Author: admin

Jillian’s – Norfolk, VA

Please allow me to introduce myself, I am a man of wealth and taste…I mean, I’m an old hometown friend of Todd and John who now lives in Norfolk, VA, serving in the Navy aboard the mighty warship USS Nitze. Recently, I was asked to contribute to the blog. I have my own blog and will continue it, but also will be contributing here.

Enough of the pleasantries, down to business. This afternoon, my division on the ship had our Christmas party at Jillian’s, a Dave & Buster’s-esque restaurant in the Waterside building in downtown Norfolk.

For those unfamiliar with D&B’s, it’s like Ruby Tuesday’s meets Chuck E. Cheese. Basically, a family restaurant/bar with a huge arcade. Basically, you can eat great food, drink beer and play videogames and skee-ball all in the same place.

I started my meal with a 23 oz Guinness

Never a wrong time…

and ordered a BBQ Bacon Burger, one of Jillian’s signature entrees.

stuid blurry camera phone!

Sadly, the only camera I had with me was my phone and the quality is lacking.

My two oldest kids both got mac and cheese with fruit punch.

almost as good as Mom's…

My wife, Amy, ordered the damn near biggest taco salad I’ve ever seen (another Jillian’s specialty).

Eat your heart out, Taco Bell…

My meal, as well as the girls’ included a $10 game card, so after enjoying our meals, we played some games.

After some gameplaying, which I neglected to take pictures of, one of my fellow sailors ordered Jillian’s Killer Cake

It's bigger than you think…

We all (about 10 of us) shared it and there was still this much left…

Overall, this place was pretty cool. The girl’s meals were only $4.99 and with a $10 game card, it was basically free twice over. Mine was $14.99 with the game card (would have been about $10 without it). Amy’s salad was about $8. My ginormous Guinness was $5.95, which is pretty decent for the area. Overall, with tax and tip, I spent about $50. Pretty decent lunch for 4, plus games. My kids won a bunch of tickets and we got some prizes. I got some Bubba teeth, Audrey, my oldest, got a bottle pop. Amelie, my middle girl, got a paper fan, and we also got some Mike and Ike’s. I noticed after we spent all the tickets (357) that had I been selfish, I could have gotten a Jillian’s pint glass. Oh well, next time…

http://norfolk.jilliansbilliards.com/

333 Waterside Drive
Norfolk, VA 23510
757.624.9100 Phone
757.624.9500 Fax

December 15, 2009
Donut Bread Pudding

I know John’s not the biggest Food Network fan, but Paula Dean and I are soul mates. She fries things, I fry things. She loves bacon, I buy it in bulk. She has a southern accent, I can fake a southern accent really well. However, when she introduced the world to Krispie Kreme bread pudding, she lost me a little. Why? One wrinkly little word: raisins. I hate them, can’t stand them, pick them out of muffins and carrot cake, truly can’t stand the little buggers. Her recipe also calls for canned fruit. Omg, what the fart monkey. Whatever, back to me. Safeway had doughnuts on sale, so what better time to make doughnut bread pudding? I followed my original bread pudding recipe, using cream, milk, eggs, coconut, vanilla, and white and dark chocolate. New to the mix were the doughnuts, replacing the usual challah bread, banana/chocolate cream, and sliced bananas. The beauty of bread pudding is that you can be so creative with it and it’s a great way to use up little things left over, for example the two half eaten bananas I had in my fridge. Such an an breezy dessert or snack. Just make sure to let the mixture soak up the liquid, otherwise you’ll end up with a crunchy dry crouton bread pudding.

From John:

Just wanted to let everyone know that this will be Varta’s last post on Epic Portions. She is starting her own blog at http://vartamelon.blogspot.com/. Make sure you add her to your daily blog readings. Thanks very much to Varta for all the great posts!

Ingredients minus the heavy cream

Not all made it to the finale

Cream, milk, coconut, egg, plops of banana/chocolate cream, and banana

11 and half cut up doughnuts. I totally typo'd that as doughbuts the first time and I'm still laughing.

Pour the wet mixture on top of the doughnuts

Love sprinkles

Golden yummy. After baking

DELICIOUS! Especially with ice cream on top.

July 22, 2009
Varta Strikes Back

After seeing John’s suicide sandwich I found out I have a competitive side which I never knew I had. Gears started turning in my head to come up with the most cholesterol laden, fatty sandwich I could come up with. I’ve always wanted to make the grilled cheese sandwich burger before and that’s pretty heavy, so I figured that was the perfect place to start. Bacon just feels natural to me, so of course that was going to be worked in. And more cheese, I love cheese. Normally I wouldn’t advocate the use of the plastic cheese, but it flows with the overall scheme. Still, something was missing. Then I remembered when I made the sausage stuffed french toast and someone suggested sausage gravy, I had never made sausage gravy before so I thought it’d be fun to give it a try. Super easy! Concerns me actually, if I can whip up sausage gravy in a few minutes now, what’s going to stop me from putting on everything. I digress. I’ll let the pictures do the talking from here…

Sometimes, there is planning involved

(more…)

July 17, 2009