Zimmy Cheap Wine Action in HIbbing Mn

I ordered what I thought was the California wine sampler (3 x 1 oz) for $6 and instead ended up with 3 x 5 oz. One white, one rose and one red.

All for $6! Clearly some sort of error!

I felt like kind of a whine-o when they brought them to my table all at once. Especially since my co-workers couldn't fly in tonight and I was on my own.

My salmon with avocado sauce and wild rice got high marks for tastiness too!

McRib Deconstructed Pics

Perhaps Ian sold you on the McRib. Don't be fooled!

Check out this link for McRib Grossness!

Cutlery Problems

Our "silver" seems to no longer be in production. This wouldn't be a problem except that someone in the family seems to lose at least a piece a month.

I'm not sure why IKEA can't pick cutlery and stick with it for years? What's next, our IKEA "china" set?

McRib

I couldn't resist the onslaught of the McRib is Back advertising and so for lunch today I had the McRib combo. 6.32 with tax.

The best feature is also its worst feature: BBQ Sauce. It's covered in it which adds flavour but makes things messy. Overall it's reasonably tasty and after washing up you can hardly tell what I had for lunch.

The nutritional information suggests while this wasn't the healthiest choice, I likely won't have a heart attack today. The whole meal rang in at 1160 calories which is decent but unfortunately it was 75% of my daily fat and 85% of the saturated for the day. Only 47% of the sodium for the day which is surprisingly low in my opinion for fast food. Looks like tonight I'll be having a low fat salt lick?

Dining Safely in the T.

T. = Toronto for those people living under a rock.

Check out this extremely handy link to see if your favorite restaurant is as clean as you think!

For the places we typically frequent:

First line (no violations...at least in the last two years)

• Aroma Indian on King
• Sneaky Dee's (Bathurst/College)
• Spring Rolls - Yonge & Front streets
• Big Fat Burrito
  
• New Generation in the Annex
  
• Rivoli (not sure why their sister operation, the Queen Mother, can't get it together?)
• Sushi Inn in Yorkville
  
• Wheat Sheaf on Bathurst
• Crystal 5 at the ROM
  
• Scaramouche
• Sushi Star
• El Fogon Peruvian
• Serra Italian in the Annex
• Future Bakery on Bloor
• North 44 in Yonge/Eglinton area
• Ethiopian House on Bloor
  

Second Liners (seemingly clean, but I have doubts)

• Old Spaghetti (clean, but I've heard from people who work there that it's pretty gross)
• T&T Cherry Street - I would have thought sketchy due to what should have been hot food left on tables for hours, but what do I know?

Third Liners (some violations, but they've cleaned it up recently)

• Boulevard Cafe
• Fresh on Crawford
• East on Queen - Feb 07 problems (we've forgiven, you should too)
• Sarah's Shawarma in the Annex ('06 pest problems)
  

Minor Leaguers (No hope for these joints)

• Ho Su on Queen - two recent yellows, perhaps the only thing saving us is the high turnover of food?
• Sushi Queen - pest control problems (need I say more?)

For Ian or other non-hockey people, this a hockey analogy. First line = good, minor leagues - back to making $10/day.

Santa Meets the Easter Bunny

Tonight I made two side dishes from my new veggie cookbook that Ian's parents got us for Christmas. Both turned out delightfully well.













Here I am making honey mustard salad dressing for the salad with the cute whisk my mom and dad gave me for Christmas a few years ago.



























The final result. New York strip loin from St. Lawrence market. One minute seared per side + 15 min in the oven at 350= perfectly well done. I will go with about 12 minutes next time.

Parsnip mash (parsnip, balsamic, olive oil, S&P).

Broccoli salad (cooked broccoli, raw apple, raw red onion). Salad dressing with cider vinegar, dijon, olive oil, garlic, honey, salt, pepper.

Easter Bunny Brings Sushi

Well actually we made some.

Big Fat Burritos Newsflash

They've been upgrading their digs recently and unfortunately when I went this week I see that they upgraded their prices as well. A small pork now runs you 7 bucks. They've differentiated the prices too between the meats as well which is annoying. I don't really want the pork but when there's a quarter on the table it's tough to say no. In the classic deceive the customer style, they also list the prices without tax whereas I thought before they listed prices with tax included.

They're still may preferred source of burritos in the TO though.

Rivoli Action

We headed out on a dinner fish eating Good Friday mission this evening. First stop was Jules, but it was closed. Next stop was the Rivoli on Queen W.

To start things off right, we got the primo table right at the front by the window. Ian of course got a bit freaked out by all the people walking by wearing skinny jeans and boots. I kinda have to agree - it's warm and there is no snow so what's up with boots???

For drinks, I went with a moderately priced 14 oz of Amsterdam Amber for $4.61 to start. Ian stuck with tap water. The beer wasn't quite as cold as it should have been.

Ian had a corn chowder. It was corny, tasty, vegetably and creamy all in one soup. Pretty good value for $5.00.

The main courses were the real star of this outing.

I had the squash & ricotta striped stuff pasta. Ian was easily impressed with the particularly vibrant stripage on the pasta. I really liked the creamy pesto sauce with mushrooms, pea pods and tomatoes thrown in for good measure. It really was more pasta than one person should eat, so Ian helped me out quite a bit. The price wasn't too bad at $15.

Ian went with a special - seared tuna, mango sauce with veggie tempura and a veggie rice risotto.

Once I assured Ian that seared tuna was indeed supposed to be somewhat raw on the inside, he chowed down pretty quickly. He really liked the tempura and it's perfect amount of coating.

The final bill came to $56 including tip.

Montreal Smoked Meat = Not So Good

While in Montreal, I had a smoked meat sandwich. I found it to be rather gross tasting with a odd texture.

More veggies for me next time!

Smoked meat may give you cancer too - who wants that???

Gourmet Med (Montreal)

While at our Montreal Office, I partake in tasty food court middle eastern at Gourmet Med in Place Ville Marie.

The price seems to have gone up in the past three years - now my 5 item veggie combo plate + a pop costs over $10.

For that I got:

- Rice (sometimes I get the potatoes instead)
- Hummus
- Falafel
- Cucumber salad
- Tabouli
- Pita

It's basically WAY too much food to possibly finish and it the best middle eastern food I have ever eaten (including normal restaurants)!

M & M

A few months ago an M&M Uptown opened up at Front and Peter/Blue Jays Way. (It's apparently the first "Uptown" store.) If they consider this location "uptown" I'm not sure where downtown is - in the lake? Anyway getting over the name issue the place is pretty good. I've never really been a big M&M fan but this has a few things going for it
1) It's conveniently located on my walk home from school
2) It seems to have lots of sales while they promote this uptown concept

We've tried a few things so far: their lemon and herb frozen chicken breasts - tasty and a decent deal when on sale for 15 bucks a box, their regular chicken - also good when on sale, their teriyaki steaks - 4 mini steaks for 10 bucks and so far 2 of 4 have been tasty and finally some 1.99 salmon fillets that were the not as great as I've picked up in other freezer aisles. Still not bad and as long as the sales continue M&M is definitely going to have a home in our freezer.

General Sketchiness

I'm not one to hold grudges so for lunch the other day when my idea of Indian buffet was shot down I hit up Island foods at the Village on/by the Grange despite my earlier experience. There was no line so I figured the wait wouldn't be that bad. Of course the wait was still surprisingly long but it was actually partially useful. While waiting for my food (unfortunately not before), I happened to notice that they had carefully covered up the bottom half of their DineSafe sign. I wasn't sure if it was intentional until I saw that just days earlier they had been given a Yellow. On reinspection they turned green again but still not a good situation. I'm going to heed my advice and stay away in the future.

When I got back to school I looked up the infractions and it didn't seem like major issues but I, of course, still prefer restaurants that can meet their regulatory requirements. While looking Island Foods up, I realized that I hadn't been checking some of my usual haunts. I happened to look up Ho Su and was shocked to see they've run into serious problems in January and February. They're green again now but it seems like some of the fines for pest control problems remain unresolved. It's going to be a while before we go there again.

Now to figure out how to strike back against the people who rejected my Indian Buffet idea.

Home Cooking Tastiness (and Cheapness)

Home made veggie sushi action by Janice!

Sushi Inn

Ian and I ventured out to Yorkville for a car emissions test. While waiting, we headed over to the Sushi Inn.

The joint was already pretty busy when we arrived at 11:55 or so!

I went with the "Silver Box" which included 6 makis (3 salmon, 3 cucumber), miso soup, salad, rice, veggie tempura, fried tofu and teriyaki mushrooms. A fantastic deal for $9.95.

Ian had "combo H" with 6 maki and 5 sushi for $7.95.

The miso soup was surprisingly tasty although rather hot (I guess that is good though?). Always classy Ian dumped some water into the soup to cool things down.

The maki was rather small but cute and better than normal. My bento box items were all very good and extremely hot. Even with Ian's help, I did not come close to finishing everything. Ian seemed sufficiently pleased with his sushi.

Home on the Iron Range

For the last few months I've been traveling to super exciting Hibbing Mn for some work related fun.

For those that care, this place is the child-hood home of Bob Dylan.

A couple nights ago we ventured away from the hotel restaurant to a joint devoted to Dylan. It was called Zimmy's. Check out their exciting web site.

As I've found in all these no-name US cities, we ended up getting a horrendous amount of food for a ridiculously low price! Perhaps they recover some costs with overpriced souvenirs (mugs for $15)!

Here's what our group of 4 had:

- 2 small tap beers
- bottle of not-very-tasty pinot grigio
- black bean veggie burger with sweet potato fries & chipotle avocodo dressing on side
- three fish entrees
- 2 coffee

All for about $80 including tax & tip!

Quizno's

I went to Quizno's earlier this week and I had their delightful Angus Steak sub. It did not disappoint. While eating there I had some fond memories of previous quizno's trips that I didn't blog about.

First off back in coupon season I partook in Quizno's new offering - the Sammie! It was certainly tasty, I had the buffalo chicken one but it was also certainly small. At 2 bucks a pop I think you're better off with getting a sub to fill you up instead of the 3 or 4 sammies.

Also back in coupon season I tried out a half pepperoni pizza. I didn't read the fine print carefully enough so I ended up having it with a regular sub which made for quite a big meal (and I could have ordered a smaller sub and still got the free pizza). Anyway the pizza was pretty good. It's different than the pizza pizza style of pizza obviously. I liked it at 3.99 I might be tempted to get it again. Only time will tell

MGM Buffet Action

This joint was rather expensive at$19 for lunch I think and $16 or so for breakfast I think.

The breakfast was surprisingly packed and we had to wait in line for about 15 minutes prior to being seated. We partook in the standard breakfast fare - eggs, potatoes, bacon, waffle with whip cream/strawberries etc. Ian pretty much ate a half pineapple. It was a bit gross!

They seemed to have quite a few salads that we of course steared clear of. They were mainly seafood-y type items in mayo...so they basically had "FOOD POISONING" written of them!

Overall, not great value for what you actually got.

Lunch was pretty decent - similar to the South Point dinner items. I really liked the salsa bar here, that was pretty fun! They also had M&M's at the make your own sundae bar. I liked that a lot.

Service was good - the dirty plates with half eaten food were always promptly removed and out beverage glasses were always full.

Candy & Cola = Vacation Super Fun-ness

Vegas Non Buffet Action - La Salsa Cantina

If you veer somewhat North of the MGM Grand to La Salsa Cantina you can purchase a slushy margarita for $16. It seems like $ well spent on the way to developing diabetes.


We had a bit of buffet hang-over from lunch, so we just stuck with steak-y nachos for about $11? It's all a little hazy after that much sugar!

Tastiness level was high.

Vegas Buffet Tastiness Part 1 (South Point)

The M&M bunny was quite cute, but the real star of the buffet eating action was surprisingly off the main strip at South Point.

Being off the strip, dinner came cheap at $13.95 per person. This is approximately half the price of most on strip places and the tastiness did not suffer at all!

There was an asian stir fry station, mexican tastiness, a tasty assortment of seafood that seemed to appease Ian and the requisite pork ribs, turkey, ham, beefy roast + a special item = beef short ribs.

Of course, they had an ok looking salad bar, but with so much tastiness, we found it better to completely skip the salad bar and focus on tasty!

There was also the standard italian fare, but again, why eat bad pizza and ho hum pasta?? Same deal for items like bread, veggies, potatoes etc etc.

The dessert was quite tasty over-all (cakes, pies, squares, cookies, ice cream dessert thingy etc). Ian always goes for cheesecake, I had a caramel chocolate cake type item. Also make ye own strawberry shortcake.

Service was pretty good and organized with headsets and the like!

As a side note - we also partook in a cheap $7.50 movie at the same location!