So Long, Wong's Place; Hello, Smile Lao Thai

For years, Wong's Place in Tempe was by far my favorite Chinese restaurant in the area. So many memories were made there. I had Wong's Place on speed dial, and picked up takeout there at least a couple times a month. It became a tradition to eat at Wong's Place before going to the Phoenix Suns games with my basketball-loving friend from Tucson. She liked it so much, she usually stopped there on her way out of town to pick up food to take home to her husband in Tucson. I brought out-of-town visitors there, and my kids almost always picked "Wong's" when choosing where to have their birthday or other celebratory dinners.

But alas, good things don't always last forever. In 2016, Wong's Place sold out. They changed their name, their menu (no more blue "Chinese menu"), their recipes, and their unique decor. They even installed a tv in the dining room where you can now watch CNN while eating your dinner. It's completely ordinary. The food servers that worked there for 20+ years aren't there anymore. And the food is completely mediocre. We ate there twice just to make sure. Yup, it is no longer the yummiest Chinese food in the area. So sad.

While I still haven't found a new favorite Chinese restaurant, I did discover Smile Lao Thai at Broadway and Rural Road. Like the name suggests, they serve Laotian and Thai food. I've been there a couple times and it's delicious! The nam (pictured above) is super yummy. I think it's chicken salad that you wrap in lettuce leaves. Every bite is the best! We also enjoyed the pad pet which is like a coconut curry with rice. That was delicious too! I need to go back there to try more yummy dishes!

There is another Thai food restaurant at the corner of Elliot and McClintock called Yupha's Thai Kitchen. It's in the same strip mall as the dollar movie theatre (which now costs $3.50). We walked past this restaurant a thousand times going to Flanny's bar and grill either before or after the movie. Finally, I decided to try this Thai food restaurant. It was good! We had the Vegetarian sampler, which included satay tofu, egg rolls and little pillows of fried tofu yumminess. The grilled tofu satay was amazing! We also had the chicken tom kha soup which was absolutely delicious!

So there you have it. We had to say goodbye to a long time favorite, but that opened the door for us to try some new restaurants that were right here the whole time!

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!!!

A couple weeks ago on a Saturday morning, I brought my girls to Food City to pick out a paleta because they were behaving themselves. As soon as I pulled up to the store, I noticed that they were grilling whole chickens out front! Mmmmm... the aroma of chickens grilling!!! They were selling the grilled chickens in the deli for $6.99. If you were willing to shell out $8.99, they'd throw in some salsa and a dozen warm tortillas along with the chicken. Since it was almost lunchtime, I opted for the chicken dinner. I chose the molcajete rojo (molcajete "red") salsa, and it was the perfect complement to the perfectly seasoned chicken! My goodness, it was delicious! It was enough for the three of us, plus the babysitter, to have a very satisfying and flavorful lunch that was muy delicioso.

It's Pumpkin-Everything Time!!!!!

It's that time of year again -- when big displays appear in all our food stores, featuring every imaginable food item flavored with pumpkins and pumpkin spices! Pumpkin cookies, pumpkin ale (more on that later), pumpkin pasta sauce (yes, I tried it - it was good, but I don't think it will be replacing yummy marinara quite yet), pumpkin pasta, pumpkin chips, pumpkin cereal and oatmeal, pumpkin spice latté, pumpkin coffee, and the list goes on and on. If you can conceive of it, apparently you can add pumpkin to it.

I'm drawn to these displays partly for the sheer imagination on display, and also because I don't hate pumpkin spices. I spotted this Sweet Harvest Pumpkin tea on one of the displays for something like two for $5, so I grabbed a pair, one for myself and one for my tea-loving colleague. He loves tea so much, he has a 6-ft. tall bookcase devoted to a multitude of tea flavors! It's very impressive!*

I tried our new tea a couple days ago and it was très yummy! I added Coffee-mate's Natural Bliss hazelnut flavor and it was delicious! Natural Bliss is basically cream and sugar but I’m sure any of the flavors would be yummy.

You see, not too long ago, I broke my cherished sparkly bedazzled to-go cup. I knew I needed a new one, so last week while grocery shopping, I stopped by the in-store Starbuck’s. They had lots of to-go cups, some of them on sale for $9.99, and going all the way up to $25!!! They had very pretty cups for $16.99, but I didn’t see a need to spend so much for to-go cup. I settled on a purple sale cup with the Starbuck's logo. I still thought $9.99 was a lot to pay for a cup!

I decided to try out my new cup with my new tea! Since it’s a little bigger than a regular cup, I threw two teabags into the cup and added my boiling water and natural bliss. I just went ahead and left the teabags in the cup and dashed off to work. Wouldn’t you know it, that little old Starbuck’s cup kept my tea burning hot for hours! I have to admit, my overpriced to-go cup is growing on me….

So get out there and enjoy the bounties of the season!!!!

*

Flag Cookies.... Just in Time!!!

We made these flag cookies last year on the 4th of July to celebrate... the 4th of July! It's a cookie base with a cream cheese spread and fresh strawberries and blueberries -- how patriotic, right! In addition to being patriotic, they are also very yummy (cream cheese and yummy berries.... Mmmmmm!)

Kids love to bake and decorate cookies, so this is a perfect family project. This masterpiece was made by a 6-year-old artist. It's conceptual :-)

Give them a try! Here you go!:

FLAG COOKIES:

I used the recipe for Thumbprint Cookies as the base. You could probably roll them out and cut nice rectangles.. we formed them by hand. I used a piece of wax paper to help me get the sides nice and straight.

Dough:
1 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 and 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream Cheese Topping:
2  8-oz. packages of cream cheese
4 tablespoons of sugar

Fruit Decorations:
Fresh blueberries, cut in half from top to bottom
Fresh strawberries, with the outer edge of the fruit cut into little strips

1. Make your dough: Cream together the butter and brown sugar. Add the egg yolks and vanilla. Last add the flour and salt.

2. Form the dough into rectangles about 3x4 inches in size, and a little less than 1/4 inch thick. Bake them at 350 degrees. Get them out of the oven when the edges just barely start to change colors (to brown).

3. Make your cream cheese topping by mixing the cream cheese and sugar together. Prepare your fruit.

4. When the cookies are cooled off, use a small offset spatula to spread the cream cheese topping across the top of the cookies. Arrange the blueberries in one corner to act like the star-spangled part of the flag. Arrange the strawberry strips into red and white stripes.

5. Eat them! Share them! Everyone will love them!!!

Here's a picture of our work product. Most of the cookies kept with the flag theme :-)

And the original Thumbprint Cookie recipe:

HAPPY FOURTH YA'LL!!!!!!!

Cheeeese!!!!!

If you love cheese, you need to get this bag of shaved fontina and parmesan cheese, and put it on your salad. This salad is so simple, but cool and refreshing and flavorful!:

SPINACH SALAD WITH A PEAR AND LARGE FLAKES OF CHEESE

Spinach leaves, lightly chopped
One ripe pear, chopped up
Large flakes of fontina and parmesan cheese
Olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Layer your salad starting with the spinach, and put the pear on top. I like to put my dressing on before I add the cheese flakes. Enjoy!!!

Mmmmm!! Pineapple!!!

I stopped by the 99 cents store yesterday to pick up a couple crossword puzzle books. While I was there, I saw some fresh pineapples. They were on the small side (which is probably why they were at the 99 cents store) but they looked very fresh, so I bought one, because it was 99 cents. Later, I chopped it up to serve as a side dish at dinner. It was sweet and yummy! Maybe I'll go back and get a couple more!

For Your Viewing Pleasure....

That's pastrami on a challah roll with thousand island dressing and cole slaw.  Courtesy of Chompie's of course.  Order these, and you get three of these little beauties on your plate.  OMG Soooo yummy!!!!!