Quickie Cubicle Lunch Review

Today it's Healthy Choice Asian Inspired Five Spice Beef & Vegetables. One of the basic problems with this dinner -- and all others containing "beef" -- is that the beef never looks very appetizing. Instead it's a fake-looking thin sliced "roast beef" not unlike the stuff you used to eat as a kid from Banquet frozen dinners. It also has this weird textured-leather look. But in spite of the look, the beef is actually tender and tasty.

While not among the ingredient list (unless if falls under "spice blend"), almost all I can taste is ginger, and the peppers. I was suprised to see "sake" among the ingredients. Not a big fan of water chestnuts either. I mean, they have no taste, really, just this crunch.

Overall, not bad, but I don't know if I'll try it again.

Friday Night Dinner Review: Tom's Elite

Rex, my psuedo-significant other, has dragged me to Barbecutie a couple of times. He thinks the food there is good, including the dry, tasteless impersonation of brisket he ordered a couple of times. (I worry that he has such low standards; he is dating me, after all.)

When I found Tom's Elite, I brought the brisket plate home for dinner and told him, "THIS is what brisket is supposed to taste like." Moist, meaty, tender, flavorful, smoky heaven.

Tom's has become one of my favorite places to stop on my way home to get an excellent dinner that I don't have to shop for, cook or clean up. I just have to eat it. Which is exactly the way I like it. Plus, the portions are generous, so I always have enough brisket left over for a sandwich the next day.

Tom's Elite is located on Gallatin Rd in East Nashville, across from Nicholson's Cleaners and my SunTrust bank. I don't think I would have tried them if they hadn't gotten a glowing review in the paper. But thank goodness, they did. I love the ribs, but the brisket has captured my heart. The turnip greens are excellent too.


So that is what we had for dinner tonight. Beef brisket from Tom's. I had mac-n-cheese and green beans. Rex had the baked apples and greens.

We were going to watch Schindler's List, because Rex has never seen it (and that will not do -- i believe it's possibly the greatest film ever made), but I discovered that my VHS copy has developed that annoying buzz. So I'll have to get the movie on DVD.

Instead we watched my NetFlix "Dracula" with Frank Langella. I developed a definite crush on Langella in this one, back in 1979 when I first saw it. Not having seen it in years, I was a bit dismayed to find myself distracted by his hair, which looks disturbingly late seventies, maybe even a tad Liberace. But I'd still let him in my bedroom window, even if he was hanging upside down like a bat.

Doolittle, however, spent some quality time with Rex's shoes. One of these days, I'll grab the camera in time to get a shot of him rolling orgasmically on his back, which a shoe clutched tightly in his paws, or trying to force his entire head into one shoe. My cat just LOVES those shoes. Maybe it's a leather fetish, I don't know.

Quickie Cubicle Lunch Review: Marche

Somehow, my lunch reviews have become rather popular -- or so people tell me. Maybe it's just three people desperate for diversion, but still....

But I'm wondering if the fact that people are actually reading about what I had for lunch is making me seek out lunches that are... well, bad for me.

I've been a bad, bad girl today. I had to be in East Nashville, dropping off some art, and thought: "Hmmmm... Marche would be a yum-fest."

So I stopped at Marche's Artisian Foods. It's an almost unbearably trendy temple to food in the Five Points area, and only the fact that the food is in fact fabulous prevents it from being pretentious. The interior is shabby chic French provencial, where the waiters are all unemployed musicians and starving artists.

It's the kind of place where you'll pay $8 (plus tax) for a BLT -- but it will be the best BLT you have ever tasted. It will be the Sistine Chapel of BLTs.

It will start with fresh baked sourdough bread, toasted lightly, with generous, thick-cut smoked applewood bacon... and sun-dried tomatoes that are to die for, and fresh tender greens. There's some kind of dressing on it, I think, something light. I'm always too busy eating and sighing in bliss to take note.

But today, I was lured by the Cheese Steak -- soft, fresh foccacia bread, still slighty dusty from the oven, with Boarshead Roast Beef, roasted red and green peppers, carmelized onions, and cheese that I think may be brie.

Yum. I'm a sucker for food lovingly, artistically crafted... a welcome antidote to the recently-frozen, mass-produced and mundane crap that passes for food in most restaurants.

I suppose I wasn't as bad as I could have been. Did I mention... creme brulle? Madeleines? Chocolate Expresso Cake with Caramel and Cream Cheese frosting? Butternut Squash Cake with Apple Mousse frosting? Every kind of bread you can imagine. Chocolate croissants. Baguettes. Stuff you could just sit down with, along with a pound of butter, and eat until you die a happy piggie.