Gastron Om Nom: Greekish Chicken

I cubed some chicken and marinated it in some basic Mediterraneany stuff like salt, pepper, lemon juice, olive oil and thyme. It was my first time using thyme! Thanks LP for lending me some. I actually had no idea that thyme was as strong or potent as it is. I had initially planned on eating it with some pita bread and garlic sauce but opted to make pasta to eat with it instead. Big poppa loves pasta.

Restaurant: Beaver's

2310 Decatur St
Houston, TX 77007

Tonight is the premiere of Top Chef Master's and my opinion thus far 45 minutes into it is that it's kinda boring. But, I'll keep watching just cos Houston chef, Monica Pope will making her appearance on next week's episode as a contestant. She's shown on the promos in tears already. Nooooooo! Her Houston restaurants include T'afia and Beaver's. I went to Beaver's about a month ago but I have yet to try T'afia. It seems as if T'afia focuses on that whole mantra of incorporating as much local ingredients as possible while Beaver's tries to incorporate as much GREASE and FAT into their food as much as possible. Holy orangutan! I mean, most of it was darn good but I think if a morbidly obese dood came in with coronary artery disease and was on the brink of death, one bite of anything from here would be all it takes to do him in. Top Chef Masters is a lot tougher so I hope that Chef Monica Pope makes it through to at least the next episode. She won the 2007 James Beard Southwest award but that doesn't really mean anything to me. Not until those chefs/cooks from my favo Asian restaurants start getting nominated. Hah! Big poppa and I were supposed to have our Valentine's Day meal here but we came at that limbo time where the kitchen just wasn't ready to start serving dinner. We were so hungry and big poppa was cranky and threw a mini grump fest. As we stood there in front of the host guy ho-humming and hee-hawing about whether to leave or stay and wait, the host guy had left and came back to us with a twenty dollar giftcard. He tells us to come back another time and enjoy some burgers on them. Seriously?!? How awesome was that! They most definitely come in second with the best customer service. Nordstrom takes the number one spot.

Big poppa had the beaver burger, which I've heard whispers of being the best burger in Houston. The meat is made up of sirloin, brisket and bacon. Oy meaty. Big poppa opted to also have a fried egg in it. That's my boy!

Mini had the bad-ass po-boy sandwich. As tiny as she is, she came very close to polishing off the entire po-boy that was made up of cornmeal-fried oysters and gulf shrimp, slaw, crispy onions and spicy tartar sauce. She was convinced that they plunged the bread into grease or something similar that made the bread glisten and glow. She decided to leave off one side of the bread, open face, and I don't blame her.

Cooper and I both ordered the pit boss chickwich. It was so good! All-natural smoked shredded chicken made sloppy with “Ring of Fire” BBQ sauce, a fried egg, crispy cornmeal onions, cole slaw and pickle. Yes. It sounds dangerous doesn't it? I only ate half and was excited about getting to eat the other half for lunch the next day. Alas, I left it in the car overnight and it spoiled. What a waste! Trust me, I actually thot about eating it but decided against it when two people vigorously told me not to.

Mac and cheese. Delish! But still not as good as Noe's and Max's. Mini also ordered the sweet potato mash and said it was really good.

Although we were all stuffed, we decided to do it big and order dessert. I've heard about Beaver's serving bacon ice-cream and I wasn't about to pass up the chance to try it. One of the guys there offered to give us a taste but I stupidly said no, just bring out an order. And it was gross. It tasted like frozen lard. I was expecting it to at least be sweet but it wasn't. At all. There were bits of bacon in it and it just left an odd after-taste. The texture wasn't quite ice-cream. It tasted like they literally took lard and put it in the freezer and called it ice-cream. Mos def not to my liking. My dining companions agreed with me.

We also ordered the beaver balls which were fried brownies that came out with some peanut butter ice-cream. These were so good. It was perfect with the ice-cream. This is something that I would love to try to re-create at home.

Musik Mundi: The Sounds

I've been packing the pod with more danceable tunes in hopes that it'll give me more energy through out the day. So sleepy all the time. It's regrettable that I do not have any anecdotes for you today.

*photo courtesy of wikipedia.org*


The Sounds
Album: Living In America (2002)
Song: Dance With Me

Paw Pals: Stay

I've been inspired to do a paw pals blog cos Antsymama just did one on hers and con k so's super laid back schnauzer. Out of my three babies, Tino is prolly the worst at taking pictures. Right when you point any type of camera in his direction, he instantly gets all squirmy and starts crying. Maybe he's Amish? And then he won't stay still at all. Just like a bad kid with a tantrum. My old man Neo is the best at taking fotos. I might be cos he's so chubby that it just takes too much effort for him to move around too much. So he'll just sit there nice and still for as long as you need him to. He's such a good doggy. Miss Stewie is hit or miss. Sometimes she'll already be in her comfort zone and will be still and sometimes she's in her super curious and exploratory mode where she'll constantly move her head around to look at everything. She also likes to run right up to the camera lens. She's getting more and more affectionate everyday. I love them so much! And big poppa loves them just as much.

If Stewie was human, she'd mos def be a snowboarder. I have my snowboard lying on my living room floor and it's one of her fave places to lie down and chill out on. I actually gave her a little hair cut. The fur around her neck is looooong. And it gets on my nerves and I'm sure she hates it too cos it get all in her food and water when she's eating and drinking and then it's just so much work for her to groom herself. So I just trimmed down her mane and omg it looks bad. Not only is my cutting skills pretty crappy, her fur underneath is all gray and white so it looks kinda weird.

Stewie and her new furcut! Haha.