Tag: restaurants

Book Club at Mekong Thai

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, friends, quest for the best, restaurants

This month’s meeting was at Mekong Thai in Wells. The six of us met there at 6pm and were given a nice table by the windows, which they opened to give us some fresh air (a 65 degree evening in Maine in late October? Booyah!).

Susan is a quick study!

The wait staff was lovely, solicitous, and helpful. Lemon for your water? Sure! Another piece of lemon? No problem! A straw? Okay, at this point even I was getting annoyed with me, but not the waitress…she cheerfully went back to get me another straw.
And not only did she produce the straw, but when some of us expressed interest in the decorative way the straw was presented, she came back to the table with a fresh straw, paper intact, and taught us how to make one ourselves! My friend Susan was actually able to reproduce the effect, so our waitress was a good teacher, having transferred the skill to another in less than 5 minutes.

The great service was evident in other small ways as well, like when I was given a small container of peanut sauce (instead of scraping what remained of my used condiment in the bowl on my plate) to go with my leftovers that I had doggie bagged.

The food was great too. I had checked online for healthy Thai food choices (when eating out) beforehand, and easily found plenty of choices within this framework. I chose the Tom Yum soup with chicken, which was excellent, as was the chicken satay with peanut sauce. The free salad was a nice bonus; it had a mildly spicy peach colored dressing that was great.

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Why am I talking so much about the food, and so little about the book? Well, you may have guessed this: the book was…distressing. None of us liked it much. What was interesting though is that (as Shannon pointed out), we seem to have a much better, involved discussion about books that we don’t like than about books that we do like.

When we met to talk about The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, we didn’t have much to say, other than that it was a good book.  When we met to discuss Lowboy by John Wray, we were all talking over each other, interrupting each other, and in general making a big commotion in the small, otherwise pretty quiet, restaurant.

Hmmm, maybe this should be a go-to destination for book clubs?

Girls’ Night

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, family, friends, local fun, restaurants, tweens

On the (rare) days when the male members of the family are off at work, but the females have the day off, we have a Girls’ Night. Today, Girls’ Nights started early, at 7:24AM. The men were out for the day so the females were left to  our own pursuits. This is what my daughter and I did today:

  1. Breakfast: Cream of wheat for Izzy and egg white omelet with spinach, mushrooms, and roasted red peppers for me. OJ and coffee, respectively.
  2. Met up with friends at Cafe Perfecto in Kennebunk. We split a gingerbread muffin. We ate it too quickly to photograph it. It was goooooooooooooooooooooooooood. 🙂
  3. Next, browsing at Kennebooks. We bought some cards, some books, and a really cool mushroom shaped eraser with the sharpener built right in. 

    Coolest mushroom eraser/sharpener ever!
  4. Home for lunch: PB&H on homemade bread for me; grilled cheese and bacon on whole wheat bread for Iz. Then she caught up with a friend on the phone, while I caught up on the laundry, chicken tasks, and dishes. Yay.
  5. Next, North Berwick Farmers Market. My friend Rebecca was there so we got to visit a bit. Lucky for us, it was the day of their Pie Contest, and we got to try a piece of the winning pie, baked by a 9 year old girl; very impressive. Besides pie, we got some fudge, some granola, herbs to mix with oil for bread-dipping, oatmeal coconut cookies…hmmm, seems like something is missing. What is it? Oh! The (token healthy food that was the excuse for going to the farmers market) apple! I ate that at the next stop.
  6. Izzy had a riding lesson and I spent the time in the car catching up on the last 2 days of newspapers that I hadn’t gotten to yet.
  7. At 6Pm, lesson over, we headed to Johnson’s Seafood and Steak. This is our new favorite restaurant, partly because it’s right on the way home after riding, but mostly because of the pumpkin cheesecake. OMG. It’s worth going just for that.
  8. Finally, home for a movie night. We watched The Clique. Izzy had seen it before and wanted to watch it again with me. Great mother-daughter movie.

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That’s it.  She’s gone to bed; I’m getting ready to. We had a great day. 🙂

Quest for the best fried clams

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, local fun, restaurants, tweens

 

Tom’s Fried Clams

We recently read an article in the York Independent newspaper rating local restaurants by how good their fried clams were.

One of the restaurants mentioned was Tom’s Fried Clams, located on Rt. 1 in York, Maine. We’d never been there, so off we went.

We had a coupon to receive $4 off a clam platter. Good thing, too; even with the coupon, it cost us $18. Actually, first it cost us $36, because the cashier charged us for two platters instead of just the one that we ordered. Fortunately, my husband was paying attention, and we got the extra platter deleted from the bill before we paid.  We also orderd lobster rangoons, mozzarella sticks (after all, we had a tweenager with us; it’s the law) and a drink.

It was lucky for us that it was a nice day: the dining room is outside. There were a couple of tables inside the fish market, but no one was sitting in there.

The platter came with the usual suspects: fries and slaw. The food was great, actually.

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 I wouldn’t go out of my way to go there again, but if I was in the area and was hungry, I would go. I would also check my receipt very carefully. 🙂

Late, late summer (but feels like fall) date night

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, local fun, restaurants
Yia Yia Pizza from Jimmy the Greek

I took off early from work for a date night I planned with my husband last week. He said he wanted Thai food, so I was going back and forth mentally all day about where to go (Mekong Thai? Thai Rose? Thai 9?).

Since I couldn’t decide, I decided to let him decide. When I got home from work I said, “Okay, where are we going?”
He said, “We’re going to Jimmy the Greek’s“.
Well. All-righty then.
Portland Dine Around Club has some pretty excellent, useful coupons for Jimmy the Greek’s, so if you have one, check it out. We ordered a small Inferno Zeus wings and a large Yia Yia Pizza (that’s the leftover, for breakfast today that you are seeing up there). I thought it was a little over-feta’d but my husband did not.
Then we drove down to Old Orchard Beach…much different experience on a post-labor day evening than it is in full-swing summer. For one thing, we parked for free this time in the lot that cost $5 last time. For another, there were way fewer people. Both of these things were good. 🙂
We walked down to the ocean, then to Dolci Crema Cafe. This is the place to go if you are craving dessert, or anything sweet. The owner offered us samples of any gelato, and even suggested some and handed us the sample before we asked! We ended up trying almost all of them. We settled on “Almond Joy”.
What was great about this (well, you know, besides the gelato) is that my husband is not really a fan of gelato. He was trying something different because I like it so much. This is why we got the Almond Joy to split; it was his favorite of the bunch (mine was the dark chocolate!).
Then we drove back home to watch the Survivor season opener.
P.S. We got the Thai food 2 days later. Just goes to show you: cravings must be satisfied.

Fall!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, restaurants
Dunkin Donuts Pumpkin Muffin

Fall is a time when a young(ish) woman’s thoughts lightly turn to…pumpkin muffins! What is a better harbinger of the new season? I ask you. 

Pumpkin muffin is a term that should be used loosely; more of a suggestion than an edict. There are many different versions of the pumpkin muffin. 

Here are a few: 

  1. Dunkin Donuts has a Pumpkin Muffin. You may want to know (if you are on Weight Watchers) that it has about 16 POINTS. Really. Almost my total allotment for an entire day. You might prefer to assuage your pumpkin craving with a pumpkin donut if you are at DD; they have about 6 POINTS. (Disclaimer: these point values were calculated last fall with nutrition info from the DD website using the online WW point calculator and I am recalling them to the best of my memory since the pumpkin products aren’t on the DD website at the time of this writing).
  2. Better yet, cheat: make them at home with this recipe from Copykat.
  3. Tim Horton’s version of Pumpkin Spice Muffin is “healthier” at only (count ’em) 9 Weight Watcher’s Points. Hey, it’s better than 16. Way better, actually.
  4. Your local bakery/coffee shop/breakfast place most likely will also have some pumpkin muffins of some sort, and most likely they will be very hard to resist, and probably better than #1 or #3 above.
  5. The local supermarket will probably have pumpkin muffins in their bakery section. Smallish, plain (as in unadorned by streusel topping and/or glaze), unappealing ones are offered at my local market.

The choice is yours. My choice was purely based on proximity; I was driving by DD and had a half an hour to kill before the football game started Sunday morning. I also had a DD card with some money left on it. Can you say DD combo with black french vanilla coffee and a pumpkin muffin??? 

So, only the 3rd day of being back to active weight loss and a pumpkin muffin knocked me off the wagon. At least my daughter split it with me…well, she had a bite of it. 

Tomorrow is another day. 🙂

Magical thinking (or: the 80/20 rule revisited)

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, fitness, health, restaurants

This summer, for the first time since losing weight, I put some back on. In reviewing my behavior over the past 3 months, I realized what happened: I reversed the 80/20 rule of maintenance. Instead of staying on track with eating 80% of the time so that the other 20% I could eat whatever I wanted, I ate whatever I wanted 80% of the time, using magical thinking to hope that staying on track 20% of the time would balance the wild abandon of the other 80%. I did the same thing with exercising (ugh!).

Coffee gelato

What happened? Well, for one thing, I guess I got smug. For a while, it actually didn’t matter that I did that; my body compensated for the excess until it just couldn’t anymore. Also, I got lazy about portion sizes and, in many instances, doubled what I knew was the amount that I should have been having. What can I say? So much (goooooood food); so little time.

Plus, hello?  Tiramisu, gelato, sweet potato fries every week? Cinnamon buns and (just today, as I recall :)) blueberry muffins as big as your head? How did I think that would turn out?

Okay, time to put the 80/20 back in the 80/20 rule; time to lose the magical thinking. Goodbye maintenance; hello active losing: points counting, writing everything down, exercise of some sort 6 days a week for 30 minutes instead of 3…um, or 1.

It ain’t gonna be easy.

The foods of the summer of 2010 will not be soon forgotten. Here’s a (small) sample:

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It’s all good

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, health, italian, local fun, restaurants, tweens

I was annoyed the other night, thinking that even though I was lucky to have had an extra day off from work this week, it had been all used up with medical appointments. Deciding to make them, scheduling them, dealing with insurance company in advance to try to make sure they didn’t weasel out of paying for them, transporting to and from them, waiting to be seen after arrival, waiting for test results…

The ocean

That evening, as I was telling my husband how annoyed I was, I decided to stop and change course. Why? As I was talking, I noticed that he was quickly becoming tense and seemed to be losing his good mood. I decided to change course and instead started listing what had been good about the day.

  1. I did not talk myself out of exercising in the morning!
  2. I had time to finish reading book that I was loving while I waited for my husband at his appointment
  3. My daughter told me things about her day that she probably wouldn’t have otherwise while we waited for doctor at her appointment (“Guess what! I’m an alto in the chorus this year!”).
  4. Lunch (Chinese lunch specials from Maple Leaves!) and dinner (Quattro Formaggi pizza from Pizza Napoli!) and dessert (Mocha Mousse Torte and a chocolate chip cookie as big as your head from Bread and Roses in Ogunquit!) dates with spouse.
  5. Drove down to say “Hi” the ocean for a few minutes. 🙂
  6. Appreciated having my son around the house more, now that college has started back up again.

After reviewing list, noticed that yoga was missing, and immediately jumped to the floor into “down dog” so I could include it on my list, and in my day.

I realized that my day had actually included many of my favorite things, but if I hadn’t noticed my husband’s reaction to my complaining, I may not have taken the time to stop and appreciate that it had, in fact, been a really great day!

Sometimes, when you try to do something nice for someone else, you are actually doing something really nice for yourself!

Eat, Pray, Love

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, italian, movies, no fear
Eat, Pray, Love promotional poster

 

Eat, Pray, Love came to theaters in movie form on August 13, 2010.  If you read the book by Elizabeth Gilbert (published by Viking in February 2006) like I did, you may have been eagerly anticipating the release of this movie. I know I certainly was.  

Then I saw a trailer for the movie, and noticed who had been cast to play Elizabeth Gilbert: Julia Roberts, who is one of my least favorite actresses. It’s not just because she basically has one character that she plays over and over; hey, I do like Meg Ryan. I usually do end up liking movies that JR is in though…  

 So, I reluctantly resigned myself to seeing it even though Julia was playing the lead character and therefore would most likely be on the screen a lot of the time (hello? it’s a memoir; told from the first person point of view). I went with a friend so that it wouldn’t be a totally lost Sunday afternoon…at least I would get to spend time with a friend sans children for a few hours.  

So, need I say it more plainly? My expectations were low. I thoroughly enjoyed the coming attractions (3 more good-to-see-with-a-friend movies to watch for) so I was in a good mood when the feature finally started.   

I am happy to report that the book was great, but the movie was also perfectly fine! It was not a total waste of two hours and thirteen minutes (plus travel time) after all! Of course, I love all things that have to do with Italy so it helped that the first country visited in the story was Italy.  

Also, the other actors in the film were all appealing, interesting, and (a side benefit) some were pretty easy on the eyes. 🙂 

Verdict: worth seeing.

Hey, we’re not ALL tourists!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, restaurants, tweens

Here in southern Maine, our population multiplies exponentially in the summer. Some of the more popular restaurants are overrun, especially the good ones, so I usually am very forgiving.

On Sunday morning, my daughter and I went out for doughnuts to our favorite donut-making restaurant, which I typically would avoid doing on a weekend morning in the summer, but we had a great coupon that was soon to expire, and my daughter really, really wanted doughnuts. 

So, off we went for our free half-dozen. We were lucky to get the last parking space in the lot, but certainly a full lot does not a short wait make. Seeing that the line for ordering to-go items was out the door (literally) was no surprise, but now we were in it for the long haul. Once you’ve promised doughnuts to the kid(s), there’s no turning back

While we waited, an owner type guy was walking around with tray of free honey dipped munchkins. I thought this was great, until he walked right by us, and offered them to some adults ahead of us in line, but none to my child. “Well, that wasn’t very nice!” my daughter said.

Then, when we finally got to the counter (half an hour later), the older lady that waited on us never smiled, barely made eye contact, and did not acknowledge my “thank you very much!” except to say “Next in line!”. To add insult to injury, she even shorted us a doughnut! To add insult to injury, our half-dozen only contained five doughnuts, which I didn’t notice until we got home.  

All in all, a very negative experience, but who can complain (except to you all!) since they were free. I guess the point is that they had generated a ton of good will towards their business by sending us that coupon, but the way we were treated when we were there to redeem it actually cost them,  in that it lowered our opinion of them.

And that’s too bad, because when all of the tourists go home…we will still be here, and there is a lot of competition for the doughnut dollar in southern Maine.

Late summer date night

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, local fun, restaurants
Federal Spice

When you have a babysitter, it’s a shame to waste the opportunity to go out with your spouse.  We only had a little lead time (once we knew we had the babysitter) to organize the date, but we put our heads together and came up with a plan.

First, we headed to Scarborough Downs. We missed Family Fun Day this year, so this would be our annual summer visit. We arrived during the 8th (of 9) race, but it was fun to sit on the bench outside (weather was beautiful) and watch the horses…and the other people. 🙂 Cost: $4.

Next, we decided to see a show at the Old Port Playhouse. We called ahead to reserve our seats. Since we arrived a little early (and were starving) after we picked up our tickets at the box office, we ran around the corner to Federal Spice and split a large order of yam fries. Let me tell you: this turned out to be the highlight of the evening. Cost: about $4 (yam fries + can of diet coke).

The show was advertised as “a comedy…” .Well. There were some humorous parts, however there were also some dark and awful scenes that neither of us expected (Hello? Rape and incest are funny? not so much) which kind of put a damper on things. The ad was also misleading visually: the attractive people in the newspaper ad were nowhere to be found onstage. ‘nuf said. Cost: $44.

The audience unfortunately contained an annoying woman who would spontaneously break into song and dance during the “pre-show” (an endless loop slide show) and who was obviously impaired in one or more ways. Fortunately, she got up and left in the first 10 minutes or so of the performance, creating more distraction since the door to the street is right in the middle of the theater, but hey, at least she was gone.

I might give the theater another try at some point; right now I’m not sure; it could go either way.

So, where would you go for an impromptu late summer date?

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