Category: Eats

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10 pounds of flour, 7.5 pounds of butter, and about 4 pounds of sugar later, our baking is done. Now all that’s left to do is package up the cookies and ship them off. Everyone will get their cookies late this year, but at least they taste good.

The eating season is upon us. Thanksgiving luncheons at work today (my dressing contribution is baking in the oven now), maybe another one tomorrow before heading off to my wife’s parents house for Thanksgiving on Thursday. Ham, roasted turkey, smoked turkey, macaroni and cheese, dressing, pie, biscuits, collard greens (which I refuse to eat) and all the other yummy stuff.

Then it’s off to Chicago for RSNA. That’ll be 4 days of hotel living and restaurant eating. Looking forward to downing more than a few deep dish pizzas from Pizzeria Uno and Gino’s East. Mmmm…deep dish pizza…mmmm.

And then back in time to start the Christmas baking. Stocking up on supplies to send out Christmas cookies again this year. We did fruitcakes a couple of years ago, which were surprisingly well received. I think it was the thorough soaking with rum we gave them. Making more than a 2 or 3 fruitcakes becomes rather expensive though. Last year we made spritzer cookies, which always seem to be popular. Butter, sugar and flour. That’s pretty much all they are. It’s hard to make them not taste good 🙂 This year we’ll be doing it again.
Once the cookies are done, it’ll be time to start planning Christmas dinner. More turkey, ham and dressing. More mac and cheese and greens.

After that is New Year’s dinner. Usually a little lighter fare. Leftovers from Christmas (if there are any left), maybe a ham, rice, a pot of black eye peas (which my wife’s mom says bring good luck for the new year).

And then 10 months to rest up before starting it all over again.

Went to another very yummy Chinese restaurant Friday night. Dragon Palace out on Daniel Island.

It’s an unassuming place in a strip mall, but inside it’s gorgeously decorated. The smells and tastes reminded me of eating at Chinese restaurants back home in Edmonton. Had Roasted duck with shitake mushrooms, steamed conch and beef chow mein. Very tasty food, not as warm as I would have liked, but still very tasty.

Saturday we went back for lunch. This time we tried the dim sum items on their menu. There aren’t many of them sadly. We ordered shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, little juicy pork buns (another dumpling variant), and the roast duck cold plate. It’s not a traditional dim sum with carts wheeled around, but the food was pretty tasty.

Now all Charleston needs is a real Chinese restaurant with real dim sum service on Sundays.

Finally, a decent place to get Chinese food in Charleston. Our other favourite restaurant was Osaka, a Chinese/Japanese restaurant with a really good sushi bar. Unfortunately, it suffered some fire damage several months ago, and we’re still waiting for them to finish renovations and re-open (at least we hope they’re doing renovations and planning to re-open). In the meantime, we’ve been going to Shi Ki Japanese Restaurant on East Bay. Their sushi bar is pretty decent too, and they’re one of the few Japanese restaurants that serves udon noodle soup.

Yesterday, we read about a new place, Red Orchids Chinese Bistro on Sam Rittenberg. So we went over there today to check it out. It’s kind of a higher class restaurant in Ashley Crossing Mall, a very unassuming strip mall. The food is very good, several steps above your traditional cheesy Chinese restaurant with the all you can eat buffet (I just stay away from those places). Prices are very reasonable, and you get a good amount of tasty food, so it’s a very exceptional value.