A Side of Meat, Bitte

For a perfectly traditional Swabian dinner go to Stuttgarter Staeffele, in Stuttgart Germany, that's an order.

They had an amazing appetizer garden salad that came with potatoes hiding under the other vegtables, jackpot! The only thing that kept me from eating all of the salad was the knowledge of what was to come (this was my second glorious visit). Feel free to order the potato cakes with homemade applesauce for an appetizer, the Germans may laugh at you and tell you it's a dessert but if you don't eat it first there is no way you'll be able to at the end of the meal. That's thinking ahead, meine Fruenden.

Do yourself a favor and order the a bit of it all platter (loosely translated). It's gigantic and completely worth it. It's delicious pork, beef, sausage, spaetzle, potatoes and probably more that I can't remember because my mouth is watering and stealing liquid from the area around my brain.

The traditional red wine is served in a short glass mug and is very potent as the people in the car who had to listen to my Enrique Iglesias renditions for thirty minutes would testify to, weeee!


This place is great because the food is face-stuffing good, the place is tiny and feels like an old wine cellar and best of all I walked by the kitchen and who was cooking? A round, old, German lady! That's authenticity!

Touristing it Right, London

Again, I'm a huge fan of kitschy, cheesy, tourist attractions. Here I present my London essentials (not all are cheesy):

1. Tour on the Red Bus.

This is great for your first day in the city so you can get your bearings, see the sights from a distance thus making it much easier to decide where to spend the rest of your time. Parents like it too, see...

2. St. Paul's Cathedral

It's expensive, it's crowded and you can't take pictures inside but a hike to the top of 500+ steps will give you amazing views of the city. Also test out the whispering wall during the first leg of the accent. My brother said it worked but he may have just been humoring me.





3. Harry Potter, nerd points points of interest

Kings Cross Station, where they have actually set up a place for all of us sad people to go to and get photo proof of our nerdom. What place you say? Platform 9 3/4, if you asked you obviously don't know.

A walk across Millennium Bridge, which is very close to St. Paul's, will allow you to get giddy like "my friend" did when you see it get destroyed in the Half-Blood Prince movie.


4. Kew Gardens

A leisurely Underground ride and a short walk from the center of London. This place is a huge botanical gardens with outdoor and indoor gardens, old royal manors and expansive lands. If you've ever imagined yourself a member of Victorian royalty this is the perfect place to daydream (Prince Charming not included). Take some sandwiches and have yourself a picnic or go late for their summer concert series.

Mamma Knows Best!

As Carrie Bradshaw would say, "hello lover!" She was talking about shoes. I'll be talking about pizza. My favorite little pizza place in the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada to be exact.

I discovered Mamma Ilardo's a few years ago and now look forward to it every time I go to Vegas. Apparently it's a chain restaurant, which, sad for me, doesn't exist in the middle of the country. It does exist in the food court of the MGM past all the fancy restaurants.

The only thing I've ever gotten and the only thing I ever plan to get is the deep-dish pizza with sausage and pepperoni (double the pig, double the fun). Sara usually opts for the bread sticks so I'll go out on a limb and recommend them too. It's true I'm not a deep-dish expert (if I were I wouldn't fail at getting deep-dish every time I visit Chicago). Regardless of my status, this pizza is just damn good. Just the right amount of crunchy crust, sauce that isn't yuck like most pizza sauce, tasty sausage crumbles. I'd go on but my mouth is watering.

The point is it's good, it's fast, it's cheap (Vegas cheap) and most importantly it's ready at breakfast time. Mmmm breakfast of champions.

Intentional Food Snobs, Accidental Winos

I go to Vegas for the food. That's right, shocking.

Imagine my euphoria when we discovered that the majority of the nice restaurants in the MGM Grand were having spring tasting menus (through the 31st of May). That's like winning at a slot machine people.

After much debate, my group of girlfriends and I decided to go big time and go to Nob Hill Tavern. I campaigned hard for this choice as previously we had merely had appetizers and two drinks and it cost $80 and now I could get 4-courses for $49! Winner? Me.

As a table we decided to invest in a bottle of wine, that's what highbrow people do after all. Still though as none of us have reached our full Housewives of Denver status we picked a cheaper* Pinot Noir on the list. We informed our Sommelier of our wine selection and he seemed unusually excited about our cheapo* bottle of wine. More on this later.

Then the food came! (cue the ding!ding!ding! of winning a jackpot)

We received two pots of delicious gruyere fondue with sourdough bread. Oh so tasty. That's Lizzie in the background and Sara the hand model. Then came the first courses. I opted for the cream of broccoli soup and was ever so pleasantly surprised when grilled cheese came with it. I'm not crazy about grilled cheese probably because I have an aversion to Kraft Singles but this grilled cheese was no "I'm in college and I'm broke grilled cheese." The cheese wasn't mysteriously salty and it was grilled just right. There was also bacon in the soup. If you don't already know bacon makes every food better and I mean EVERY food.

Bring on the Main Courses! By this time I'm already feeling the pinch of too much food. I probably went a little too hard at that fondue out of pure excitement. After leaving half of the grilled cheese behind as a causality I was greeted with this magnificent dish.


I won't lie when the menu said Braised Short Rib with Root Vegetables and Mashed Potatoes I didn't exactly know what Braised Short Rib meant. I chose it because it had me at Mashed Potatoes. As it turns out a Braised Short Rib is like a pot roast, a pot roast from Heaven. It was better than grandma's. I never thought I would say that, I'm sorry grandma. I wanted to eat it all but and I tried my hardest, until my stomach was audibly yelping in pain. I did make a tiny bit of room to try Sara's dish, Chicken and Dumplings. To which my official review was and will remain, "I didn't know chicken could taste that good!"



For dessert I had Irish coffee creme brulee (I don't know how to make fancy accent marks) and by this time I must have been so delirious by deliciousness that I neglected to take a picture. It was beautiful and fabulous and somehow I managed to eat it all.

Finally it was time to go. Our bill arrived and to our surprise (or maybe for some, horror). We had not ordered at cheap bottle of wine. I even checked with our adorable Sommelier to be sure we weren't all food drunk or actually drunk, as we had finished the bottle. We were neither. Instead we had accidentally ordered a 2006 Kosta Browne from Kanzler Vineyards* costing over $200. Nothing to say to that except that fate wants us to be as fancy as we pretend. So go to Nob Hill Tavern they'll assume you fit in and perhaps you'll accidentally prove that you do.

Wherein I admit to the cardinal sin of foodies

I don't always have time to make dinner.

What can I say? I live a jet-set life, full of adventure and interesting people. People who wear glasses unironically, places that set my soul ablaze with gastronomical delight, full of bright shiny objects to distract me from an existence which is increasingly about selling things. 

I'm rarely home. And even though I have three grocery stores within walking distance of my apartment, I've been known to do that which must not be named, from time to time.

Eat. Frozen. Dinners.

I'm constantly searching for a good frozen dinner (which I hold myself to one a week). We're not talking WW, or Hungry Man, or anything like that CRAP. Although I have been known to enjoy a Chicken Philly flatbread from Lean Cuisine. Try it. You might like it.

This is about it in the frozen food department. Which means, once a week, I have a date with one of these Chicken Philly Flatbreads and a Caesar Salad. I'm so sick of it.

So last night, I decided to drop $5 on a real frozen dinner. And fell in love.

Kashi's Sweet and Sour Chicken is actually really good. Don't hate. Try it. You might like it. The brown rice is savory and mixes extremely well with the S&S sauce in the package. The chicken is not dry, and the veggies taste like they actually lived in the ground at some point. It's expensive, but not more than you would likely spend on making yourself dinner or going out for a quick meal. It's better for you than eating a hamburger. And it tastes great.

Favorites in Seattle

Because I was asked today,

My 3 Favorite Seattle Tourist Activities:

1. Experience Music Project
~ Crowded fun; don't be afraid to fight a child for an interactive exhibit.

2. Underground (Walking) Tour
~Creepy fun; bring a jacket it gets chilly.

3. The Duck Tour
~Cheesy fun; roll with it and see Sleepless in Seattle beforehand so you don't end up pretending to know what they are pointing out, like I did.

Add-On for fun:
Summer Solstice Parade in Fremont, get there early for the "unofficial" and naked start. For added awkward fun, bring your father.