Burger Bar Las Vegas

So much stuff has been happening lately that I've hardly found the time to blog. Lots of changes in the personal life of me.

This past weekend I went to Las Vegas for a wedding with Charlie to see our friends Christina and Eric bite the dust tie the knot at the LOVELY Mandalay Bay Casino. Food is always a huge part of our outings, which is probably why we mesh so well together, and Vegas was no exception. After a weekend of hoity-toity food and drink, we were happy to find this little gem.

Burger Bar, is the brainchild of Uber Chef Hubert Keller. Burgers are our life.

Burger Bar is set up like a super fancy Burger Subway where you start with the bun and pick everything you want to build the most epic burger of all time.

I opted for the Black Angus Burger, with caramelized onions, peppered bacon, whole grain mustard and peppered jack cheese with buttermilk zucchini fries as my side.

Charlie opted for a plain burger, well done, with cheddar and peppercorn sauce on the side and fat fries.

Don't bother the man with petty pictures when he's eating.

The cool thing about Burger Bar is they have loads of awesome toppings, some basic and some very gourmet. In fact they have a $60 kobe burger on their menu that is topped with shaved black truffles and sauteed foie gras, which if you're into that is awesome, but I'm more of a extra pickles kind of girl.

Charlie snapped a few pictures as I attempted to fit the burger in my mouth. This one is my favorite.

Burger Bar has an awesome Sweet Burger Menu filled with amazingly delicious looking treats, which we didn't order, and also some Beer Floats which I was tempted to order, but we had to be hitting the road.

Cooked perfectly pink and juicy.

All in all it was a great experience that we both loved and still talk about to this day. The only downside is you're going to have to be ok with spending at least $20 for a burger and side, but I think it was more than worth it.

Mediterraneo in Alpine

Just recently, I was privileged to get to go to Mediterraneo in Alpine for dinner and drinks. I had never been, but I had heard it was delicious and raved about so I was ready.

We started off with some drinks. I got one of the special martinis of the week, and Charlie got a Cranberry Grey Goose.

We started off with some Bruchetta, with toasted crustinis and shaved Parmesan cheese.

I ordered their Free Range Chicken, which was amazing and came topped on a bed of mashed potatoes with Chinese long beans with a wine reduction. Did you expect any less?

Charlie got this delicious pasta with chicken and cream sauce that was pretty much to die for.

German Pancakes!

So this past weekend I had a craving for pancakes. It didn't really matter what kind of pancakes, but I knew I needed some. After much hemming and hawing, I convinced Gary to make the trek up to Kearney Mesa so we could go to the Original Pancake House. (It's a chain, so look it up please!)
After scoping out the menu, we ordered what he affectionately called "The World War II Special"; German Pancakes and Potato Latkes, with a side of Green Tea for the Japanese influence.

We both agreed that the only thing that would have made it better would be to violently tear apart some French Toast and make it submit under the pancake. Taking it a bit too far eh?

I had never had a German Pancake, I had only seen it ordered here, and over my salivation had vowed to order it one day. It's basically a HUGE oven baked crepe that you eat with copious amounts of butter, powdered sugar and lemon.

The best thing about German Pancakes, is that almost, if not all of the ingredients required for it, are already in your kitchen! I had yet another craving, so I scoured the internet for a recipe, and now I bring it to you.
If you wanna get all fancy and make the latkes too, there is a great and hilarious YouTube show called "Feed Me Bubbe" and they do it step by step. You can find the video here.

German Pancakes, adapted via. Living in the Kitchen with Puppies

Pancake:

3 large eggs

3/4 cup milk

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp Vanilla extract

2 Tbs butter

In a big skillet on the stove, heat the butter until melted and hot.
In a blender (or something similar) blend the remaining ingredients, pour into hot butter and throw into a 450* oven for 15 minutes.

Turn the heat down to 350* and cook for 10 more.
When it's done it should be all puffy and fluffy like above. Make sure you use oven safe pans, and a heavy duty oven mitt when taking it out of the oven. This seems like a no-brainer, but I assure you, it's FREAKING HOT.


Carefully transfer to a plate and fix it up. You can really put anything you want on it, syrup, jam, jelly, but I like to garnish with butter, powdered sugar, and fresh squeezed lemon.

Pizza Gourmet Express

Gary lives just a block or so East of the adorable heart of University Heights in San Diego, which leads to us trying lots of pedestrian friendly restaurants and bars in the vicinity. One such place is our new favorite "neighborhood pizza joint", Pizza Gourmet Express which hails itself as just that.

I walked over to get a pizza last night, and as I snapped a few pictures I heard, "Oh! Another Yelper!" to which I explained that I wasn't a Yelper, and I had my own food blog, not that being a Yelper is a bad thing, I just already have too much on my plate, ya know?

Pizza Gourmet Express

4615 Park Boulevard
San Diego California 92116
(61...

PEG is kinda like the "Subway" of pizza restaurants, an assembly line of fresh ingredients made fresh to order right in front of your eyes and either taken home to cook yourself, or flash baked in their high speed pizza ovens. Gary and I met the owner, James, who is super nice, awesome and informative. He said he'd stop by and see what I had to say, so... HI JAMES!


We got our old standard, the Vegetarian Pizza, which comes with 4 veggie toppings of your choice. We opted for tomatoes, garlic, artichoke hearts and fresh asparagus, on their thin whole wheat crust, then topped with fresh basil and spices. A lot of times I'll forgo the "whole wheat" options, cuz I don't like eating cardboard, but PGE's 51% whole wheat crust is thin, nutty and still soft which makes it a great camouflaged "healthy" option for those of you trying to watch what you eat without giving up taste. Plus their dough is made and delivered fresh! DELISH!

I also love that they have glass bottled sodas, wines and beers, and even Virgil's Root Beer ON TAP!


Pizza Gourmet Express is also doing their part in the Green Movement and deliver their neighborhood pizzas on a cute red bike! I got mine delivered by a cute bearded man.


We got the pizza home and I immediately began snapping pictures of the deliciousness that was our dinner. A large vegetarian pizza has 8 slices and feeds 2 hungry people with enough left over, for well, left overs and runs you just under $16.



Gary got to eat the rest for dinner the next night.


The month of September has affectionately been dubbed, "Nostalgia Movie Month" so we accompanied our pizza with The Dark Crystal on DVD. GELFLING!?!?

(source.)

Feel free to join us by watching movies from at least 15 years ago that make you say things like, "OH yeahhh!! I forgot that part!"

Up next in our queue is; "The Never Ending Story"

FREE BURGERS!!

Hey San Diegans! Burger Lounge will be giving away free Burgers on Tuesday, September 8th, from 3-9pm for all their Twitter followers. Just show a print out, screen shot, or if you've got one of those fancy fandangled phones you can show them that too, to prove you are a loyal follower.

Winner of the "Best Local Hamburger Joint" by San Diego Magazine in 2009, they offer TallGrass (r) grass fed beef, turkey, and quinoa veggie burgers.

You can find their menu here, and follow them on Twitter here.

For all you anti-Twitter people who want to go and tag along with your free burger receiving friends, have no fear, a burger will run you just under $8.

Drunken Hobo Stew

So, like I mentioned before, the past 2 months I've been "in a relationship" and we've been eating up a storm. One of our new favorite things to do is cook over an open flame in the form of a beach bonfire. We've done it twice and both times the results were in the realm of "OMG AMAZING!", so I thought I would share our recipe for; Drunken Hobo Stew.

As a kid, my family used to make Hobo Stew all the time, it's pretty simple, meat, veggies, foil, a sprinkle of water, heat. We used to douse it with ketchup or A-1 sauce, dig in and call it a day. As I've gotten older my tastes have matured and covering meat in ketchup and A-1 sauce just doesn't cut it for me anymore.

Gary used to be this wilderness guidey kind of dude, I mean the guys an Eagle Scout for Christsakes, so he's made loads of "Hobo Dinner" as he calls it, so it was an obvious choice when we went to the grocery store to get the necessary supplies.


We picked up some ground turkey, something we both could agree on in terms of meat, but you can use (as we both have before) ground beef, or fish steaks, like salmon. We also went over the the produce section and grabbed some of our favorite veggies. I recommended at least grabbing some onion, garlic, carrots and potatoes, anything else you want is up to you. We also grabbed some sugar snap peas, Italian brown mushrooms, and zucchini.


Cut up all the veggies into easily cooked, bite sized pieces.

I like to put a thick slice of an onion on the bottom of the tin foil, and place the "meat ball" on top so it doesn't burn on the coals.


While I was busy doing the "woman work", Mountain Man was getting the fire ready.


When you have a nice fire going, you are going to want to isolate some coals to cook on. When cooking on a bonfire, or any fire really, it's best to cook on HEAT and not FIRE. Use a poker, or a stick or an Ove-Glove, but not your bare hands.

I like to double wrap the food to prevent leakage, it also makes it easier to handle in and out of the fire. To do that I use one 12" piece of foil facing "North/South" and one 12" facing "East/West" to create a "+". I place the onion slice in the middle, meat on top and then create a "bowl" shape around it, and fill it with the chopped veggies.


After you've filled your foil bowls to your hearts content, season with salt, pepper or any other seasonings you can't live without. This is where the drunken part comes in, douse it with whatever white (or red for red meats) wine you have on hand or can muster up. We've used both Pinot Grigo and Riesling. (I liked the Pinot a bit better)


Wrap up your masterpiece, giving the excess on top a distinct shape so you know who's is who's, and toss them onto the hot coals for about 20 minutes or so.


You might have to check around then, turkey should be cooked throughout, where as beef can be slightly rare in the middle.


Careful when opening the foil, the steam from the wine creates a very hot and dangerous burning hazard, which I know about first hand, so let the dude take care of that stuff.

Then you can just chow down, dig in, scarf it up, whatever.

If you don't live in an area that has bonfire pits, or beach camping, you can totally make this the same way in an oven, or even on the BBQ. I would also recommend figuring out whether or not alcohol and glass are permitted on your beach, and if they are not, as in the case with us, be ever so sneaky smuggling it onto the beach. I don't think cops are all the lenient regarding the culinary delights verses just plain breaking the law.