We are excited to announce that SnapGifts.com is in beta! You will be able to purchase e-gift cards through the site to a variety of restaurants and merchants. Currently, we are working on the following areas:
Kansas City Gift Cards
Lawrence Gift Cards

What makes SnapGifts.com different than other sites offering e-gift cards?

With SnapGifts, you can purchase a personalized gift card for someone and it will be emailed to them. The card can be redeemed by presenting a printout of the card or by showing the email via a phone. There is no waiting around for a plastic card to be emailed. There is no plastic card to be lost, stolen or eventually thrown away to sit around in a landfill. In fact, there are no plastic cards involved whatsoever. And periodically, Snapgifts will email balance reminders to ensure that the full value of the card is eventually used.

Like many folks this past Tuesday, I celebrated St. Patrick’s day.  While I have my doubts as to how much the day celebrates Irish heritage as much it provides folks with a justification to drink until they are green to the gills, it is still a light-hearted holiday for me.  We watched a local parade, then enjoyed some corned beef and cabbage later at my dad’s house.  With a Black and Tan appetizer, of course.

Earlier this month, I came across this article in the NY Times titled “The Lost Art of the Irish Pub“. The article begins:

“A good pub is a place devoted to conversation, with drink as the lubricant,” Mr. Barich said one evening last week. “In an American bar, the minute you finish your drink they say, ‘Do you want another?’ You’d never see that in a good pub.”

Bill Barich, an author, went on a hunt to find a traditional Irish pub. He found this hunt to be more difficult than you would think, considering he was searching in a country that is home to over 12,000 pubs:

In years past, a pub was a family-run business, and the publican more than likely lived upstairs — an arrangement that created an intimacy across the bar.

“A good publican is a person with character, concerned about the welfare of patrons,” Mr. Barich said. That a barman could aspire to one day own a pub himself made for a system of dues paying that also resulted in better service.

But with trophy pubs now commanding as much as $8 million, a shift has been made to partnerships or corporations that may own and manage several bars. At the same time, more Irish are drinking wine, and drinking at home or in restaurants, chipping away at the social relevance of pubs.

What I found particularly interesting was this observation from Larry Kirwan, a singer from a NYC-based Irish rock band who was talking about a pub from his hometown.

The pub, Mary’s Bar, is basically one room and was run until recently by a now-deceased publican who was known to break out a harmonica and lead impromptu sing-alongs.

In pubs like Mary’s, Mr. Kirwan said, “there’s almost a Talmudic sense of rules and conventions to be observed.” Chief among them is not getting overly plastered.

“Nobody wants drunks in Irish pubs because they’re boring,” he said, “and the last thing you want to be called is boring.”

Instead, traditional pubs foster warmth and fraternity.

Undoubtedly, Kirwan would have been dismayed at some of the drunken behavior I saw in Lawrence KS on Tuesday.

Fortunately, Barich’s pub hunt had a happy ending:

Stepping inside, Mr. Barich was met by a wood bar that has been there since the 1830s, and a publican, Eugene Kavanagh, who lives above the business and is so devoted to his pub’s continued existence that he had been prepared to put it in a trust if none of his children wanted to take over. (It was unnecessary.)

“It’s not my job,” he told the writer. “It’s my life.”

Naturally, Mr. Barich sat down and ordered a pint.

Sláinte, Mr. Barich. Sláinte!

Fortunately, we have not really been affected by the economy.

Yet.  Although, I do feel really, really lucky that we have been given a sort of “heads up” that it might be wise to ramp back on our spending.

So, while we are counting our lucky, lucky stars, we still have invoked some cutbacks.  It’s just common sense in this economic environment, no?    One of the first slashes at our so-called budget was in the area of Eating Out.

The yummy but expensive spot where we used to get our weekly Thai fix?  Out.

The lovely but expensive little spot in downtown Kansas City that served fresh, crunchy salads and delicious tapas?  Out.

Sushi lovingly carved right before your eyes?  Out.

The mouth-watering, but slightly expensive Persian buffet that we used to frequent so much that I nearly went into labor with our 2nd child there? Out.

This list goes on, but the gist is this:  we are still eating out as frequently, but we are spending less money.  This has translated into us frequenting a nearby deli and a local Mexican restaurant far more often than we had in the past.  Furthermore, that same Mexican restaurant actually lowered its prices.  Whoa.

One of my shallow concerns in all of this is that my favorite high-end local establishments will not survive this economic environment and that they will close up shop by the time I can start frequenting them again.

Damn, how I miss meal with menu items that have me running for a dictionary.  But an enchilada with poblanas sauce is not so shabby, either, so I cannot complain too much.

In the article,  “Edible Excretions: Taiwan’s Toilet Restaurant” , Time Magazine describes a restaurant in Taiwan that boasts an unusual theme:

Every customer sits on a stylish acrylic toilet (lid down) designed with images of roses, seashells or Renaissance paintings. Everyone dines at a glass table with a sink underneath. The servers bring your meal atop a mini toilet bowl (quite convenient, as it brings the food closer to your mouth), you sip drinks from your own plastic urinal (a souvenir), and soft-swirl ice cream arrives for dessert atop a dish shaped like a squat toilet.

While that does not sound too bad, further in the article, it does begin to push the Edgy Card a bit too far:

The reasonably priced food includes curries, pasta, fried chicken and Mongolian hot pot, as well as elaborate shaved-ice desserts with names like “diarrhea with dried droppings” (chocolate), “bloody poop” (strawberry) and “green dysentery” (kiwi). Despite the disturbing descriptions, the desserts were great. But after seeing curry drip down a mini-toilet, I may never have that sauce again.

Now that?  Sounds simply offal, no?

Lately, I have been utterly obsessed with getting things organized in my house.  Furniture is getting dusted, then rearranged.  Superfluous pieces are getting moved to the garage in anticipation of our annual neighborhood garage sale.  Long-neglected books are getting bagged and taken to a used bookstore for re-sale.  Clothing and other household items are getting bagged and donated to a local charity.

All of this “fresh start” activity in my Real Life is bleeding over into my Virtual Life and as such, regular posting shall resume here.  I am inspired to dust off this place and get going.  Beginning next week, you will see restaurant industry happenings, FoodieBytes happenings and a new feature on Thursdays called The Chef’s Special.   Each Thursday, we will feature a few food bloggers from all over the country.  Truthfully, I was only going to feature one blogger each week, but there are just too many yummy food bloggers out there to limit ourselves to just one a week, no?

The Rookie Catching Her Inaugural Japanese Steakhouse Shrimp

Our 18 month old daughter tries everything and anything right now.  Sure, that means she hits a hot pepper every now and then, but overall, she is none worse for the wear.

Over the past few months, FoodieBytes.com has extensively expanded their menu offerings and location coverage.  They now span over 20 cities!  The recently added new locations include the following:

Columbus, OH

Dayton, OH

Indianapolis, IN

Kansas City Metro

Los Angeles

In addition, coverage has been expanded in the following existing locations:

Boston

Cincinnati

New York City

Washington DC

San Francisco

Chicago

More cities are in the works, but in the meantime, Cincinnati recently joined the ranks on FoodieBytes.com!

I have a done a few quick searches to check out the offerings there:

1. Sauerkraut
2. Chicken Vindaloo
3. Cold Noodles
   

Now, I am hungry. Awesome.

That’s not much money for such a big mouth.

As soon as I found out that BlogHer 08 would be held at the Westin St. Franis in Union Square in SF, I knew I had to go. As soon as I registered, I began contemplating where I was going to eat. Because, hello! Eating first, blogging second. A girl’s gotta have her standards.

I fly in on Thursday evening and leave Sunday afternoon. With the conference committments and a few social ones, it seems I have three meals in which I can choose where to eat:

Dinner, Thursday.

Dinner, Saturday.

Lunch, Sunday.

I have narrowed the following options:

Dinner on Thursday will be at Pot Sticker (the Waverly location). I have not tried Pot Sticker before, but I love spicy cold noodles. I did a search on FoodieBytes and found this location. Since I will be traveling with my daughter and I wanted to curl up in the hotel for the evening to let her get used to the place. Also, we arrive somewhat late-ish, so I needed to pick a place that does delivery.

Dinner on Saturday will be at Shalimar (Jones St. location), one of my very favorite Indian spots. The haleem is to die for and the nihari is to kill for. Talk about perfect harmony, no? I am attempting to get together a big group. Unfortunately, the location on Jones is fairly small, but I thought it would be fun to massive amounts of takeout and have a carpet picnic at the hotel.

Lunch on Sunday is still undecided. The last time in SF, we ate at a sweet little pastry place on Columbus St that I am tempted to try and scout again. In the meantime, I will use FoodieBytes to find some options and potentially, may just meander my way through the streets of SF letting my nose guide the way.

Or maybe not.

The New York Times has an article titled Does Recession Mean Doom for Restaurants? – which did get me thinking a bit. As the Times noted “The average restaurant meal, after all, costs three times as much as one cooked at home, according to the NPD Group, a consumer research firm.“

While my husband and I are not affected by the recession (yet?), we have been in a mode of financial reservation. He is an entrepreneur who began a new business last year, so we are watching the numbers of everything we buy. Our restaurant expenditures have definitely taken a hit, but probably not as much as folks would expect considering our lack of a paycheck. The problem is that eating out is “what we do for fun”. Like many foodies, eating out is not just about eating. It is the entire experience - exploring different areas of the city, trying a new cuisine – maybe a new wine to go with it, meeting up with restaurateurs that we have gotten to know over the years. And we love taking our children with us on these outings. Sure, we have decreased the total amount spent per month eating out, but we are still eating out nearly as much.

Admittedly……we are most certainly frequenting our local Mexican joint here a lot more than we had in the past since the days of steak and sushi have passed us by…… Ahem.