Food

It was in Topeka that I began to realize how varied my meals were becoming during my trip:
1) I mentioned eating at Don Pablo's in Cincinnati; in case you can't tell, this was a Mexican restaurant.
2) In St. Louis I ate at Emperor's Wok (Chinese),
3) and a fast foot Italian restaurant (no not Olive Garden, but I forget the name... anyone?).
4) Of course we can't forget the good old American hamburgers and hotdogs cooked outdoors on a barbecue grill at the Flaherty's. (Does this count as being Irish too?) 5) Well, in Topeka, I had some Japanese sushi,
6) French wines at the monthly meeting of Topeka's wine tasting group (I'm not sure of their official name if they have one) ,
1 revisited) some more Mexican food prepared by the family of one of the candidates for queen of Our Lady of Guadalupe's church festival,
5 revisited?) and some of the best Fish I've ever eaten at the New City Cafe which also caters functions in the area under the name "Gourmet to Go."
7) Finally Israeli, and
8) Italian restaurants were enjoyed in Denver.

Perhaps my first time eating blackened food was at a friend's home in Louisiana where we ate grill-blackened chicken. Years later my first meal at Copelands was Blackened Redfish. Finding a recipe in a Tony Chachere cookbook, I began trying to blacken salmon in my apartment kitchen rousing the curiosity and concern of my neighbors.

I have a tendency to order anything on the menu described as "blackened," and have had fairly good results even when liberties had been taken with the term. The New City Cafe prepared a slab of tuna lightly blackened on the outside, raw on the inside, and served on a bed of rice with a mustard sauce which could not receive too high a praise.

I've already begun leaving my attempts at blackened salmon a bit raw. Maybe with the shorter cooking time I will produce less smoke and burning aromas giving my neighbors less cause for concern.