Thanksgiving Supper at Claudia Sander's Dinner House Shelbyville,KY

 Here is the sign for Claudia's Sanders Dinner House.  The dinner house also known to locals as The Colonel's Wife.  it is out in Shelbyville, KY, about 30 minutes out of Louisville.  Go when it is light out to see all the beautiful horse farms in the area.

 For Thanksgiving, it was packed.  We had 5pm dinner reservations.  I thought we would had been at the start of the dinner crowd, but we were at the end of the crowds.  They had started serving at 11am, and by the time we left at 7:30, the huge room we were in was almost empty.

 This is the grand entrance to the dinner house.  There is a little gift shop, to buy KY merchandise.

 All around the dinner house are these framed photos of Saddlebred horses.  These are amazing horses that were developed in Kentucky.  I had the honor of working as a groom for a saddlebred trainer for about 6 months (during show season).  These are amazing spirited horses that can be ridden or driven (the horse pulls while you sit in a little cart).  They are very fun horses with a lot of personality.

 Here's a portrait of Colonel Sanders and his wife Claudia.  They are both buried in Louisville, at Cave Hill cemetery. When you enter the cemetery, just follow the yellow line on the ground to lead you to his grave.

 There were two buffet lines in the restaurant.  We were in the larger of the two rooms.  Look at this buffet!!!  Just kept going and going!!!

 In this picture you can see (from top to bottom) the creamed spinach, sweet potatoes and stewed tomatoes.  The creamed spinach has always been one of my favorite dishes here.

 Here's my plate.  I'll give you a tour - starting at 12 o'clock position moving clockwise....creamed corn, stewed tomatoes, creamed spinach, turkey covered with stuffing and stewed apples.  See a theme here....stewed and creamed....WOW!!

 They served another favorite of mine - their cream of tomato soup.  Yes....it stays with the creamed theme.

And of course, the Colonel, sort of, was walking around greeting everyone.

My dinner - Cauliflower soup

Winter = soup.  I already made vegi beef soup (on a previous post).  Today I made Cauliflower soup.  I used one of my favorite tricks.  I bought the mirpoux at Trader Joe's.  Mirpoux is the start of every great soup - onions, celery and carrots.  They had a container of all three vegis cut up - 1 cup of each.  If I can't get to Trader Joe's, I get the cut up vegis from salad bars.  It helps to speed it all up, it doesn't cost much more than buying each vegi separate.  When you buy each vegetable separate, you have to get a bunch each of carrots and celery, so it usually goes to waste in my house, as I hate wasting food.

I roast the cauliflower in the over.  While that is roasting, I saute the mirpoux.  I like to get some color on the vegis, just a bit of browning.  This just adds to the depth of the flavor.  Once the cauliflower is soft and roasted, I add it into the pot, along with chicken stock, garlic, salt, pepper and bay leaves.  Let everything cook together about 30 minutes.  To this pot, I also added some curry - just to see if we would like this.

After the 30 minutes, I shooshed it with my stick blender.  I just got a more powerful one from William Sonoma.  It was on sale.  The blender I had before was 250 watts.  It never really got my soups smooth.  This new one is 600 watts....and yes, it is smooth.  No cream added = no fat added.  When you puree vegis to this degree, I have found there is no need to add cream to make it smooth and lush.

To try to kick my meals up to the next level, I tried something new.  While the soup was cooking, I used the vegi peeler and made some slices of sweet potato and thinly cut some shallots.  I put them on non-stick aluminum foil and sprayed them both with Pam.  I sprinkled some of the curry powder of them as well.  I put them in the hot oven after the cauliflower had roasted.  Watch them closely so they don't burn.  I took them out and let them cool.  They were nice and crispy.  We sprinkled them on the soup right before eating it.  Nice contrast to the smooth soup!!

Real life with teenagers

Is this what your dinner table looks like?!? And how often do you say........

NO SCREENS AT THE TABLE!!!!!

Perfect winter meal

I made a delicious winter meal the other night - butternut squash soup, pork chops and a side of onions and apples.

 For the soup, I used my regular formula.  1 cup chopped onion, celery and carrot (I buy it pre-chopped from Trader Joe's Mirpouix - you can also buy it pre-chopped at most salad bars), chicken stock and I roasted 1 pound of chopped butternut squash.  This I also bought pre-chopped.  Have you ever tried to cut a butternut squash?  Your hands get this coating on it that make it stiff.  Really weird, but true.  While the butternut squash is roasting, I brown the vegis right in the soup pot. Then just add in the roasted (soft and slightly browned) squash and chicken stock.  I also added a dash of nutmeg and white balsamic vinegar.  The nutmeg makes you go "Hmmmm, what's that extra flavor?" and the vinegar counters the natural richness of the squash. That's it. I shoosh it with my stick blender and add in salt and pepper as needed.  My husband calls this soup liquid candy.  It is SO delicious!!  And not to mention healthy with no added fats and minimal salt.

 I thinly sliced sweet onions and granny smith apples (which I peeled). I add in a dash of salt, nutmeg and cinnamon and about 1/4t of brown sugar. I cooked all this low and slow on the stove top until they all got soft and brown.

 This takes about half an hour to get it to this point.

For the pork chops, I bought butterflied boneless porkchops.  About 1 hour before I grilled them (I grill all winter long), I rubbed them with bacon salt (yes, bacon salt.  You can find this in the spice area of a lot of grocery stores these days.  Believe it or not....it's kosher!!) and chipolte seasoning salt (another item I found in the spice area of the grocery store).  I put them back in the fridge for 1 hour, then took it out while I was cutting the vegis to let the meat come to room temperature.  This is always a good idea to do with your meats.  It allows for a more even and true cooking.  The most important thing with pork (and all meats) is not to over cook it.  Remember that there is carry over time in your grilled foods.  My pork was very moist and slightly spicy with the rub.  And with the crunch and sweetness of the onion/apple topping it was winter on a plate!!

Fun outing - Architectural salvage

On a cold day in Chicago, we were looking for something fun and different to do.  I had seen architectural salvage places on various HGTV or DIY network shows, but I had never been to one.  I went on Yelp and looked it up.  There were a few options.  We went to Architectural Artifacts.  Wow....SO fun.  We walked around for a couple of hours.  Your mind just goes wild in a place like this.

Here are a few of the sights -

This is a room of doors.  There are many of these rooms.  As you can see here, there is every kind of door you can image.

 Here is a room of fireplace mantels.  Look on the left of this picture.  That is a gorgeous mosaic mantel. Again, many rooms of mantels as well.

This was one of my husband's favorite pieces.  This is a clock face, like from a old building, turned into a huge dining table. You can see the 12 o'clock roman numeral at the bottom of the picture frame.  SO cool!!!

Restaurant review - Urban Vegan, Chicago

I was looking for something different to eat.  I found Urban Vegan.  Ends up it is a "vegan Thai" restaurant. It is a small restaurant - maybe 8 tables.  It was very clean and the staff was very nice and attentive. I was at the Lakeview location.  They have another restaurant in the Lincoln Park area.

This is the Seaweed soup.  Yes, I like seaweed. If you like sushi, you like it too.  It is the nori, the dark wrapper around your maki roll pieces. This had seaweed, napa cabbage, mushrooms, tofu and mung bean noodles (also known as cellophane noodles).  This was so nice and light and just brimming with health.  I really enjoyed this soup and this little restaurant.

Brilliant Idea - Panera Cares

When we were in Chicago the other day, we wanted to grab a small bite and sit.  Look at what we found - Panera Cares.  Ends up that there are 4 of these in the country - and two of the four are in Chicago.  The other ones are in Clayton, MO (seemed weird location, but this is Panera's home base, so it makes sense now) and Portland, OR.

The idea is that you pay what you can. On the menu there are "suggested donation" amounts, but you pay what you can.  According to the co-founder of Panera "Twenty percent of customers pay more than the suggested donation. Sixty percent leave the suggested donation and 20 percent leave less, typically significantly less."

As you can read below, they ask for volunteer time if you can't pay at all.  This is an amazing thing. It is so win-win. Panera can write off its left over inventory as donation (since the food at a Panera Cares is day-old) and those who can't afford to eat get food.  I haven't ever seen such a big win-win scenario before.