home from vacation
We are now home from our mini-vacation. Craig and I both had off from the Friday before Memorial Day until the 29th.
We were in the Poconos for the weekend to help Mowgli dedicate a sign at the house she inherited from her parents. There was a lot of great food (I brought my smoker down and did up about 8 pounds of pork), 3 Kitchen Witches on site, and lots of good energy zipping around.
We came home Sunday evening because I knew we had a lot to get done before we could head out on our Foxwoods trip. We did a bunch of errands on Monday and tried to get to sleep at a decent hour (HAH!). Tuesday, we met up with my mom at the Galleria to drop off some clothes and sheets with her and to get my hair cut, then we hit the road. The trip out was easy enough; we were there by 8 p.m. or so. We caught the shuttle bus over to the casino and found some food (a great Noodle house - only problem was too much food and no fridge in the hotel room).
Wednesday morning we got up early and had breakfast at the hotel. This was a mistake, as I had quite possibly the worst Eggs Benedict ever. It looked like two golf balls on a plate covered in Hollandaise. Seriously. Hard-boiled eggs aren't much more cooked than those eggs.
We then drove over to Mystic Aquarium (via back roads - lovely!) where we spent a wonderful day looking at all the sea life. We went back a bit early in order to make our dinner reservations.
Caution: Anyone with high cholesterol should probably not read the following.
We had dinner on Wednesday evening at David Burke Prime. It's a steakhouse, which is like calling the Sistine Chapel a church. It was amazing. When they seated us, they brought us each a popover. But not your run-of-the-mill popover - these were clearly made like real Yorkshire puddings, with hot beef suet (like McDonalds french fries used to be back in the day). They were served with fresh butter which was garnished with pink Himalayan salt. Fucking amazing.
The wait staff appeared and asked us what we wanted to drink. I deferred to our main waiter-guy, and he suggested a Cabernet Sauvignon Silver-something-or-other. Craig chose the yellowfin sashimi with yuzu soy and ginger, and I chose the classic Parisienne-style onion soup. Oh. My. Gods. I will more than likely never have onion soup that good again.
For entrees, Craig selected the 20 oz. bone-in Filet Mignon, and I had the 18 oz. Kansas City ribeye. We both chose that day's special side, the Cheddar scallion twice-baked potato. The steaks were phenomenal, and the potatoes were incredible. The potatoes had a kind of mustardy undertone along with the cheddar and scallion that kind of gave them a different twist.
The steaks were so good that we kept eating long after any sane person would have stopped. We kind of tried to scope out people who were leaving, and nobody had a doggy bag, so we figured that we just had to eat what we could. And really, it was impossible to stop - it was that good.
And then, our waiter, I think his name was That Bastard, came over and asked if we wanted to see the dessert menu. "Oh," he said, "if you've never been here before, you should at least LOOK at it!"
I had the Creme Brulee (OMG OMG OMG!!!!!) and Craig had an ice cream/sorbet sampler thingy, with black cherry ice cream, pomegranate sorbet, and chocolate ice cream, all of which were fabulous. The check arrived with a lemon-lime cotton candy which was (despite our being stuffed to the gills) strangely addictive.
We waddled our way back to the shuttle stop and to our hotel room, where we collapsed into groaning heaps to sleep off our postprandial torpor.
On Thursday, we headed out to Mystic Seaport for a day of cool stuff. We really only skimmed the surface - I am still walking with a cane, and there's a lot of ground to cover. We left at closing time and headed back to the hotel. Dinner was the Festival Buffet - very reasonably priced, but not exciting.
Friday was up early, check out, and head to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, which was quite probably one of the best museums I've ever been to. The dioramas are amazing, the computer interactive stuff is uber-cool, and the displays are completely engaging. We were there for over four hours, and we only scratched the surface. We've decided that there is enough stuff between Mystic Seaport and the museum that we definitely want to go back.
Anybody who is interested in visiting this area, feel free to ask and I'll hook you up.
Pictures will follow, once Craig pulls them off his camera.
We were in the Poconos for the weekend to help Mowgli dedicate a sign at the house she inherited from her parents. There was a lot of great food (I brought my smoker down and did up about 8 pounds of pork), 3 Kitchen Witches on site, and lots of good energy zipping around.
We came home Sunday evening because I knew we had a lot to get done before we could head out on our Foxwoods trip. We did a bunch of errands on Monday and tried to get to sleep at a decent hour (HAH!). Tuesday, we met up with my mom at the Galleria to drop off some clothes and sheets with her and to get my hair cut, then we hit the road. The trip out was easy enough; we were there by 8 p.m. or so. We caught the shuttle bus over to the casino and found some food (a great Noodle house - only problem was too much food and no fridge in the hotel room).
Wednesday morning we got up early and had breakfast at the hotel. This was a mistake, as I had quite possibly the worst Eggs Benedict ever. It looked like two golf balls on a plate covered in Hollandaise. Seriously. Hard-boiled eggs aren't much more cooked than those eggs.
We then drove over to Mystic Aquarium (via back roads - lovely!) where we spent a wonderful day looking at all the sea life. We went back a bit early in order to make our dinner reservations.
Caution: Anyone with high cholesterol should probably not read the following.
We had dinner on Wednesday evening at David Burke Prime. It's a steakhouse, which is like calling the Sistine Chapel a church. It was amazing. When they seated us, they brought us each a popover. But not your run-of-the-mill popover - these were clearly made like real Yorkshire puddings, with hot beef suet (like McDonalds french fries used to be back in the day). They were served with fresh butter which was garnished with pink Himalayan salt. Fucking amazing.
The wait staff appeared and asked us what we wanted to drink. I deferred to our main waiter-guy, and he suggested a Cabernet Sauvignon Silver-something-or-other. Craig chose the yellowfin sashimi with yuzu soy and ginger, and I chose the classic Parisienne-style onion soup. Oh. My. Gods. I will more than likely never have onion soup that good again.
For entrees, Craig selected the 20 oz. bone-in Filet Mignon, and I had the 18 oz. Kansas City ribeye. We both chose that day's special side, the Cheddar scallion twice-baked potato. The steaks were phenomenal, and the potatoes were incredible. The potatoes had a kind of mustardy undertone along with the cheddar and scallion that kind of gave them a different twist.
The steaks were so good that we kept eating long after any sane person would have stopped. We kind of tried to scope out people who were leaving, and nobody had a doggy bag, so we figured that we just had to eat what we could. And really, it was impossible to stop - it was that good.
And then, our waiter, I think his name was That Bastard, came over and asked if we wanted to see the dessert menu. "Oh," he said, "if you've never been here before, you should at least LOOK at it!"
I had the Creme Brulee (OMG OMG OMG!!!!!) and Craig had an ice cream/sorbet sampler thingy, with black cherry ice cream, pomegranate sorbet, and chocolate ice cream, all of which were fabulous. The check arrived with a lemon-lime cotton candy which was (despite our being stuffed to the gills) strangely addictive.
We waddled our way back to the shuttle stop and to our hotel room, where we collapsed into groaning heaps to sleep off our postprandial torpor.
On Thursday, we headed out to Mystic Seaport for a day of cool stuff. We really only skimmed the surface - I am still walking with a cane, and there's a lot of ground to cover. We left at closing time and headed back to the hotel. Dinner was the Festival Buffet - very reasonably priced, but not exciting.
Friday was up early, check out, and head to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, which was quite probably one of the best museums I've ever been to. The dioramas are amazing, the computer interactive stuff is uber-cool, and the displays are completely engaging. We were there for over four hours, and we only scratched the surface. We've decided that there is enough stuff between Mystic Seaport and the museum that we definitely want to go back.
Anybody who is interested in visiting this area, feel free to ask and I'll hook you up.
Pictures will follow, once Craig pulls them off his camera.