husband had sea bass with potato fingerlings. I don’t’ know what fingerlings are, but he said the meal was very tasty. For desert, it was crème brulee for me. I always have that. You can view the other pictures of our meal HERE.

It was a nice, relaxing meal and a great date night.

Adventures in Restaurants! Anniversary Dinner.

It’s been a long time since Hubby and I had a date night. Covid lockdowns stopped our weekly outings, and the fear of covid and trying to get our house finished kept us away, but there’s always one night out of the year that we make sure to dine out. Our aniversary.

This year we played it low key. There’s a cute pub-style place out in the township called The Rose and Crown that we visit every now and then. It’s one of the few places Hubby will get a half pint of beer. All drafts, no bottles. At least not that I’ve seen, and they have good deals for their fish and chip meals. They did have a cheese plate on their menu and we ordered it, thinking it would be nice cheese from the U.K. Nope. Crackerbarrel and saltines. Not impressed. I reminded him of that when we were there and wasn’t surprised to see it wasn’t on the menu anymore.

The best anniversary dinner we ever has was when we went to The Wharf in Ottawa. The meal was expensive, but it was a special occasion. I forgot to get a picture of our ‘amuse bouche’ they started us off with, but the rest of the meal was superb, and when the chef learned we were celebrating our anniversary, they made us a special desert! You can view the pictures HERE.

What was a special once-in-a-lifetime place you went for dinner? Would you go back?

From the Recipe Box: Garlic Bread Meatballs.

Want something quick and easy for dinner? Try garlic bread meatballs! You can use them as a side or, because they’re so filling, a main and they’re the easiest thing to put together. I saw this recipe on TikTok and had to try it.

Ingredients

1 jar of spaghetti sauce

Frozen Meatballs

Garlic bread (frozen or homemade, doesn’t matter)

Shredded cheese.

Instructions:

In a pot, pour the jar of spaghetti sauce and add the meatballs. The amount of meatballs you add all depends on how many slices of garlic bread you’re making. Roughly it’s three per slice, but it depends on how big your slices are.

Let the meatballs simmer in the pot for about twenty minutes. The more it stays in, the more flavour they’ll pick up. When they’re done, take them out and cut them in half.

Heat up your garlic bread. Make sure both sides are toasted. When it’s ready and the meatballs are ready, take a spoon and indent the top of your garlic bread and place the halved meatballs on top. Cover with cheese and pop it back into the oven for the cheese to melt. Then, broil them for a couple of minutes to brown up the cheese.

I posted a picture HERE.

That’s it. Easy peasy and so much yum!

From the Recipe Box: Easy Cheeseburger Casserole.

I’ve got another dinner cheat for you, and it takes half the time and only a third of the ingredients that I found on recipe websites. The Cheeseburger Casserole is a good comfort food dinner, but I made it the other night because I got caught out in a rain storm and was cold. The storm went on to spawn a tornado south of Ottawa, too. I can believe it. The clouds were scary as they passed over and I’m glad they only dropped rain.

Onto the dish. All the recipes I found online had ten or more ingredients, and if you’re in a hurry, some of them you’d have to go out and buy prior to making the dinner, and some of ingredients, I’d only use once over the next six months, when this one that I put together has ingredients most of us already have in our pantry.

Ingredients.

2 lbs lean hamburger

1 box of Kraft Dinner

1 ½ – 2 Worcestershire Sauce

½ tsp Garlic powder

1 tbsp Dried Onion flakes

Salt and Pepper to taste.

½ cup Shredded cheese (optional)

7 ingredients. That’s it. Pictures are HERE.

Instructions:

Cook the hamburger and Kraft Dinner at the same time. This is what saves you time. Season the beef with salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion flakes. Mix well. Add in the Worcestershire sauce. Mix. Drain and prepare Kraft Diner and set to one side until beef is ready. When the beef is done, mix the Kraft dinner into it and top with shredded cheese. Cover and let the heat from the food melt the cheese. That’s it. It takes roughly seven minutes to make the Kraft Dinner and fifteen to twenty minutes to the hamburger, depending on your stove.

All these ingredients are a staple in my house. I had some store-bought shredded cheese left over from another meal so I added it in, otherwise, I use American cheese slice to bump up the cheese for the Kraft Dinner. The Worcestershire Sauce gives it a nice bite too, but if you’ve never used it before, use it sparingly.

Enjoy!

Adventures in Restaurants: Father’s Day Sushi Lunch.

It’s rare when Hubby and I go out to dine anymore, moreso if it’s a special occasion, but while this year has been somewhat stressful, we did manage an outing for Father’s Day. Unfortunately, as my debit card was acting up, he had to pay. I’ll take him someplace nice for his birthday to make up for it.

Sithboy dislikes sushi so we didn’t invite him. Plus, he was working. There are a few good sushi places in our city, but I love one restaurant in particular, a place called Sakura Japanese Restaurant. Their menu is all on a tablet and you order right from it. It’s great because there isn’t a lot for each dish, so you can sample several items over the course of your meal. They’ve changed how they plate their food since the last time I was there as well. My order of the 6 piece Philadelphia Roll came with Hubby’s Crab Stick and Salmon Rolls. We didn’t realize that at first, and when we did, he’d already eaten all my whole order. *cries* That’s okay, because I think I ate one of his Shrimp Tempura rolls. I can see why they served everything together. No point in having three separate plates when it’s all going to the same table. We’ll have to remember that for the next time.

This was the place that made me a fan of sushi. I’d tried it once before and didn’t care for it, but something about this place changed my mind. Maybe because everything is prepared fresh when you order and not pre-made?

What do you think of sushi? I know people can’t get past the raw fish part, but you can do it up with vegetables too, and not everything on the menu is raw. We had some cooked dishes too, and they have deserts! I took lots of pictures and you can see them HERE.