Blissful Cupcakes

Stephen was a good helper at Aldi yesterday, so I decided to swing by Blissful Cupcakes on Sixth Street for a little reward. Julie, the owner, had already sold out of my suggested Magic in the Middle cupcakes (inspired by Joe's favorite chocolately-creamcheesy treat growing up), so Stephen had Lemon Drop with Chocolate Frosting.

Rockam had a cookie from my purse.

Mostly, Stephen just licked all the frosting off.

Julie's downtown shop is probably causing Hopkinsville to collectively gain a few hundred pounds. Since she opened four months ago, she's had several days of selling out before closing time. Last week she closed at 3:00 one afternoon after selling 3,000 cupcakes in a day. Her cupcakes sell for $1.50 and feature natural ingredients. For example, she juices real strawberries to go into her strawberry buttercream frosting. I could taste it.

Anatolia Turkish Restaurant in Nashville

Ever since our good friends, the McQueens, moved to Turkey, I've been a little obsessed with all things Turkish. Despite my love for ethnic food, I'd never been to a Turkish restaurant. So when the 34th birthday arrived, I chose Anatolia Turkish Restaurant in a quiet part of Nashville for our night out without children.

I had studied the menu before we came and knew I wanted to try the Anatolia Eggplant from their "Classical Turkish Home Cooking" section of the menu. At $15.95, the eggplant half is roasted to a silky texture and brimming with cubes of lamb, tomatoes and bell peppers. It might not look very pretty, but I ate the entire thing up to the woody stem tip.  It was that melt-in-my-mouth tender. Joe ordered kabob of some sort, but ate it too quickly for me to remember the details. Sorry about that. I was really fixated on my own eggplant deliciousness.

Soft spotlights, Turkish wines, rugs and pottery decorate the walls. The ambiance was quiet, but friendly, with lots of what seemed to be Turkish accents coming from the servers, all of whom were friendly and unobtrusive.

And for dessert, we ordered kunefe-- a warm, crisp nest of pastry over chewy unsalted goat cheese oozing with sticky rose water syrup. Think baklava meets pizza and turn it upside down. The dessert paired perfectly with the clean flavor of hot Turkish Tea. Joe enjoyed sticking his pinky out as he sipped the very manly Turkish coffee out of a very girly demitasse.

Months ago, my cousin Amy was dreaming about Kunefe, the dessert her friends raved about, which she had never sampled. I'm going to have to figure out how to make it. The difficulty will be finding shredded filo twigs that form the top crust... I think mozzerella would serve in for the goat cheese and I could get rose water the next time I pass through Champaign on my way to Chicago. Now I'm dreaming about it too.

Momocho

Even the name of the restaurant sounds like something a babbling baby would say to express hunger. Mo-Mooooooo- Choooos, Mommm-mommm-nomm! So, when my sister-in-law, Cris, was describing some of the food at Momocho [smoked trout guacamole, please!], I was finding new space in my stomach despite the previous day's Thanksgiving gluttony.

 The Ohio City restaurant, featuring "Mod Mex" cuisine, is nestled in a cozy neightborhood with quaint homes and narrow alleys. Once inside, The restaurant was very dark, very crowded, and somewhat intimidating because of its lucha libre and Dia de los Muertes themed decor, and its hip, slightly snobby wait staff. But that only made me feel more giddy... Date night! No kids! Restaurant featured on Food Network!

While our husbands ordered the first off beat beverages they found (cervezas especial michelada style with ice, lime, salt, worcestershire and hot sauce), Cris and I pored over the paper menu, squinting in the dark at the extensive guacamole list and scribbling tick marks in the margins of the main dish and appetizer sections.

We finally settled on:



Guacamole with smoked trout, bacon and chile poblano. I was thinking about it later, and the reason this works so well is because it's a little bit like a revved up California roll, minus seaweed, crabstick, rice and tobiko. OK, it's nothing like sushi, but the avocado and uncooked fish textures and flavors work so well in Japanese cuisine, that I'm not surprised that they dance together in this rich dip.

Just in case you're interested in the other varieties that we didn't try, I brought home the menu from the night. As avocados are on sale this week at Kroger, I think I will have to try to make some of these at home:

• goat cheese, tomato, chile pblano
• jicama, pineapple, chile habanero and mint
• garlic confit, blue cheese, chile verde
• honey crisp apple, mango, chile serrano and thai basil
• pickled corn, crab, chile chipotle

Seared Sea Scallops with cauliflower and hominy frita, jalapeno creamed corn. This was my favorite dish, aside from the trout guacamole. The flavors were light, creamy and sweet, so they didn't overpower the delicate flavor of the scallops, which were just slightly undercooked in the center, but still pretty good :-) The ball in the middle is kind of like a cauliflower hush puppy. It would have been better if there was more cauliflower than hominy.

Butternut squash and goat cheese empanadas with oaxacan red chile and chocolate mole.
This was Jack's favorite dish of the night. I also liked it, but it was almost a dessert with all the sweetness and richness. As far as I'm concerned, anything with goat cheese is good.

Smoked gouda tamale dumplings. Cris found these to be a little bit dry, but I thought they were pretty well balanced when forked with a bittersweet heap of the crisp onion and corn saute with which it was served.

 Our server recommended the sofrito green beans, adding that they were very popular. But these were actually my least favorite dish of the night. If you've been reading me for any length of time, you probably know I generally prefer vegetables to the other food groups. In my not so humble opinion, a good green bean should be flash fried just enough to be bright green, but still crisp enough to bite through the strings, OR they should be slow cooked down to a buttery-melt-in-my-mouth slurp of a legume, preferrably laced with pork fat. I would have expected the crunchy end of the cooking spectrum for this dish, which was heavily seasoned with the sofrito. (I'm guessing the mix included chili, cilantro, onion, garlic and maybe tamarind or something to give it bite.) Instead, the beans were in that no-go doneness zone in the middle. They were too cooked to maintain their crispness, and not done enough to eliminate the stringy toughness. In addition, I felt that the flavor was too sour and too bitter, when I was craving savory, zesty and sweet. OK. That's enough philosphizing about green beans! On to the wild boar....

No joke, we orderd chancho, adobo braised wild boar taquitos with pickled jalapeno and mustard crema. After all, the guys needed something to go with their worcestershire beers, and this was one of the more awe-inspiring meats on the menu.

(As a side note, please excuse the horrible quality of my photos from the night. The room was exceedingly dim and I didn't want to draw attention to myself by flashing the food every 60 seconds.)

I'm not a fan of tough meat, or even red meat in general. And this was overtly both very red and tough meat. However, a little dollop of boar shreds on a mini corn tortilla with copious amounts of the pickled jalapeno and mustard crema was pretty good. And if I wasn't so stuffed that I felt every bite was bound to come out my ears, I might have liked it more.

Ironically, neither Jack nor Joe really liked this dish, despite Cris and my chidings that they didn't add enough of the salsa and crema. If I were to get a do-over on ordering, I would have thought less about what others might like and ordered what I knew I'd like: the picadillo, ground lamb shoulder with mint, walnuts, red chile and chocolate mole, which sounds like a pretty amazing little taco. Or, the camarones, achiote shrimp al postor style with pineapple and jicama salsa... or pato, slow cooked duck confit with chile anco and pomegranate barbacoa. Or...

 

There's always next time.

Fujiyama in Clarksville

Hidden in a quiet commercial strip off Wilma Rudolph about 5 minutes past the heavily trafficked shopping area, this Clarksville, Tenn., sushi bar is a tiny treat. Both times I've visited, I've had my two boys with me. But even though my attention has been divided between stuffing my own and their two tiny gullets, I found the presentation to be pretty, the selection broad and the sushi plump and fresh.

Pictured above, special bento boxes with California rolls, teriyaki salmon and teriyaki tofu, xiao mai, crab rangoon and rice.The tofu was silken, but fried to a crispy, chewy crust on the outside, making it my most shared item off my box.

I can't remember the name of the sushi roll that looks more like a still-wet oil painting than food... but it was really good. Sorry. I'm writing this post about four months after the fact. Again, little gullets getting in the way of my goals as foodie and blogger...

A salmon-bone to pick with IKEA

The trip between Hopkinsville, Ky., and Cleveland, Ohio, with two little ones in tow, is ardorous. The one bright spot had always come in the form of a cobalt blue building looming on the horizon of the interstate not far past the "Florence, Ya'll" water tower. IKEA. The land of modern but affordable DIY furniture, random houseware bargains and, a decade ago, an exciting Scandanavian cafe. The West Chester IKEA, outside of Cincinatti, is our half-way point and stopping point of choice because of the kid-friendly bathrooms, eating area and play areas. It has ceased to be an exciting stop for me, though, because I can only taste my memories of favorite dishes like Pittya-pana and Three Salmon plate.

They've still got the multi-colored carrots, Swedish meatballs, elderberry flavored drinkboxes, and maybe one overcooked fish dish on their menu, but IKEA's top-floor cafe has slowly slumped in my opinion from a destination ethnic eatery to a hum-drum cafeteria.

The rest of the store's offerings include chicken fingers and fries, mashed potatoes, soggy steamed vegetables, mac n cheese, dried out wrap sandwiches, a hockey-puck sized conglomeration of spinach and eggs and limp salad bar fixings.

It really depresses me!

The Curry Pot in Chattanooga

The Curry Pot is an Indian Buffet no where near the touristy part of town. The couple that own the buffet must be Christians, as their menu features a logo with a verse from 2 Corinthians on it. The food was much less spicy than the other Indian restaurants I've tried (and than Indian food I've had with Indian friends), but I really liked their Saag Paneer (spinach with fresh cheese cubes) and their Vegetable Korma (creamy veggies with cashews). I also liked their Channa Masala (spiced chickpeas)

Their tandoori chicken, a staple at most Indian buffets, was really charred and overdone. I wasn't a fan, but Stephen really dug it! He wolfed a PB&J and then realized there was more interesting food to be had. "Can I have some Indian food?" he blurted out loud enough for the ladies in the next booth over to swivel their heads and smile.  

Big River Grille

Between the two halfs of the Tennessee Aquarium, we took the boys to the Big River Grille and Brewing Company. First off, I'm not a huge fan of brewing companies and I get irked by places that add an unecessary "e" to the end of perfectly straight-forward words... eg "grille" or "shoppe".

And when the lady at the Visitor's info center suggested this restaurant in response to my query for an Italian or ethnic restaurant, I was a tiny bit annoyed. "Well, it's not really Italian, but it's very good and kid-friendly," she said.



I could tell that Joe was trying his best to find me something more exotic; afterall, Chattanooga offers plenty of cuisines that can't be found in little ole Hopkinsville, KY. I appreciated his efforts to preserve a happy wife, but we had the McQueen's double stroller and the clock was already circling toward 1:00 p.m.
"It's just across the street," she said.
"Let's just go there," I said.

The first thing I noticed was how genuinely nice the hostess and servers were. Our server even helped us lift the double stroller up two steps to a dining area that was less crowded and rearranged the tables near ours so we could roll sleeping Rockam up to the table. She was also quite knowledgeable, having eaten through every dish on the regular menu and some of the dishes on the new-that-day Pacific Rim specials menu.

The atmosphere was also nice--- sort of the typical masculine, dark wood decor you'd expect at a brewing company, but without any of the rowdyness. Despite being a rather large restaurant with several large seating areas, it was pretty quiet. Joe and I actually were able to have some decent conversation (I should qualify that my standard for "decent conversation" is considerably lower since having two kids).

Joe got some kind of burger. He ate it too quickly for me to remember what it was exactly, let alone take a picture. I ordered the Udon Noodle Bowl... laden with shitake mushroom slices, chopped baby bok choy, fried chicken cutlet and fresh bean sprouts. I've slurped a lot of udon in my day. This dish definitely did not taste Japanese, but it was really good :-) The broth was salty-sweet and the chicken was more of an American-style, but all the veggies were flavorful and fresh. Stephen enjoyed slurping some of my noodles in between handfuls of Goldfish and graham crackers.

Pasha Coffee and Tea

Located near the bottom of the Incline railway in St. Elmo, Pasha Coffee and Tea caught my eye on the restaurant review site Urban Spoon.

Their menu includes yummy Middle-Eastern-influenced dishes like this Turkey Pesto Panini served with a side of pita chips and a grape-leaf dolma. They've also got breakfast all day, with various scrambled egg sandwiches. One was called curry eggs... but the girl behind the counter said if I was really hungry, the panini would fill me up better. I took her advice. Free of the buttery coating found on paninis I've had at Corner Bakery and Panera's, Pasha's Panini was more like something I might make in my toaster oven, well-stuffed with turkey, tomatoes, pesto and feta cheese. It would have been better if I could've eaten it hot off the press. Alas, Rockam was hungry too, and I had to nurse him right after I placed the order. So, even though it wasn't hot and toasty, it was still tasty. The petite dolma was tender and filled with tangy rice. The pita chips would have been better if there was some hummus or baba ganoosh to dip them in, but they did help fill me up.

Joe had one of the egg dishes, but he polished it off and had become engrossed in USA Today before I returned from nursing Rockam in one of the back rooms, so I really don't know much about it! He also ordered Turkish coffee, with the famous sludgy grinds at the bottom of the cup. We split a jumbo M&M cookie that was about 50 percent crunchy and 50 percent chocolate.

Pasha's atmosphere is artsy and rambling, with a small, strangly shaped main room and a couple of dimly lit back rooms that feel like hallways more than bona fide rooms, furnished with mismatched wicker furniture, metal cafe tables, a ficus with christmas lights and starving artist paintings on the walls. It's definitely a college town hang out, and it's youthful clientele and baristas made Joe and I feel like old fogeys... not intentionally, I'm sure.

Stephen really liked the big leather couch. He decided to take his nap a few minutes after I set him down on it.

Basmati is now Bombay

On the way home from Chicago (where we celebrated my dad's 60th birthday at the most awesome Swedish restaurant ever-- see previous post), we stopped in Champaign to eat lunch buffet at our favorite Indian restaurant, Basmati... only to find that it had been sold to Bombay, our second favorite Champaign Indian restaurant :-) The food was still yummy and the service was a cut above. One of the waiters took a liking to Stephen and gave him his own Mango Lassi (yogurt drink). Stephen loved the naan. I liked it all.

This restaurant is at the corner of I want to say First and White streets in Champaign on the outskirts of campus.

Chicago food - September 2010

The best fish I've ever eaten... Trout at Tre Kronor, a Swedish restaurant in Chicago. It was butterflied and served with sauteed spinach and a chunky tomato sauce, most likely drenched in butter and lemon :-) The creamy white mound is potato gratin.

Brussels sprout candy

I just wanted to get your attention with that one :)The maple bacon brussels sprouts at Harper House on Main Street in Downtown Hoptown are labeled as a side dish, but they were so yummy that I thought of mine as dessert.

My parents swooped in last Thursday night for my birthday and blessed me with a weekend of great meals.

I know before I swore allegiance to Da Vinci's calamari as the best (only) in town. But the calamari at Harper House really got me talking. It seemed like the squid they used were extra tiny, and the pieces were also very finely cut. The batter was very light and salty. And the whole mess of rings and legs was piled on top of this tomato-sausage-peppercorn sauce that was like a different country in every bite.

So I think Harper House's calamari is my new favorite version of squid. I've got some frozen squid in my freezer and I'm very tempted to try to replicate this dish.

I ordered salmon with the aforementioned brussels sprouts and new fingerling potatoes. It was all "Um-Meee" as Stephen likes to say. We at on the second floor, at a table overlooking main street. Stephen had a blast running up to the window and creating fingerprint art while shouting "Up! Up! Up!" -- I'm assuming because he was excited to be up. There really aren't very many second floors in this town. The wait staff were really sweet and helpful, without being cloying. They accidentally brought out a side of maccaroni for Stephen, loaded him up with colorful straws with plastic fish on the ends, and brought a free dessert to make up for my dad's porkchop being overcooked. Oh. And we accidentally brought home the etch-a-sketch they lent Stephen. I'm bringing back as soon as I can afford to eat there again :-)

There are many reasons to like this restaurant:
1. The food is really yummy. The menu offers mostly "new southern" cooking and enough adventurous choices to give me something to look forward to ordering next time.
2. Harper House occupies a building in the heart of downtown, where we desperately need classy gathering places.
3. They play old movies on the back wall.
4. The staff are personable and attentive, without seeming like their sole motive is to garner a big tip.
7. The atmosphere is just the right balance of sophisticated and warm, bustling but allowing for intimate conversation.
6. They've got deviled eggs on their menu.

Woodlands Indian Vegetarian restaurant

After a shopping spree at Trader Joe's in Nashville, my mom took Stephen and I to the Woodlands Indian restaurant. It's a vegetarian place, specializing in dosas-- long slightly sour crepe burritos, stuffed with potatoes or other fillings. I could do without the dosas (in the lower right corner of the photo above), but I did really like some of the other foods in the buffet.
Stephen was also eager to eat most of what we gave him. A little too eager in this case. He likes to stick big things in his mouth and watch me have a fit. He doesn't gag like he used to, he just maneuvers it around in his mouth until he's whittled it down to chewable and then swallowable size.

I especially liked one of their dessert dishes... it was made of cream of wheat, bright yellow and flavored with sugar or honey, milk, maybe cardomom and possibly orange zest? The consistency was like a soft polenta and it was studded with cashews and soft dried fruit. I've been craving some ever since... but I don't know what it's called and it wasn't on the paper menu I brought home.

This restaurant is hard to find, we overshot it even with the help of GPS. It's on the ground floor of an apartment complex at the intersection of West End Ave. and Highway 440.

Buona Beef and Tensuke Market

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Joe, Stephen and I took our first flight to Chicago as a family. Stephen did really well... though he did guzzle about five sippy cups of diluted apple juice in a little over an hour. While we were there, Joe was stationed at a table representing Kuei Shan School for an international Christian school expo held at several Christiain colleges in the Chicago area. Steve and I were free to eat, play and chill out with my mom. We had sandwiches from Buona Beef one night... mine was a chicken artichoke pesto panini, crunchy and compact like a panini ought to be (in my opinion.)
Mom had the egg and pepper sandwich, only offered on Fridays (for meat-avoiding Catholics, I guess.)
We also all went out for dinner at Tensuke Market, a little Korean/Japanese grocery that has a casual restaurant in the back. I got the soba set, which came with soba soup, shrimp and vegetable tempura, california roll, fried tofu squares and salmon chirashi. Yum! This photo combines some leftover udon with one tofu square. Sorry, no photos from the original meal.

Silke's German Bakery

Joe had the day off on Wednesday, which happens to be our anniversary... We started dating 11 years ago and were engaged 9 years ago on Nov. 11. Those were frigid, gray days in Cleveland, Ohio. But our day was sunny and filled with fall color and good eats, such as this authentic German SPAM :-) with eggs and briochen from Silke's German Bakery in Clarksville, Tenn.
The decor of the bakery was kind of like a garden with plenty of nature art for sale on the walls and little mosaic patio tables. There was even a picket fenced area for children. We sat right next to it so Munchi could play.
I had a melted brie and apple sandwich with honey. We also split an almond croissant and later, a pan au chocolat.

Da Vinci Little Italian Restaurant

Let me just say that I ate Da Vinci food three times in one week. The first time was for the story below, the second two were just because I couldn't get enough of the calamari. :-) Stephen liked his baby pizza, which is free for children under 5 when you eat in.  Chef Pavel's balsamic dressing is addictive, and his Da Vinci Salad-- with a warm chicken breast and sauteed mushrooms over spring mix, tomato and a hunk of feta is possibly the best salad to be had in Hopkinsville. Below is the story of how this international couple came to open their new eatery in a little Western Kentucky town.




Italian chef opens North Drive eatery

By Emily Parrino, Special to the New Era
Published: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 12:53 PM CDT
Pavel Skorpil’s signature Italian salad dressing, marinara sauce and pizza dough are all freshly made. Alexa Becker rattled off the list as though she was preparing for a quiz.

“Pavel, you make your meatballs from scratch?” she directed the question toward the kitchen where her husband was rolling out pizza dough.

“Yes I do,” Pavel fired back.

“He makes them from scratch,” Alexa repeated.

“You didn’t know this?” Pavel shouted from the kitchen, feigning indignation. “You’re fired!”

“Yeah, he makes everything from scratch,” Alexa said. “I am so glad I don’t work in the kitchen.”

The feisty couple are chef and head server of Da Vinci Little Italian Restaurant, an eatery in the former Pizza Roma storefront on North Drive. Pavel is keen on treating the town to authentic Italian, but is also learning what locals like.

Since opening on Oct. 13, they’ve been selling mounds of meaty entrées.

“The first day, everyone wanted meat lover’s pizza,” Alexa explained. “The second day it was all Italian Sausage sandwiches. It was like everyone was calling their friends and telling them to order the same thing.”

Spaghetti and meatballs and lasagna with meat sauce have also been big sellers. Pavel also offers an Italian-style pulled pork sandwich with mushrooms and creamy gravy on foccia. In a town where meat-and-three is a menu staple, Alexa urged her husband to offer traditional barbecue sauce as a substitute to the Italian gravy.

“A lady ordered it the other day,” Alexa said, “and she was surprised.”

“She thought the flavors went well together,” Pavel said.

Pavel, originally from Italy, and Alexa, a German native, met and fell in love at a restaurant in Clarksville, Tenn., where they both worked. Pavel had initially come to the U.S. to be chef of a restaurant in Destin, Fla., before moving to Atlanta and eventually Clarksville. Each time, Pavel cooked a menu according to the owner’s set recipes and specifications.

After the Clarksville venue closed, Alexa urged her husband to be a chef once more, but this time using his own recipes.

“I told Pavel, ‘You should quit working for other people and open your own restaurant,’” Alexa said.

The couple agreed on opening Da Vinci in Hopkinsville, lured by the lower cost of rent and hoping to bring authentic Italy to the locals.

The bustle of business their opening week seemed to heat husband and wife up with the intensity of the Blodgett stone pizza oven that fills Pavel’s kitchen.

“We yell so much,” Alexa said. “But we don’t take it home with us.”

These days they don’t go home very often. The restaurant is open Tuesday through Sunday for lunch and dinner, with Pavel staying up, sometimes until 2 a.m. to make his dough from scratch.

“I am always busy,” he said. “I was born busy!”

“He makes dough by hand, using fresh ingredients,” Alexa explained. “One time he put a towel over the bowl and said, ‘Shh! Everybody be quiet because if you’re loud it will sink.’”

Pavel trained at a cooking school in Bolzano, northern Italy, but he learned his favorite dish, lasagna, from cooking under his grandmother in Milan. He still calls his popular recipe “Nona Lasagne,” using the Italian word for grandma.

In addition to the long hours, bringing Italian food culture to Hopkinsville has proved challenging. In Italy, lunch breaks are typically two hours, Pavel said.

“So if you go in a restaurant, the cook will make the pasta and bring it to you fresh, which takes between 10 and 15 minutes to prepare,” Pavel said. “You can’t do this because people here have only 30 or 40 minutes for lunch.”

He also decided to offer some decidedly American items like buffalo wings, deep pan pizza and cheese sticks alongside authentic Italian items like Mussels Alla Diavola and Calamari Fritti.

Still, Pavel is proud to make the majority of his menu from fresh ingredients. He tells Alexa to tell customers he uses specially ordered unbleached flour to make his dough.

“Unbleached flour is much better for your stomach,” Pavel said.

Pavel’s original recipes include Da Vinci Salad with mixed greens, grilled chicken, sauteed mushrooms, tomatoes and feta; and his White Pizza, topped with crème, mozzarella, roma tomatoes, proscuitto and mushrooms.

The restaurateurs say their menu and long hours have won them many compliments.

Several of Da Vinci’s diners early Saturday evening were repeat customers.

“It was delicious again,” a woman said to the server as she left.

“Bye y’all,” Alexa said with a convincing twang. “Have a great day!”

Vegan Vittles

That was the hammer on my food story a week ago. Today's New Era will feature Da Vinci Little Italian Restaurant, but I'll wait until it's published before I blog, so as not to scoop myself. :-) So for today, let's talk about The Little Teapot Cafe in Bradford Square:
I had the "Chick" Tetrazzini with a side of peas, fresh all-grain bread and some kind of soy butter.

Here's the story I wrote for the New Era:
Vegan vittles

The Little Teapot Cafe serves up veggie versions of homestyle classics
By Emily Parrino, Special to the New Era
Published: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 1:35 PM CDT
Barbara Neher opened the oven and pulled out pale loaves of all-grain bread. The 72-year-old great-grandma flicked the crusty tops, hoping to hear a hollow sound. Dissatisfied with the response, she shoved them back into the oven.

The galley kitchen where Neher and her husband, Jack, prepared the day’s blue plate special was full of the yeasty aroma that greets customers at The Little Teapot Café, which opened last month at Bradford Square.

The quilt-festooned décor, the spindly furniture, calico cloth napkins and the heady smells from the kitchen conjure up feelings of comfort and coziness. Teapot’s menu includes a daily blue plate special and homey items like potato salad, muffins and chili.

“We get more people coming in who say, ‘I just feel like I’ve gone to my grandmother’s house,’” Neher said of the Teapot’s charm.

But this isn’t your grandma’s cooking.

Every dish the Nehers serve is vegan; free of meat, eggs, and dairy ingredients. Breads are cooked from scratch with an emphasis on whole grains. Baked goods use raw, organic sugar and flaxseed gel in place of eggs.

“They’re all dishes you’re familiar with, but vegan,” Neher explained.

Dishes like “Chick” Salad Sandwiches and Garden Patch Burgers, modeled after familiar comfort foods, are designed to be low-fat and low-cal. To add protein and meatiness, Teapot dishes rely on soy and wheat protein.

And Neher’s spice rack spans one wall of the kitchen.

“I’ve had vegan dishes before that were just blah,” she said with a frown.

“Like sticks and twigs,” her husband chimed in.

“But I like color,” Neher said. “I’m big on flavor.”

At the height of the lunch hour Monday, only a few customers wandered in.

“Two taco salads,” said the Nerher’s daughter, Teresa Ingle, who works as a waitress at the Teapot.

Barbara Neher arranged corn chips, vegetarian chili, fresh vegetables and vegetarian “cheeze” shreds on mis-matched China.

In a town where many restaurant are shuttered before reaching one year in business, the Nehers were prepared to labor long. They see their café as a mission to improve the health of the city rather than a money-making venture.

“We knew there wasn’t any vegetarian restaurants in town and we figured it’d be slow for people to come in,” Nerher explained. “Business has been slow, but we’re not real disappointed on that.This is a self-supporting ministry. The Lord is our partner. Everybody that works here is a volunteer.”

The Nehers are devout in their faith, but say they use the restaurant to spread a message of healthy eating, not religious beliefs.

“We’re concerned about the health of our area,” Neher said. “A lot of people would like to be healthy, but they don’t know how.”

Adjacent to the dining room, the Nehers have set up rows of student desks and a book display with healthy cookbooks.

“We have free health classes, but you have to buy the textbook,” Jack Neher said.

Classes take place at 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and the next session begins Oct. 20, he added.

“We want to teach them what power you have on your plate!”

For Ingle, that power allowed her to drop 100 pounds and control her diabetes.

“We also give out recipes,” she said. “We’re wanting people to eat healthier so we share.”

Her mother said the changes her family has made have had great rewards, and that she hopes the café could help people ease into a new lifestyle.

“There’s fanatics everywhere you go,” Barbara. “We try not to be that way. We believe any step toward a plant-based diet is great.”

Neher is no stranger to championing causes. In 2004, she, her husband and Ingle founded the It’s My Very Own: Bags of Love program to provide blankets and toiletries for children who have recently been move to foster care.

With The Little Teapot Café, the Nehers hope to continue their family tradition of ministering to people in a way that conforts them.

“My philosphy is that I don’t want to make people uncomfortable…You don’t have to worry when you come in here,” Barbara said. “It’s all healthy and it’s all low-cal.”

Emily Parrino can be reached at 270-887-3237 or eparrino@kentuckynewera.com.

Joe's birthday

On Oct. 7, we went out as a family for Joe's 34th birthday to Outback Steakhouse in Clarksville. We don't go there very often...but Joe had a coupon and it was his day :-)

Joe ordered rack of lamb and I shared my salmon with steamed vegetables with Stephen. They were nice enough to cook my vegetables extra-mushy (as in mushy enough to eat with 2 1/2 teeth) on request. The portions weren't huge, but everything was so well salted that I felt very full. The salmon was perfectly cooked and crispy on the edges. Joe like his lamb so much he even at the fat. If you know my husband's aversion to grissle, you'll understand what a big compliment to the chef that was!

A couple of bones to pick

Oh, Hopkinsville. I always try to give you the benefit of the doubt, but here you go annoying me again.

OSAKA JAPANESE RESTAURANT
Many of us were ecstatic when we saw the old Skinny's Diner/Chicago Style Grill building on the boulevard morph into Osaka Japanese restaurant. Hopkinsville, I'm told, used to have an excellent sushi restaurant until their chef returned to his homeland and the place shuttered it's sprawling plantation-style building. The classy building eventually reopened as a smokey sportsbar that felt (and tasted, in my opinion) more like someone's ugly basement than a restaurant. I digress.

Knowing that the owners were Chinese, and the restaurant was no where near bodies of water that contain fish commonly used in sushi, I wasn't expecting it to offer the cuisine of it's namesake city (where Joe and I were unable to even afford the sushi when we visited.) However, I would expect the staff to be a little bit familiar with their menu offerings. And how to pronounce the word "tofu." And for the chef to prepare dishes according to the menu description.

Suffice it to say, my mom and I were dually unimpressed. And our comiserating probably ruined it for the rest of our party... sorry, guys. We moody foodies can't help ourselves. I was really wanting to like the restaurant, too. I've been longing for a sushi place to succeed here, especially since half of the clientele at Yamato's just across the state line have Kentucky plates. But I have little hope for this newest eatery.



Stephen did enjoy the corner booth... at least until he threw up tofu and a cup of pool water all over daddy's lap.

INCREDIBLE SHRINKING BARGAINS
My next "bone" isn't exactly Hopkinsville's fault. From reading this blog and my old New Era columns, you might have picked up that I'm a Kroger grocery store fan. I do force myself into Aldi from time to time because it's supposed to be cheaper, but I think I find the best deals in the little orange "manager's special" stickers at Kroger. Plus, it's gotten to where I know their sale cycle... namely the beloved "10 for 10" sales. They come around every 5 or 6 weeks-- and I can get boxes of pasta, frozen vegetables, brownie mixes, good hand soap and other kitchen staples for what I consider reasonable prices. I'm the girl in the self-check out with 15 bags of frozen Brussels sprouts, lima beans and chopped spinach. And at 16 ounces each, the bags supply 15 dinner's worth of veggies to cram into my freezer. But as I eagerly awaited 10 for 10 week this past month, I noticed some snazzy new changes in my freezer aisle: lights that dimmed until a customer activated a motion sensor, doors that were completely fogged up and more stylish packaging on the store's generic frozen vegetables.

That's when it hit me. Prettier packaging... but smaller bags. No longer can my George Washington get me 16 beautiful ounces of cauliflower... rather just 12 skimpy ounces. I squinted at the price label. Sure enough, it read 10/$10.00, 12 oz. Cauliflower. My eyes raced along the shelves holding an expanse of swanklily packaged produce. 12 oz. 12 oz. 12 oz. Surely, this makes it so there's no savings at all.

In an effort to cheat the system one last time, I dug behind the puny bags and unearthed the remaining 16 ounce packages in their dowdy white wrappers, and pitched them into my cart. To my temporary satisfaction, they rang up at a dollar each. But my days of feeling like I got a good deal are coming to a close. I suppose stores and producers across the country have been sneeking in ways to give the consumer less for more. But it burns me that while burger and soda sizes have increased exponentially over the years, my humble but wholesome sack of veggies is dwindling.

Biaggis

This weekend, Stephen and I met up with my parents in Evansville, Ind., and ate some amazing food at Biaggi's -- a chain that Joe and I always meant to go to when we lived in Champaign. Above are the leftovers from my entree, butternut squash ravioli with a brown butter sage sauce and toasted pinenuts. My first bite of this decidedly sweet and nutty pasta reminded me of my Nan Tilsch's kugel. Biaggi's was nice enough to sub the pinenuts for the original walnuts (I've got a mild allergy to walnuts) and I think even if I could eat them without having irritated gums, I'd like the pinions better. This is a dish I'd travel 90 minutes to have again :-)
Baby beat and arugula salad with chevre, avocado and cherries.