enjoying a new old place for the first time

I met Jason for lunch today at a famous local Cedar Rapids landmark, The Flying Wienie. It was awesomely historic with memorabilia covering the walls and complete with unpretentious menu of barbecue, gyros & dogs. We both decided to stick with the classic Chicago dog and it did not disappoint. For your information a Chicago dog comes with mustard, dill spears, onions, tomatoes, relish, sport peppers & celery salt. From now on I don't think I'll eat another hot dog without adding a dill pickle. So good!

Would you like to know....

what I chose from the menu last night at Shuey's?

Ruth's Burger $6.95
1/3 Angus burger topped with a fried egg, lettuce, pickles, onions, and tomatoes.

I love trying new things on menus while on the other hand Mike sticks to the classics. Who knew a fried egg on a burger would be so delicious? AND my middle name happened to be involved- I will admit that it was a factor in my choice :)

Week 20 of Souper Sundays!

Week 20 of my ongoing Souper Sundays challenge featured Cincinnati Chili! Just in case you are not familiar with this variety of chili... what sets it apart from other chili is that it is served over spaghetti noodles. After researching several recipes I found that cinnamon and coriander were called for in almost all of the recipes so in they went with a bunch of chili powder and other spices.You could definitely taste and smell the cinnamon which I think threw Mike off a bit ("is there cinnamon in this?!") and he couldn't quite get past it- I on the other hand loved it!

This was the last week of soup before Super Bowl Sunday's Chili Cook-Off. I will attempt to gather pictures and recipes of my challenge and post them for your viewing pleasure :)

Weeks 18 & 19

Last weekend's soup for Week 18 was Beef & Noodle soup. The recipe was from Cuisine at Home's Soups, Stews & Chilies book. The recipe called for Madeira wine and it turned out so rich and delicious-we loved it.

Mike convinced me that he needed a soup for today's playoff game so lucky for him I decided to keep going and I whipped up a Spicy Chicken Chili- served over hot white rice for Week 19. Just the right amount of kick came from some jalapenos I've kept frozen from my garden last summer. Mike was pretty happy about the whole situation :)

Souper Sundays 16 & 17...can you believe I'm still going?!

Week 16: Hearty Tomato with Rosemary
- this recipe was from my new Giada DeLaurentiis cookbook I got for Christmas- the recipe called for fresh rosemary so I went to my patio and uncovered some snow from my herb pot from the summer and grabbed some rosemary that was nice and frozen but still worked great anyways

Week 17: Smoked Turkey & Wild Rice
- this recipe is from Jessie's magazine Cuisine at Home and their latest slow cooker book. I have to say that getting the meat off those smoked turkey legs was the most annoying step ever! Xena sure enjoyed that giant leg bone after we were done though- lucky dog!

This weekend is playoffs so it will be my last soup before the final soup for Super Bowl Sunday!

It was a Blue Moon Ball!

For New Year's we headed to Des Moines to go to the Blue Moon Ball at Champps. It was of course in celebration of the blue moon that occurred exactly on New Year's night- a once every 19 or 20 years event! We had so much fun as we always do when getting together with Jessie & Chris. We ate delicious appetizers, a steak & lobster dinner, drank Blue Moon beer and danced the night away. We had to make our own count-down to the New Year because somehow we missed out on the actual ball-drop countdown....but we made the most of that and rang in 2010 with kisses and champagne and noisemakers galore!