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Restaurant Review: Halverson's Upstreet Cafe

Halverson's is a great little pub-type restaurant located on Church Street in Burlington. Rick and I split the almond-crusted brie & raspberry sauce appetizer--very nice. Then we split a fairly decent Caesar salad, dressing was homemade, good but not fantastic. I had the Teryaki Chicken sandwich (topped with grilled pineapple and onion). The sauce was tasty, but the sandwich was unnecessarily drenched in the stuff. I would have much preferred a little extra on the side. The french fries were nice and crispy. Rick had the Mediterranean Pasta, a nice mix of artichoke, olives, sun-dried tomato and chicken. He enjoyed it very much.

Our one major complaint was the speed of service: WAY too fast. We had barely started on our appetizer when the salad came out, then after only a few bites of salad, our entrees came. The waitress was young, she obviously hadn't been taught to pace the meal correctly.

Restaurant Review: The Skinny Pancake

Located near the waterfront in Burlington, VT is the Skinny Pancake, a crepe and fondue restaurant. We went for Sunday brunch yesterday morning. The menu had a good selection of both savory and dessert crepes. I had the "Lumberjack" a crepe filled with egg, cheddar cheese and ham. At first I was worried that a crepe could be big enough to be a meal, but my fears were groundless--I couldn't finish. Nicely stuffed with good quality fillings. The crepe itself was just a tad dry, but flavorful. Rick had the "Eggs Fetalicious" stuffed with olives, spinach, feta, tomato, mushrooms and egg.  The service was friendly, but the system of taking a number to your table and having the waitstaff wander the restaurant and outside tables with your meal in hand seemed a little inefficient. Almost all of the ingredients are locally produced. I'll be sure to post again when I try their fondue.

Cheap Eats: Homemade Whole Wheat Pasta

Homemade pasta is CHEAP. And it's easy. You've got two ingredients: Flour and egg.

But up until today, I haven't tried making whole wheat pasta. After poking around on the internet, I found that most recipes call for a 50/50 mix of white flour and whole wheat flour. My past experiments with whole wheat breads has taught me that it is necessary to have this mix; pure whole wheat flour is just too dense and stiff.

Further investigation brought up this controversy: Many folks were saying that whole wheat pasta is much better with lighter sauces, traditional white flour pasta is better with heavy, "red gravy".  So I conducted an experiment. I made a batch of whole wheat pasta, and made a traditional Bolognese red sauce, and a lighter sauce of garlic, olive oil and fresh basil.

Rick and I found both batches of pasta to be tasty; you can't beat homemade pasta. But it did become apparent that the garlic and oil pasta disappeared more quickly.

What I found out was this: You don't need a mixer, and you don't need a pasta maker. I kneaded the dough by hand, rolled it out with my trusty wooden rolling pin, and sliced it into fettucine noodles with a knife. NO expensive equipment involved. Sure, it looked homemade. But that's fine with me. And if you go with the garlic and olive oil "dressing", you can feed an army of folks for chump change and not a lot of work.

English Muffins

When will those bakers at the english muffin factory figure out that splitting them with a fork does NOTHING?

allrecipes.com

I love allrecipes.com. But I have become increasingly annoyed by people who review the recipes after substituting more than 50% of the ingredients in the recipe!! At that point, you should be posting your own recipe, not reviewing someone else's. I feel that a certain amount of substitution is acceptable; any recipe that calls for boullion cubes and water I will automatically substitute broth. But I'm tired of reading reviews that take 3 paragraphs to describe all the changes they made. And some of these reviewers only give 2-3 stars!!

Mud Season

I didn't want this blog to be just about food. But it's mud season in Vermont, not enough snow to go shoeing, too muddy to hike, not warm enough to go kayaking. Rick is taking my Subaru into the shop tomorrow to get the struts replaced. A hazard of living with dirt roads. I lost two hubcaps two weeks ago due to the potholes. Good thing he bought them at K-Mart. Hopefully a month from now, we'll be playing tennis. It was actually in the '50s today; warm enough to clean the car a bit and chip away at the ice that's been lying in wait on our walkway. We've been wearing our Yak Tracks just to get back and forth to the driveway.

Chicken in Reisling revisited

So, I made this dish, and I have to say, didn't do anything for me. Definitely needed more flavor. And Rick mentioned the fact that he didn't like the chicken still on the bone, you couldn't really pick up the pieces to eat them. and it was a lot of work to carve the meat off the bone at the table.