Food Adventures: Richmond, Virginia

Well I really had meant to write a little about my trip to Richmond, VA sooner, but I just haven't been in the writing mood. This will be a bit minimal about my trip, I should have written about it sooner when my memory was fresher. I also wish I had taken more pictures, but I am just not that much of a photographer. I need to learn to be if I am going to write about things I do.

The first place we went where I took pictures was Capital Ale House. They had a very nice menu at this bar, and I think the rest of my family enjoyed the beer selection as well. It was also a pretty short walk from where we were staying during the trip as well.

This was the pulled pork poutine that was on the menu at Capital Ale House, french fries covered with cheese curds, gravy, and pulled pork. My dad is actually the one who ordered this, the portion was quite big, but of course there were too many fries and not enough toppings, but still it was quite delicious.

This was my dish at Capital Ale House, bacon and onion stuffed chicken, with au gratin potatoes, and broccoli. It was really good. I loved the garlic and onion flavor in the stuffing and the chicken was cooked perfectly. It was a great, slightly healthier option on the menu because I knew I would be having some less than healthy foods during the week.

The next morning my brother and I went off to a local English pub to watch some Premier League soccer, the place was called Penny Lane, and yes after The Beatles. I got the full English breakfast. It was quite mediocre, as I thought it might be at a pub, but it was high in protein and really filling.

We went out to a French restaurant with some friends of our father. There really wasn't all the much that appealed to me on the menu here, but I decided to get some mussels, since I was closer to the coast seafood was one of the things I wanted to eat. These mussels were flavored with ingredients that also go into clam chowder, and there were a few clams included as well. Seasoned with bacon, leeks, and cream, they were quite good, but were weirdly served with french fries, all of which together was quite salty.

This is the last food picture I have from the trip, the one thing I wanted to have more than anything else, Chicken and waffles! I also had it with some sweet tea for a true southern experience. The chicken and waffles was everything I wanted it to be, crispy, chewy, salty, sweet, and juicy. The one complaint that I would have preffered some pieces of chicken other than wings, but other than that it was amazing.

The one other thing I had to add to this was a picture of the Lucky Strike building in Richmond, I guess Richmond used to be one of the biggest cities for tobacco companies, and there is a long row of former tobacco warehouses that are being repurposed as apartments and condos. I just thought the Lucky Strike tower was really cool. There is also a Native American looking over the corner of the building.

The Lucky Strike building from a different angle.

Peter's Cooking Diary #12

So this week was a pretty simple meal to prepare, and it was using leftover turkey from Thanksgiving dinner that I had with my family. I want to make something that was low carb as I am trying to get back on that wagon and trying to lose move weight. This was made more or less freestyle, I didn't have a recipe that I used for this, just combined many different ideas.

The first step to most of my cooking is starting cooking most of my vegetables, and in this case I actually used a lot of veggies. I used the whole pack of celery in this, trying to make it more hearty so it would be filling enough when eating it for lunch.

I didn't take a picture of lightly cooking the carrots before adding them to the crock pot, but I used the whole pound of carrots that I bought, I could have used more if I had bought more, but like I said it was just free style. This is the onions and garlic that I use as a base for just about every recipe.

This is the crock pot filled with onion, garlic, celery, carrots, stock, and some tomatoes that I got from my mom. I also added some herbs like oregano, thyme, and parsley as well as some red pepper flake. I also added a little bit of soy sauce, because I like the depth of flavor it adds to a soup. I think for the herbs you could actually just use some poultry seasoning if you happen to have that on hand as well.

My mom also gave me some green beans that she grew in her garden. I cut them up into about 4 pieces and added them to the mix.

I chopped up the turkey and added it to the pot, not sure how much I had, maybe a pound of white meat? I think you could just as easily use whatever leftover meat you have, or you can even make it without meat if you want to.

The second to last ingredient that I wanted to add was some wheat berries, which I think I have mentioned previously on here, but at least from what I have read they are the whole grain of wheat with the husk removed. They take about an hour to cook, and they need to be rinsed well. So I took some and boiled them almost the entire way to being done, but left them slightly undercooked and added them to the soup. They add a little bit of crunch and pop to the soup that was missing from the texture.

This is after I had added the cooked wheat berries to the pot.

The last thing that was added was some small butter beans because I wanted to add some sort of legume to the soup. I liked what they added to the dish as a whole. I have been eating the soup for lunch all week and have enjoyed it very much.

This is the final image I have, its kind of a bonus. My friend and I had another little food party. I guess the theme for this was sort of breakfast we had bagels, jam, some local Wisconsin honey, pears, apples, clementines, dried fruit that my mom gave me, crackers, goat cheese, some sweet oat crackers and some almonds. We actually didn't even crack into the loaf of bread at all.

Frozen

I just want to start off with my reaction from leaving the movie, and that reaction was WOW! I was extremely impressed with this movie. I really haven't seen many of the Disney movies from recent years, but we went to this as a family on Black Friday. It was actually nice to go to a movie together, to a small town theater. The first showing we tried to go to actually sold out, so we came back later for the next showing, which appeared to also sell out.

The movie was loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson's story The Snow Queen. I am not familiar with the details of the story, so I don't know exactly how much they had taken from the story, and how much they had created themselves, but all in all I really enjoyed the movie. I don't recall that many Disney movies that were that dense with laughs, it almost reminded me of old episodes of the Simpsons in that respect.

I will say the story isn't quite what I would have expected out of a Disney movie, but then again thinking about it more I guess that lots of Disney's animated movies have an element of adversity in them. I guess I haven't rewatched a lot of the Disney movies I liked as a kid now that I am sort of an adult, there could be elements that I wasn't able to appreciate as a kid, because in Frozen I really enjoyed every part of the movie.

This movie has so much to it, there are parts that are sad, parts that are exciting, some great songs, and so many laughs. I definitely laughed so hard I teared up a few times during the movie. I think that Josh Gad's work as the snowman Olaf really made the film. He had possibly the 10-20 funniest lines in the movie, almost all of his lines had laughs. I was generally impressed by the number of laughs throughout the film, although of course it is easy to make me laugh a lot.

I think this is actually the first family friendly movie that I have seen this year. I would absolutely recommend this movie to everyone old and young. I know my mom and my younger brother also enjoyed watching it. I know it isn't technically an original story, but it is a very enjoyable story that would be a great thing to see with your family.

I had to put this movie in front of Catching Fire for the simple reason that even though I just saw Frozen, i kind of want to see it again right away, and I always value movies with rewatchability.

11. Pain & Gain
10. Thor: The Dark World
9. World War Z
8. Pacific Rim
7. Iron Man 3
6. Hunger Games: Catching Fire
5. Frozen
4. Star Trek Into Darkness
3. This Is the End
2. The World's End
1.Gravity

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

For reference, this was my favorite book in the series, I just liked the many elements of the story and how it added to the story of the first book. I liked the many twists and surprises that happened in the book. Along with liking the first movie, this was definitely something that made me optimistic about the execution of the 2nd movie.

I really should have written this back when I saw the movie, because it is not quite as fresh as it was when I had saw it. I remember leaving the movie being quite impressed with the it. I thought it was a bit more consistent with the book than the first movie was, but then again I read them right before the first movie and I have not revisited them since. I also just enjoyed this movie more than the first in general.

I really wish I could remember more of my thoughts from the movie, but nothing is really coming to me. I enjoyed it more than the first one, and I am very interested to see what they do with the 3rd book, although I believe they are turning it into 2 movies, which as the 3rd book was my least favorite could make for 2 bad movies instead of one decent one.

I liked the movie, and had some trouble deciding where to rank it this year, but I decided that it belonged before Iron Man 3.

10. Pain & Gain
9. Thor: The Dark World
8. World War Z
7. Pacific Rim
6. Iron Man 3
5. Hunger Games: Catching Fire
4. Star Trek Into Darkness
3. This Is the End
2. The World's End
1.Gravity

Thanksgiving

I just wanted to write a little bit about my Thanksgiving, and what I am thankful for in this holiday season. I really wanted to do this earlier, but I just haven't been on a computer to type this out during my extended holiday weekend.

I have not been someone who has really struggled all that much in my life, I really have been quite fortunate in most areas. I think that even the negative things that have happened in my life only it make it that much easier to appreciate all of the positive things.

Things I am thankful for (not an all inclusive list):

I am thankful for my family. I have 2 supportive and caring parents, both of whom I have great relationships with. We might not talk every day, but I am extremely thankful for them. I also have 2 great brothers who might not live in the same area, but I am always happy to have them.

I am thankful for my friends. I have some great friends in my life, both old and new. I have especially enjoyed making new friends in the past few years, I am glad to have each of them in my life.

I am thankful to have found some passions in life. I like writing on this blog. Its not about how many people read it, its more about being able to write in general, I like to have that kind of an outlet in my life. I also love movies, and thinking about movies, writing about movies, talking about movies, and just movies in general. I also am thankful for the ability to cook, I like trying new foods, I love cooking new recipes and everything in between. I prefer to make things at home rather than buying them when I can. I am always looking for new things to make or try.

I am thankful for my health, and the fact that I have not yet had to deal with any major health issues myself, knock on wood. I may have dealt with some issues mental healthwise, but I feel great in that department too, I have done a lot of work to get here, but also getting through depression has helped make me who I am today. I would not want to change that for the world.

The final thing I will list that I am thankful for is humor. I love my ability to laugh at things, I believe that I am able to find humor in so many different things in life, and I never take myself too seriously. I think humor makes it easier to deal with so many different things in life. I think the fact that I have spent a long time dealing with depression has helped me appreciate the humor in life.

Now that we have covered some of the things that I am thankful for, I want to show some of the foods m family had for thanksgiving:

We started off the day with some cranberry oatmeal bake made with steel cut oats and fresh cranberries, it was really good, I had a few servings of it over the weekend.

The table was set for our dinner, I was the one drinking the ginger ale, everyone else had wine with their dinner.

We set the food up as a buffet because there was not enough space on the table for all of the food.

A loaf of bauernbrot that a a friend of mine was able to get made at the bakery she works at, it was great, I could definitely remember the flavor of it from when we lived in Austria, the large loaf did not survive the weekend.

This was my main contribution to the feast, my mom had some purple and yellow potatoes that we baked with some garlic, oil, and herbs. The result was delicious, and even though it wasn't mashed potatoes, I still enjoyed them a lot.

Wild rice dressing made with dried cubes of my mom's own bread, I loved the flavor of the dressing, it went well with everything. The other dish was a cranberry baked squash, I tried it, but it was still squash so it wasn't for me.

Some home made green bean casserole, made with green beans from my mom's garden, home made cream of mushroom soup, and bread crumbs made with homemade bread and onion.

An apple crumble pie and pumpkin pie, the apples were locally grown, I helped to peel them and got the other pie ingredients together, there was a nice crumb topping on it, the tart apples worked perfectly in the pie. The other is the same pumpkin pie we have been having my whole life, it if ain't broke, don't fix it!

My place with all of the different items on it, the turkey we had was a fresh Wiscosnsin turkey. I was very happy to have a Thanksgiving with lots of home grown and home made ingredients, and we also wanted to use as many local products as we could in our dinner.