Favorites of Houston

Everytime someone comes to visit, or we want to go out to eat, we always have to sit and think....WHERE should we go?? I still have a list of restaurants I want to try, but here are some of my favorites in H town.....


Some favorite seafood/steakhouse places are....

Trulucks
America's

I was not impressed by The Oceanaire or Smith and Wollensky.

Taste of Texas is pretty good too.

Still want to try Strip House, Reef Restaurant, Pesce, and Glass Wall restaurant.


Favorite mexican places are....



El Tiempo - drinks are very strong
Lupe's

Not a huge fan of Chuy's like everyone else.

Guadalajara is good too, but not my favorite. I like the seafood enchilada at Cafe Adobe.


Sushi


Favorite so far is Azuma on Kirby near Rice Village. Their is also a location downtown. They have the best crunchy roll. The red devil and crazy irish man roll are also very good.

Oishii has decent sushi for a good price.

Sushi King is decent as well.


Brunch


Mia Bella on Lexington is good.
Empire Cafe on Westheimer is really good. I love the tomato mozarella egg dish that they have.

I have been to Benjy's for dinner and it was good so I would like to try their brunch. Farrago's is good too! I hear King Biscuit on White Oak is good too!



Pizza

Favorite is Star Pizza on Norfolk. Half Starburst half Ben's pizza thin crust. DO NOT TRY THE DEEP PAN. It's not good. Their version of thin crust is perfect, not too thin.

I love California Pizza Kitchen. The chipotle pizza is the best!! The chicken lettuce wraps are good too!

I want to try Kenneally's pizza, located on Shepherd. I hear its good.


Asian


If you like PF Chang's - go for Pei Wei the much cheaper version. It tastes just as good!

That's all for now.....

Beautiful Bride

Well the wedding weekend is finally over!! I am absolutely exhausted!!! I haven't stopped since I got to Lafayette on Tuesday.

Tuesday- I stayed at Michal's house till 2 AM talking with her and her mom
Wednesday night- we had a girls dinner at Lafonda
Thursday- we went to the Tap room in River Ranch with some of the bridal party
Friday- Bridesmaid luncheon at 10:00, rehearsal at 6:00, dinner at 7:00 at Cafe Vermillionville
Saturday- was up by 7 unfortunately, went to Michal's around 11 and helped with hair and makeup, had my own hair appointment at 1:00, then got ready to be at Oakbourne by 4. The limo brought us to the church, got ready for the wedding at 6:00.

The wedding was beautiful and so was the bride. Unfortunately, it was pouring and the streets were flooding. We started the wedding about 10 minutes late so that people that were late due to flooding could get there. The ceremony was short and sweet.

When the wedding was over, we received word that Oakbourne did not have electricity. We had the trolley drive us around extra time while we waited for the power to come back on. Unfortunately, that never ever happened. I am sure you can imagine the emotions going on as Michal found out that her dream reception was not happening as planned. She handled it much better than most brides would. Some food was eaten, many drinks were drank while we waited patiently for the electricity.

Around 9:00, the wedding planner announced that we were moving the party to the Crowne Plaza, the old Hotel Acadiana building. So we cut the cakes at Oakbourne for fear of what might happen while transferring them. We made it over to the Crowne Plaza and had a blast the rest of the evening. It was soo much fun and by that time, all the emotions were gone and everyone was having the best time of their lives! It was definitely a night that will never be forgotten by many.

More details and pictures to come later!

Day 4 of Cancun

Sunday July 5, 2009

The boys went to play golf and the girls went to the spa! Wes is feeling much better, I am not. But I am hoping all goes well at the spa during that hour!


We had a nice 50 minute holistic massage while the boys played golf. Sasha and I headed to the pool around 10:30 and stayed there, ate lunch and then met up with the boys around 2 or shortly after.

Wes and I went to kayak in the ocean and ride wave runners. We had fun doing that. Wes wanted to throw me off, but I didn't want to be shark bait.

After doing that, we went to get ready to go to Margaritaville in the hotel zone area. We had tons of fun at Margaritaville (well they did since I was still sick). They made balloon hats for us. Sasha and I had to get on stage and dance! It turned into 1 big party by 11 PM. There were 40 year olds dancing all over the place.




We stayed there till after 11 and unfortunately, due to me being sick, we had to leave. I wish we could have stayed, but it was not happening! For sake of humiliating myself, I wont go into detail.

Wes and I have plans to try the island tour tomorrow!

Day 3 of Cancun

Saturday, July 4

It's 5AM, and unfortunately we are awake. Wes has food poisoning........

So its looking like we may not make it on our island tour, but we still have hope.....

Since I was awake anyway, I decided to take some sunrise pictures....



So around 6:40, we go down to the lobby, still hoping to make it to the island, but shortly realize that it's not going to happen. So we send Sasha and George on their way and we return to our room. It is early, so I try to go back to bed unsuccessfully. Eventually, I leave Wes and head to the pool. He is still miserable.

Around noon, I go to check on him. He seems to be better. He doesn't feel great, but the side affects of food poisoning have stopped. He comes with me to the pool.

Around 2:00, we head to Sun Palace, another resort owned by palace resorts. Included in our package, we could go to any of the palace resorts and drink/eat, etc for free. The beaches were amazing and so were the chairs on the beach! It felt like laying in a feather bed......

We swam in the ocean, got in many of their pools over looking the ocean.

Unfortunately, at this time, I began to feel sick. It was not fun. Frequent trips to the facilities.
We made it back to our resort around 6:30 and spent the rest of the evening in our room, ordered room service. Around 9:30, we ventured out to the gift shop to look for medicine, but there was none. So back to the room it was, to remain still in bed because that is the only thing that kept me away from the facilities.

Thankfully, I was able to sleep from about 10 until 4:30 peacefully that night............

Day 2 of Cancun

We woke up to room service breakfast and lots of it!! I miss room service!!
Picture this but times 4!!

We put our bathing suits on and headed to get some much needed sun! Here is a picture of us about to go to the pool......


We hung out at the pool for a couple of hours and then went inside to eat lunch. We had been waiting on our friends to get there because they missed their flight on Thursday. So they had to take the first flight on Friday morning. They happened to be arriving as we were walking into the lobby.

We ate lunch and headed to the pool......
After spending several hours at the pool, we went and got ready for dinner. We went to a steakhouse on the Sunrise side of Moon Palace. We also went to this bar that has swings all around it.....


We went to bed early because we had big plans to go to Isla Mujeres at 7AM the next day. The tour included a boat ride around the island, bringing us out to see lots of fish and then to see some dolphins up close and then going to the prettiest spot in Cancun (where the Corona commercials are filmed) and let us swim awhile and then a shopping tour for an hour......... That was supposed to all take place the next day............To be continued................

Day 1 of our Mexico vacation

July 2, 2009
Flight at 11:50 AM, no delays everything going great! The flight was about 1 hour and 45 minutes to the Cancun airport. We arrived in Cancun, got through immigration without any problems. We then had to get our bags and proceed to customs, which had an enormous amount of people, I am talking hundreds of people in about 4 lines. However, we got through it and proceeded outside to find our shuttle to Moon Palace.

Our resort was about 15 minutes from the airport which was very nice. We arrived to the resort and were taken to our fabulous room.



The room was great. We had a liquor dispenser in our room (which we ended up using 1 time), we had a nice walk in shower, the view from our room was pretty good. The service at the hotel was fabulous. However, we were EXTREMELY disappointed in the beach/ocean.....


This was what the beach looked like when we first got there. It's even worse than what the pictures look like. You had to walk over 1 yard of seaweed to get to the water. Then once your feet touched the water, all you saw was brown seaweed. If you stepped in the water, your foot would be covered. So we never once got in the water at Moon Palace.

So we put our bathing suits on and headed to the pool(s), which were pretty amazing.




one of pool bars.....

We stayed at the pool for a few hours, mostly at the pool bar area.

We had dinner that night at a Brazilian steakhouse located at the resort. It was pretty good, not great, but not bad. They had 7 different cuts of meat and walked around letting you try each one.

They had karaoke for entertainment that night. We watched a few songs, but it wasnt entertaining. It was too early and people were trying too hard to be good. I'm sure it got better later into the night.

So I was tired, went to bed early, ready to get up for lots of sun the next day!

More to come about Day 2 later..........

Chicken Cheesy Spaghetti

So I found Pioneer Woman's blog recently and fell head over heels in love. I have literally spent hours reading her recipes, her photography tips, etc. So I decided to try 1 of her recipes, I am sure the first of many. I started with her chicken spaghetti recipe.

I started with my ingredients: a cut up fryer (except i had a whole fryer that I had to cut up), thin spaghetti, 1 onion, 1 bell pepper, 1 4 oz. jar of pimentos, 3 cups of sharp cheddar cheese, 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup, red pepper, black pepper, Lawry's seasoned salt.


Then I cleaned my chicken, got a big pot, filled it with water and let the water boil. I put the chicken in the pot for about 30-45 minutes.

Here is my chicken boiling. I let it boil for a couple of minutes and turned it down to low.

I cut up my onion, bell pepper, and drained my pimentos and put them aside.

I broke the spaghetti into 2 inch pieces and used about 3 cups.

When the chicken was done, I took about 2 cups, maybe a little more broth from the pot to save for later.

I took the chicken out and set on a plate to cool. I turned the heat on the stove up to high to boil the leftover broth for the noodles.

Once the broth was boiling, I poured the noodles into the pot.

I tore apart the chicken so it is somewhat shredded into bite size pieces. I let the noodles cook for about 4 or so minutes. I drained them and poured them into a large mixing bowl. Then I became an idiot and stuck my hand in the noodles to see if they were cool. They werent. So then I had to race to the sink and put cold water on my hand.

Now my hand is better so I put all of the ingredients into this bowl picture above and mixed them with a spoon. I then put 2 cups of cheese into the bowl and stirred it all together again.


I poured the finished product into this foil pan and sprinkled 3/4 cup of cheese on top.

I put some of the spaghetti mixture into this foil pan to go into the freezer for another day at another time, maybe when my hand is not still burning. I sprinkled 1/4 cup of cheese on top of this one.

I put the small one in the freezer. I plan to bake the bigger one tonight for dinner. 350 degrees for about 40 minutes. I plan to serve a side salad and some garlic bread. I will let you know how it tastes. For a more detailed recipe as well as one that can be printed out, feel free to browse pioneer woman's blog.