Ate at the new Subway in Duncanville, Texas on Sunday for lunch. Superb!
Continue reading Best Subway EVER!
Category: eats
recipes and dinner club news and general eats from Casa de Blundell
Chipotle responds
UPDATE 9/9/09 :: Chipotle has reached an agreement with the CIW famers.
A couple weeks back we talked with Amanda Kloer on our podcast. She shared a lot about the issue of human trafficking and modern day slavery. And in the process we talked about an article she had posted earlier that day regarding Chipotle and the rights of farmers in Florida.
I’ve shared links to Amanda’s article in several places and after my initial Twitter messages, left a voice mail with their PR department. I followed up again with Chipotle today (via Twitter) to see what they had to say.
This time I had a brief exchange over email so here’s the latest from Chipotle:
Continue reading Chipotle responds
Sushi night – take one
Well, as I mentioned in the Tuesday Briefs this week, on Twitter several times, and on this week’s podcast – last night was sushi night at Casa de Blundell! Woot! Woot!
Now I’ve never been a huge sushi eater. I’ve had it a few times and liked it, but it always seems a bit overpriced to eat on a regular basis. So naturally, getting to eat it several times during our cruise – for free was amazing!
Continue reading Sushi night – take one
Interesting potluck themes
As part of our weekly community group meetings (most every Saturday at 6 p.m. – come join us) we always start out with a meal/snack of some sort. I think I’ve been delegated the food committee chairman and I have to admit, sometimes I’m at a loss for ideas.
I’d love to go all out each week, with “gourmet cuisine” but it seems that getting folks together once a week tends to be hard enough without adding an undue burden of everyone having to come up with a new dish/meal.
So here’s the question:
What creative potluck & party themes have you seen or would you like to see at a get together/party?
Some great potluck ideas I’ve enjoyed in the past:
- Greek/Mediterranean
- Cajun
- Mexican – always a big hit
- Italian
- Baked potato bar
- Make your own pizza
I did find one great thread that suggests building your potluck meal around dishes that contain one main ingredient (ala like Food Networks Iron Chef) or dishes with the same color.
A few other great potluck ideas:
- The last meal – everyone brings a dish based on the first letter of their last name. Blundell’s bring beans, Lehmann’s bring lima beans, Ellcey’s bring eggplant, etc. etc.
- Brinner – Breakfast for dinner. Pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, etc.
- Vegetarian – This could be a great win, or a flop depending on your group 🙂
- Thanksgiving – Who says you can only have turkey, pumpkin pie and all the fixings on Thanksgiving day? Why not have a huge Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of July as well? For that matter, you can probably come up with any number of holiday meals to have “out of season” and probably save some cash as well since no one else will be fighting you for a 20 lb turkey.
- Slow cooking – Only dishes cooked in a slow cooker are allowed. This might be fun to see how creative people get.
Another great idea to always encourage is for everyone to bring extra copies of their recipes to the potluck dinner. That way if folks try a dish they really love they can go home with the recipe and don’t have to hope someone remembers to send it to them later.
I’m also thinking I need to get more people in on The Pioneer Woman’s website and/or cookbook and do a Pioneer Woman Cookbook theme…
So, there’s the task I want to know what other clever/successful themes you’ve come up with… comment away!
Bachelor Dinner
bachelor dinner
Originally uploaded by Jonathan D. Blundell
A strange thing tends to occur when I’m left to eat dinner on my own — I think its something I picked up from my dad — I tend to come up with some different creations.
I usually take advantage of knowing Laurie won’t have to eat what I fix, so I tend to pull things out we might have left over that I know she won’t likely eat later as well.
Tonight was no different. As she rushed off to St. Arbucks I cooked up some turkey meatballs we got from Costco and made a super tasty sauce to go with them.
The sauce was made of canned jalapenos, sliced green onions, HEB BBQ sauce and a bit of water to thin it out.
Topped the meatballs and sauce with cheese and I had quite a tasty meal (and lunch left over for tomorrow).
I also made some homemade chips with some left over corn tortillas. I basically cut the tortillas into quarters, splashed some EVOO on them, added some salt and cajun seasoning and baked them at 350 for 10 minutes.
They tasted great but the texture wasn’t quite right on most of the chips. But some of them got just the right heat, oil and everything else and were superb. Now if only I remember what I did differently with those chips :-).
NOTE: The tortillas in this picture were only stand-ins for the real tortilla chips. The real ones were still “getting their tanning on” when this picture was taken.
Beaten again and again
So Friday night is date night around Casa de Blundell. It’s been kind of inactive due to the holiday season.
So I think we both figured it was time to reenact this important piece of legislation.
The great thing about date night is there’s no requirements for what we do, where we do it or how we do it – just as long as we do it together – just the two of us.
We had a great time last night.
We made a huge dinner of homemade spaghetti and meatballs along with salad and bread.
Ok – it was homemade in that we put it all together for a full menu.
HEB had one of their great specials a week ago that I’m a super fan of. Buy a package of frozen meatballs, get spaghetti noodles and sauce for free. Awesome! $6 for the whole thing. Laurie bought some artisan bread and pre-packaged salad Friday evening and we put it all together. We also made a dipping sauce for the bread with crushed red peppers, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
After dinner we talked a little more about the Casa de Blundell.com re-design and then headed to our local Starbucks to enjoy some hot drinks and reading.
She’s working on “Emily Ever After” that I got her for Christmas and I did some more reading in “Ragamuffin Gospel.”
Although with the girls working at Starbucks I found it hard to concentrate on what I was reading verses the latest gossip about their relationships.
We came home and I built the first fire we’ve had in our new house.
It was a rough start – hadn’t realized how small our fireplace actually was and the big log I put in never really got started. Glad we had some fire starters and Duraflame logs.
As the fire grew we played three rounds of Sequence. Laurie beat me again and again and again.
We started with one game, went to best of 3, then best of 4/5. Apparently she didn’t want to give me a chance to win ;-). That’s OK. She beat me three straight games. Everytime I started to get some offense built I had to jump over and play defense. And if I remember correctly I was usually three good cards away from beating her each game. But no excuses – 2nd place is the first loser :-).
After the games we had the pleasure of cleaning up after Presley and her upset stomach. We finally called it a night and crashed for the long night.
Great time! Doesn’t get much better than spending time alone with my life. I LOVE YOU BABY! Thanks for making my life fun and memorable.