Belize - New Years

My husband and I visted the country of Belize for the first time over New Years.  Overall, I give it high marks.  We stayed on the small island of Ambergris Caye for 5 nights, which is about a 15 minute flight from Belize City and is located right off the barrier reef.  For those of you who know nothing about Belize, it's a small country that used to be part of British Honduras and is protected by the second largest barrier reef in the world.  Ambergris itself was very small and was kind of a mix of Caribbean attitude but Mexican influences, particularly in the food and drinks.  The small town of San Pedro was easily walkable in about 30 minutes but still had plenty of restaurants and bar options.

We also spent one day touring the mainland to visit some Mayan ruins on the border of Guatamala and to do a jungle zipline.  The zipline was a blast and I would do it again but I won't lie - I'm scared of heights so I was about to pee my pants at every platform.  I was pretty terrified for the first 3 runs but then I got over it.  Unfortunately, however, we also got monsoon rains for a full two days of our trip which ended up cancelling our plans to snorkel the reef.  Kind of a bummer but we ended up watching college bowl games at a small ex-pat bar that we found a block away from our hotel so Steve was happy. 

So, would I go back?  Yes but I wouldn't say that I'm in a huge rush to do so.  While Belize is interesting and we found the people to be friendly, it definitely lacked the beauty of the Virgin Islands.  Also, the cayes of Belize are very similar to the Florida Keys as they are small coral islands with no real beaches to speak of unless you stay at resorts far north of town, which is very isolating and requires a boat to get to town for dinner and activities.  For my money, the Virgin Islands still wins the vacation lottery hands-down.  We will, as always, be making our 10-day trip to St. Thomas and the BVI this April and it can't come soon enough.  That trip alone is what keeps me sane year over year (well, sort of sane).

A few pics from Belize:

Breakfast in Belize



Mojito at the Palapa Bar



Me looking like a huge dork on Zipline



Steve looking like a bigger dork on zipline



Draft Picks Bar - Douchiest Bar in Dallas?

Okay, probably not the douchiest, but definitely the loudest.  Last weekend, we visited Draft Picks bar in Dallas prior to attending the Dallas Mavericks game for some pre-game food and beers.  Draft Picks is located near the AA center in the building where Newport's Seafood used to be.  First, we parked in the House of Blues parking lot and walked over, which was a mistake.  Unfortunately, you have to basically make the entire block to get to the entrance of Draft Picks because of a large concrete retaining wall and fence around the building.  We finally walk inside and I immediately hated the place.  It was so loud that I thought my eardrums were going to burst.  The decibel level inside this place was incredible. 

As expected, there were TV screens everywhere playing various sporting events, including one massive  screen that was like a movie theater screen.  Also as expected, the testosterone level in the place was at an all-time high, which definitely made it what I call a "sausage party."  There was also much yelling, screaming and booing/cheering which echoed off the polished concrete floors and bounced around the room like a ricocheting bullet.  The noise was simply deafening to the point where I had to yell at my husband to be heard (though this is not unusual and not limited to high noise level situations).

I will give them points for having a great selection of draft beers, including one of new favorites, Firemen's Ale #4.  The service was prompt and I was treated to an up close and personal view of almost every server's back upper thigh cellulite since all servers were young females wearing daisy dukes.  Again, predictable but not as obnoxious as Twin Peaks or Hooters.  We ordered 10 hot wings and a plate of nachos.  Wings were actually pretty decent and had a nice heat level.  Nachos were unimpressive.  The cheese and pico de gallo on them were good but your only option was to have the nachos with taco meat.  I prefer to have a chicken fajita option and the taco meat was greasy and tasted no better than what I can make at home with the powdered McCormick taco seasoning mix.  Seemed like almost everything on the menu was fried, which they refer to in a really annoying way as "dunked".  Dunked Mushrooms.  Dunked Pickle Chips. Get it?  It's dunked like a basketball but it is also dunked in hot grease.  How clever. 

While it seemed like a cool sports bar to go to on a slow night, I wouldn't return pre-game given the noise level.  The food and drinks are not so above average as to make it worth having my inner ears destroyed.

Go Mavs!

The Hitchin Post II - Buellton, CA

The spouse and I spent a few days in and around Santa Barbara County, visiting the wine country.  Most people know the area from the movie Sideways and the trials and travails of the two protagonists, Jack and Miles. While our adventures in the area were not so low brow or exciting (Steve did not pour the wine spit bucket on his head during any winery visit), we did do a lot of wine tasting and a lot of eating.  I'll post on some of the wine tasting and recommendations later (haven't had time to download photos yet), but I can pass on my recommendation to eat at The Hitchin Post II if you're ever in that neck of the woods. 

The Hitchin Post was also featured in the movie as the location where Virginia Madsen (Maya) worked as a waitress.  I read some reviews first and overall, people seemed to give it high marks.  I will say that reservations at this place, especially on a Friday or Saturday night, are an absolute must.  We had reservations, which you can make on Open Table, for 7:45 pm.  We showed up about 10 minutes early and we had to wait.  It was so crowded in the bar that the thought of trying to get a drink from it was nothing more than a pipedream.  So, we sat in the outer lobby area for about 10-15 minutes until our table was ready.  We overheard the hostess turning people away that walked in without reservations and telling them it was a 3-hour wait for a table.  I don't think she was lying either as it was packed.

The Hitchin Post decor is pretty sad.  Kind of reminds me of my grandmother's house.  Old, tired and a little bit gummy and funky.  It sports carpet that needs to be replaced, brassy light fixtures from the 1970's and doiley-looking drapes that you can tell were probably white 10 years ago but now have a soft brown patina that only come from smoke, dust and the expelled lung air of California hippie people.  Dirty hippie people.

However, all of the above matters not.  Why?  Because this places turns out some kick-ass food.  I really went in with low expectations as I assumed they were probably living off their movie connection to pull in gullible tourists like me.  I was wrong. Their specialty is steaks grilled on a wood fired Santa Maria style grill.  A Santa Maria grill is native to the area and has a wheel on it that allows the griller to raise or lower the grilling platform to be closer or further away from the flame.  Man, on man, this place makes a damn good steak.

We started with their grilled garlic appetizer.  It was great, despite its seeming simplicity.  It's just a huge clove of garlic that has been cooked until its insides have become sweet and carmelized and is served with a side of toast points that you can spread it onto. We then had house salads, which were surprisingly good thanks to the housemade dressings.  We weren't expecting much from the salads but they were impressive.  Finally, our show stopper steaks arrived.  Steve had the filet mignon and I went with a meatier cut of sirloin.  The most amazing thing about the steak was the wood smoke flavor and smell.  It literally smelled like a camp fire and in a good way.  The meat was incredibly juicy and had an incredible woodsy, smoky flavor that I don't think I have ever had with a steak (maybe I have gotten some of that with BBQ, but not with a straight-up steak).  We both had their house made french fries with the steak and they were some damn fine fries - perfect for dipping in meat juice, which is far superior to ketchup.  Perfect smoky goodness.

Below I'm including a photo of the massive Santa Maria Grill they use. 

If you can get there - go.  I have only one disclaimer and I know this is definitely TMI but I don't care.  Later that evening, I woke up in the middle of the night needing to pee (not unusual).  The weird thing was my urine actually smelled like woodsmoke.  I shit you not.  I had smokey pee. Well, smokey-smelling pee.  I couldn't have sent smoke signals from it or anything.   It must have been from the steak and/or the garlic appetizer.  It was kind of cool but freaky at the same time. 

Victory Over Shrimp & Grits

Okay, it doesn't take much for me to declare victory but I have to say that last weekend, I made shrimp & grits my bitch.  My husband, Big Steve, loves shrimp & grits.  It's one of his favorite dishes but, alas, is almost always disappointing wherever he orders it.  He's tried shrimp & grits at just about every place in Dallas that serves it (Grace, Screen Door, J. Blacks, Dodie's, etc...).  The only place where he had S&G that lived up to his high expectations was at Nola Restaurant in New Orleans.  Nola is one of Emeril's restaurants so we assumed it would be overhyped and mediocre in execution.  Well, we have now been to Nola at least 3x and everytime, the S&G (and all our other dishes) have been phenomenal.

Steve says that the best thing about Nola's S&G is the Spicy Abita Beer BBQ Glaze that is on the shrimp. Well, I finally found the recipe for this dish and made it last week.  It was awesome.  It did take several steps to make  but the end product was worth the time and effort.  To be honest, the glaze itself was so simple to make that it was laughable.  Basically, it's beer, ketchup, crushed red pepper, brown sugar and Abita Amber ale that you cook on the stovetop for about 10 minutes and that's it.  I found the recipe on Food Network.com of all places.  Go figure.

I also made an appetizer of some fried oysters (used Zatarain's fish fry mix) on field greens topped with a horseradish cream sauce.  I hate to toot my own horn (not really) but they pretty much rocked.

Evidence of said victories is below.

Oyster Appetizer

Shrimp & Grits with Abita Beer BBQ Glaze.  Boo.Yah.

New Grill - Searing Feature - Test One

Last weekend my husband decided to test the "searing plate" on our new grill.  For those of you that haven't used one before, it's basically a porcelain plate with a grate over it that replaces one of your grill burners and heats up to an ungodly temperature (circa 1200 degrees).  It's supposed to immediately sear your steak to lock in the juice and flavor.  Our google research indicated that your steak should be placed on it for about 20-30 seconds before the quarter turn for the cross hatch and then flipped for an additional 30 seconds and then finished on the regular grill burner for about 5 minutes.  We had mixed results but it was our first time using it so I think that with more practice, it can work really well.

Here are the finished steaks.  As you can see, one steak got a nice cross hatch on it but the other one, not so much.  You really have to get them both right on the mid-section of the plate, which can be tricky b/c it's 1200 friggin' degrees.  In fact, when you start heating up th searing plate, it begins to glow in an unearthly way.  When you open your grill, you would swear that it's about to unleash the Balrog demon that Gandolph fought in first The Lord of the Rings.  You almost want to stand in front of the grill and strike the ground with your staff while shouting "You shall not pass!"

At any rate, the searing plate is going to take some more work and practice.  Both steaks came out a little underdone. 

Gym Etiquette

About 10 months ago I embarked on a serious "get my fat ass in shape" program at my local gym with the help of a trainer.  After months of torture and self-deprivation, I came out the other side with a much more svelte physique and renewed sense of self confidence.  Unfortunately, the reality soon hit me that this was not a one time thing and that if I want to eat food other than egg whites and plain oatmeal then I would literally have to work out 5 or 6 days a week in order to avoid weight gain.  So, I now spend quite a bit of time at the gym, which has really opened my eyes to a new subculture of freaks, roid heads and narcissitic weirdos.  There are a lot of strange people that work out.  Over the past few months, I have developed some basic etiquette rules for people working out at the gym and if these rules were followed, we could all have a much more pleasant exercise experience.  See below.

• Please don't speak loudly into your cyborg phone headpiece while working out.  It's annoying and just because you tell your lame-ass friend on the other end that "I'm working out, girl!", you really aren't.  If you were really working out, you wouldn't even be able to draw enough breath to have that conversation.  So, shut up, girl.

• Guys this is for you.  I know that sometimes you need to adjust your package and there are discreet ways to do so.  Here is what not to do while walking through the middle of the gym:  (i) Don't pull up the bottom of your T-shirt and put it in your mouth thereby exposing your flaccid, hairy stomach, (ii) don't use one hand to pull your shorts several inches away from your body and (iii) don't plunge your opposite hand into your scrotal region and start rummaging around down there. No one needs to see that. 

• Ladies, please put some fucking clothes on.  First, the vast majority of you (including myself) don't look nearly as good as you think you do.  Yes, you have recently lost 15 lbs, so congratulations and all, but when you started out weighing 195 and you're 5'3, it's kind of like a chip off Mount Rushmore.  A t-shirt is needed.  Second, for those of you who do have the figure for it, please keep in mind that you are wearing a sports bra.  The key word being "bra" which means that it does not qualify as a shirt.  Also, chances are you still have cellulite on the back of your thighs so there's no reason to wear shorts so short that your butt cheeks hang out the bottom.  Try to have some dignity, please.  Plenty of men will be looking at you later as you slide down the pole and grind the floor at your evening job. Your mom must be proud.

• Yes, weights can be heavy but if I can hear you groaning from the complete opposite end of the gym over the sound of the shitty techno music coming through the loudspeakers then either you are trying to lift too much weight or you're trying to draw attention to yourself.  Either way, you're an idiot.  The sound of your groaning is not a mating call so don't expect women to come running down there to watch you lift a 50 lb dumbbell. No one cares.

• Finally, don't talk to me.  If I have my headphones on, that should be the universal sign of "fuck off" to you.  If I don't, you should still assume I have no interest in speaking to you.  If I smile and say "good morning" that is not an opening for you to begin telling me about how awesome you are at flag football and how much you can bench press.  It just means I was in a rare good mood and had a fleeting moment of kindness and love towards my fellow man, which you just ruined.

There, I think that sums it up pretty well.

Wasting Away in Margaritaville

Given that we're now on consecutive Day #31 of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees, our weekend beverage choices seem to be on a steady rotation of frozen margaritas, white wine or light beer (aka, domestic swill).  Now, I know that some people believe frozen margaritas are a bastardization of the real deal and I do agree with that.  To my tastebuds there is nothing better than Rick Bayless' simple margarita recipe of high quality silver tequila mixed with freshly squeezed lime juice, a teaspoon of agave nectar and served on the rocks with a bit of salt on the rim.  However, when it's 104 degrees outside, sometimes you just need more damn ice in your drink.

We recently finished building (or I should say, having a team of sweaty construction workers build for us) an outdoor kitchen. It was just finished last Friday afternoon and it's pretty awesome.  My husband is referring to it as his fully operational entertainment area deathstar.  The new kitchen also gives us extra storage and additional electrical outlets, so I gave my spouse the go-ahead to buy a contraption that he's been eyeing for about 3 months now - the Margaritaville Frozen Concoction Maker.

Here it is in all its Margaritaville trademarked glory. Is there anything that Jimmy Buffet won't put his name on these days? You have to hand it to the guy - he does more marketing and branding than Mel Brook's Yogurt character did in Spaceballs The Movie.  It's impressive.

Despite the cheesiness of it, I have to give this product high marks.  It pretty much bitchslaps regular blenders when it comes to creating a frozen alcoholic beverage.  It works differently from your average blender.  You put the ice in the top and put your tequila and lime juice or mixer in the carafe.  Then, you flip a dial to set how many drinks you want it to make (who are you kidding?  Just set it to the highest number) and it shaves the ice, dumps it into the carafe and then blends it to make the perfect margarita or other frozen concoction.  If you decide you want more ice, you can just turn on the shave feature to dump more perfectly shaven ice into the carafe.  It makes the perfect, fluffy frozen margarita with no hint of unprocessed ice chunks that I get with my normal blender and that get stuck in my straw creating a margarita blockage which pisses me off.  So, this product is getting an A+ from me as far as functionality. I'll deduct a point or two for the corny marketing ploy, though.

We found it for sale at Macy's for $299.  Sur la Table used to carry it but seem to have dropped it now.  At any rate, if you like frozen drinks, it's pretty kick-ass in that department.