For the first time since the close of the 2009 season, the University of Cincinnati Bearcat football team is nationally ranked! After their big win in Florida versus South Florida, they are now #23 in the USA Today coaches poll and #24 in the AP poll, however they have yet to hit the BCS standings. Their 37-34 victory over USF this past Saturday was a big thriller. Even as they were down late in the game, I really felt that they would still pull out the victory and was glad to see them score the winning touchdown with just twelve seconds left in the game.

Next the Cats will play at Pittsburgh in a couple of weekends before heading back home to face West Virginia, who is now just one spot behind UC in each of the national polls. If those standings remain, and even if they don’t, the game versus the Mountaineers will be a big one. I’m glad that we will be there in person to watch it all unfold.

My weekend of fantasy football was better than last. I walked away with two wins and two losses. My teams now sit in 1st of 10, two teams at 4th of 12, along with 1st of 4 in the division based league where I still hold the best record. I dropped from 1st to 2nd in pro pick’em and retained 2nd place in the college game. And again I am still in 11th place in the salary cap game. I’ve made some changes to my roster that I’m hoping will  help.

While attending Second Sunday on Main a couple of weekends ago, I had the pleasure of trying my first slices from Fireside Pizza. I forgot to snap a photo of the food truck like contraption, but fortunately they have one on their website. Once I spotted this unique food cart I knew exactly what I wanted to have for lunch. My wife agreed and we decided to split a pizza with pepperoni, roasted red peppers, and mushrooms.

Our Pizza Creation

After placing the order I was told to check back in ten or fifteen minutes and that it would be ready. After running into some friends and looking through some of the street fair vendors, I walked back to find our pizza waiting for us. The crust of the pizza was perfect! I love a nice crisp outside crust that is still warm and chewy on the inside. The sauce had a little sweetness to along with the fresh tomato taste and the toppings all seemed to be of the highest quality and in good amounts.

Great For All Ages

Even though he is easy to please, our nine month old son was also a big fan of the pizza!

We spent this past weekend in Cleveland, Ohio for my cousin Mark’s wedding. The wedding took place on Friday so Kim and I decided to drive up Thursday after work to make the drive easy on Trey and so that we would have Friday morning and afternoon for relaxation and play time in the hotel pool before the festivities.

Dark Cake Picture

The reception was one of the longest I can remember, going from 6pm until midnight, and was a ton of fun! They had a nice tiered cake with different flavors of cake in each tier, which was a fun surprise. They also had a really good band on the stage, The Remains. The band actually traveled from Cincinnati for the event, so keep them in mind if you are planning a Cincinnati area wedding. They play an excellent mix of songs but focus heavily on the music of The Beatles.

The Remains

Everyone in my family had such a good time, we all decided to stick around until Sunday even though we had originally planned to drive home on Saturday. Congratulations to Mark and Monica and I hope to see you guys again soon.

After having prior dinner plans spoiled due to circumstances beyond our control, my wife and I stumbled into Lemon Grass for dinner. This was the first dinner in a long time without our infant son at our sides. We walked in and asked for a table for two and were led to the back of the restaurant. Upon sitting down my wife and I both realized how dark and dreary it was in the back of this narrow restaurant. We asked our server if we could move toward the front of the restaurant and he directed us toward a table that sat along the front windows. I guess we should have asked for a table up there at the beginning since he seemed more than happy to accommodate our request.

Chicken Thai Spicy

I can’t find a menu online other than their lunch offerings, but I think what I ordered was called chicken Thai spicy. If that’s not right it was some basic dish of chicken with mixed vegetables in a light but spicy sauce. It was served with a side of white rice. Lemon Grass uses the 1-10 spice rating for their dishes and I went with an 8. It was fairly spicy but I could have used just a bit more I think. Other than that the dish was well prepared and tasted good. I would definitely order it again.

Paht Thai

My wife went with the Paht Thai. The way that the dish was presented was nice in that you could easily leave out some of the ingredients if they were not to your liking. She also ordered an 8 on the spice scale which seemed to be enough for her. I sampled only a small bit of her dish, but it tasted pretty much like Pad Thai should. She agreed that the dish was good and fairly standard, nothing out of this world. With that said I think she would easily order it again on a future visit.

Compared to Bangkok Bistro, which I reviewed earlier this year, I would say that the spice scale at Lemon Grass seems to be dumbed down just a bit more than the already weak scale at Bangkok. The serving sizes were a bit larger at Bangkok but I also think that their prices were too. With all of that said I would bet that we will likely return to Lemon Grass in the future and I would recommend it as a place to get a solid Thai meal for a very affordable price.

The University of Cincinnati had yet another win over the weekend against the Louisville Cardinals. It was the first conference win for the Bearcats and they now stand at 5-1 on the season. Though they have yet to crack any of the top 25 polls they are starting to get some votes. The game was down at Paul Brown Stadium, home of the Cincinnati Bengals. I much prefer to watch the Cats at home in Nippert Stadium, but we still managed to have a good time with our usual group of over a dozen. Next up for UC are some tough matchups, this Saturday at South Florida, followed by a game at Pitt, and then back to Paul Brown for West Virginia, a nationally ranked team. Let’s hope they can continue their winning ways.

My hockey team had the weekend off. Our record is currently 2-1 and play will resume this coming weekend.

In the world of fantasy sports, I had a very disappointing week going 0-4. This comes after three undefeated weeks in a row, but I guess the streak had to end somewhere. Even with all the losses I am in 1st of 10, 3rd of 12, 4th of 12, and 1st of 4 in my division. I remain in 1st place in the pro pick’em game but fell to 2nd in the college edition. Finally I’m in 11th place in the salary cap game, but making some progress.

A couple of weekend ago I finally made it to a restaurant that I have wanted to try, Dilly Café. I actually stopped by earlier that week to pick up a bottle of hard to find Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout. I remembered there being a patio and suggested it to my wife on a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon. We arrived to find the restaurant fairly crowded and were told it would be a fifteen or twenty-minute wait for a table on the patio. We grabbed the paging device and headed to the back of the restaurant where there is a bar. We found an open bar table and before we could even decide on beers our pager had alerted us that our table was already ready. I like when that happens.

We soon realized why the wait for an outside table could be unpredictable as we found that there was only one server taking care of the many tables on the patio. We often had to flag him down to place a drink or food order. Though that made the pace of the meal quite slow, we didn’t mind, and other than the server being overworked he was friendly and very courteous. We actually ended up staying on the patio for the majority of the afternoon, as did a number of other tables. The weather was perfect and their beer selection is quite good.

Grape Pecan Chicken Salad Sandwich

As far as the food goes, I was really impressed. I am a big lover of chicken salad and I especially love it when there are various fruits and nuts (besides almonds) in the fresh mix. Their grape pecan chicken salad had two great additions to the white meat chicken breast and celery. I really loved the chicken salad as well as the multi-grain bread, and the lettuce and tomato were top quality. The only thing I should have done was ordered something other than ruffled potato chips on the side.

Mariemont Gobbler

My wife went with the Mariemont Gobbler sandwich, which features turkey, imported Brie, cranberry chutney, and lettuce on a baguette. Again this sandwich was very good! A large slice of Brie was included on the sandwich and went perfectly with the cranberry flavor. She also substituted sweet potato fries instead of the chips, which I should have done. I don’t think there was an extra charge and they were much better than the standard chips. Lesson learned and I will be sure to change it up on future visits. We will definitely be back soon, especially since we both bought a recent LivingSocial coupon.

This past Saturday was a big day for my blog. Ten years ago I started my online journal as a fun-loving twenty-one year old student just starting my forth year of college. It is really hard to believe that I have been blogging for over 10 years now. Though the updates back then were often monthly, I’ve settled into a nice pattern of daily updates that allow for a quick break during the work day. I’m thankful for everyone who continues to stop by, some on a daily basis and others just from time to time, giving me another reason to write. Here’s to 10 more years!

Pepperoni & Mushroom

Last Friday my wife and I ordered pizza from Ramundo’s Pizzeria for us and her youngest brother who was staying with us for the night. She placed the order and decided to get two 18″ traditional crust pizzas, one with pepperoni and mushroom and the other plain with cheese. We  had the pizzas delivered and they arrived in timely fashion from the tiny pizzeria that is just down the road from our house.

Cheese Pizza

Both pizzas looked great upon delivery and arrived hot from the oven. I started with the pepperoni and mushroom pizza and was immediately hit with a bit of spiciness in the sauce, which I am a fan of. The sauce wasn’t sweet at all like some of the other pizza places around town. The toppings were pretty good and in fairly generous amounts. I also sampled the plain cheese which was good, though in this case I preferred some toppings. The cheese used on the pizzas was good, but the crust was a little plain. I’m told that they also serve New York style pizza, so next time I will have to give that a try. Overall this is a solid pizza that I’m sure we will order often in the future.

We’ve been without cable TV since moving into our new house at the beginning of July. Even with the fall season in full swing we have yet to miss an episode of all the shows we watch. This is all thanks to a new PC that I recently bought from newegg.com. It has everything needed to easily be configured for a home theater PC except for a tuner which I solved with this little device and a rabbit ears antenna that I borrowed from my father-in-law.

The TV signal that I get with the antenna is incredible HD quality from all the local channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, etc.) as well as some PBS type channels. With Windows 7’s built-in Media Center every computer is equipped to be a DVR. Plus Media Center automatically downloads program guides online and full season recordings can easily be set up too.

Since this is only a single tuner configuration versus the dual tuner that many cable system DVR’s have, we simply watch any conflicting shows from that networks website. Nearly every show in our list has full episodes available online for streaming. We also have ESPN3 through our current Internet service provider so we can stream all sorts of sports too.

My friend Phil was the one who introduced me to the idea and he has been doing it since the beginning of the year. I’ve yet to find any major drawback to this setup. If you are even moderately tech savvy this setup shouldn’t be hard to do yourself.

As many times as I’ve visited Lucile’s Creole Cafe near our old home in Denver, I have never once reviewed it, other than mentioning it in other reviews as my favorite breakfast place I have ever found. On our most recent visit to the mile high city I made sure that we stopped in for breakfast one morning and I actually took some photos this time around.

On this particular visit we actually arrived before the doors had opened at 8 AM on Saturdays. This was actually not the first time this has happened, but it’s always a good idea to get to Lucile’s early as the wait for tables just gets longer as the day goes on. Fortunately for us we didn’t have to wait for a table any longer that it took to seat the few others that were actually ahead of us, in line before the doors has opened.

Cajun Bloody Mary

If you do find a wait for a table, you can enjoy one of their Cajun Bloody Mary’s around the fire pit outside. Their bloody mix is spicy and delicious. The drink comes garnished with a shrimp, okra, olive, and a massive stalk of celery. The also have great mimosas and Cuban OJ.

Carlin County

On 99% of my visits to Lucile’s I always order the same thing, Carlin County ($7.35), which is sausage gravy on a buttermilk biscuit.  Served with red beans and grits (substituting potatoes for grits). Chef Mickey’s sausage gravy is like nothing I’ve had before. It is really spicy, thick, and full of andouille sausage. Also worth mentioning are the biscuits, which are served on the side with many of the other dishes. They are massive, easily enough to share with another.

The red beans are also very good, and while the potatoes themselves are nothing fancy, their homemade ketchup is to die for! In fact we bought a bottle of it to bring home with us. It is that good. They also make their own hot sauce and various jams that are on the table for the biscuits that arrive at your table before the rest of your meal.

My wife typically orders one of four different egg based items:

• Eggs Jennifer - Thomas’ english muffin, spinach, tomato, avocado, poached eggs and hollandaise. Served with grits or potatoes. $10.20
• Eggs New Orleans – fried eggplant slices with creole sauce, poached eggs and hollandaise. Served with grits or potatoes and a biscuit. $8.95
• Hank’s Eggs – potatoes, onions, peppers, cheddar cheese and three eggs, scrambled together and topped with avocado and tomato. Served with a buttermilk biscuit. $9.20
• Farmer’s Eggs – potatoes, onions, peppers, cheddar cheese, sausage and three eggs all scrambled together. Served with a buttermilk biscuit. $9.20

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