A Week in Atlanta for Work...and Food!

I had to train for my work in Atlanta. We stayed at one of the embassy suites hotel. I love embassy suites, but I took my mom with me and each day we would venture out and find some good eats!

One place we went to was the Cheesecake factory. If anyone has been there they know that it has every type of food imaginable on their menu. The menu is literally 20 pages, with everything from Chinese, Italian, Mexican, up-class food and of course 60+ different kinds of cheesecake.

I wish I would have taken a picture of my piece of cheesecake. I had the chocolate-raspberry cheesecake.
It had five layers of delicious!

The bottom was a chocolate crumb crust, then on to a chocolate cheesecake layer, then a chocolate-raspberry cheesecake layer, then a chocolate ganache layer, then finally topped off with a chocolate icing.


Another place my mom and I went was Joey D's Oak Room. It was within walking distance of the hotel.

This place was kind of expensive, but boy was it worth it.

The first course was oyster shooters. These were fresh cold raw oysters in shot classes, covered in a slight spicy vodka water and spicy cocktail sauce on top. I would take an oyster with cocktail sauce and a squeeze of lemon, place it on a cracker and gulp it down. Fantastic!

My mom had a very large filet mignon with creamed spinach on the side. The spinach was a little heavy on the nutmeg, but her steak was cooked perfect.

From where we were sitting we could see the filet cooking in the large rotating oven. Couple passes in the oven and it was a excellent medium.

As for me, I had a mushroom and shrimp pasta, with a light wine sauce. It was very good. I could only eat half, but that was the best next day lunch. I am not a drinker, but I love the taste of cooked wine; it permeated the pasta and really sent this dish over the top. The mushrooms also absorbed the flavor so they just popped in your mouth with juicy flavor.

All in all, this training trip for work turned into a food extravaganza. I really had a wonderful time enjoying the sites, smells, and food of the little area of Atlanta we stayed in that week.

Hopefully I will need more training soon!

Christmas Dinner 2007

This was our Christmas dinner for 2007. Our tradition is to be non-traditional, so we never have turkey. By the time Christmas rolls around we are turkey'd out.

This year we had Christmas Crab. Kroger had a special on Alaskan king crab. Each leg you see in the picture is a pound of crab. We each got one leg a piece. Above is my mom's plate, and we used kitchen shears to crack open the leg meat, which you see in one huge piece in the top right photo.

We also grilled large shrimp and scallops, and I made garlic spinach.

Crab Legs:

Ingredients:
4 Alaskan king crab legs
1 bag of crab boil
Large pot full of water

How we prepared it:
To prepare the crab legs we got a huge pot of water to almost boiling, and then we threw in the crab boil bag, which you can find around the fish section of any grocery store. Once the water was colored with the crab boil we put the crab legs in. They were in the water at least 20 minutes, at least 5 or more of those minutes were spent at a rolling boil. The legs come out bright red, and if you look at the knuckle meat you can tell if it is done.

Garlic spinach:

Ingredients:
2 bags of spinach
4 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon (one big pinch) of crushed red pepper flakes
2-3 tablespoons of light or extra virgin olive oil

How we prepared it:
The garlic spinach was easy to prepare. In a large skillet with deep sides you pour light or extra virgin olive oil two times around the pan. We chopped the garlic and threw that in the oil over medium high heat. We then added the crushed red pepper flakes. We let those flavors meld until the garlic start to turn a little brown, and then we added 1 bag of the washed and dried spinach.
Cover the skillet with a lid and let it wilt some, then with tongs just start tossing the spinach in the garlic oil until everything is coated; this helps the spinach wilt.
When that spinach is wilted add the other bag of spinach and do the same until all the spinach is wilted.
If there is any access water at the bottom of the skillet I usually pour the spinach into a colander to drain it off; nothing worse than watery spinach.

Shrimp and Scallops:

Ingredients:
4 large shrimp
4 large scallops
Lemon juice
Old bay seasoning

How we prepared it:
Cut the large scallops in half.
Squeeze lemon juice over all the seafood and then sprinkle on the old bay seasoning.
Flip and sprinkle some more seasoning.
Then grill the seafood until shrimp is pink and scallops are firm.

That was our Christmas dinner. We also had some baked potatoes and garlic bread, although I don't really remember eating too much of that. Hope you try this seafood feast with your family.