The Country Club Steakhouse at Wynn Review

The Country Club Steakhouse – Excellent service, great appetizer, salad was blah, good wine selection, steak was over cooked, the environment was a bit noisy, and the televisions were distracting. Without the TV’s this would have been much more enjoyable experience. Had the New York strip.

I really expected more out of this place. It was the first restaurant I went to on this trip and I spent a ton of money and got a mediocre meal. I have had better steaks at places half the price. I guess part of the “charm” of this place it is at the Wynn, which if you ask me is a pretty pretentious, excessive and overpriced Casino. Maybe I am cheap, thrifty or have a better head on my shoulders… but I would not recommend wasting the money here.

Envy Steak House Review

Envy Steakhouse @ Renaissance – very nice setting, good wine selection, good salad, excellent sides, excellent steak, seemed understaffed compared to the other steakhouses I went to. Steak was cooked perfectly. 16 oz bone in fillet, which was a new treat for me. Not sure if I have ever had a bone in filet before. It allowed the steak to retain more juice and flavor, plus it was more of a reasonable size than a porterhouse.
The fries here were insanely good. I think they were fries with truffle oil on them, something like that. They were perfectly cooked, seasoned perfectly as well, and a nice crispness to them.

When I mention that it seemed under staffed, we had one waitor for a table of 12 or so. He did do a fine job handling the whole thing, but some of the nice places I have been to seem to work in teams and more or less attack a table with attentiveness. They waiter did a great job, don’t get me wrong, but for 12 people I would think maybe 2 or 3 should tag team it.

I think like any steakhouse in Vegas the prices are a bit inflated. I was quite happy with this meal, and did not have to find my way through a casino to get here. I would defiantly recommend this restaurant or hotel to anyone who is going to Las Vegas for a conference at the convention center and has no interest in gambling.

Del Frisco's Las Vegas Review

Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse – amazing service, perfect cocktails from the bar, excellent wine list, nice atmosphere, excellent seafood (shrimp starter and crab cake), 8oz fillet. 18oz was the smallest lobster, which we all thought was ridiculous.

We had a table of maybe 9 or 10 guys head out to this place. The staff was super friendly and we had a team handle the table. They were a bit less “professional” than your normal upscale restaurant, but provided some good fun and entertainment with us. We got into some jokes and one of the guys pulled the “do you have any ketchup” routine for the excellent steaks that were served.

The cocktails at Del Frisco’s were PERFECT. The guy next to me ordered a Vodka Gimlet and they made it with fresh squeezed lime juice. It was the perfect strength. I wish I would have ordered that instead of my Makers and Ginger.

There was a huge group of hungry guys and we tried a variety of appetizers. We got a few shrimp starters which contained 3 types of shrimp. This was great. And then a few orders of crab cakes. These crab cakes were huge and had large chunks of crab in them. I would say the best crab cakes I have ever eaten.

When it came to the steak I went with fillet because I was not hungry enough to handle a porterhouse. The steak was delicious. One of the better steaks I have ever eaten.

As we were leaving we got to see the “James Bond Wine Rack” which is some crazy table that opens up into a wine cellar and then closes.

I would totally recommend Del Frisco’s to anyone needing to take a group out, or to anyone who loves a great meal and can afford this upscale restaurant.

Hugo's Cellar Review

Hugo’s Cellar – shitty casino, dark and dirty. Awesome wine selection, excellent salad cart, good bread, huge portions, great pieces of meat, lacks creamed spinach. Excellent service.

I did not know what to expect when I went to Hugos Cellar, but was not expecting much when I had to go to the old strip and through one of these dark and seedy casinos. Once you go down to the basement you are greeted by friendly staff.

The service here was great. The atmosphere was more “old school” and seedy, but still enjoyable. The prices were reasonable and the food was delicious.

The wine selection was great and there was an on staff sommelier. We had a “wine expert” at the table, and he and the sommelier discussed various things that were over my head. We ended up getting 2 or 3 excellent bottles of wine and champagne to start.

After you order the waiter comes around with this salad cart which is like a portable salad bar and makes a great salad for you right at the table. One of the people at the table was allergic to shellfish and he made sure, that nothing he touched ever touched a shrimp.

By this point of my trip I was “steaked out” and had to switch up. I switched to a prime rib. (c: The prime rib was terrific. It pretty much could have been cut with a fork, and was served with a delicious sauce and horseradish.

The highlight of this meal was when we got the bill. We all covered the organizer of this event, and had way more than enough wine. The bill was less than half of what I spent the other nights, and the food was terrific.

I would defiantly recommend Hugo’s Cellar to anyone who loves a great steak, and is will to venture out to the old strip. The bonus on this is that you can save a bunch of money, have a great meal and terrific wine, excellent service, all at a fraction of the price of one the places on the strip. You just need to be willing to compromise on the location and the atmosphere a bit.

CraftSteak Steak House @ MGM Grand Las Vegas Review

I did not go to Craft Steak on this last trip, but I did a few years ago, and was blown away by the meal. CraftSteak is a bit gimmicy in that they serve “Kobe Beef”. Due to regulations, it is not 100% real Kobe beef, but is still damn good.

I treated a friend to dinner here and we decided to get the taster menu which was amazing.

The quality of food was superb, and the variety and portions were great. I think between us we got 2 or 3 small appetizers, 3 steaks, numerous sides, and a variety of homemade ice creams for desert. There was even some in between course palette cleansers that were served.

The service here was awesome. Our waiter was this older guy who had a crazy accent. He sounded like a vampire, and was just brilliant. He saw that we were 2 younger dudes and freshed up his pitch with some funny slang words which made the meal that much better.

He said the mashed potatoes were “ridiculous” and he was not mistaken. It was like an equal mix of cream and potato and was INTENSE. They were great. The steaks were terrific. The meat is extremely tender and flavorful. The steaks seemed to have been oozing “goodness” out of them. Juice galore. We got three steak cuts, a New York Strip, a Fillet, and one other served with the tasting menu. My only regret was not getting the Steak Tartar as the suggested first course. The waiter switched to a Foie Gras since we were pussies when it came to eating raw meat.

CraftSteak IS expensive, but it is a memorable meal and will let you get in some “Kobe Beef” which will be one of the most flavorful tender cuts of meat you have ever eaten. I would go here again, and take some friends here to pop their “Kobe” cherry.

Where is your favorite steakhouse in Vegas? While you are there, you may also want to go shoot some machine guns!

Chop the ginger into finely chopped pieces. Throw into a pot with the water. Start it at a really low heat.

Let it sit, and sample it every few minutes.

After desired ginger strength strain the ginger.

Add honey/ sugar until desired sweetness

Serve over fresh cut lemon slices

Add bourben to taste.

I do not see a machine capable of making a dragon roll or anything really complex, but it is still pretty cool.

Here is their link and on the site you can find videos of the different machines…good luck understanding them though. I liked the sushi cutter (video) the best, it looks brutal.
sushi robot expert – sushi machine european manufacturer

Today I cut my grass, harvested about 12 cherry tomatoes and roughly 16 jalepeno peppers. The other day I had about 32 I needed to use up so I searched the web and came up with some pretty blah recipes, nothing of which really stuck out, or they seemed like too much work, so I improvised and created the following:

Dr Wertrose's Variety Stuffed Jalepenos

Ingredients: fresh jalepeno peppers, variety of cheese, tin foil, rubber gloves.

1. Pick a peck of fresh jalepeno peppers.
2. Wear rubber gloves and cut the peppers in half length wise.
3. Remove the seeds and the "membrane". Supposedly the membrane contains the heat of the peppers.
4. Line a cookie sheet with tin foil
5. Fill up the pepper halves with cheese (whatever kind you like) and place them cheese side up on the cookie sheets
6. throw in the oven/toaster oven on 325 until the cheese starts to brown and the peppers kind of go blah and loose their shape.
7. let cool and enjoy

I used an irish cheddar, a mexican cheese blend and bleu cheese to stuff my jalepenos and I liked the Irish cheddar the best, with the bleu cheese making go woah…however I just picked a bunch more of these peppers today so I plan to make bacon wrapped bleu cheese stuffed jalepenos tomorrow. Here is that recipe:

Dr Wertrose's Bacon Wrapped Bleu Cheese Stuffed Jalepeno Pepper Much-ems

Ingredients: fresh jalepeno peppers, blue cheese, bacon, tin foil, rubber gloves.

1. Pick a peck of fresh jalepeno peppers.
2. Wear rubber gloves and cut the peppers in half length wise.
3. Remove the seeds and the "membrane". Supposedly the membrane contains the heat of the peppers.
4. Line a cookie sheet with tin foil
5. Fill up the pepper halves with bleu cheese, wrap with half a slice of bacon (toothpick optional), place cheese side up on the cookie sheets
6. throw in the oven/toaster oven on 425 until the bacon crisps.
7. let cool and enjoy (maybe, I will know more tomorrow)

Someone out there make these and let me know what you think, or someone come over and eat them with me, then let me know what you think.

I have been spending some time this year in the garden and this is the biggest payoff to date.

There are 8 cucumbers/pickles, 2 handfuls of "sweet 100" tomatoes, and 3 jalepeno peppers.

My buddy is always telling me that I need to undermind authority, i think by having this garden I am changing the way in which I consume. I am cutting the throats of the local supermarket (: . I think one day I may end up ona farm.

Does anyone want free cucumbers? Because I picked 3 the other day, made cucumber salad and do not want 8 others!!!

Has anyone else been gardening? If so what are you growing and how are they this year?

I made everything so I knew the proper spacing going into it and then plotted it into illustrator:

I think it is overkill looking back at it now, but I am glad that I did do some planning or my garden would be an ever bigger mess then it is now. It looks pretty good now, I just cannot wait to see the plants grow. The other up side is that next year I will have a much better idea of the space that is available and a year of planting under my belt…we will see how it goes. In addition to that I have been having to do other types of yard work, including mowing the lawn and patching the grass.

I have an old shitty gas lawn mower that I want to exchange for a manual push mower… the kind they used years ago, and the kind I had in Chicago. They are totally quiet, do a nice job cutting the lawn and have zero polution, plus I think you probably burn more calories pushing one of those then a gas one…although on some mowers I have probably burned 1000 calories trying to start the damn things. Luckily my shitty old mower starts up with out problems. I think I will use it until I run out of gas. Then it is craigslist or the alley for you my friend.

Having a house with a tiny yard can take up 10x the ammount of time of renting an apartment. Compare this my one pot gardening from last year. The good news is that I was sore after the 6 hr gardening adventure and put in another 2 hrs the next day. It was the good type of sore and I was glad to get some exercise.
What are you doing in your yard this year?

I made a batch last week for my own use, and made a batch for some co-workers on sat. They are really easy to make and have a simple list of ingredients. I will put the original recipe here followed by some notes:

First off this recipe is right off the can of Ghirardelli sweet ground chocolate powder, but my sister got me on to it , and it OWNS.

Ghirardelli Award Winning Brownies
2 Eggs
3/4 cup of sugar
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract – or paste if you are fancy (you should be)
1/2 cup butter or margirine – melted. (I use butter, need to try with corn oil?)
3/4 cup ghirardelli sweet ground chocolate and cocoa powder
2/3 cup unsifted flour
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cups walnuts, chopped (I never add these)
1 cup ghirardelli double chocolate chips (optional – never use these either)

preheat oven to 350-f
using a spoon, stir the eggs with the sugar
add the vanilla
add butter
sift the chocolate powder with the flour, baking powder and salt
stir into the egg mixture, add nuts and chips
spread into a greased 8" or 9" square pan
bake 20-30 min
less for fudge like, more for cake like

ENJOY! – they take like 7 minutes to make, and 25 minutes to bake.

Notes: I use a 350 degree convection oven, and bake for exactly 24 minutes, and they come out real nice.

I usually use block ghiradelli chocolate and sliver/chop it up, in white, dark and milk choclate variety, making these the ultimate triple chocolate brownies.

I recently tried some heath chips in the mix, and it was awesome

I want to try the following: white chocolate, coconut and almond slices in a batch at some point…my guess is these would be great.

I love this recipe because it tastes great and is way quick to make. If you have any doubt about the greatness of these brownies, look at how fat I have become as an indicator of delicious taste!

if you try this out, let me know your feedback.

This is the original recipe:
Ingredients
8 chicken thighs
6 small red potatoes, quartered
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, or as needed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
Place chicken and potatoes into a large bowl. Pour olive oil over them, and stir to coat. Scatter the chicken and potato pieces in a large baking dish, or cookie sheet with sides. Sprinkle with rosemary, oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper.
Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven, uncovered. Baste during the last 15 minutes for extra crispness.

What I did was cut the potatoes into smaller pieces, used less oil, probably more fresh rosemary, fresh garlic – crushed (lots of it), and dried oregeno. The result was great, but I would tweak it slightly next time, and here is my twists:

I used boneless chicken Thighs, and would use those or bone in skinless chicken breasts. Here is how it went down: I cut the potatoes, threw them in a bowl, covered them with oil, put in fresh chopped rosemary, covered with salt and pepper, fresh thyme, garlic, and dry oregeno. Stirred everything around and coated the potatoes, then put in the chicken thighs, flipped those around and coated everything, threw it onto a cookie pan (like a cookie sheet with a lip), and cooked for 50 minutes (the chicken was boneless so it was less dense and cooked quicker).

Next time I would do the chicken and potatoes seperate since the thighs are always fat/juicy, that they moisten the potatoes almost too much. Either that or reduce it to two large potaoes, and 2 chicken breasts, that would make a nice meal for two. Just add some salad.

Anyhow I look forward to trying this again with some other variation and see what I get out of it…the worst part is I have enough leftovers for 2+ more meals!!!

Have you ever tried this stuff? It is quite tastey on toast, steaks, chicken…

I was just happy to find it, and it has been enhancing my toast on a regular basis since my purchase! Cavenders Greek Seasoning, you are a true friend!

I made some tom kha kai soup the other day and had some left over coconut milk, instead of throw it out I decided to save it, in case I wanted to make another batch of soup later on. I am glad I did…mid week I brewed some chai tea, sweetened it with sugar and put like 2 spoonfulls of coconut milk in it, the result was sweet, spicy coconut goodness.

Recipe:
1 mug of your favorite chai tea (hot)
2 teaspoons of sugar
2 teaspoons of coconut milk/cream

Add sugar and coconut milk to the tea, stir, sip, enjoy, repeat.

I need to try it with green tea now.