Not Much Lunch Happening This Week

I've been sick and was called to jury duty on Tuesday. Lots of meals at home that really don't meet the definition of "meal"

Today #1 son home sick with me. I'm having Perfect Fit turkey chili with a little cheddar and crushed saltines. Reminiscent of the chili elegante Moms used to make in the pressure cooker. Needs some salt and the black beans aren't quite cooked through, but it's good enough. Little Dude is having juice, and Ritz crackers and a Ninjago marathon.

Yesterday was real food at a Westheimer restaurant (Bird and Bear, Bull and Bear, something like that). It will be a longer post so more on that later. Short version. Good dessert. Not bad entree. Too much going on with it though.

Anyone have a Kleenex?

Blah blah . . .

As # 1 son is fond of saying now about everything. Came home sick before lunch with raging sinus infection. Ate leftover grilled pork chop and jasmine rice. Several hours later my stomach is flipping around like I have food poisoning. Awesome for me. What the hell? I'd like to think it was bad meat vs my cooking. At any rate. Boooo. With as many sick people as we've had lately it could be anything and nothing to do with pork chops.

Tomorrow is Jury Duty. Will keep you posted on lunch opportunities!


Ed. note: stomach issues perhaps due to Z-pack?  Pretty sure it was not the pork chop.

Palak Paneer . . . .

Not enough brain power this morning to come up with what to name my post other than the food I ate.  Friday I enjoyed a Trader Joe's frozen Palak Paneer.  Palak Paneer is my all time favorite Indian food.  Many a visit was made to Pakistani Tea House on Church Street downtown in NYC for an order of palak paneer and naan for dinner prior to night classes in law school.  All palak paneer and lentils are judged based on the Pakistani Tea House standard.  Some curry, a bit of spice, good ratio of spinach to cheese.

The package is supposed to be 2 servings.  Again, I guess if you are serving this as part of a meal that is cool but for someone like me who eats this as the meal (and whose family would never ever ever in a million years eat this) the two servings in one package is annoying.  Calories are 250 per serving which is pretty good.  I solved the two serving problem by just eating the whole thing.

this whole photo rotation thing is really starting to irritate me.

4.5 microwaves and recommended.  My favorite versions of this though are still the single serving with the brown rice. 

Quick Hit . . .

Ok so I actually ate a Lean Cuisine this week.  I just can't recall what day it was.  Maybe Wednesday.  Yesterday I didn't have lunch so nothing to report there.  I did go to a networking thing in the afternoon though and had some snacks there.  No photos though.  It wasn't crowded enough for me to snap a pic and I didn't know anyone there.  Don't want to wave the freak flag!

Back to Wednesday.  I went with a LC Sesame Chicken.  This is another one of my go to meals.  It's vermicelli with breaded chicken chunks in what purports to be an Asian style sesame sauce.  Does any Asian food really have a sauce like this or is it faux?  I will need to consult with faux-Asian Chungry and find out.  It's good though so I'm not complaining.  Meal has some sliced green beans and red pepper for color.  We know my rule about red peppers so obviously I could do without those.  Green bean is nice for flavor.  No surprise it also has the mandatory 5 pieces of chicken.  Someone must have been asleep at the conveyor belt though when my meal went through b/c I actually had some additional tiny chunks of chicken.  I should have bought a lottery ticket that day.

330 calories too so you can actually have something to go with it if you wanted.  Since this meal is in my rotation obviously I like it.  4.5 microwaves and a recommended.


Who knows how to rotate photos on blogspot?  Do I have to do it in my image editor and its too late once it gets posted?  if that is the case, that's dumb.

Twinkle Twinkle. . .

Tuesday's lunch was an off campus foray to Sparkle Burger. I'm not sure who first stumbled on this little gem of oddity but after seeing its impressive breakfast and lunch menu I knew it was destiny to one day eat there.

Since this is Houston it's hot until well into October. I don't mean Indian Summer hot. I mean legit over 90s sweat dripping down your back hot. Not ideal for eating a burger outdoors. Sparkle burger is about as big as my office with only outdoor seating. After a very thorough discussion on the pros and cons of eating in the car, Twist, Ducky Momo and I knew we had to bide our time for cooler weather. Tuesday the waiting was rewarded with a glorious sunny day in the low 80s. We rejoiced in our good fortune but our hopes were cruelly dashed when it was learned Ducky Momo could not attend in person. He would have to experience by proxy and get takeout. That left Twist and I to take on Sparkle Burger with no elder statesmen.

First. Let me just say nearly everything about Sparkle Burger is crazy, starting with its name. Really I only say that because the only businesses I know of named Sparkle are car washes. It doesn't sound very burger-y to me. Next is the size of the burger. For $4 it's got to be bumping up on 1/2 a pound. The picture doesn't do it justice. It is ginormous. I couldn't even eat half of it. Not to mention the inelegant shape of my patty which had me cracking up. I will call it Frankenburger.

Fries also HUGE. So big you can't even call it a steak fry. Just giant potato wedges. The eating area was also interesting. Dubbed the Sparkle Chill Spot it was a small wrought iron fenced-in area of misshapen iron picnic and patio tables on the side of the building in the parking lot. The best part about it was the crumpled up astro turf.  It looked my 2-yr old had come by and dropped her blanket then someone decided to put tables on top of it.  Lemonade was homemade which is always a plus. On the down side I think the lemonade was a bag of sugar in a pitcher of water with a shot of lemon. The sugar coma hit me around 2.

Don't misunderstand my calling it crazy. By crazy in this case, I mean crazy-awesome. Twist and I decided sparkle burger was more an overall experience vs. just looking for a good burger. My burger was good by the way. Fresh bun, nicely seasoned meat. I'll prob find out later it was soylent green, but whatever. Until I do, I would go back. Tots on the other hand were just meh. They tasted like when you get some tots and try to save them and put them in the microwave the next just to be disappointed b/c now they are kind of soggy.

Rookie error we made was not calling ahead. We had to wait 25 min for our order bc of the stream of people coming through to pick up. And there were a lot of people coming to pick up. We put in our order for Ducky Momo and it was ready by the time we finished eating. He wasn't very awed by his giant burger patty, but then he was at his desk and missed all the ambience.

Sparkle Burger gets a 4 and a recommended. We will be going back. I can't ignore the sheer quantity of items on its menu. And, they serve breakfast. Giddy up!

Eating Gluten Free Can Be Fun!

But not in every instance.  #1 Son for example likes gluten free pancakes from Trader Joe's.  I have not eaten them, I admit, but just based on my making them for him they look disgusting.  They are so gooey I just can't handle it.

In this case however I am dealing with the PF Chang gluten free Singapore Street Noodles.  I love the original street noodles, my only real complaint is they put too much other crap in there, scallions and tomatoes and the real stuff does not have all that nonsense.  I wish I had a photo of the place where I used to get noodles when I lived in NYC.  I worked in the garment district on a pretty crappy and depressing street.  Best thing about it was the great variety of Asian food available.  The place across the street from the office had the best street noodles ever.  It was a total dump too and if I recall correctly it had ducks hanging in the window.  Roasted, with heads on.  So gross . . . moving on.

So why did I go for gluten free?  I overheard my Moms looking up the nutrition info for what she wanted from the Chang and the sodium was like 100x your daily needs, then it was discovered that some of the gluten free stuff had dramatically lower sodium.  Figured I would give it a go for no good reason.

It doesn't have fewer calories than the regular version, but it does have 1000 less mg of sodium if you care about that at all.  The regular dish has I think a grown up person's entire daily recommended dose of sodium.  You are basically eating a salt lick.  Only good if you are that alien from that episode of the orig Star Trek that was leeching all the crew dry down on the bad sound stage planet.  Anyone remember that?  Anyone?  Bueller?

I didn't note much difference in taste between the two despite the GF dish not appearing to have any of the curry sauce on it.  Noodles are white and not yellow like the regular version.  Tasty though, and also good as leftovers, which was when I had it again on Monday while waiting for the plumber to come tell me why one of the bathroom's upstairs was flooding.

I'll give this a 4 and a recommended.  Calories are 710 for the dish, so I guess it's up to you to determine what the serving size is, but I would say it's about 3 servings.  It's a really giant portion--so maybe then the sodium isn't that bad on a per dish basis but I suppose it never hurts to eat less. 

Travel Meals Wrap-up . . .

Work event wrapped up on Friday at noon and Thursday night we all broke into groups and went to dinner at various Banff landmark restaurants.  Mine was Grizzly House known for its fondue and its early beginnings as a swingers club.  Considering how small Banff appears to be that must have been quite interesting.  My table all got the fondue dinner which was cheese fondue, choice of meats to grill on a hot rock and choc fondue for dessert.  I had the Alberta special which I think was Bison, Elk, venison and one other meat.  Can't recall if it was beef or boar but I think it was beef.  Cheese fondue was traditional and tasty. roasted garlic came separate in case you didn't want to dump it the cheese.  I went back and forth between the pot with garlic and the one without.

Main course was the bite sized meat of choice that you speared and cooked on a 650 degree rock brought out to your table.  Drunk people should prob. not be roasting meat on a rock hot enough to burn your skin off but there we were roasting away.  Happy to report no casualties despite 3 bottles of wine and pre-dinner cocktails.  At one point I was invited to bring my family to stay at a co-workers weekend home in the mountains.  Not that I'm not super friendly and likeable, but I suspect the invite had something to do with all the wine.  Tempted to call and accept the offer to see if she remembers putting it out there.

chunks of meat and dipping sauces

 

Chocolate fondue with fruit and chunks of some cake I think

Very hot rock

Last of course came the chocolate fondue.  And it was real chocolate I might add.  Not fake chocolate fountain at Golden Corral chocolate.  Toblerone chocolate.  The restaurant also sold a 4.5 kg Toblerone for $125 CAN.  Being metrically challenged I had to ask how many pounds that was to warrant the heavy price tag.  After the entire table (of Canadians) rattled off the conversion factor, it was decided that that was about 10 pounds.  That, my friend is a lot of chocolate.  I'd give this a 3.5 total. The traditional fondue was my favorite part of the meal.  I could have stuffed myself silly with cheese and bread.

Next day was group breakfast.  Pretty decent scrambled eggs, ham, bacon and some link sausage of an indeterminate origin.  It was tasty though so maybe I don't care what it was.

And, bonus, it was warmer than most of the other food eaten at the Fairmont that week.  I did not eat at all the restaurants in the hotel.  Truth be told one of the better things I had was a sandwich from the coffee bar.  Food quality and prep was uneven so I can't give the hotel food more than a  3 and that is an average.  Plus it drove me crazy that none of the hot food was ever actually hot.

After the meetings were over Hubs and I took a drive to Lake Louise, around the glaciers and then back to Banff for dinner before heading to Calgary.  Lunch at the Chateau Lake Louise was in the Lake Lounge.  Overall nice meal although I kept thinking my entree would taste more.  It was too subtle bordering on  the bland.  I had a shrimp and scallop lentil cassoulet.  Shrimp and scallops all cooked well, but I wanted my dish to have some saffron and a hint of curry.  It's a shame to use that many lentils in something and not have even a dash of curry in there.  I threw on some salt and pepper and ate it all.  Portions were on the small side so that wasn't really as much as it may sound like.

 Hubs had a cobb salad with salmon.  I think he liked it.  I was fascinated with how yellow the egg yolks were there.  They were almost orange.  Dessert was a raspberry mousse cake that had about zero cake and was all mousse.  It was fine.  Not great. I was wanting more cake and less mousse so I felt kind of let down by the dessert.

Dinner took us back to Banff to the Bear Street tavern for some pizza.  We started with garlic sticks with bacon added.  YUM.  marinara served with them was cold which I didn't care for.  I think you should heat that marina at the very least so people don't think you just spooned it out of a jar -- even if you did in fact just spoon it out of a jar.

Before the pizza came the server brought out a giant thing of honey and chili oil.  She said it was to mix together and dip your pizza into?  Uh gross.  No thank you.  I admit I did try it and yeah. it was kind of gross.  Not in like a spit it out can't eat it way but just not a good flavor combo--pizza with spicy honey that is.

 Pizza was delish.  Very thin crispy crust.  We just had a margarita with some sausage. I also had an awesome local beer from Grizzly Paw in Canmore.  Not sure though if its the Rutting Elk Red or the Bar Honey Wheat.  Either way it was a very nice beer with a good taste and good finish.

I really enjoyed this food.  Bear Street Tavern gets a 4 and a recommended.

Now, if I can just get caught up on my other posts . . .