Cooking Tip - From Tina

Even though I go out to eat for almost every meal, I really enjoy cooking. When I cook, I like foods with lots of flavor, i.e., Italian, Mexican, lots of onions and garlic. What I don't like is the lingering smell. It smells great while it is cooking, but after I am finished eating, I want the smell to go away. I will wake up in the middle of the night and smell it. Yuk!

One idea I came up with is to put a candle in my bedroom (pumpkin spice is one of my favorites) and close the bedroom door. That works only if you keep the door shut and leave it shut during the night.

Tina gave me an idea the other day that I am using this morning. It is rainy (for the first time in about 6 months) and cool, so I decided to cook a roast. When I cook a roast, I put several slits in it and insert garlic cloves in the slits. It tastes great, but the smell is very strong. I loaded the Greek seasoning, garlic salt and steak seasoning on the roast and put it in the crock pot. I even cheated and used one of the new crock pot liners so there is very little clean up.

I have the crock pot on the back porch so that all the smells will be outside instead of in my house. I have it on low and it will cook for about 12 hours. Should be great. My house will also smell good and not like garlic.

An Old Favorite - Reata

To finish off the weekend, we decided to go someplace else that we haven't been in a long time, Reata. It has been at least a year. We have been enough to know that we love the appetizers and desserts and are not that crazy about the meals. Our plan was to just get our favorites.

We started with the signature "tenderloin tamales." They are not like any other tamale you have ever had. They are very fat and topped with what they call "pecan mash." They are very unusual and hard to describe, but great. You just have to try them. We also had an order of the bacon wrapped shrimp.

We split an order of the barbecued shrimp enchiladas. We were full after the appetizers and should have stuck to our original plan. The enchiladas were okay (I just at the leftovers for lunch), but we would have been just fine without them. Pops had to have a side order of jalapeno cheddar cheese grits. Those are his favorite along with the pecan biscuits that are served with the meals.

We saved the best for last, the banana pudding. It was as good as always.

Finally - Dinner at Celebration

Saturday morning as I was driving to Gymboree, I was thinking about where we could go different for dinner. Celebration popped in my head and I thought about it several times throughout the day.

When I got home, Pops said "Let's go to Celebration tonight." Believe it or not, that does happen frequently. It has been a long time since we have been there. If you remember my post from September 6th, we were headed to Celebration and got diverted to Pappa's barbecue. Not tonight.

We went to church and sat in our usual seats. Ted and Tina came sat right behind us like they usually do. As usual, we started talking about where we were going to eat. Tina said she had thought of Celebration. She had never been there before, but was trying to find some place new.
With 3 people independently choosing Celebration, it was meant to be.

We met them there. It was as good as always. My favorite part of the meal is the salad. It is served family style with homemade dressings and croutons. I could eat the salad only and be completely satisfied.

Between us we had pot roast, meatloaf and chicken fried steak. No one was disappointed. The vegetables served family style were mashed potatoes with cream gravy and roast beef gravy, sauteed yellow squash and broccoli casserole.

To top it all off we had several servings of the bread basket. It consists of jalapeno cornbread, delicious rolls (with butter and honey of course), blueberry muffins and pumpkin muffins. Great meal!

Barbecue in Argyle

We have always been adventuresome in our eating. We have traveled many miles just to try a new restaurant. Back about 15 years ago, we heard about a barbecue restaurant in Tioga. To be honest, I really don't remember much about it at all.

Friday, I was reading the paper and I read that Clark's Outpost in Tioga has opened up a new restaurant in Argyle, so that is where we headed for dinner. It was located in a strip center. There is not much else in Argyle.

We were pleasantly surprised by our meal. I ordered the barbecued ribs. They had a dry rub and were very tender and smoky. The coleslaw was great, but the potato salad was just average. Pops had the beef and sausage. It was also good and the red beans were good as well. It was served with Texas toast.

The read draw (and I have to admit the real reason I wanted to go to Argyle) is the dessert. There used to be a tiny diner in Argyle called Evelyn's. Her specialty was homemade pies. Clark's has her pies on their dessert menu. Since pie is my favorite dessert, I could not pass it up.

They had very little pie left when we arrived, so we ordered dessert before our meal. We wanted to make sure we got what we came for. We ordered lemon meringue and coconut meringue. I will have to say the coconut was probably one of the best I have ever had.

Argyle is about 12 miles south of Denton. It was worth the drive.