The Cox Family Food Network Adventures

So...Cory and I are big fans of the Food Network. If there's not something specific on we want to watch, our TV is on the Food Network. That channel has inspired us to take on two different adventures. The first one was quite passive. The second one was active, but...I'll address that when we get there.


The first FN show we got hooked on was Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives where Guy Fieri goes all over the U.S. finding awesome restaurants and showing us the amazing food that we can't eat because it's certainly not in the Dayton area. So, Cory and I decided to take our own like Triple D show on the road to try to find some good Mom & Pop eateries in the Dayton area. Unfortunately, it was barely successful. We tried out several places. We found one that we really liked and one that was just a decent place for cheap food. Our first stop was Tickets in downtown Fairborn. They kinda have Greek fare there. Cory had the ribs, I had a gyro. The ribs were the WORST either of us had ever had, and the gyro was just ok. Our second stop was Foy's Rock & Roll Diner. This was the decent cheap place. It's quirky, small, and greasy, but it reminds me of my favorite place to eat in my hometown of Portsmouth, Hickies. Next we tried Rudy's Smokehouse. We were expecting some kickass BBQ place, nah. It was pretty much like City BBQ but not as good. So then we tried some other place in downtownish Dayton. They're ribs were decent but the portion was tiny for a pretty high price. So then we checked out Amber Rose for some European fare. Epic Fail. They're prices were WAY high, and the food was crap. I had pierogies that I'm quite certain were filled with instant mashed potatoes. The only place we tried out and thoroughly enjoyed was Mamma DiSalvo's. Talk about delicious. Their alfredo sauce is divine. The meatballs are totally delish, and they have the best cheese sticks I've ever had in my life. We love that place. Several months later and just 4 days ago we discovered Elsa's. We knew it was the home of the Bad Juan, but didn't realize that they had pretty delicious Mexican food as well, so I'm sure we'll be returning.


Our second adventure into the Food Network world was a much higher goal. We kinda decided to dive into gourmet cooking Iron Chef style. Our first attempt was to make Italian Barbecued Chicken with Polenta and Dirty Risotto. So I found out the hard way that Risotto is a royal pain in the ass to make. You have to add 1/2 a cup of chicken stock to the risotto every 2 minutes for about 30-36 minutes, and stir it constantly. Apparently there is a lot of room for failure with this dish. Fortunately, I didn't fail. It came out just as it was supposed to. Unfortunately, it still wasn't all that great. The recipe included Sweet Italian Sausage and that stuff just didn't jive well with this recipe. The Italian BBQ Chicken was just bad. The chicken itself turned out just fine, but the recipe was a little unclear in its directions and we ended up combining the ingredients for the bbq sauce and the polenta together. It looked like vomit and tasted like crap. Fail. Later on I made banana empanadas but it was so easy that it's not wroth mentioning as a challenge. So we've decided to try to do this once a month. Find some uber-complicated recipe and take a stab at it together. Fun times.

As you can tell, we are both big fans of food. Good food to be specific. And we both like to cook which brings up the importance of us finding a new place to live. Our kitchen sucks. We were practically on top of each other (not that that's a bad thing) while trying to cook Saturday. I would love to have a little room to work with and not have to stack things on top of each other constantly. We're considering trying to buy a house...a fixer-upper kinda deal. So we'll see how that goes.

And by the way, Cory's surgery went just fine. The stone is gone, and he's just about back to normal now. :)

Peace out!