bad food and good food

!!!!BAD FOOD!!!!

This right here is chicken breast with cheese sauce and sauteed apples. I ate this at Les Quince Nits. A place that was going to be our fancy meal(well not that fancy but good, and at a restaurant). So first things first, this thing is cut as thin as paper so it has to be dry. Now you smell this thing from a mile away(I am not a big stinky cheese fan)so I am already thinking, uh oh some thing's up, but I eat the apples on it and I am in heaven. they were soft sweat and very literally melt in your mouth. I was expecting big things from that chicken and it completely missed the bar of my expectations.  I think there was about 8 different cheeses in that thing and 4 of them were stinky.  But that's enough about that, I don't want to make this place look too bad.

So this is blueberry cheesecake and we got it at this great place next to our apartment.  And I thought it was going to be delicious.  That jam looked like they had made it themselves.  So when I took a bite of this it came off a little more solid in some parts and less creamy then I was expecting.  It was really bland too. And my brother thinks there was limes in it.  But this was the ONLY thing there that ever tasted bad.  The rest of the stuff at the place was so good that as soon as we tasted some of it we went back every day after.  This was what my Dad picked.

SO, one of my FAVORITE foods is hamburgers.  Imagine my astonishment when I ordered a burger at the Barcelona Olympic Museum Cafe and this is what came out (see picture below).

This thing was really bad.  It was PINK!  It was chewy.  It looked burnt.  It tasted like super bland sausage and I just don't know what to call it.  I took two bites and then I put it down and moved it into the middle of the table.  I was happy that I didn't get food poisoning.  Now let's go to GOOD FOOD.

!!!!GOOD FOOD!!!!

This is a chocolate croissant from Cappuccino, the coffee shop across the street from our apartment.  My Dad forgot the keys to our apartment, or so we thought, so we went here to get a little cheering up.  It was absolutely deliciousioso.  The chocolate on the outside was not the only part that had chocolate.  It had like a chocolate bar running through the middle.  But anyway let's move on.

So since we had to wait for a new set of keys to the apartment we started walking around and we spotted an open air market, kind of like a festival.  We went to it and walked around and came across a freshly squeezed orange juice place.  Before when we were eating the chocolate croissant my brother really wanted an orange juice but it was too expensive so when we came across this place for 1/2 as much my parents let us have some.  This stuff was so fresh that I watched him squeeze the juice for my cup of orange juice.  It was pulpy but tart and delicious.  It was sweet and a little bit tangy for some reason.  But that's enough about orange juice, let's put a bright side on that restaurant I went to for diner.

This was what I immediately asked if I could order when I saw it.  We were at a seafood place and seafood isn't the thing that I like too much.  So when I saw this I thought it would be a great appetizer instead of anchovies and baby octopus that my parents got.  (I tried the baby octopus and it was actually really good!)  It was chips and homemade guacamole.  The guacamole was nice and creamy and the chips were probably something that they bought at the supermarket.  But it was an overall solid and decent dish that I shared with my brother who ate 3/4s of it in the time it took to me eat 3 chips.  But now let's give a little bit more of a bright side to the bakery I was talking about earlier (La Colmena).









So this is just a SMALL section of the chocolates in the corner of La Colmena.  They are truffles that I actually never have tried but the picture at the bottom is delicious. 







So this stuff inside of the chocolate covered cone was cold cream...not ice cream but cold whipped cream.  It also had nuts on the outside and there were two flavors, trufa and this other one that I can't remember but let's call it vanilla.  It was delicious and my brother had it twice in a row.  I've never seen it anywhere else.  They use the creams in a few other pastries that we had as well.  The woman working there was so nice.  She gave us extra candies!  So I think that concludes my good and bad food, more to come soon!  Please leave comments!

airport Europe

look at this pan au chocolat (chocolate croissant)

Hi so i am in the Madrid airport (I'm not actually there but imagine that I am for blogging purposes). I am at a European airplane restaurant but does it look like a restaurant at the airport (i didn't think so)

                                                   look at this it is amazing fluffy, smooth,and buttery   

this is a short blog but i will post again I am a little behind becuase of wifi at the place I am staying we olmost got our camra stolen well not stolen but they were trying to steal it the people at our resturant were giving them the hary eyeball, so they left.

Europe

Hi guys I'm so sorry i didn't get back sooner i meant to blog but, I couldn't i was wrapped up in my own stuff like school. I will be blogging for the next few weeks so hope you are following me because this is going to be good. I hope you comment because it MIGHT help me decide to go to certain places to (when I say might I mean might) so this is just a heads up. please comment and tell me you will follow me.

                   !!!!!!!Thanks and by!!!!!!!

BBQ N Tailgating

Greenfield BBQ

My Dad, my brother and I went to the Greenfield BBQ competition.  It was our first BBQ competition / festival.  We were expecting to have mainly ribs but I wasn't expecting the two racks we had to be so different.

But first, a bit about the competition.  Everyone who entered had to make: a rack of ribs, a pulled pork, chicken and brisket.  People had all kinds of crazy grills and smokers.  Check these out!

This grill is the size of my brother and he's the biggest kid in his class.

This smoker is made out of a wine barrel.  The guy claims that he made it himself.  It looks really cool!

This is way smaller.  That shows how different the shape and size of the grills can be in this place.

Now let's get back to talking about the ribs.  We had two totally different racks.  One was from Phat Boyz.  These ribs were a dry rub and were really spicy.  Their grill was pretty cool though and their sign was even better.

We also had a rack from Cliffs Backyard BBQ and my Dad had a brisket sandwich.  I liked these ribs much better.  They were sweeter and really thickly seasoned (sometimes too much) but they had a good smoke and they were moist.

TAILGATING
The next day we had another BBQ adventure while tailgating at the Patriots game.  They were playing the Saints and my Dad and I were with my Cousin Erik and my Uncle Jon.

My Dad smoked these ribs in his Weber Smokey Mountain Bullet.  They were like Cliff's only a little less seasoned, more meaty and AMAZING!  Here's some photos of him making them and his smoker.

Dad's smoke with contraptions

Ribs before smoking

Ribs after smoking

 

Football spirit!

All in all it was an awesome weekend!

Oh look at the time, it's time for me to chickinout!  Good eatin' and BBQ bye.

ADVENTURES IN MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY

Hi, sorry that I couldn't blog sooner.  I want to blog to you about the dinner I did on my birthday.  It was Molecular Gastronomy.  For those who don't know what that is, it's chemistry with food.  We had some successes and some failures but overall it was super fun and we ate some good food!

FRUIT NOODLES
The fruit noodles were one of the things that turned out ok.  We took my three favorite fruits: blueberries, kiwis and pineapple.  We blended them up individually and then boiled them in a pan with Agar Agar packets.  The Agar Agar makes it turn gelatin like.  Then we put injected the mixture of fruits into tubes, left them in water for 3 minutes and then squirted them out of the tubes.

But when we tried to pick them up they ended up breaking.  They were also way to slippery to hold.  But then my Mom came up with an idea to make ones that looked better.  She spread out the pineapple mixture  in a baking tray and then froze it for 20 minutes.  She cut them into long strips, we called fruit linguini.  And then Dad came up with the idea to dribble the blueberry onto the pineapple linguine and it looked this.

They tasted really fruitty!

SURPRISE BUBBLES
The Surprise Bubbles were supposed to come out as gelatin on the outside and liquid lemon on the inside.  But here's how ours turned out.  They weren't exactly a fail but they weren't a success either.

First we had to freeze the freshly squeezed lemon juice mixed with Calcium Lactate.  This took awhile and the cubes never fully formed.  So we ended up taking our semi-frozen lemon cubes and added them to a bath of Sodium Algonite.  Once in the bath they kind of formed a gelatin shell around the outer part and then we carefully spooned them out and put them in regular water.  The texture was kind of slimy and gooey on the outside and some of them were icy on the inside.  Think of jellyfish!




They tasted really lemony.  Some of them tasted sweet and lemony.  You'll know what I mean by lemony when you see this picture.

CHOCOLATE WIND
The thing I had as the biggest success was the chocolate wind.  It came out just the way is was supposed to.  I didn't like it because we used dark chocolate but my Mom, my Dad and my brother loved it.  We put it on ice cream with Raspberries.

NOT SO GOOD

The molecular burger was not such a success.  The recipe called for cold vegetable oil and we didn't have any so my Dad decided to we should just try and wing it.  But it didn't work.  The mustard and ketchup pearls ended up falling apart.  We decided that we'd just have the burger and it was still really good.

Here's what the pearls looked like before they ended up getting squished.

So, anyway it turned out good.  If you're interested the place that makes it is called, http://www.molecule-r.com. 

We have new found respect for chefs that work with these techniques because it looks easy but it's really hard.

I think this if 'bye until the next blog...and good eatin'!

Zev's Favorite Chips

Tonight we are featuring a guest blog by a very special person known as, my brother, Zev.  He will show you and tell you about his recipe for his favorite kind of chips.  And these aren't potato, sun or any other kind of chips.  These are Kale Chips!

ZEV'S FAVORITE CHIPS

Ingredients

• 1 - Head of Kale
• Olive Oil
• Salt

Hi, my name is Zev and I'm seven and my favorite food is Kale Chips!  I like Kale Chips because they're crispy, they are very salty and the most reason why I like them crispy is because my Dad forgets they're in the oven!

Here's how he does it:

1. First we preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Next we chop up a head of Kale and place it in a big pan.
3. Drizzle the Kale with Olive Oil and season with Sea Salt...it has to be sea salt.
4. Put them in the oven and then forget they're in there (or for about 35 minutes)
5. Stir the Kale Chips and then put them back in the oven for another 5 minutes or until super crispy.

Enjoy the Kale!

On my next guest food blog I'll do my favorite foods.  Until then




Chipper Bye and good eatin'!

Whoopie Pie Review - Part 1

One of my favorite parts of summer is Whoopie Pies.  I love the taste.  Me and my family are Whoopie Pie fanatics.  I want to tell you about our Whoopie Pie adventure in Maine.

We go to Acadia National Park every summer and there are tons of places to get Whoopie Pies all around there.  Here's a list of some of my favorites:

1. Gott's Gas Station
I know, that's so weird but it's true.  It's  a gas station but it has the best peanut butter filling for its Whoopie Pies.  They're huge.  So huge that we split them in quarters and that's enough.  The cake is really chocolaty but not too sweet.  And my mom can eat the filling because its fluff based so there's no dairy.  (she can't eat dairy.)





2. Little Notch Bakery

If you're a butter cream person, Little Notch is the way to go!  They're small but delicious.  We go to the one in Southwest Harbor.

3.  Two Fat Cats
This one is in Portland, Maine.  The Whoopie Pies are almost always sold out so get there early but they sometimes have "day olds" that taste just the same.  There's also a really great restaurant across the street called Duck Fat.  Best milkshakes on earth...but that's another post!







MYSTERY WHOOPIE PIE
Every year on our way to Acadia we try to stop and get Whoopie Pies at the Friar's Bakery in Bangor but they're never open.  We hear their the best.  If you have them please let us know!

whoopie bye and good eatin'!