food: border grill las vegas
28 May 2012 2 Comments
in booze & other drinkables, food & cooking, restaurants & dinning out, travel Tags: booze, food, las vegas, mexican food, pig, pork
border grill in mandalay bay has been my favourite place to dine in las vegas since my husband (then – boyfriend) stumbled across it on our very first trip to las vegas.
we were walking to the shark reef and saw the cantina and decided on a whim to stop in for a margarita. we started noming on chips and salsa and realized we were kind of hungry, so we ordered tortilla soup.
not just any tortilla soup… the best one i’ve ever had in my life.
and an obsession was born.
this restaurant is owned by Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger who i knew from their cooking show Two Hot Tamales. (side note – remember when the food network used to have actual cooking shows? i miss that)
since then, susan feniger has made appearances on top chef all stars, doing quite well for herself. and its no surprise, her cooking is masterful.
the restaurant itself has two lovely outdoor areas. one upstairs that is covered and i’ve dined in a few times, and also the downstairs outdoor patio that housed my wedding reception. outdoor areas for dining are a rarity in vegas, so i always make note of them for my lists, as i love al fresco dining.
this is where we had lunch on my latest visit… the downstairs outdoors…
as if the regular menu choices don’t cause me enough distress with all the yummy options, their specials menu gets offered to me.
oh my… what to do…
well, obviously the pineapple strawberry sangria needs to get in my mouth.
my mom went with the patron silver margarita, and said she preferred the one at hussong’s because it was simple. of course, she ordered one with blood orange and other stuff, so its obviously not comparing apples to apples.
while we were waiting for lunch, we enjoyed the chips and salsa… i love their salsa. all 3 of them.
they haven’t changed the recipes in years and i love them for it. its perfect. not to be messed with.
for the meal, we both decided on tacos, since it was lunch time and we were hungry, but not starved and wanted something kind of light since we were headed back to the pool.
i went with the carnitas with no onions. because it was supposed to have guacamole on it which contained onions, they just put avocado slices on it for me. which worked perfectly.
you have the option of pinto beans or black beans and i went pinto.
my tacos were delicious and the pork cooked to perfection, although they were a little greasy. they could have been drained a little better before going on the tortillas.
but in terms of flavour, preperation, tenderness, ect, top notch.
my mom went with the shrimp creole tacos and they were WOW.
she had black beans, also good, but i still stand by my pinto bean decision.
my mom’s shrimp was cooked to perfection and the slaw on top was crunchy and provided a great contrast for the rest of the taco.
we agreed that these were the superior choice between mine and hers.
stuffed to the brim, we headed back to pool for a lay down.
thanks for yet another amazing meal border grill. i’ll see you next time.
cheers!
travel: las vegas – trip number 8
28 May 2012 1 Comment
in booze & other drinkables, restaurants & dinning out, travel Tags: booze, drinks, food, las vegas, photography, the fine things in life, travel
on saturday i returned from my 8th trip to fabulous las vegas.
and dare i say, i think it was my most successful one yet.
we flew with westjet… for a few reasons.
flight time was the main one. we left at 10:15am which really makes the most of your first day there. and coming home, there’s a 1:45pm flight which meshes nicely with hotel check out time.
second, westjet includes a checked bag, which i appreciate because it equals saving at least $50 in bag fees.
and lastly, the overall price of the flight to begin with was the best.
so westjet won for this one.
the flight itself was pretty uneventful… which is how i like my flights.
my mom and i had a spare seat in our row, so i sat in the window and enjoyed the view and she sat aisle and we had the middle seat free. wonderful.
the one place where westjet really falls down is their in-flight entertainment. air canada definitely wins for that. but, its a short flight and i amused myself with my ipad and vodka.
we arrived and grabbed our bags and hopped into a taxi to mandalay bay.
upon arriving, there was a line up to check in of about 25-30 minutes, but it was well organized and there was a guy passing out bottles of water, which was nice.
the front desk lady gave us a high floor with a great view of the pool and we were off to the 30th floor.
one thing that i really liked about our view was that it was easy to keep tabs on how full the pool was and if it was worth trying to get chairs in which location.
this trip was largely focused on checking some chef’s restaurants off my to-do list.
and i’m pleased to say that i accomplished 3 that have long been residents of said list. i’m doing a blog post for each restaurant, so more to come on that. and if you’re on facebook, i did save most of my food pictures for the blog, so there will be new content.
the big success on this trip was the gambling.
not only did we ACTUALLY WIN on the slots… but we won a LOT. well, considering we were playing penny slots – its all relative. when your spins are $0.80 each and you hit $300, it’s a big payoff.
for the first 2 days we were in vegas, we could not lose. we were literally sitting down at machines, playing for 30 seconds and hitting $200 wins. we won at the luxor, tropicana, new york new york and a little at mandalay bay.
total, we won about $1300. but once you factor in the losses, we figure we were up about $1000.
this is amazing to me. in all my years going to vegas, i have NEVER won more than about $70 on a machine. we were so excited at all this, it was hard to absorb. we just could not lose. man, gambling is fun when you’re winning.
so because of this, we decided to up the ante on the trip.
we spent a day at Qua Spa at Caesars Palace which was absolutely out of this world. The baths were incredible and i had a 50 minute body polish and a 50 minute sweedish massage that were delightful. we spent a total of 5 hours there and we were hard pressed to leave. i’ll be back there for sure.
we also check out a show – Zumanity at NYNY.
ummm… so not what i was expecting. i knew it was “sensual”, but i didn’t expect it to be so overtly sexual. it was great and i definitely recommend it, but it maybe wasn’t the best pick to see with my mother, haha. don’t get me wrong, she enjoyed it too, but when the “mistress of the evening” is suggesting that you take your date home to the hotel and fuck their brains out, its possible you didn’t bring the right date if you’re there with your mom.
but yes, excellent show and wow, does cirque ever do an incredible job of making the most insane feats look effortless. absolutely stunning.
besides that, it was food, gambling and pool time…
i did a lot of this:
…and this…
…and definitely a lot of this…
ah drinking in vegas… free in the right places, and totally effed when you pay for it.
that irony never gets old for me.
so there you have it kids!
my totally awesome 4 nights in fabulous las vegas!
upcoming posts include:
- Mary Sue Milliken & Susan Feniger’s Border Grill
- Charlie Palmer’s Aureole
- Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill
- Rick Moonen’s RM Seafood
- Hussong’s Cantina in Mandalay Place
learning: back to basics
17 May 2012 1 Comment
in general posts Tags: farming, food, healthy cooking, organic, reading, resolutions
about a month ago, i came across this book; the back to basics handbook.
it was at costco (ironic?) and when we flipped through it, we were instantly interested.
my husband has a dream of owning a farm.
to be honest, i find this dream slightly hilarious, because as much as i love him, he’s never farmed a day in his life and doesn’t really have a green thumb or a lot of patience.
but, his life aspirations definitely culminate with a plot of land away from society.
for me, its not so cut and dry.
part of me loves that idea and part of me knows i would hate my life if i wasn’t close to the city.
so, i picture more of a centrally located moderately sized house with land to grow stuff on. and a lot of making my own food and endeavoring to cut out the grocery store.
so this book, i guess i you would call it life porn.
they cover EVERYTHING. from finding a plot of land (checking for natural sources of water, the proper slopes for crops ect) to building your own house from wood found on the land… and then raising various types of livestock, growing crops, cold storage of crops, preserving ect.
this book is absolutely fascinating to me.
it literally chronicles the “need to knows” for a dying lifestyle.
this is true sustainability.
naturally the front half of the book, about land and farming and raising animals isn’t really applicable to me at this stage in my life… but the second half of the book is all things that i could use today.
they call it “household skills and crafts”… its a mixture of some skills i know like canning and preserving, but also cheese & sausage making, preserving all kinds of food for long term storage without chemicals, making fermented foods…
and then basket weaving, candle making, tanning leather, natural dyes, soapmaking and more.
and what i love is that it really guides you from the start. like, for natural dyes, there’s a chart of plants, pictures of the plants and a guide on where to find them growing so you can forage for them.
at no point in reading this, do you scratch your head and think “where the heck do i find X?” because this book has already shown you how to grow it or make it from something else.
i have a huge soft spot for this kind of thing. clearly.
when i was a young girl, i was absolutely obsessed with laura ingalls wilder books. i had them all memorized by age 7 and read and reread them voraciously trying to fathom this lifestyle that she described so vividly.
my mom was a little helpful on the matter because she was born and raised in saskatchewan with no running water. so a lot of things could be explained by her. but i’ve never forgotten the descriptions of the mill used to grind wheat to flour or churning butter and the soaking of the salt beef. the things you just don’t see today.
this book made me nostalgic for my childhood visions of frontier life.
and while i’m still very firmly a city girl in many respects, i have an unabated interest in this simple country life where everyone worked their balls off just to keep alive.
maybe its just because i’m super stressed at work lately, and maybe its what happens as you get older… but i find myself dreaming of working hard. not for a paycheque at an office… but for my household. raising and growing my food, making my cheeses and soaps and whatever i could. running away from society and being self sufficient.
these days, that seems like bliss.
the supermarket seems like a scary place to me. full of poison masquerading as food.
stocked to the brim with faux-foods designed to deceive your body and re-write your natural rhythms.
sometimes i wander the aisles at the “heath food” store next to my office on my breaks. its row after row of pre-packaged foods and supplements and substitutes… there’s little to nothing that my brain naturally recognizes as actually being healthy. but yet, its what we accept as health food as a society.
to me, the farm market that sells only produce next door is the real health food store.
these are good reminders to myself. if a lifestyle of ultimate sustainability is my goal, then it has to be carried out in daily life. and i have much work to do.
it means that bag of cheesies or chocolate bar that i was craving needs to be forsaken. and that hangover meal of macaroni & cheese out of the box needs an overhaul.
its a slow process… tough to break a lifetime of addiction… but i’m working on it.
food: fajita salad
13 Mar 2012 1 Comment
in food & cooking, wheat free Tags: food, gluten free, recipes, whats for dinner, wheat free
friends, this is a no-brainer blog post.
this is what happens when a girl that is notoriously addicted to fajitas has to stop eating them because the tortillas are on the no list.
she finds a way to eat them anyways.
from my vast 7 weeks of paleo knowledge, the easiest way to turn a non paleo dish into a paleo dish is to make it into a salad.
so behold; fajita salad.
we started with steaks. good steaks. we went with strip loin.
then it got a healthy dose of fajita seasoning. mine comes from only one place and nothing else is an adequate substitute for my tastebuds.
i buy paul prudhomme’s fajita magic online.
my mom has been using this stuff since i was a kid and we mail ordered it.
this is seriously the best stuff ever. i am so loyal to it and i use it often.
i can’t do it justice on the internet, but if i’ve ever made you fajitas in my house and you’ve said “damn, those are the best fajitas ever”, this is my secret not so secret ingredient.
fajita magic
anyways. everything tastes awesome with fajita magic on it, but we had a ton of fresh cilantro so we used some of that too.
then i pan seared the steaks.
because it is way too cold for me to bbq.
and i actually enjoy a pan seared steak when cooked properly.
i let the steaks rest and went about assembling the rest…
i sauteed some bell peppers and onions in fajita magic too…
and i built the salad with mixed greens (aka – the lettuce in my fridge at the time) some grated pepper jack & cheddar cheese (oops, not so paleo) and some homemade pico de gallo.
continued the load up with the peppers & onions, sliced steaks and topped it off with a whack of homemade guacamole.
this one is my husband’s… he likes lots of corn chips and pico de gallo and everything in one big pile.
this one is mine…
i like everything separate so i can build my salad mouthful by mouthful.
i also don’t like onions, so the pico de gallo was a pass for me.
and i totally cheated on paleo with a sprinkle of cheese and a couple corn chips.
food: preserved meyer lemons
12 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in food & cooking Tags: canning & preserves, food
so, on sunday, i was wandering through costco… when i spied something in the produce section.
generally i avoid the costco produce. sure its cheap and often pretty tasty, but it’s always from SO FAR AWAY. no joke, right now they have peppers from isreal. like, WHY? is it really cheaper to fly produce half way around the planet rather than buy it locally? i just don’t understand.
anyways. that’s a whole other rant.
but, some things i give a pass to… like avocados and pineapples and oranges and other things that we just don’t grow here…
including the meyer lemon.
meyer lemons are like the snuffleupagus of the culinary world in vancouver.
seriously, i can NEVER find these things. even in the best of the specialty markets. i don’t know if i have terrible luck or if they just don’t have a demand for them or what. but they are hard to find.
so finding 4lbs of them for $7 seemed like the deal of the year.
until i got home and realized i had 4lbs of meyer lemons.
that’s 20 lemons in case you were wondering.
i have a plan… i’m roasting a chicken tomorrow for dinner and it will get stuffed and roasted with halved lemons.
and if i get motivated there will be a lemon curd in my future…
but in all honesty, that still leaves me with like 10 lemons.
so i decided to preserve them.
it was so ridiculously easy.
i read a bunch of different recipes (really, more like instructions than recipes) and eventually decided against blanching the lemons first. most comments seemed to indicate that it was unnecessary with meyers since they have such a delicate thin skin anyways.
basically you cut into wedges, take out the seeds, toss in salt (i used 6 lemons to 3/4 cup coarse sea salt) and pack into jars. cover with enough lemon juice to cover them lemons, put the lid on and let sit at room temperature for 5 days, gently shaking/turning once per day.
at the end of the 5 days, you can top up the jars with olive oil and refrigerate and you’re good to go.
plus they’re super pretty.
vegas in food & drink part 2
21 Oct 2011 1 Comment
in booze & other drinkables, food & cooking, restaurants & dinning out, travel Tags: drinks, food, las vegas, restaurants & dinning out, travel
first stop on this food tour…
BB Kings in the mirage. we went here because we had a coupon but also, we love our southern fare.
here’s my husband eating catfish bites. they were amazing. and it was his first time eatting catfish, so he was impressed. it was flaky and buttery and the coating was very light, i believe cornmeal based.
we also had a mac & cheese. damn fine. would definitely go back AND they have live music every night. which goes far for me.
these next series are from our “splurge” dinner at ONDA in the mirage.
my husband picked this place based solely on the menu. and it was a fine choice.
the meal itself wasn’t ridiculously pricey, but we had a bottle of champagne and a bottle of wine, so about $150 in booze on the bill. i think it was about $320 once we were done.
first up is our appies. i had the aged prosciutto & parmigiano. it was outstanding. my only complaint is that my salad was over-dressed. it was literally drowning in dressing which was very unnecessary. everything else was perfection.
husband went with the classic caprese salad with house made mozzarella & heirloom tomatoes.
for mains, i was powerless to resist this pasta. it was basically just fresh egg noodles, butter & olive oil, garlic and truffles. shit loads of truffles. and cheese. for me, utter perfection. this is exactly how i like my pasta, and it was my first time having fresh truffles. decadent and wonderful.
husband went with the server’s suggestion of lasagna. it was also excellent. there’s nothing like a REALLY GOOD lasagna to make you realize how much mediocre lasagna you’ve had.
bottle of Chianti. also on the server’s suggestion.
dessert. tiramisu semifreddo. really good but WAY too rich for me after my meal. so i had a cappuccino and left it to my husband.
next up i’ve got a few pics from the wicked spoon at cosmopolitan.
wow, what a place. this may be fighting the wynn for my new favourite buffet.
it was really excellent and well priced for the quality. and i love buffets because i’m indecisive, but hate feeling like i’m eating out of a trough. this solves that problem. individual portions for everything. wonderful.
below is the short rib eggs benny.
and a berry macaron.
vegas – a trip in food & drink pictures
14 Oct 2011 2 Comments
in booze & other drinkables, food & cooking, restaurants & dinning out, travel Tags: drinks, food, las vegas, restaurants & dinning out, travel
it’s a real shame i didn’t carry my camera around for the first day. because i missed out on some choice pictures. these first two are from BLT Burger in the mirage. now, this is a place i’ve eaten once before, so i knew it was magic, but i was not prepared for this burger pictured right below.
that was the “gameday” burger (football, i think) and was a delicious BLT Burger patty on a pretzel bun, topped with a bratwurst, bacon & cheddar cheese. if that doesn’t sounds delicious to you, then you’re dead to me.
this next magical burger is my buffalo chicken burger. nothing insane, but it was what i was craving and it did me right.
now, on to some beverages…
this little delight was the suggestion of the server at the magical place we know as RHUMBAR. it’s the sensual berri. and i drank 3 just to be sure i loved it.
our bar neighbours were super friendly and fun. but you would be too after a 42oz scorpion bowl.
…and a mention for my husband’s 2 faves at RHUMBAR – the mai tai and the old cuban.
last but not least, i had a sparkling cosmo. and it was yummy.
…to be continued.
