Tag Archives: food

Williamsburg – November 17th 2010

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Today flowed a lot like yesterday did. Woke up, got a continental breakfast and attended sessions. Most of the sessions were useful, one got me considering swapping out my homemade ‘clever SQL use’ for T-SQL Cursors (cue the horrified screams of SQL admins everywhere!) and we were able to enjoy a quick lunch and then have our users group meeting. Mostly we’re happy with the response we’ve gotten from Sage when we initially pitched huge fits back in Chicago, then in Denver, and finally in Atlanta during previous Sage Summit events. They listened to us and a good portion of that I believe was our particular user group writing a ‘Meeting Statement’ and sending that to Sage. By doing that and not leaving it all for the pleasantries of verbal communications they could take the things we wrote to corporate management and definitively show that the users were upset. This time around we decided to do the same document style, a written statement, but instead of being full of piss and vinegar we expressed how happy we were that they responded so well to our statements of displeasure. We also indicated some useful ideas for Sage Summit 2011 which will be held sometime in July in Washington, DC. It’s looking like I may be attending that event, but only time will tell if that’s the case.

Once the convention concluded at 3pm I figured I wasn’t going to be paying any visit to family on my trip to Virginia, which I half-expected, it’s just too much distance and too much trouble and in the end ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’. I instead helped my coworkers go through another round of shopping at the outlet malls, retail therapy doesn’t being to describe it. 🙂 I broke down and after several years of simply pocketing my ID and plastic I broke down and bought a front-pocket wallet. I didn’t even know really that they made such a thing and when I found them in a Totes outlet, even the proprietor didn’t even know they made them like that. They were in a discount rack, originally $15, marked to $9. What the hell, I figure since I saved scads of money on food and supplies last week and this week that I can certainly afford a few splurgy purchases.

Tomorrow is going to be a madhouse. Our flight leaves Richmond at 9:40am, so we have to be there by 8:40, and the people at Kingsmill said that the hour drive to get to Richmond is pretty spot on because as they said “All the Military people are travelling south in the morning, so you won’t run into traffic coming north.” So… we are planning on getting on the road by 7:30am. I’m all packed up and ready to go, all I have to do is shower and load the few toiletries into my bag and I’m ready to go. Once we get back to Kalamazoo we have to rush to the office so we can all fill out our reimbursement forms so we can be reimbursed in a timely fashion. I think right after that I’m going home, as there really isn’t any point in starting work half-way through the day.

Dinner was good tonight, we went to the Whaling Company restaurant in Williamsburg. We got a far better dinner for more competitive prices than the last place that I dinged so bad for having crappy selection and outrageous prices. Now I am sitting back, helping my one coworker polish off the beer she bought so she wouldn’t leave any behind. This is a difficult task I feel I have no choice but to accept. 😉

Tomorrow, the flight. Tonight? Sleep.

Williamsburg – November 16th 2010

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Today wasn’t as ram-tear as yesterday was. Breakfast was a continental at the resort center which was a surprise considering all the stories I’ve heard about Kingsmill, but I chock up the differences to a cost-conscious host like Sage and not because the venue just can’t get their host on.

Most of the day was spent bouncing from one room to another, learning some initially upsetting things and then as time went on realizing the inherent rightness of what I needed to do, essentially upgrade via scorched-earth policy. The best way to go from where we are with our product and where we have to go is to rip out everything, and reinstall from scratch. What was going to be an onerous task now became a sluggardly onerous task, but not insurmountable.

Lunch was quick, another continental, and the rest of the sessions went by in a blur. I caught up on my email, caught up on a huge wad of unread RSS feed material and made some headway clearing out my “favorite twitter” queue.

Dinner was shortly after that. We went to Berret’s Seafood Restaurant and Taphouse Grill on South Boundary Street in Williamsburg. The restaurant was initially quite pleasant however it was designed by the same people who assembled our ballroom office-space in Walwood Hall, it is organized like a rabbit warren, little connecting pathways between staging rooms. It’s not that I found fault with my food, it’s not that I didn’t like the restaurant either, but the menu selections were agonizingly assorted. If you wanted Shrimp you could have that, but you also got Oysters. If you wanted Tilapia, you also got Crab Cakes. The short two-page menu was rife with this sort of thing and I looked it over and frankly couldn’t find anything that I could order from the menu that I wanted to eat. Individual items, of course, but each dish was a mishmash of different seafood types and I’m not one for clams, oysters, or mussels. I ended up selecting a special, Tilapia-in-a-bag and got hosed. The dish was $26 but I got food that was really $8.99, at the most generous. The scallops that came with this dish were quarter size and nominally acceptable, but they weren’t properly washed and so I got a little sand in my diet tonight. If you are going to pump a $26 plate, wash the ingredients. In the end the meal was “very light” and that was a generous estimation from some of my dining compatriots who also had what I had. “This is it?” was what we heard up and down. I didn’t pitch a fit because it was a very high-class establishment and in the end it wasn’t my money on the line. If you are visiting Williamsburg, trust me on skipping this restaurant. I’m sure their other foods are outstanding, but if you are in any way picky about your seafood like I am, you’ll either leave hungry or upset, and poorer for it.

After dinner we decided that the night wasn’t over and some of my peers went out to get beer and wine so we could have a chat about our convention and enjoy each others company. The “party” devolved into a conference group meeting and we talked about obvious things that were on our minds, mostly about the company hosting us, Sage. Almost everything we remarked on was positive and we were all generally pleased with how Sage had compensated for their earlier problems that we chided them on in Denver, Atlanta, and our Users Group meeting in St. Olaf. Some people are apparently driven to see the two co-chairs, me and another lady, attend the Sage Summit 2011 in Washington, DC. I don’t see the reason or the justification for it since I’ve already attended here in Williamsburg, but I may have to go in order to make sure that Sage keeps in line with the wishes from our group. Only time will tell with that one.

Meanwhile, I’m contemplating going to visit family tomorrow afternoon after my last session ends, but I don’t have any method of conveyance from Williamsburg to Virginia Beach as I don’t have access to the rental vehicle that I once thought I might have had. The visit to VA Beach is still a possibility, but I haven’t the foggiest how I’m going to get there.

There are some oddities that do bear sharing. Kingsmill is a fantastic resort, but their bathrooms have been outfitted with occupancy sensors that were mounted about head-level, so when you make the slightest move, the toilet flushes and you get progressively more and more spritzed. I discovered that I could fix this … annoying problem by wrapping the occupancy sensor in toilet paper until I was good and ready for it to figure out that it was time to flush. I also noticed that in high traffic areas Kingsmill spares no expense and lays out cloth napkins to dry your hands after using the lavatory. In lesser used areas? Just paper towels. It’s not a problem, but it is kind of funny to see cleverness all the way down to how patrons dry their hands. The only other irking thing has nothing to do with the resort itself, but the obvious and annoying lack of any cellular signal whatsoever. I suppose if you are visiting for the spa, or the golf, or the grounds you don’t care so much about cellular technology. For me it would be a problem, if it weren’t for free Wifi and Google Voice.

Tomorrow is another day, up at 7ish, some more conference sessions and then? We’ll have to see…

Wii’ll Fit

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Ever since I returned from visiting my folks in South Carolina I’ve been using my Wii much more, and my Wii Fit program with the balance board. For the past 14 days I’ve been following a rather extensive exercise regimen:

  • Yoga: Deep Breathing, Half-Moon, Warrior, Sun Salutation, Standing Knee, Palm Tree, and Chair.
  • Strength Training: Single Leg Extension, Sideways Leg Lift, Torso Twists, Rowing Squat, Single Leg Twist, Lunge, and Jackknife.
  • Aerobics: Hula Hoop, Basic Step, Basic Run, Free Run
  • Balance: Soccer Heading, Penguin Slide, and Balance Bubble.

Mostly I’ve trimmed this list to most of the Yoga, and Strength Training as I do my workouts at 6:30am and they last me about 45 minutes until 7:30 or so when I get dressed and head to work.

There have been some noticeable changes in my body while using these programs on the Wii Fit. My overall balance has greatly improved. I no longer find myself toppling over when I’m on one foot to put on my socks, I don’t fumble about when I’m trying to put on shoes and I feel more centered in general. My general workout is to do the most pleasant Yoga poses in the morning as a warm-up, then run through the Strength Training series at least once, and then double-up on Torso Twists, Jackknives, and Rowing Squats. My goal is to lose weight and tone my abdominals and lose my love handles.

All the Wii Fit in the world will just make me sweat and feel good that I’m getting my 30-minutes-a-day exercise in that everyone says will keep me healthy. In order to really see some progress and to lose weight and BMI, I have to eat less and eat better. The quality of my food really can’t get much higher, I’m cooking 99% of the food I eat and I’m sourcing damn near everything from basic raw foods, removing processed foods where I can and such. That brings me to eating less. There are some very handy strategies I already know in order to achieve this goal, such as drinking 500ml of filtered water right before a meal, stuffing myself with green vegetation, and eating the ‘main course’ in a normal bowl or small plate.

This is way more important now that autumn has arrived, the change in the seasons brings on overeating, eating sweet and or fatty foods, and generally plumping up over the colder months to come. I’m planning on hitting the Wii Fit every day and eating smart in a bid to prevent my personal plumping, which almost always coincides with our Halloween Event, Thanksgiving, and all the eat-and-sleep that is coming.

My goal is to reach 200 pounds. I don’t know how long it will take me to get there, but I do know that’s where I want and need to be in order to avoid the traps coming for me down the road, such as prostate cancer, hypertension, and diabetes.

SmashBurger Kalamazoo – A Return

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Last Friday my friends Justin and Jeramiah asked to try SmashBurger Kalamazoo. For them it was the first time, for Scott and I it was our return. I promised that I would give SmashBurger Kalamazoo another shot around September 11th, 2010. I was a little late in getting back to the restaurant to give it another try. This was tounge-in-cheek because a beloved family member of mine sent my blog entry to the restaurant management company and they responded quickly, urging us to return and give SmashBurger Kalamazoo another shot.

Upon our return we dwelled for a brief few moments in the foyer to the entrance while our friends regarded the menu items. After we all made up our minds, we walked into the restaurant. The order process was acceptable, the person behind the counter was stumbling and trying to cope with our order but got it in successfully. In comparison to our previous visit there were some notable changes:

  • Fountain Service was at 100%
  • Restaurant was not absolutely packed.
  • Manager was not bounding like a billiard ball.
  • Servers were not wandering aimlessly asking everyone what they ordered, the numbering system is working.
  • The hamburgers were rested properly and did not fragment or run with juice.

That being said, quite an improvement. However there were some lingering problems and one I did not detect until this last visit. We were dining with my dear friend Jeramiah, who I trust completely when it comes to food preparation. He detected it before I did, and that is that the French Fries had a different taste to them. They were fried, but they carried an odd flat/dull taste along with them. Jeramiah told us that what we tasted was what happens when you deep fat fry french fries in shortening instead of a true plant oil, like Peanut. It wasn’t unpleasant, just different.

In the end we couldn’t detect any failures in SmashBurger itself on our visit, our only point of surprise was the price, again. For Scott and myself it came to $18.57. For Jeramiah and Justin it came to $21.52. I polled the table and posed the same question to them that I did the last time: Comparing SmashBurger Kalamazoo to Culvers Kalamazoo, which one would you choose and why? The answer was unanimously for Culvers, and the reasons were “better food” and “cheaper prices”. The prices for what we got were really remarkably upsetting, still.

Of course, for due diligence I must also state that Jeramiah became extremely ill the next day and had to miss work because he was very ill. The illness was most likely foodborne as it affected his digestion. I can’t pin anything on SmashBurger as none of the other of us got sick, but my trust in a restaurant is savaged when I or someone I know gets sick from eating at a place. Once bitten, never again.

That being said, we are done with SmashBurger Kalamazoo. We will never return to this restaurant and we won’t include it when we are thinking about places to go when we are hungry. The food is not very compelling for the price and the prices themselves are too high.

Entertainingly, the people who own and run SmashBurger Kalamazoo also run at least two other “Food Traps”, FireBowl Cafe and Wine Loft. While I haven’t been to FireBowl Cafe and wouldn’t comment on the quality or price, I did attend Wine Loft’s inaugural opening and I have not been back since. The food quality follows the design that we see in SmashBurger Kalamazoo, meh food for unacceptably high prices. Seeing that two out of the three properties this holding firm own are off-limits, it makes it a handy guide to figure out whatever else they own and avoid that out-of-hand. We can simply assume it’s not very good for too much money, and instead patronize other establishments that are better and worthy.

French Cooking

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Last night I got home and was faced with a quandary, what to make for dinner. The classic response to this is a battle royale where we struggle to figure out what the other person wants to eat, we compare what we have in the pantry and fridge and if we’re very lucky we can make something that if it isn’t what anyone really wanted, does at least dispel hunger for a while longer.

Last night I arrived home and looked in the freezer. I had previously used my FoodSaver system to secure/freeze a giant blister pack of chicken breasts, two at a time per bag and they were mocking me in the freezer. “Oh whatever will you do with us!? Try as you might, it’ll be either minimally acceptable or barely edible!” and it struck me that I had a copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, AKA, THE GREAT BOOK. (The Holy Bible is the Good Book, whereas the MAFC is THE GREAT BOOK. Accept that cookbooks > bibles and you’ll go far in understanding me!) So I grabbed the blessed tome of tasty and looked through the table of contents. Ever since becoming acceptably proficient in making Boeuf Bourguignon I’ve been itching to try more from THE GREAT BOOK. I discovered that what I had was 4 frozen “Supremes”, or so the French call them, and there was an entire section devoted to them in the MAFC. I opened the first recipe “Supremes De Volaille A Blanc” and looked over the plan. I had nearly every ingredient on hand. On the sheer thrill of trying something from the MAFC I thought about a side-dish that I could make and remembered that two days ago I had watched an episode of French Cooking (yes, the B&W one, Julia herself, soldiering on, and yes, on our HDTV) where she featured potatoes as the theme. She had prepared Gratin Dauphinois and watching her became a clip-meme that was bounding around in my head since I saw it. I decided that I would look it up, found it, again had a good number of the ingredients already on-hand and that became side #1. As I pondered over the MAFC it struck me that I had a main course, a side-dish featuring potatoes, but no vegetable! (I don’t regard potato as a vegetable, I regard it rightly, as a pillar of cuisine, I’m Irish, deal with it.) I then scanned the MAFC and briefly chuckled at my hubris, that I would take on not one but three untried recipes singlehandedly. For the vegetable side I selected Carottes A La Concierge. I marked the three recipes using slips of paper (I need a set of five bookmarks to just keep in THE GREAT BOOK itself I think) and had a list of things I needed to get at the market. I was able to acquire the ingredients for this hubristic cavalcade for just under $20, which was just about all I had left in my food budget.

Once I returned from the market with my supplies I got down to thinking about something I need more experience in, which is kitchen timing. Which dish do you start with? How do you manage mise-en-place with hot components, and how can you work three MAFC recipes with a kitchen as woefully tiny as mine? I enlisted a friend in vegetation disassembly but once I had everything I was pretty much on my own. Let it be clear, I was on my own by design, many offered to help but working with the MAFC is a one-man-one-book-one-sharp-knife deal. I started the Dauphinois first, since it needed to bake for at least half an hour in a blazing box at 400 degrees. I then got the ‘Carottes’ dish off the ground and started both it’s primary section and it’s attendant sauce and finally worked on the Supremes, and their attendant sauce.

The first thing that occurred to me as I promptly botched the prep for the Dauphinois was that Julia’s two pounds of potatoes is kind of a winking joke. There was no way that two pounds of potatoes were going to actually come together properly, it’s actually about 1 pound 12 ounces that you need. Julia’s estimations aren’t wrong, for her tools they were probably just right, but for me and mine, yikes. I was able to salvage the botched prep on the Dauphinois and then the first durable lesson popped out at me, that dogmatically following these recipes would be an utter disaster. If you want to cook French properly, you have to follow Julia’s suggestions on her video programs and cook by the seat of your pants, the recipe as a rough guide, not a scaffolding or a plug-and-play situation as I originally approached them as. Along with the potato oddity the instruction that a supreme should be able to cook to done in a 400 degree oven in 6 minutes from raw was dangerously off. I was really concerned about this because the 6 minutes passed and my probe thermometer showed an internal temperature of 108 degrees for the Supremes. I sat there thinking about why I read “6 minutes, maybe a moment more” when my common sense is screaming “try 14 ya dumbass! Yer gonna kill someone with raw chicken!” and then it struck me like a ton of bricks. Julia Child, and the MAFC was written when Supremes were of a certain size. Yes kids, we have witnessed a definite manipulation of CHICKEN. My Supremes were 3 times bigger than Julia’s! Each! So armed with my probe thermometer I let the Supremes go for nearly 17 minutes, checking every few minutes until they got to 150. I knew they would coast all the way to done at 160 and I knew that they were rendered “safe” at 140.

As the Supremes coasted and rested I was able to turn my attention to the sauces. Once I got them whipped into shape I pulled out the Dauphinois and looked down and into the casserole dish I had prepped them in. I couldn’t face them if they were as I feared, goopy and overdone or raw vegetal nasty underdone. I was absolutely convinced that the Dauphinois was an utter loss. I reached in, grabbed them, and pulled them out. As I set it down on the counter I peered in, steeling myself for the absolute worst. Well, as it turns out, they came out perfectly. They were not goopy, nor were they underdone. I reflected on the Dauphinois, it wasn’t difficult to throw together and the recipe is deliriously (and thankfully) resistant to botching, even if you utterly botch the prep! With one success under my belt for the night I covered the Dauphinois and got back to everything else. I added the egg/cream thickener to the ‘Carottes’ and what was a dingy speckled thin mess became a mustard colored dingy speckled thin mess. I let it simmer for a long while and in the end I figured this would be my failure. I poured the sauce onto the ‘Carottes’ and covered it all up and let it rest.

All in all I was facing plating and presentation, the Dauphinois was a great surprise, and I could handle the failure of the ‘Carottes’ if the Supremes worked. As everyone congregated I uncovered the Supremes and started to plate them each out, 1 Supreme per person. I got out the forks and I showed off all that I had done. The sauces sensed my foreboding and thickened magically and when I uncovered the ‘Carottes’ dish, they were PERFECT. Everyone dug in and in the end I had a lot of clean plates and very happy diners.

I must admit that I did not suffer for my hubris, and now I have experience in these particular dishes I now feel more at home in the MAFC than ever. I find myself itching to try other recipes in the MAFC, and a part of me would love to whip up something for my folks in Rock Hill when we go on vacation.

Which brings me to another thing I’ve discovered. There is a kind of magic in cooking. It’s a feeling I haven’t felt since my early years at SUNY Buffalo. Watching the loom of the kitchen work, all the ingredients coming together, the amazement at the complexity of some of these dishes and the utter surprise when they are successes feels a lot like hacking away, writing code in whatever programming language, and creating something. That I think is the same rush that painters feel when their work is done, when a sculptor chips the last bit of marble off, when a thing is created, new, and it was all your doing that made it happen. I also firmly believe that the loom of the kitchen cannot operate properly unless emotions are also present in the room, and all of them too, hope, compassion, love, rage, will, avarice, and fear. It’s why I could never cook like this on a timer, for money, I could never be a professional chef. I care too much, I think. It’s also a kind of therapy I think, definitely a giant batch of crack for a Cancer such as myself to cook this way. There is something utterly delightful and perfectly wonderful in creating truly amazing dishes. The MAFC may be a doorway for me to find my Art.

Only time will tell.

Casa Bolero – Mexican Tapas

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Casa Bolero in Kalamazoo MI is a quaint cozy restaurant serving tapas style food. Having to wait for our tables was the only annoyance, but understandable.

The food is delivered on small plates and I had chicken falutas and chicken enchiladas. The flavors are clear and bright and presentation is top-notch. The price per plate ranges from 6 to 11 dollars. It is a very good value for the money for upscale downtown dining. I give it a 8/10.

The sharing of plates is a delight and this restaurant delivers. The staff is bright and conscientious and the interior is very pleasant.

The desserts, flan and key lime tort are toe-curlingly delightful.

There are only two issues I can see, the first is that the tortilla chips aren’t very good, but they are consistently bad which makes me think that they are meant to be this way and i’m off. The second problem was that one of the bench seats was besmirched by some stray BBQ sauce. It should have been bussed properly before we sat down. These are the only problems, and they aren’t anywhere important enough to truly complain over, so they only get a 2 point ding on their score.

SmashBurger – Kalamazoo, MI

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Today, on August 11th, 2010 a new burger joint called SmashBurger opened on West Main Road in Kalamazoo, MI. Scott, Craig, and I decided to try them out for dinner, along with a fair amount of the rest of Kalamazoo, they were very very busy.

I had a Classic SmashBurger, Scott put together one of his own featuring sauteed mushrooms and onions and Craig had a Michigan Olive Burger. For sides, Scott had the classic french fries, and I had deep-fried Dill pickles.

We walked into a clean and orderly restaurant with a very compact and on-first-glance well designed approach and order area, we ordered our food, the total for Scott and my meal came to just under $20. Craig’s came out to just about $10. After we ordered we were given a number flag that went with our order and wandered away. The first failure hit then, we weren’t given cups that went along with our order and had to ask for them, this isn’t anything out of the ordinary as we have to do that for a few restaurants in the area. Once we had our cups, that’s when we ran into our first problem. The fountain service is to the far left and it is not at all obvious where the lids are kept. I walked up to the fountain depot and already the Low Ice alarm light was blinking. I put my 16oz cup under the Coke Zero spigot and tried it, the Coke Zero sprayed horizontally and covered my hand with mix and a big carbonated squeal. Only when I looked much closer did I discover that there was an “Out Of Order” label that was printed using black ink on a clear plastic label and attached to a dark piece of plastic just under the Coke Zero display. I got slightly vexed and switched to Diet Coke instead, which was just as well. With my hands covered in Coke Zero mix and what amounted to fizzy club soda I walked back to the bathrooms. What I expected was a standard restaurant bathroom setup, Men/Women, big enough for multiple users at once. SmashBurger’s bathrooms were single use rooms and there was a line of 4 men doing the pee-pee dance, I didn’t need to wash my hands THAT badly. As I walked to the bathrooms I was amazed at how much space was wasted in the long hallways to the bathroom area, whoever designed the layout to that restaurant did them a disservice.

Once I returned to the table we waited for our meals to be walked out to us. It quickly struck us that nobody was really paying any attention to the number-flag system for the orders and they were wandering around asking people what they ordered and seeing if it matched what they were carrying. Scott and I got our food first, then after a few minutes Craig got his order. I immediately had a problem with what I saw in my order, The Burger I ordered was delivered open-faced and the patty/cheese combo was wedged underneath the tureen that held my side-dish. When I moved the tureen I saw that some of the cheese was stuck to it and came away from the burger. So right from the start my food was smushed up against the outside of another serving dish and I had to fight down a little bit of irritation, it didn’t *have* to be that way. On to the burger itself, it had it’s own problems. The SmashBurger Burger that I received was assembled hastily and the burger began to immediately fragment as I started to manipulate it on the serving dish it came on, trying to pick it up. As I started to eat I noticed not a dripping of meat juices but a veritable raining / deluge of juices running out. SmashBurger cheats. They sear and sling, the meat doesn’t have time to dry out since it’s delivered in a heartbeat right off the grill. As I ate, I had to lean very far forward so the gushing juices could land in the serving dish and not against my shirt or in my lap. As I ate, the meat slid to one side and the vegetation slid to the other side. This was because the burger was sent out of the kitchen open-faced. The meat didn’t have time to melt the cheese and help the vegetation stay in place. As I ate it was mostly the hamburger first, and then at the end a bread-covered salad. Once I was done speed-eating the burger (since it was gushing juices so very much) I reorganized my dishes and tried the fried pickles.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a salt hound. I love salt, I can’t get enough of salt and I always season everything to my liking and it’s always proper. Even I, as a salt hound, found the fried pickles to be shockingly salty. The taste was SSSAAALLLTTT pickle dill.

After I finished my meal and my drink I got to thinking about how everything was organized in this restaurant. There are no “Meals” or “Baskets”, everything is a-la-carte, you get a dollar discount on the sides if you order a sandwich, but that’s it. I started polling the table for opinions and Scott was very displeased and Craig was shrugging along with the rest of us. What we got wasn’t $20 worth of food, at most it was $12 worth of food. SmashBurger is in direct competition with Culvers, and from what we saw tonight SmashBurger will not be able to compete with Culvers. I posed a question to the table, “If you had a half-tank of gas, as we do now, and you were driving from downtown, would you stop here and have dinner or would you drive on another 5 minutes and go down 9th Street to the Culvers by the I-94 interchange?” Everyone was in agreement that Culvers would be the preferred destination by far.

Earlier today we stopped at Culvers for lunch and I had a vastly superior burger and fries, Scott got a burger and chili-cheese fries and the total was $15.03 for the entire meal, with fountain drinks. Culvers superiority coupled with it’s relative inexpensiveness in comparison with SmashBurger is really damning.

On our way out of the restaurant we were effectively trapped and prevented in our leaving by a SmashBurger employee who took it upon themselves to begin spraying the glass door with Windex and wiping it down. There is only one door, and there we stood for about 30 seconds while we waited for the SmashBurger employee to conclude their needless glass cleaning task. It stunned me, that they elect to have someone wiping down the glass doors during the massively busy dinner crowd, just getting in the way, preventing people from entering or leaving. Since this was the ONLY DOOR in or out I did feel a slight shine of irritation that I couldn’t exit until they were done doing a needless task.

The manager of the establishment was wandering around like a lost puppy bumping into customers and tables, during the mad dinner press he was bounding from table to table, getting in the way. He asked how everything was and Scott and Craig were fine, I was busy chewing. By the time I was done he had bounded off to another table. What I had to say wouldn’t have made him feel very good anyways, so I kept my peace.

SmashBurger enjoyed an insanely busy opening day, the honeymoon period in it’s prime. After our experience we decided that we would give SmashBurger one more shot, and we’ll do so on September 11th, 2010 – one calendar month from now. Scott mentioned “If they are still open by then…”

Then once we were in the car, I asked everyone for their ranking scale and the score they gave SmashBurger Kalamazoo. Scott gave them 2/5. Craig gave them 2.5/5. My score is 1/5.

One thing that struck me was, SmashBurger’s grand opening could have been far more successful if they had tried a soft open a week earlier with invited guests. “Please come to our new Restaurant and have a meal on us, critical feedback is greatly appreciated” and that would have caught the lid problem, the label problem, and most likely the salt problem.

I don’t see SmashBurger being very successful, I see the competition walking away with their money. There are so many other better places to eat lunch or dinner with similar themes. Culvers, Red Robin, and even Sonic are better than SmashBurger. I can agree with Scott, if they are around in a month, I’ll be surprised.

Best Bread Ever!

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This recipe takes two days and creates a handy loaf of homemade bread, unit price per loaf is less than 50 Cents, 1 loaf can be a meal.

Ingredients –

  • 3C Water at 100°F
  • 2 Packets of regular Yeast
  • 6.5C of AP Flour
  • 2 tbsp Salt

Procedure – Wake up Yeast in 100° Water for 2-4 minutes. Stir vigorously to get them all distributed evenly. Put salt and flour in mixing bowl, mix them up. Pour water and yeast into mixing bowl and mix until the entire mass is turned into dough and there is no loose flour on the walls of the mixing bowl. If you have a stand mixer, dough hook attachment, 10 seconds for dry mix on 4, then likely 2-5 minutes on 4 to get the dough to form while pouring in the water and yeast. When the dough is completely formed, scoop out and put in a soup pot or plastic bin big enough to handle 4x it’s starting volume. Place pot or bin on countertop and cover. Leave it for 2 hours, then put it in the fridge overnight. Next morning take out the bin or pot, with a serrated knife hack it into 4-5 equal pieces. Prepare a work surface, put down some more flour, grab a hunk of dough and knead it into a ball, you want a taut drumhead surface and a bunched up bottom. Lube up cookie sheet, put bread on cookie sheet spaced an inch or more apart from each other. Melt half stick of butter, brush onto bread loaves. Fill oven-safe bowl with water, heat oven to 350°F. When oven is at 350°F, put bowl of water at the bottom rack, then bread on next highest rack. Bake for 40 minutes. Bread will be fragrant about 30 minutes in and will be an early warning that you are getting close. Pull at 40 minutes, bread should have a thump-able crust.

You can multiply this recipe as much as you like, either for your arm+mixing spoon or the size of your mixer. Recommend that if you want to multiply, mix in batches and set in batches. The dough is viable for 2 weeks in the refrigerator, the longer it goes the more complicated the flavors get as the yeast complete their life-cycle. You can dole out whatever shape bread you want, I prefer the 5 loaf approach because they are handy and makes enough for 4 people + 1 bakers loaf. You could incorporate mixins if you wanted or cover in cheeses or augment the butter or switch fats and go with olive or peanut oil to brush-on or you could skip the fats altogether. Up to you. One important thing to note, this bread requires absolutely NO KNEADING. Bread needs gluten to form properly, gluten can either be kneaded in or ‘waited for’. I elect to wait for gluten to form, makes for a much moister interior and a more satisfying texture.

This recipe is from the “Artisan Bread” recipe available on splendidtable.org. I heard it on the program, made it once, fell in love. Everyone should listen to The Splendid Table! With these loaves made, you can have a loaf or two a day and if you are trying to eat without chemicals and to do so incredibly cheaply, you cannot go wrong. I imagine that if you hollowed out these loaves and put in a thick soup, you’d be able to make bread-bowl-soup, quite delicious, for pennies on the dollar for what you’d pay at Panera, for example.

With good clean water, you know EXACTLY what you are eating. No preservatives, no chemicals, nothing but yeast, water, salt and flour. If you want to use different flours, feel free. Don’t know what happens if you use something that isn’t as balanced as AP Flour. Bread Flour might make a really rough-and-tumble loaf, pastry flour would probably just puddle or flop about. If you attempted to use a different starch, like arrowroot or rice flour, I have no idea what might happen, no gluten, no structure *shrug*