A Weekend of Good Eats

Maza: Baked Goat Cheese
and Sambousek

Tomorrow wraps up the experiment. With the impending end, we made sure to have a weekend filled with good eats! Actually, Thursday deserves a mention in that regard as well. We stopped at Maza after work...one of the more unique restaurants in town. Its name draws from "mezze" in Lebanon/Turkey, "tapas" in spain, and "antipasti" in Italy, so its specialty is small dishes served as appetizers.  We ordered the Baked Goat Cheese, which we had tried before and enjoyed, and the Sambousek, a Lebanese dish.  Everything was very enjoyable, and we managed to squeeze in dessert, a delectable bread pudding.  My review for Maza is here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/maza-west-lafayette#hrid:CtTabJ_rvBtut0zIX14t8w/src:self.

Maza: Bread Pudding



Friday dinners nearly always end up being pizza in some variation. This Friday was a little different; we ended up stopping at a pizza place we had ordered from once before. The pizza we had had there was pretty unremarkable, but we decided to dine in and give them another shot. We shared a California sub, which came with spinach and feta and an order of cheese sticks. It was fairly cheap - around $11 for the both of us - and the food was really good.



Greyhouse Blueberry Ricotta Crepe

 



Jarocho's

Our plans got rained out Saturday, so we found ourselves at Greyhouse Coffee to start our day where we shared a Blueberry Ricotta crepe and I had a Creme Brulee latte. Usually their coffee is a little too bitter for me, but this time I asked for an extra shot of caramel, and it made a world of difference. This meal left us surprisingly full for most of the day, until we headed over to Jarocho's mid-afternoon for lunch. This was a fairly new Mexican restaurant in town - they had a rather small menu, but Francisco was a big fan of them. He pretty much dislikes every single other Mexican restaurant in town, so that's a plus.  

Taj Mahal lunch buffet plate

Taj Mahal dessert buffet plate

Sunday, we grabbed a quick breakfast at Starbuck's before heading over to the movie theater to catch an early showing of "Straw Dogs".  Afterwards, I finally relented to going to an Indian buffet with Francisco, and we headed over to Taj Mahal. Now, the nice thing about Indian buffets is I always feel like I eat less food than I would at a traditional buffet. But the not-so-nice thing is that I'm not terribly familiar with Indian food, so I couldn't even begin to gauge the calorie-count.  I made two trips each to the lunch table and dessert table. The main staple of the buffet is a white rice, and there are several different curry options to layer over the rice. All but two of them were vegetarian - definitely one of my favorite things about Indian food. There were only two options at the dessert buffet table. Francisco and I were really looking forward to the Gulab Jamun, which are deep-fried milk balls in a sugar syrup.  They are possibly the best dessert ever. We were dismayed to find that they didn't have those on the buffet. Instead we had rice pudding and some other kind of dessert that tasted similar to Gulab Jamun, but we're not quite sure what it is. I must say, Indian food is not the most aesthetically pleasing but it is certainly anything but bland. Our meal was very flavorful and yummy. While the lunch offerings can be a bit spicy, the dessert is usually milk-based, so it helps to soothe the palate.

Soon it's back to grocery lists and recipe planning and treks up and down supermarket aisles...I'm kind of looking forward to it. :-)