To say that I have never been much of a breakfast person isn't entirely accurate. In fact, I love breakfast. The thing is, I only love it some of the time. I love it if it's a leisurely weekend morning and Neil and I are drinking bloody maries and listening to Getz/Gilberto while we cook, and I love it if I'm at a great breakfast spot like Wild Eggs, Lynn's Paradise Cafe, or my mama's kitchen. But when I'm dragging my ass out of bed on a weekday morning and trying to get myself ready to be at work at the unholy hour of 8:00, breakfast is not much of a priority.
I've been this way since high school, when breakfast consisted of a cup of coffee and a Bugs Bunny vitamin. Since then I've dabbled in toast, bagels, crumpets, muffins, and other quick, delicious carb-fests that left me feeling hungry sooner than I would have if I'd eaten nothing at all. If you ever asked me to skip lunch or dinner I'd laugh in your face, but it's not at all unusual for me to have nothing but coffee for breakfast.
Since everyone is always harping on the importance of breakfast, however, I recently decided that I should make an effort to eat it. Not the kind of effort that requires cooking or anything, though. But I decided that I could handle pouring some stuff in a bowl and spooning it into my mouth. I don't really care for cold cereal, though. (Except for the occasional guilty pleasure bowl of Lucky Charms.) So, what to do?
Enter Ellie Krieger and her granola recipe.
I picked up Krieger's cookbook, The Food You Crave, several weeks ago. I'd never seen her Food Network show or even heard of her, but I was in the market for a healthy cookbook that did not rely on a bunch of processed, fortified, low-fat, bullshit "food." This book definitely fits that bill, so I bought it. And found her wonderful, easy, delicious, good-for-me granola recipe inside.
Granola has had some image problems over the years. First it was considered healthy but goofy hippie food. Then people started looking at the nutritional info for granola and saying "Hey, this isn't really that good for me!" Ellie Krieger's granola recipe saves the day by managing to be natural, moderate on the calories, and super yummy. I know this will sound ridiculous, but I actually wake up each morning feeling excited that I get to eat this granola!
Nutty Granola
Cooking Spray
3 cups old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup chopped raw, unsalted walnuts
1/2 cup chopped unsalted almonds
1/2 cup chopped unsalted pecans
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins, optional
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Spray a large baking sheet with cooking spray.
In a medium bowl combine the oats, nuts, maple syrup, salt, cinnamon and the raisins, if using. Spread the mixture onto the baking sheet and bake until golden brown, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes. Transfer the sheet to a cooling rack and let cool completely. Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container.
This makes 9 half-cup servings. Neil and I eat it mixed with a half-cup of low-fat organic plain yogurt. It's more delicious than it has any right to be!
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Customer Service, Good and Bad
I am happy to say that I rarely experience truly bad service in restaurants. Of course, sometimes it takes a little longer than it should to get my food, sometimes a server is inattentive or even surly, and sometimes orders get messed up. It happens. But when I stopped the regular excursions to Denny's of my early 20s, I generally stopped experiencing really horrifically bad service.
Until Wednesday.
The culprit, I'm sad to say, was my beloved Third Avenue Cafe. Neil and I hadn't been out to eat in a while and I was really in the mood to do so. It wasn't just that I didn't feel like shopping for food or cooking; I was really in the mood for the experience of sitting in a restaurant and enjoying a meal. I was also really craving a cheeseburger. Off to Third Avenue we went.
We needed to be in St. Matthews at 7:45, but we got to the restaurant at 6:15 and figured that would give us plenty of time, especially because they weren't at all busy; the place was maybe 1/4 full. We were promptly seated and ordered drinks. They came quickly and Neil and I each ordered cheeseburgers, mine medium-well and his medium-rare. I also ordered tomato soup and Neil ordered coleslaw. Even though I love their fries, I made a conscious decision not to order them, because I'm trying to curtail my fried food intake.
We didn't note the time that we ordered, because, frankly, we weren't expecting it to matter. How long could it take to get two cheeseburgers in a 1/4-full restaurant on a Wednesday night? Suffice it to day, it was no later than 6:30 when we ordered.
So then we waited for our food. And waited and waited and waited. Our server was strangely absent. Eventually she appeared with a complimentary basket of fries "Because it's taking a while." Even though my brain didn't want fries, my belly did, and I was thus appreciative. I would have been more appreciative though if she had told us why it was taking so long or, more importantly, how much longer it would take. But she did not. And then she disappeared again.
We continued to wait. Meanwhile, people who had arrived after we did got their food, ate, and left. Two humble cheeseburgers! What could possible be the problem?!
7:15 came and went. It was becoming clear that we were not going to get our food in time to eat it. Since our server was steadfastly avoiding our table, Neil got up and approached her and told her that we were going to need our food to go, since we were not going to have time to eat. She stared at him blankly and eventually showed some sign of understanding.
And still we waited.
Finally, just as I was asking Neil if he wanted to leave, a man approached our table with our food. He said he was the manager, that they only had one cook that night, that he was very sorry, and that "this kind of thing doesn't happen here." (But guess what! It did!) He said he'd throw in two free desserts for our trouble. At that point we didn't care. We had 15 minutes to get from Old Louisville to St. Matthews. We just wanted our food and our receipt and to get the hell out of there.
We arrived at our appointment with a few minutes to spare and decided to dig into our food while we could. Here we experienced the final insult: our medium-well and medium-rare burgers were both well-done, I had coleslaw instead of soup, and we had no napkins or utensils.
Wow.
Did Third Avenue Cafe try to make this up to us by plying us with free fries and desserts? Indeed they did. But neither of us felt that this was an acceptable way to handle the situation. Instead they could have:
1. Told us up front that they were short-staffed and that the food would take a while.
2. Tell us that the cheeseburgers (for some reason I still cannot fathom) were going to take an especially long time and advise us to order something else (since everyone else in the restaurant seemed to be getting their food in a timely fashion).
3. Assuming that the delay was in fact unforeseen, apologize and give us some reasonable expectation of when our food might arrive.
4. Give us our food on the house.
#4 is what really galls me. I went to Third Avenue specifically because I wanted a nice dinner in a restaurant, and they totally screwed that up for me. I get angry all over again when I think about the fact that we spent $28 on this meal which, when we finally got to eat it, was not even prepared correctly.
Third Avenue Cafe, you break my heart. Every year around this time I get antsy to go sit at one of your sidewalk tables and enjoy a beer and some delicious food. But I don't know if I can forgive you for this. Neil has vowed that he will never return.
:(
On the other end of the spectrum, however, we have an unlikely hero: Starbucks. I have to state up front that I am a big local coffee fan and that Starbucks is not a place I frequent. I have no reason to when there are so many awesome local coffee joints in this city. However, yesterday Neil and I were headed back from a wonderful day at the new Cincinnati Ikea, and we decided to break up that long stretch of I-71 with coffee break. So we stopped at the Starbucks in Florence.
Neil had to go to the bathroom and didn't tell me what he wanted first, so I went ahead and ordered and received my drink. Then Neil came out and ordered his. We chatted for a few minutes while we waited, but it seemed to be taking a little longer than it should have. Neil approached the counter and asked about his drink. Oops! It had somehow fallen through the cracks. It would be right out, they said.
Indeed, the drink was ready just a few minutes later. But instead of just calling it out when it was done, an employee brought it over to our table, apologized again, and handed Neil a voucher for a free drink. They took this relatively minor lapse in service very seriously, and we were duly impressed. Good on Starbucks, but how terribly sad that this corporate giant was more concerned about a few-minute delay on a cup of coffee than a beloved local restaurant was that they ruined our entire dinner.
I never thought I'd say that anyone could take a lesson from Starbucks, but Third Avenue Cafe definitely could.
Until Wednesday.
The culprit, I'm sad to say, was my beloved Third Avenue Cafe. Neil and I hadn't been out to eat in a while and I was really in the mood to do so. It wasn't just that I didn't feel like shopping for food or cooking; I was really in the mood for the experience of sitting in a restaurant and enjoying a meal. I was also really craving a cheeseburger. Off to Third Avenue we went.
We needed to be in St. Matthews at 7:45, but we got to the restaurant at 6:15 and figured that would give us plenty of time, especially because they weren't at all busy; the place was maybe 1/4 full. We were promptly seated and ordered drinks. They came quickly and Neil and I each ordered cheeseburgers, mine medium-well and his medium-rare. I also ordered tomato soup and Neil ordered coleslaw. Even though I love their fries, I made a conscious decision not to order them, because I'm trying to curtail my fried food intake.
We didn't note the time that we ordered, because, frankly, we weren't expecting it to matter. How long could it take to get two cheeseburgers in a 1/4-full restaurant on a Wednesday night? Suffice it to day, it was no later than 6:30 when we ordered.
So then we waited for our food. And waited and waited and waited. Our server was strangely absent. Eventually she appeared with a complimentary basket of fries "Because it's taking a while." Even though my brain didn't want fries, my belly did, and I was thus appreciative. I would have been more appreciative though if she had told us why it was taking so long or, more importantly, how much longer it would take. But she did not. And then she disappeared again.
We continued to wait. Meanwhile, people who had arrived after we did got their food, ate, and left. Two humble cheeseburgers! What could possible be the problem?!
7:15 came and went. It was becoming clear that we were not going to get our food in time to eat it. Since our server was steadfastly avoiding our table, Neil got up and approached her and told her that we were going to need our food to go, since we were not going to have time to eat. She stared at him blankly and eventually showed some sign of understanding.
And still we waited.
Finally, just as I was asking Neil if he wanted to leave, a man approached our table with our food. He said he was the manager, that they only had one cook that night, that he was very sorry, and that "this kind of thing doesn't happen here." (But guess what! It did!) He said he'd throw in two free desserts for our trouble. At that point we didn't care. We had 15 minutes to get from Old Louisville to St. Matthews. We just wanted our food and our receipt and to get the hell out of there.
We arrived at our appointment with a few minutes to spare and decided to dig into our food while we could. Here we experienced the final insult: our medium-well and medium-rare burgers were both well-done, I had coleslaw instead of soup, and we had no napkins or utensils.
Wow.
Did Third Avenue Cafe try to make this up to us by plying us with free fries and desserts? Indeed they did. But neither of us felt that this was an acceptable way to handle the situation. Instead they could have:
1. Told us up front that they were short-staffed and that the food would take a while.
2. Tell us that the cheeseburgers (for some reason I still cannot fathom) were going to take an especially long time and advise us to order something else (since everyone else in the restaurant seemed to be getting their food in a timely fashion).
3. Assuming that the delay was in fact unforeseen, apologize and give us some reasonable expectation of when our food might arrive.
4. Give us our food on the house.
#4 is what really galls me. I went to Third Avenue specifically because I wanted a nice dinner in a restaurant, and they totally screwed that up for me. I get angry all over again when I think about the fact that we spent $28 on this meal which, when we finally got to eat it, was not even prepared correctly.
Third Avenue Cafe, you break my heart. Every year around this time I get antsy to go sit at one of your sidewalk tables and enjoy a beer and some delicious food. But I don't know if I can forgive you for this. Neil has vowed that he will never return.
:(
On the other end of the spectrum, however, we have an unlikely hero: Starbucks. I have to state up front that I am a big local coffee fan and that Starbucks is not a place I frequent. I have no reason to when there are so many awesome local coffee joints in this city. However, yesterday Neil and I were headed back from a wonderful day at the new Cincinnati Ikea, and we decided to break up that long stretch of I-71 with coffee break. So we stopped at the Starbucks in Florence.
Neil had to go to the bathroom and didn't tell me what he wanted first, so I went ahead and ordered and received my drink. Then Neil came out and ordered his. We chatted for a few minutes while we waited, but it seemed to be taking a little longer than it should have. Neil approached the counter and asked about his drink. Oops! It had somehow fallen through the cracks. It would be right out, they said.
Indeed, the drink was ready just a few minutes later. But instead of just calling it out when it was done, an employee brought it over to our table, apologized again, and handed Neil a voucher for a free drink. They took this relatively minor lapse in service very seriously, and we were duly impressed. Good on Starbucks, but how terribly sad that this corporate giant was more concerned about a few-minute delay on a cup of coffee than a beloved local restaurant was that they ruined our entire dinner.
I never thought I'd say that anyone could take a lesson from Starbucks, but Third Avenue Cafe definitely could.
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