Fruit pizza?

I was researching new food products on the internet today when I came across this little wonder.

At first, I thought the idea of a "Real Fruit Pizza" Eggo waffle sounded weird, but the more I thought about it, and read about it, the more appealing it became. It is described as a cinnamon and maple flavored crust topped with a combination of fruit and toasted granola. There are currently two varieties: strawberry and mixed berry.

Even though the description sounds tasty, I still have a few reservations and questions about the product. For instance, is it a waffle, or just a waffle-like crust? And how do you cook the darn thing?

I guess these are questions that can only be answered by trying the fruit pizza, which I will be looking for the next time I go to a grocery store. Check back to see how the new Eggo product fared.

Let the baking begin

Rolling out dough for pie crust. Store bought crust just isn't the same, but it is nice when you are feeling lazy.

The two in the back are sweet potato, and the one in the front is pecan pie.

Great American Coffee Roasters

The new coffee place downtown, Great American Coffee Roasters, really is great.

From the outside of the building, located downtown on South Magnolia, right before the S-curve, you would never guess this place would have some of the best coffee in town, but it does.

The coffee shop, which just opened on Monday, is the brainchild of a local couple who have an obvious love for coffee. The coffee they serve is roasted daily in a huge roasting machine that is taller than I am. This is the only place in Ocala, as far as I know, where the coffee is roasted so frequently.

The coffee is really good, and the prices are substantially lower than other coffee places downtown. Cough, Starbucks, cough cough. A large iced coffee is only $2. McDonald's can't even beat that price.

Actually, the coffee tastes better than what they serve at Starbucks. I find that their coffee is often bitter. And, I don't mean strong. I love strong coffee. Something is just off about the brew at Starbucks.

Great American Coffee Roasters also has a large variety of teas, both hot and cold, smoothies, ice cream and Italian soda: all things I love, especially Italian soda.

Just like other coffee places, you can also buy the coffee and tea in bulk to take home. If the coffee was roasted just days earlier, it is sold at a discounted rate. These people are serious about freshness.

Usually I don't care for sweet coffee drinks, but I tried a white mocha cappuccino, and it was delicious. And although the outside looks less than inviting, the inside is really cute and comfortable. I was impressed to learn that the owners completely revamped and constructed the inside on their own.

I am really excited about this place, and considering it is on my way to school, I will probably become a regular pretty quickly. I have to urge you to break from your usual Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts routine and support a local business. Trust me, you won't regret it.

More fuel for my addiction

About a month or two ago, I noticed that a new coffee place was being put in near my house, on my route to school. Ever since, I have been anxiously waiting for it to open.

This morning, on my way to class, I noticed it is finally open for business. While I have to work today, waahh, and won't have time to try it, I will definitely be checking it out tomorrow as soon as I get out of class.

Check back tomorrow to see how it went.

Just a small gathering

Thanksgiving is only three days away, and I can barely wait.

This year, most of my family is MIA, so I will only be cooking for a handful of people. While many people would probably be thankful for this, I am not. Now, I have to choose things to cut from my menu of grand proportions.

Choosing just one type of pie to make is just unacceptable. And even though it will probably end up being extreme, and too much dessert, I am still going to make both sweet potato and pecan pie. Although I make sweet potato pie every year, I rarely make pecan pie, and this year I am craving it.

If I have to end up giving pie away I will, because I want at least one or two pieces of both kinds.

The dessert is not the only thing that will have to be scaled back though. Instead of a whole turkey, I have decided to just roast turkey thighs and possibly breasts. Considering that one of the four guests coming to my petty Thanksgiving dinner is a vegan, a whole turkey for only three people would be ridiculous.

Also, traditionally I try, despite my mom's disapproval, to make as many sides as possible. But this year I will have to narrow it down to just a few, and probably at least one that contains no meat or dairy.

Though it is disappointing, I need to keep in mind that it could be worse, and that some people, for various reasons, aren't even having a Thanksgiving at all. After talking to my brother, who is currently deployed in Afghanistan, I actually felt a little bit guilty about my greedy ways.

Even though this Thanksgiving will be scaled back, I want next year's dinner to steal the show. My brother and I have planned to make the holidays next year, when he gets back, the best ever, and that makes this holiday being small just fine with me.

Mmmm cupcakes

A chain restaurant I can stomach...occasionally

It is not often that I am fond of a chain restaurant. Although I have never worked in one, I have heard stories about what goes on in those kitchens: bagged soups and sauces heated up in steam wells, microwaved entrees and frozen vegetables. Not yummy.

Plus, usually the food tastes, and often looks, like cardboard: a sign that the rumors are true.

Now, I don't know what goes on in the kitchen at Harry's Seafood, Bar, and Grille, but what comes out is actually pretty good. And on a day like today, when I am so hungry I don't even care what I eat anymore, it seemed pretty appetizing.

Granted, there is only really one palette of flavors at the restaurant (creole, spicy, seafood), but if you are in the mood for it, it works.



Today, I had a cup of shrimp bisque and a garden salad with balsamic dressing. My mom, who was nice enough to take me out to lunch (hi mom!), had the crab cakes, which she always has (Love you!).

I learned to make lobster bisque years back at a restaurant I worked at, and I developed a taste for the sharp taste and creamy consistency of the soup.

Harry's did a good job with the shrimp bisque, and it had that sharp, spicy element that I love. The salad was nothing exciting, but still, what you would expect from a garden salad? I would have liked a little bigger of a portion though.



The crab cakes were good, and tasted like the last time I ate them there. Consistency is a huge factor in the success of a restaurant and is probably the key factor in why people gravitate to chain restaurants: familiarity=comfort.

I definitely could not eat at Harry's more than once or twice a year, but it worked today, and for that I am thankful.

Country Days cuisine

I love fairs and festivals of all kinds, but particularly events like the Ocali Country Days Festival that took place over the weekend at Silver River State Park in Ocala.

I get a kick out of seeing how people in times long before ours lived. And mostly, I love to eat the food at such events.

This weekend was my first visit to Ocali Country Days, and it was much like I expected; similar to an event in Orlando called Pioneer Days. I enjoyed learning and seeing how Florida settlers lived in the 1800s.

My only critique is there should have been more food from the Cracker days.

I ate a lot of different things while I was there, and probably the most authentic thing was the one item I didn't even pay for. A reenactor used a pit filled with coals and a cast-iron dutch oven to bake buttermilk biscuits.

Wow. Those biscuits were one of the best things I have ever eaten, honestly. They were steaming hot and so soft they were falling apart. Topped with fresh, hand-churned butter, I couldn't stop stealing samples. The reenactor said that at one event they topped them with local honey; I didn't think the biscuits could possibly be any better until he told us that.

I am definitely trying out this unique cooking method on my next camping trip, hopefully in a couple of weeks.

Other than that, I had sugar cane (yum), fresh lemonade, kettle corn, funnel cake and baked goods from a boyscout bake sale (only because I felt bad for the boys because they weren't selling much).



The funnel cake was really good, and was prepared in cast iron skillets: something I had never seen before.

Although there wasn't as much food as I had hoped for, I still walked away happy, with my sweet tooth fulfilled for the day and enough sugar cane to keep it that way.

Hillbilly Tea

I never would have associated drinking tea with backwoods country folk.

Well, maybe super sweet iced-tea, but not "artisan", organic, free-trade tea.

Leave it up to Kentucky to change my mind.

Right in the middle of downtown Louisville is a cafe called "Hillbilly Tea". Obviously, the place is famous for its selection of tea, both hot and cold. But Hillbilly Tea also serves breakfast on the weekends, lunch and dinner.

I found the restaurant during a bout of intense research into the local food culture in the city, and I wouldn't let it go. Every day, I bothered my friends about eating there. I don't think they were ever against the idea, but I am sure I annoyed the hell out of them talking about it.

Unfortunately, we only had an hour lunch break to visit the restaurant.

Although I would have liked to try the iced tea, which they had three varieties of, the day we visited was cold so I stuck to hot "gunpowder" matcha green tea. It came out in a mason jar, steaming hot. It took at least 10 minutes for it to cool down before I even tasted it. I like the mason jar thing; it is cute and allows for a huge portion.

Honestly, I have to say, it wasn't the best tea I have ever had. I was expecting, maybe foolishly, something extraordinary, and what I got was just plain old green tea. I regret not trying something else.

The lunch is served a-la-cart and the menu changes periodically.


I had the lunch special of the day, which was a "box lunch" of a chicken pot-pie, a small salad of bibb lettuce and pumpkin soup. The presentation was clever; the three items were served in a flat wooden crate.

Both the pot-pie and the soup were really good. The salad, I could have passed on. The dressing was some kind of weird corn salsa that just didn't really go with the lettuce.

My friend, Raven, tried the bison steak that was served with two small segments of grilled corn, and au jus. The portions are very small. I think we realized too late that you were supposed to order a couple items to make up a meal. My lunch was a fair enough portion, but the steak was tiny.



I really wish we had more time in Hillbilly Tea: time to sit and enjoy my tea, after it finally cooled off, time to eat several different dishes and time for dessert. The menu is full of unique items like roadkill stew, fried frog legs and Earl Grey scented chocolate cake.

After such anticipation, I let myself down by not sampling more of what Hillbilly Tea had to offer. If only I was in Louisville on my own time....

To check out Hillbilly Tea on your own you can visit their website (or fly to Louisville)

http://www.hillbillytea.com/hillbillyteacom.html

Feeling social

So, honestly, I have been avoiding this post because my pictures for this restaurant did not turn out. Although I feel that words cannot do this place justice, I will attempt to write visually enough to compensate.

While in Louisville, I ate at so many different places it is difficult to take the time to write about each one, even if it is only somewhat in-depth.

However, I visited so many special and memorable places that I feel it is almost my duty to talk about them: places like 732 Social.


The local restaurant serves organic food and wine, and locally grown/raised food whenever possible. The food is prepared in a rustic, French style and the menu changes with the season.

What really drew me into 732 Social, however, was not the food.

While dining at another restaurant, I asked the waiter where I NEEDED to visit while in town. He told me that the drinks at 732 Social were amazing and made like cocktails used to be. In other words, the drinks were old-school, and I was interested.

He was definitely right. Drinks like the "Long Stem Rose", a mixture of brut champagne, Peychaud, orange, grapefruit and peach bitters, rose water, sugar cubes, St. Germain elderflower liqueur and lemon zest, really are reminiscent of an earlier time.

While the drinks brought me to the restaurant, the food made me want to come back.

The menu I sampled was made up of fall flavors and hearty textures.

I had Tasmanian Ocean Trout that was baked in parchment paper with preserved lemon, heirloom carrots, fingerling potatoes and salsify.

Salsify is the root of a purple-flowering plant sometimes called "oyster plant" and has a very unique flavor. While some people say that it tastes like oysters, hence the nickname, I have to disagree. The vegetable has a sweet component to it; I think it almost tastes like a more savory and less intense fennel flavor.

Basically, the flavor is hard to describe, but it worked perfectly with the dish.

The trout was some of the best fish I have ever eaten. I want to say it is in the top five fish I have ever eaten. Baking fish in parchment, and even foil, leaves it so moist and tender that you barely have to chew it.

It was delicious.

I also tried the the "Mac-n-Cheese". Although I usually don't like when people re-invent macaroni and cheese (I am a stickler for the classic Old South recipe) this was an exception. Made with cavatapi macaroni, which has a unique spiral shape, bechamel sauce and rock shrimp, this rendition of the classic did not offend me.

The pasta was a huge portion, especially by French restaurant standards; it was served browned and buttery, overflowing from a large souffle dish. The flavors blended perfectly and actually created an umami flavor. Thinking about the small amount I tasted is making me crave the dish right now; it was that good.

The only let-down of the whole meal was, unfortunately, the dessert. My sweet tooth was definitely not satisfied by the red velvet and carrot layered cake that was available that night.

Visually, the cake was delicious. I was staring at the damn thing the whole night. Precise layers of red and cinnamon-laced brown layered perfectly between ribbons of cream cheese icing called to me from across the restaurant.

But my taste buds did not agree with my eyes. The cake ended up having a weird coating of crushed peanut butter cups, which I did not feel married well with the rich flavors of the cake. Also, the red velvet cake suffocated my mouth with its dry and crumbly texture. While the layers of carrot cake were tasty, the other components drowned the one good tasting element out.

I can forgive one night of bad dessert, however, with food and drinks as good as I tried that evening at 732 Social. Along with a unique atmosphere, open kitchen and friendly service, the night was fantastic.

I can definitely say that if I am ever in Louisville again, I will be back.

I think my cholesterol levels just increased...

The second day of eating in Louisville turned out to be a much more pleasing experience than my first night in the city. Although my breakfast was less than wonderful (a protein bar and a cup of coffee), things got better as the day progressed.

Considering I was in Louisville for a college journalism convention, and not just to sample the cuisine, I ended up doing quite a bit of food tasting.

I only had an hour between sessions for lunch on the second day, so I was thankful to find somewhere close to the hotel with good food. The Bluegrass Brewing Company, BBC, is a Louisville original and has three locations across the city, including one just a block away from The Galt House, where the convention was held.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to try the beer at BBC, considering it was at 1 p.m., but I'm sure that it would have been worth a tipsy afternoon. The company actually makes its own beer at the original location.

What I did have that afternoon, however, was delicious. Being in Louisville, I had to try an original local recipe, the Hot Brown. The sandwich, originally created in 1926 at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, has been a staple in the city for over sixty years.

The dish is an open-faced turkey sandwich with bacon and tomato lathered in a cheese sauce. When I asked the waiter about the dish he responded with "do you like cholesterol?". It is definitely not something I would eat regularly, but it was a delicious splurge.

I also tried a soft pretzel with BBC's homemade beer cheese. The beer cheese had a subtle flavor at first and finished with the strong taste and aroma of beer. It was awesome.

For dinner, I ate at 732 Social, another local restaurant. That meal, however, deserves its own post.