Restaurant Wars 2013 - Olive Garden

The biggest problem with going to Olive Garden? Getting a table. It seems no matter what day of the week you go, you will be waiting for a table unless you arrive at three o'clock for dinner. Yet for some reason, people are willing to wait over an hour for soup, salad and bread sticks. Well wait no more, make it all at home.

In order to test out the OG, boyfriend and I ventured out to dinner on a very specific night. February 13th. This year February 13th was both the day before Valentine's day and Ash Wednesday. When we arrived at 7:30, we were escorted right to a waiting booth. That's a first in my book.

The person who really likes OG in my house is BF. He calls it classic Italian comfort food. What you would want your bowl of carbonara to look and taste like. The dishes are all simple, straightforward and require no fancy words to describe. It's not the food your Italian grandmother would prepare, unless she was cooking for two dozen. 

To keep with that classic OG menu, BF and I both got simple dishes. BF went with a chicken Parmesan and I decided on a chicken and shrimp carbonara. Both meals came with the traditional OG soup/salad and bread sticks, and I ordered a cherry Italian soda to round out my meal.

First, do not order the cherry Italian soda unless you have a real love of children's cough syrup. It was dead on in flavor and probably had twice the amount of sugar. I took a sip and ordered a water as replacement.

Next, the general rule with the bread sticks is a follows - eat them before they get cold or prepare to sword fight with them. Once these little gems cool off, they take on a other worldly strength. I had ideas on how to avoid this issue at home.

Our meals were just as expected. BF dove into his chicken Parmesan whole heartily, until he realized he ate too many bread sticks and couldn't eat anymore. My carbonara came out looking creamy and delicious, and incredibly oily. I found out the next day as I had my leftovers just how much oil was in my dish. I love carbonara and this was good, it's just not something I could eat on a regular basis.

The plan for home. Recreate the OG experience from bread sticks to salad to main course. Lighten the fat load and try to maintain the flavors. 

Olive Garden salad at home is pretty easy.  The salad itself is just lettuce, pepperoncini, black olives, red onions and croutons.  Black olives are gross, so I omitted those.  It's pretty true to when I go to the restaurant.  The dressing has quite a few copycat recipes online that I based my final recipe on and apparently those are very similar to the actual OG recipe (I couldn't believe that they actually use mayonnaise in their recipe).  Where I took a big left turn is with my carbonara recipe.

Want easy and delicious bread sticks?  You need two ingredients.  Pizza dough and garlic salt.  I used a pre-made pizza dough from the grocery store and cut in into eight pieces.  I rolled each piece into a bread stick-like shape and spritzed them with cooking spray.  After a light sprinkle with garlic salt and eighteen minutes in the oven, we had bread sticks that didn't harden up in two minutes.  A little denser than the OG variety, but BF and I both liked the pizza dough sticks better.

The OG carbonara dish I received was covered in cheese and dripping in oil.  I made a simple and classic carbonara with grilled chicken.  BF was a little sad that my version wasn't under a layer of cheese, but it was something I could actually have before going to the gym.  After our dinner at the OG, we went home and melted into the couch.

Next time you want some Olive Garden and don't want to wait for a table, just pick up a few ingredients and make it at home!  Or you could sit in the bar area, they serve the full menu at the bar and the wait is usually much shorter!

Cherry Kuchen Bars

I make a lot of desserts.  I go through pounds of sugar every month.  I love to bake, but I also love to fit into my jeans.  So here are the ways that I stay healthy and still make all these tasty treats.  Maybe my tips will help you keep off the pounds but let you enjoy time in the kitchen!

- For most of my recipes, I will make half batches.  Having fewer cookies around means fewer to eat.

- I make things that Boyfriend likes to eat.  As long as I leave fruit out of my dessert recipes, he'll happily chow down cookies, brownies and blondies.  He's six foot three inches and burns calories like a hummingbird.

- My coworkers often enjoy treats on Monday morning.  I once put an entire bundt cake in the lunchroom and left for an hour.  When I returned, I found an empty cake plate.

- Boyfriends coworkers also get to have sweets.  Things like cakes, cupcakes and pies stay in New Jersey because they are awkward to carry on the commuter train.  The most positive thing about sending them to work with BF is that I don't eat any extras.  The downside?  I've lost a few containers because someone forgets to bring them home.

- The freezer is full of dessert.  They are there if I really want something sweet.  At the end of the month I go through the freezer and clean out all the excess food.

Of course I also hit the gym several times a week and I'm on my feet a lot during the work day.  I generally eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch during the week (oatmeal for breakfast & a salad for lunch) and I make lean protein and veggies for dinner.  Repetition helps me maintain my healthy weight.

Or you could think about it this way.  The more cupcakes you feed your coworkers, the thinner you look in comparison!  It's a win-win.

Wilde Week #5

1. I think I have a problem - I'm addicted to Fairway markets.  If you aren't from the Tri-state area, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about.  If you live near one of these beautiful grocery stores, you totally understand.  If you live in Brooklyn, I feel for you and your Sandy-ravaged store.  (Worry not, it's opening back up on March 1st!).  If I ever need any strange, foreign or fancy ingredient, I know that I can go to Fairway and they will have exactly what I need.

On my most recent trip there I bought the following strange variety of items...
- Blueberry extract
- Biscoff Spread
- Adobo sauce
- Gummy bears
- Meyer lemons
- Tiny, fancy pears
- Dried Kiwi

2. The book of the week - "Matched" by Ally Condie.  Yeah, so I'm a total sucker for teen lit.  Matched is another girl living in a post-apocalyptic world.  Something changes her perspective and all of a sudden the rebellion is on.  Needless to say, I loved it and it only took three days to read.  I'm on to the second book.
3. Sometimes chemistry is super cool.  Take this compound that I made earlier this week.  I walked away from it for twenty minutes and when I came back it had transformed!  It turned from a yellow oil to a sparkly crystal!  Too neat.

4. What color are my nails this week?  They're teal of course!  ("Skinny Jeans" - Sephora by OPI)


I've had this on for a few days, so please ignore the chipped tips!



5. I love this and this and I'm totally doing it later this week.  The question is, weekday hourly photo or weekend hourly photo?  If I do it during the week, you'll get four different views of the commuter trains of NYC!  If I do it on the weekend you'll realize I'm totally boring and like to hang out at home, with a short side trip to Fairway...

6. My mom is super talented and crafty.  Three weeks ago I sent her a pinterest link with a quilt that I thought was pretty.  Within the hour she had asked what size quilt I wanted and had made her way to the quilting store.  Yesterday I received  a giant package in the mail from my mom and it was filled with this amazing quilt!  She's so good to me.

7. Have an iPhone?  Go grocery shopping?  You have to get this app.  Grocery IQ (see it down there, green icon, orange in the Q).  You can use it on all your iDevices and it will sync to each of them!  I like to make my grocery list on the couch with my iPad.  Then I bring my phone with me to the grocery store and shop!  Check check check and I'm done.  I like it that I can add things to my list whenever I think of them.

8. Crossfit continues!  Yesterday they kicked my butt with a power clean warm-up drill.  We went into the core workout in teams of three and performed a round of three exercises.  Pull-ups, power cleans and 200m runs.  As many rounds as your team could do in twenty minutes!  It helped that everyone cheers each other on during the workout, I felt so good after the workout.  Loving it.  Getting buff.