On our way into Steamboat Springs for vacation last week, we decided to stop for some Mexican food at Tequila’s, which is in the historic downtown area. Nearly everyone in the group opted for one of their house margaritas that come served in a pint glass. With that much tequila to start our trip, we knew we were in for a good one. I’m told that their margaritas are made with just tequila, lime juice, and agave natural sweetener. I do recall them being pretty tasty and not overly sweet.

Inside Tequila’s

We were given a few complimentary baskets of chips for our rather large table, along with a traditional red salsa as well as a non-traditional cabbage based salsa. I will admit that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the cabbage salsa at first, but after trying it on top of a warm chip I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a little like coleslaw but not very creamy and much more bold in flavor.

Cabbage Salsa

For lunch I ordered chicken enchiladas with salsa verde. This plate was served with refried beans and rice. I’ll start with the beans, which didn’t appear to be from a can, but I really didn’t enjoy them that much. It seems that they weren’t very fresh and when the plate was warmed in the oven they got crunchy around the edges. The rice was alright too, but not worth the extra money. If I were to order again I would have went à la carte, as the enchiladas were surprisingly good! I also had a bit of my wife’s chile relleno, which was great too, even though they prepared it with beef when she requested vegetarian. Nearly everyone in the group licked their plates clean, so Tequila’s is definitely worthy of a visit.

Chicken Enchiladas

Steamboat on Dwellable

My brother and I spent many hours playing with LEGO’s growing up, so it’s easy to understand why I was super excited to accompany my youngest brother-in-law and his friend to LEGO KidsFest this past weekend. Kim and Trey also came along for the fun-filled day.

Batman greeted everyone at the entrance.

Lightning McQueen too!

Nick and Nash with SpongeBob.

Darth Vader

I was expecting a ton of really large sculptures made completely out of LEGO’s, and while there were well over a dozen, the real attraction at the KidsFest are all the play areas, construction zones, group builds, and games.

Group build map of the USA.

Trey driving a DUPLO car.

Trey running away from a taller LEGO man.

This brick pile was nearly a foot deep!

Burying Nick in the big brick pile.

If you couldn’t already tell from the photos, we had a great time!

If you didn’t notice by the lack of posts last week, I was on vacation. Kim and I decided earlier this year to take a snowboarding trip back to Colorado. Since we wanted to bring Trey along with us, we realized that it would be more fun if we brought one of Kim’s siblings along with us to take turns hanging with Trey and hitting the slopes. Turns out that both of her college aged brothers wanted to join in on the fun, so we planned the trip for their spring break. It also turns out that her sister and fiancé wanted to join in too!

We flew out of the Dayton airport very early two Saturdays ago. Rather than driving up that night, I found a reasonably priced hotel near the hotel that we all stayed at Friday night to make the 6:30 flight a little more tolerable. We choose this flight so that we could be in Denver in time to catch the always entertaining St. Patrick’s Day Parade. While at the parade we got to see a bunch of old Denver friends. Sorry for those that we missed, but our stay in Denver was much too short.

Wash Park – near our old home in Denver

After breakfast and a quick stop at a nearby park for Trey to run around, we packed up the rented Suburban and headed for Steamboat. We realized that trying to drive up to the slopes and get a full day in would be impossible with our already limited sleep and having Trey with us, so we took our time getting to Steamboat. We did make it up in time to watch the UC Bearcat basketball team beat Florida State in the NCAA tournament from our rented condo in the Bronze Tree.

Trey enjoying the deepest snow we’ve seen all winter.

Trey really loved being pulled around in sleds.

The following three days were spent on the slopes of Steamboat. Since we had six adults on the trip, one of us would stay back for the morning shift with Trey and either take him out on a sled, take a dip in the pool, or just hang around the condo. We would then all regroup for lunch each day around 11:30 to enjoy macaroni and cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then another person (or sometimes two) would hang back for the afternoon shift. This actually worked really well for all of us.

CAUTION: Deep Snow Conditions May Exist.

Ski Yesterday…Ski Today…Ski Tomorrow

We really lucked out with the snowfall. We arrived Sunday to find sunshine and cool temperatures, but before we headed to bed that night the snow really started to fall. When we woke up we had three fresh inches of snow to play in on Monday morning. Fortunately the snow continued to fall throughout parts of Monday, leaving another three inches fresh for Tuesday. I had the Tuesday morning shift with Trey, but I heard that some in our group found half a foot or more of untouched powder that morning. Wednesday was a warm day, complete with spring skiing conditions (slush). Hard to complain with what snow we did see though. It felt great to be back on the slopes.

Snow At Steamboat

Snow In Trees

Bronze Tree on Dwellable

My birthday was this past Saturday. When asked by my family where I wanted to have lunch that day, the obvious choice for me was the Moerlein Lager House. Since opening late last month I knew it was only a matter of time before I would stop in for a visit. Though I’m not a fan of most of the Christian Moerlein brand of beers, I do appreciate the efforts that Greg Hardman has put in to bring Moerlein and other Cincinnati heritage beers back home. This brewery is another step toward that goal.

Moerlein Lager House

Prior to our visit on Saturday I had seen many pictures of the newly built restaurant, and I must say that no amount of pictures can convey how neat the building truly is. I love the amount of glass that was used in the construction. It allows a ton of natural light in, while providing diners with wonderful views outside. The large wood beams and contrasting black metal work really well together, and there is also a large amount of granite inside too.

Upstairs Inside

John Hauck Brewing Co. Room

In addition to eight or so Christian Moerlein draft selections, there is a great selection of guest beers also on tap, not to mention the lengthy bottle list from around the world. It may not have the best selection in the city, but I’m glad that they didn’t limit it to only Moerlein products. The food menu is also fairly lengthy as well, even during lunch. Eventually I settled on the smoked stack BBQ sandwich ($11) – pulled pork, smoked sausage, chipotle BBQ sauce and fried onions on brioche roll.

Smoked Stack BBQ

The pulled pork itself was good, though not excellent. The real treat of the sandwich is the spicy smoked sausage that is mixed in with the pork. The fried onions didn’t add much to the sandwich other than an occasional crunch. I opted for coleslaw on the side and not the sweet potato chips. The slaw was okay, but fairly bland for my tastes. I did steal some sweet potato chips from my mom and liked those better. Though I think I would like them even more if they were thicker cut.

Beer Can Chicken Melt

I also stole a couple of bites of my mom’s beer can chicken melt sandwich ($11) – pulled rotisserie chicken, applewood bacon, caramelized onion, roasted tomato and cheddar with honey mustard on French roll. This sandwich was awesome! I would definitely order it again. My wife had the applewood chicken salad ($14), which I also sampled. This combines grilled chicken over spring greens tossed in cranberry poppyseed dressing with bacon, egg, cranberries, spiced pecans and bleu cheese. The portion was huge and again pretty tasty.

Applewood Chicken Salad

I’m excited to see how the menu progresses over time, and hope that the beer list continues to grow. I know that I will be back to sample more of the fine food and drinks. Below are some additional photos from my mom, with a few more on her flickr page.

Reflections In The Glass

Christian Moerlein Brewing Co.

Taps

Three Meat Flatbread

Black Cherry Forest Cake

So far so good with my march madness picks. Five games have been played and I correctly picked the winners of each one. As I normally do, I’ve picked Cincinnati pretty far into the tournament. It would feel wrong if I didn’t do so. I was getting nervous that Syracuse was going to lose their first round game, but it looks like they are starting to pull away with just a few minutes left to play. I think many are predicting them to have an early exit, but I don’t think many picked them to lose the first round.

For those of you who would like to stream all the games from your computer, you can do so here. This used to be a free service, but now they are trying to charge $3.99 for access. However I found a way to get it for free again this year. Just text “0BEARCATS” to 2653 and you will receive a code that you can enter for free access. The first character is the number zero, not the letter. Enjoy!

I  have finally found a recipe for roasted asparagus that is on par with the recipes I have for grilled asparagus. This recipe combines the fairly standard garlic and olive oil with the less common Parmesan cheese and lemon. The recipe actually denotes the latter as both optional ingredients, but I would not skip them. I used the juice of half of a lemon and just guessed on the amount of fresh grated Parmesan to use. The results were excellent!

Oven-Roasted Asparagus

The weather over the weekend was fantastic! Plus the weather for the week ahead doesn’t look too bad either. I hope that I get the opportunity to take advantage of this heat wave.

5 Day Forecast

Fortunately we took full advantage of the weather over the weekend. Saturday afternoon we headed down to Williamstown Lake in Kentucky. Kim’s uncle has a small cabin on the shores of this 300-acre reservoir. Though we didn’t take the pontoon out during this visit, some of the group took rides on the paddle boat. Other activities included shooting a BB gun, grilling some food, and sitting around a campfire.

As nice as Saturday’s weather was, Sunday may have been even better. I took Trey on an early morning walk throughout the neighborhood. We then followed that up with some outside play time before heading to a very nice playground outside of the Pleasant Ridge Recreation Center. We then wrapped up the weekend with another grill out with Kim’s siblings. Bonus!

Pleasant Ridge Park

Having spent nearly half of my life living in Cincinnati, LaRosa’s pizza was always one of the places that I missed while living elsewhere. Now that we are living back in town, I’ve discovered some other local pizza places that I like even more. However I still love the thin crust, square cut, LaRosa’s pizza.

One weekend night a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were out in search of pizza. We first stopped at ZZ’s and quickly found a 30 minute wait for a table. Without much room for our son to run around, we decided to try their pizza another night. We drove over to Dewey’s in Oakley, and found an even longer wait. We were starving at this point and I suggested we just head over to the nearby LaRosa’s for dinner.

Multigrain Wheat Crust Pizza

Upon entering the restaurant and finding no wait for a table I was reminded again another reason to love LaRosa’s, I have never had to wait for a table. My wife immediately noticed a new item on their menu, multigrain wheat crust pizza. I agreed to try it out with her. The 12″ square pizza serves 3-4 and starts at $9.99 with 3 toppings, we choose ham, pineapple, and banana peppers.

I must say that I wasn’t sure that I would like LaRosa’s on a crust other than the traditional that I was used to, but I honestly could hardly tell a difference. It seems that this multigrain crust isn’t as crisp as the regular, but that was the only thing I noticed. I didn’t even really taste a difference. The pizza was just as good as always.

Despite the frigid temperature and the falling snow Sunday morning, I braved the elements to run the three-mile Sprint for Special Olympics.  Kim and her family are big supporters of Hamilton County Special Olympics, so this is just one of many events throughout the year that I get to enjoy. Plus it provided me the opportunity to try out my new running tights and half zip top that I recently purchased. The race went really well for me, as I finished in fifth place overall with a time of just over 24 minutes. I’ve run this distance in under 24 minutes a few times, but never when it was this cold.

My wife had some shopping she needed to do up in Kenwood on Saturday afternoon. I used this an excuse to try out a sub shop that has been on my radar for a while, Firehouse Subs. Of their 485 locations in 29 states, five are in the Cincinnati metro area, and this is one of the closest to our home.

I’m a sucker for a well prepared hot sub, and this looked like just the place to fill that craving. They have ten hot specialty subs on their menu, along with some more basic hot and cold subs. I didn’t think twice about ordering anything other than a hot specialty sub and went with the Club on a Sub ($5.79) – smoked turkey breast, Virginia honey ham, crispy bacon, and melted Monterey Jack cheese on wheat. I also agreed to have it “Fully Involved” meaning mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomato, onion, and a dill spear on the side.

Club on a Sub

The sandwich was great! The wheat bread was fresh and just a touch crunchy from the oven. The meat and veggies all appeared and tasted fresh. This was a great sandwich that I would not hesitate to eat again. My wife had the Engineer Sub ($5.59) – smoked turkey breast, sautéed mushrooms, and melted Swiss. She also was very happy with her sandwich.

We each made had a combo with a bag of chips of our choice and a medium drink for $2.29 extra. The medium cup was huge, easily the size of most places large. And with their Coca-Cola freestyle machine there are over 120 different combinations of soda available. I tried some flavored drinks, but they all were a little too sweet for my tastes. It was still fun (and slightly confusing the first time) to play with this unique machine.

We had a great first experience at Firehouse Subs, and I will definitely add it to my list of quick eats. I just wish there was a location closer to home.