Happy belated Turkey Day. I spent most of the holiday weekend at Deer Creek State Park with my wife’s family. Originally we had planned on coming back Friday, but we were having such a nice and relaxing time that we decided to stay another night and drive home on Saturday. The first two nights we stayed in cottages, and the last night we slept in a room in the lodge. Our weekend was filled with hiking, biking, running, swimming, eating, drinking, campfires, and board games.

Monopoloy

One of the many highlights of the trip was sitting down to play some Monopoly. I hadn’t played this game in years, and it took the four of us a few turns to get all the rules figured out again. I still think we made up some things as we went along. In the end I found myself as the sole survivor and winner of the game. My hotel complexes on the orange and red properties proved to be the deciding factor, though the runner-up nearly knocked me out with his hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. I forgot how much fun (and how long) a game of Monopoly can be.

This past Saturday was the annual Eden Park Balluminaria. During this event a dozen or so hot air balloons line up around Mirror Lake in Eden Park and simultaneously light up the night. Some of my photos from the evening are below. My mom also has posted hers on flickr.

I couldn’t have asked for a much worse week as far as my sports interests go. The Bengals lost a heart-breaker to the Ravens on Sunday, 31-24. The University of Cincinnati Bearcat football team lost to Rutgers, 20-3, their first game without a touchdown in years. To make an already depressing Saturday worse, the Bearcat basketball team lost to the Presbyterian Blue Hose later that night, 56-54. These warm-up games for the basketball team should nearly be automatic wins.

My hockey team had a disappointing 8-2 loss to the first place team in our league. I guess it turns out that eating pizza and drinking beer doesn’t prove to be the best pregame activity. At least some friends and I actually brewed some beer earlier in the day, otherwise Sunday would have been a down day too.

My fantasy football teams provided only one win this week. With our playoffs starting in just a few weeks I sit in 2nd of 10, 8th of 12, 10th of 12, and I’m still in 1st in my division based game, where I had my only win of the week. I’m still in 2nd place in the pro pick’em game but fell another spot to 5th in the college version. Finally I moved up to 7th in the salary cap game. I’m hoping some of my players on a variety of my teams get healthy so I can finish out the season with a bang.

One last item, the Jenny Challenge is starting up in just a couple of days. I’ve participated the last couple of years and look forward to doing it again. Signing up is really easy this year, and again is open to anyone and everyone. I’ve already recruited a few new friends to the challenge. You know you want to join us.

This past Thursday I ventured to the west side of town for one of my brother-in-law’s birthday celebrations. We all decided to go to his favorite wing place, Wild Mike’s. Though I think I went to a different Wild Mike’s location, this was definitely my first time in this location on Harrison Avenue. Despite this location being relatively small, our table of seven was easily able to get a table together in the middle of the restaurant.

Though there were no specials on wings during our visit, their draft beer selections were super cheap. While the choices are limited to American mass-produced beers, they have recently added Yuengling (Lager and Black & Tan) so at least there are some decent choices for a great price.

Boneless Wings

My wife and I agreed to split a large order of boneless wings (1 lb for $12.29 with celery and choice of ranch or blue cheese) bathed in hot Mike’s Mix sauce. Mike’s Mix is a combination of their sauces so you get to try them all in one bite. This really appealed to me as I sometimes find it hard to pick just one or two sauces. Also I liked that all the flavors are available as mild, medium, hot, xtra hot, and stupid hot. So there are a ton of sauce options available. I really enjoyed the flavor combination that we ordered.

Curly-Q Fries

The wings game drenched in sauce, enough for our side of fries to be dipped in. Speaking of the curly-q fries, they were good. On their own they are a little bland, but there is an option of Cajun seasoning to be added to them, which I tried and enjoyed. Our table also split an order of jalapeno poppers which were fairly standard but still delicious.

I liked my experience so much that I can safely say that Wild Mike’s could very well be the best wing spot in Cincinnati.

A couple of Sunday’s ago my wife and I decided we wanted to order in dinner. We quickly decided we didn’t want pizza and would rather have some sort of Asian. Eventually we settled on Ruthai’s Thai Kitchen, which is just down the hill from our house. We almost decided to go elsewhere once we found out that they didn’t offer delivery, but my wife offered to pick up our carry out order while the Bengals game was on the TV.

I didn’t get to see the inside of the restaurant, but I’ve walked and driven past enough times to know that it isn’t a very big place. She mentioned that they have some traditional tables with seating on the floor. Sounds like it could be a fun experience eating in, so we will have to do that in the future sometime.

Basil Noodle With Chicken

As we typically do we decided to order a couple of dishes and split them. My choice was the basil noodles with chicken ($9.95), which features stir fried soft wide noodle with tomato, bamboo shoot, green bean, bell peppers and fresh basil. This dish typically comes with egg too, but I had that removed. Every dish gets a choice of mild, medium, hot, or Ruthai hot. I figured that Ruthai hot would be way to much and decided to go with hot. Even this spice level was perhaps a little too much, and this is coming from someone who loves spicy food. Aside from the overpowering spice the ingredients were all fresh and cooked perfectly.

Massaman Curry With Chicken

My wife selected the Massaman Curry ($10.95) with chicken as well. The meat is simmered in coconut milk with a special curry paste, sweet potato, potato, carrot, snow peas, and ground peanut. This dish was excellent! She ordered medium on the spice scale and I felt that it could have used a little more spice for me. It seems that it may take some time to get used to their spice scale and the effects on various dishes. The serving sizes were large and the prices are fair. We will definitely be back for more in the future.

As announced on their official blog, Google Music is now open for business. The idea here is that anyone can upload their personal music collection for free to the cloud so you can stream it anywhere, any time. The service has been in beta since May and though I was a beta member I never used it. Since our move my main music library has been stuck on a computer that does not have internet access, so I didn’t have an easy way to upload my tracks.

I finally took some time today to login to the service and even found some free tracks to add to my library. The best find so far has been 13 selected tracks from the Dave Matthews Band Caravan tour stop in Chicago earlier this summer that I attended. According to antsmarching.org the tracks are all from night three. These tracks are well recorded and are only available on music.google.com. Be sure to download Live On Lakeside and start using this great service.

I finally got the chance to visit a restaurant that has been at the top of my list since it’s opening earlier this year, A Tavola. I brought my wife to this trendy Over-the-Rhine eatery for her birthday a couple of weekends ago. We had heard that the line for a table was often long, and they do not take reservations, so we found ourselves lucky to talk in around 6:30 and find just a twenty-minute wait. We could have been seated immediately at the pizza counter, but decided to wait for a more spacious table.

Inside A Tavola

While waiting for our table, we found a couple of seats at the nearly packed bar and enjoyed a drink. I was impressed by the selection of draft beer and my wife found new love in a glass of red wine. She loved it so much that she took down the name so she could try to find a whole bottle later. Before we could get too far into our drinks, our table was ready.

After being seated pretty much in the center of the dining area, we glanced through the menu filled with a wide variety of pizzas along with a selection of salads and appetizers. Our server gave us a nice introduction to the restaurant after finding out it was our first time. He also suggested ordering a couple of appetizers and then splitting a pizza. He said that the pizzas are too large to be considered a personal dish.

House Salad And Chicken Meatballs

Following our servers advice we decided to split the house salad and one of the items on the seasonal menu, the chicken meatballs. The house salad was a basic mix of greens, shaved parmigiano, and a delicious balsamic vinaigrette. The salad greens were very fresh and tasty, in fact some of the best I have ever had. As good as the salad was, the chicken meatballs stole the show for me. The mix of tomato sauce and salsa verde was delicious and the meatball itself was perfectly seasoned. I wish that this would become a permanent item on the menu.

Artichoke + Goat Cheese

As for our pizza we went with the artichoke, goat cheese, salsa verde, tomato sauce, and mozzarella. With such good results with our appetizers I was expecting to be blown away. Unfortunately I was a little let down. The combination of ingredients tasted great, but I had a problem with the crust. I felt that it was too flimsy in the middle. When I picked up a slice with my hands nearly the entire slice would flop down toward the ground. I would have liked for it to be a bit crisper on the outside but still chewy on the inside. Other reviews seem to indicate a better cooked pizza so I hope for better results on a future visit. Even with this mistake, A Tavola is definitely worth a visit and I hope to be back soon.

This past Saturday was game five of six in our season tickets to University of Cincinnati football. We lucked into another great afternoon for football and started with a morning tailgate. The Bearcats took on the Mountaineers of West Virginia in an exciting game despite coming up three points short in the end. UC showed a lot of heart keeping the game close and nearly claiming a victory even after their starting quarterback went down in the first half and didn’t return. Despite the loss, the team can still win the Big East Championship and will start that effort this weekend at Rutgers.

Similarly the Bengals came up just a bit short in their game against the Steelers this weekend. I haven’t written much about them this year since I cannot easily sit down to watch their non-sold out home games. However the team is managing to do much better than most would have thought this years team could provide. I may even try to get to a game before the season is over.

My fantasy football teams didn’t perform much better with only 1 win out of 4 leagues. My teams are now in 2nd of 10, 4th of 12, 8th of 12 (after five straight loses), and finally 1st in my divisional based game. I am in 2nd place in the pro pick’em game and 4th in the college edition. Finally my team in the salary cap game has moved up to 9th place. I don’t think I’ll win this one as I’m now nearly 200 points out of 1st, but I hope to continue moving up in the standings.

My hockey team had a big win on Sunday night against a team that we had previously lost to. After 6 games we are now 4-2 and are in 2nd place behind an undefeated league leader. We will be playing against the 1st place team this weekend so I’m hoping for another big win.

Since returning to Cincinnati there was one item on my craving list that I had not had until a couple of weekends ago, Adriatico’s Pizza. I had never had their pizza before starting classes at the University of Cincinnati in 1998, but before long it was a college staple. They sell a pizza called The Bearcat, which is 18 by 24 inches and has 30 slices! Not only is it big it is also on really thick Sicilian crust. The Bearcat pizza was often seen on campus for various meetings, off campus at a wide variety of events, and occasionally it found its way into hungry college students’ residences. I’d be lying if I said that my roommates and I hadn’t ordered a number of Bearcats before.

The Bearcat

When my family decided to come over to help my wife and I pass out candy for Halloween, my wife and I both agreed that it was a great time to pick up a Bearcat, which would easily feed the six hungry adults. My wife picked up the pizza from the Clifton restaurant and when it arrived at our house I was happy to see that it had not changed. They still layer each slice of pizza with its own piece of giant pepperoni. The sauce is still as spicy and tasty as I remembered, and the crust was wonderfully thick.

In all my years of eating Adriatico’s pizza I have never tried their thin crust, though I have had multiple people say good things about it. I may one day get around to trying it, but in the meantime I’ll always look for any excuse to grab some family or friends and order a Bearcat.

After taking the Newport Gangster Tour my family and I headed to Dixie Chili for lunch. We walked past the restaurant during the tour and were all surprised to hear that this restaurant had been in operation since 1929 on the same block in Newport. Nicholas Sarakatsannis worked at Empress Chili, the first of the Cincinnati chili parlors, before starting Dixie Chili in an 8×30 foot room. Today the restaurant occupies a much larger section of the block.

6-Way

Unlike Skyline Chili parlors, customers at Dixie Chili enter the restaurant and are queued up to an ordering counter along with a big menu on the wall. My family and I all stared at the menu for a few minutes and most of us decided to order their exclusive 6-Way, which combines chili, spaghetti, beans, onions all topped with fresh chopped garlic and cheese. The garlic is what really makes this combination different from anything I’ve eaten before. Also the chili at Dixie is spicier and not as sweet as Skyline’s chili. I liked it a lot.

Chili Cheese Sandwich

As I often do, I combined my favorite chili way with a chili cheese sandwich on the side. I’m not a hot dog eater, so this is my substitute for the traditional coney on the side. Again, I really enjoyed this. Another interesting item on the menu is the vegetarian chili, which my wife tried as a 6-Way. It was a little more Tex-Mex style than the regular chili, but still a great option for the non-meat eaters out there. It is also available in jars to go, along with the traditional chili. If you have not tried Dixie Chili before do yourself a favor and go now.