What Did You Do During the LTH Outage

What did you do during the LTH outage this weekend?

I cooked a tri-tip on my Weber Kettle (thanks Mike G and G Wiv for sharing your Costco Bounty).

Grilled Tri-tip


I went to the Family Fruit Market on Cicero and got some Portuguese style Bolitos and made a sandwich with some Inglehoffer Spicy Honey Mustard, garlic mayo, tomatoes and a pile of fried onions.

Tri-tip Sandwich


That helped take some of the sting out of not having LTH to read.

Saturday.

Sunday.

Well, I was in Windsor for most of the outage. Not necessarily known for its excellent dining... but I did fairly well:

Friday, Dinner: Jim's Original, Chicago

What more is there to say? Perfect polish sausage and, when ordered with "extra salt," the fries are edible. A fantastic quick meal before a 4.5 hour drive.


Saturday, Lunch: El Mayor, Windsor

Quite, quite good Lebanese food. Detroit is fantastic for Lebanese, and it seems to have jumped the border. Superb shawerma, especially chicken, from giant spits; hummus with lots of tahini and olive oil; fluffy, extremely garlicky toum; fragrant rice with cinnamon+clove along with fried meat; good bean and tomato stew, good lentil soup. Extremely friendly service, and free strong coffee after your meal.

"Combination BBQ" with rice, El Mayor:




Saturday, Dinner: Spago Trattoria e Pizzeria, Windsor

Good, but not great, wood-fired pizzas. Very good arancini in a pool of undersalted marinara. The margherita was a real disappointment, but the four cheese and roasted red pepper w/prosciutto were much nicer.

Margherita, Spago, Windsor:




Four Cheese, Spago, Windsor:




Sunday, Lunch: Habiby, Windsor.

More middle eastern. I'm not positive of the nationality, so I won't attempt it. It's a fast food style place, but nothing is served from steam trays. He (counterman and cook) has two small spits of shawerma, and all the other dishes are made to order, including above-average felafel, kifta, and fried halloumi, all of which are very good. The kifta was overcooked a bit, but was still fine. The halloumi was perfect. Free cinnamon-infused tea while you wait for your food.



Windsor isn't a great food town, but it's really not bad at all. Along with the above mentioned, there is a thriving little italy with a few good bakeries, good ethiopian and some edible indian food.

-ed

Russian Markets

stevez wrote:I cooked a tri-tip on my Weber Kettle

Steve,

I did a tri-tip myself yesterday and, while it tasted very good, did not take any pictures. I thought I'd let your pretty near perfect tri-tip picture speak for mine.

Enjoy,
Gary

We went to Costco on Saturday and I spent some time staring at the tri-tips, but we decided to wait until our next trip there (probably in two weeks). Right now, after looking at that impressive photo, I'm sorry I didn't pick some up.

Spent yesterday eating at our neighbor's house, a brunch for their daughter's confirmation that lasted until about 7:00 p.m. Nothing truly outstanding, just lots and lots of food, including five kinds of jello and about twelve different desserts.

Hi,

So you don't repeat the mistake I made. The gentlemen above tend to purchase the cryovac tri-tips at Costco, then split it up amongst themselves.

Initially, I bought the foam board and plastic wrap tri-tips which were smaller and pricier. I have since bought the cryovac, then transfer the tips into into ziploc freezer bags for future use.

Just before Christmas when I was still dickering in my mind about purchasing a rib roast, I had a conversation with a Costco butcher. The cryovac rib roasts are offered initially, then removed from the display just before their sell-by date.

The cryovac is opened, the roast is either kept at the same size and repacked in plastic wrap and foam board or cut in half to be sold as smaller roast. This additional handling does increase the price by $1 or more per pound. Sometimes they are cut into steaks. When they approach their expiration, then they are pulled.

The final stop is ground into hamburger, where the price drops from their lofty steak and roast prices to $1.99 per pound or so.

What I learned is cryovac in these situations is the way to go.

Note that tri-tip at Costco is a sometimes-available item, that's why I bought the 7-pack as soon as I saw it even though I still had a frozen one left. As a matter of fact, I had walked to Costco that day and rode home with my large, bloody cryovacked package on the bus, rather than risk it not being there when I returned with car.