Comfort Foods

Oh my goodness, I'm having blogging withdrawal.  I use to blog almost every day and now my time is so consumed with being the bus driver and working 20 hours a week that I have no time to write.  Boo hoo hoo!

Today I thought, since it's a yucky rainy first day of autumn, that I'd talk about food.  Comfort foods to be more specific.

We all have those foods that just make us feel good.  It may be as simple as a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tomato soup, or as extravagant as a Thanksgiving Feast!  For me, it's the simple pleasure of a home-cooked grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of Campbell's Tomato Soup.  Don't get me wrong, I love my Mom's Turkey-Day Feast and have yet to miss one of her Thanksgiving Day dinners.

But .... last Friday Jon and I had the pleasure of having another evening out.  I'm loving that my kids love babysitters!  We started our evening out with meeting up with friends of Jon's (and mine too) at bar cento bier markt in Cleveland.  Our friend Steve has a daughter that has Juvenile Diabetes and last weekend was the "fund raising" weekend.  Steve, and two of our other friends, Shannon and Jim were all guest bartenders at bar cento - raising "tips" for Juvenile Diabetes.  It was a fun night to be able to reconnect with some long lost friends.  Having children has really put a damper on all of us, regarding keeping better in touch and getting together.  (Thank goodness for Facebook.) Since we had a babysitter, Jon decided we needed to revisit, The Greenhouse Tavern on East 4th Street for dinner.

Two years ago, we had the pleasure of meeting Jonathon and Amelia Sawyer and their kids while waiting to embark our plane to Orlando (Disney).  Jonathon and Amelia are the owners of The Greenhouse Tavern and Jonathon is the "head-chef".  Interesting and coincidentally enough, the Continental InFlight magazine was also featuring an article on Jonathon Sawyer and his new restaurant - The Greenhouse Tavern.  We come to find out through our conversation with the Sawyers that Jonathon was invited by Disney/Epcot to showcase his food at the Food and Wine festival while we were at Disney in September/October 2009.  My kids and the Sawyer children were around the same age, and entertained each other until the plane started boarding.

Meeting Jonathon and Amelia and reading the very positive review about The Greenhouse Tavern in the InFlight Magazine, peaked my interest, and we made it a point to put The Greenhouse Tavern on our bucket list of restaurants to try out!  A couple of weeks after we got back from Disney, we decided to finally celebrate our anniversary and we chose The Greenhouse Tavern as our restaurant.  It was the wisest and best choice we had made - Amelia immediately recognized Jon when we walked into the restaurant.  She found us a very nice "choice" table that looked over the main floor of the restaurant from the second floor.  We received a complimentary post dinner "drink" and the head dessert/pastry chef hand delivered dessert to us, and the coolest thing was that Jonathon took time out of his busy evening to stop by our table and say hello.  It was pretty cool feeling like a VIP for an evening.  That doesn't happen very often in life when your just the average Jon and Colleen of this world - so we soaked it all in and enjoyed every second of our dinner experience.

Of course, since we had such a fabulous and VIP experience, we managed to stop in three more times since.  And each time we were not disappointed by the food, service or atmosphere.  But what really keeps us coming back is the keen way in which Jonathon and his staff of chefs can put together flavors of food that just satisfy your taste-buds.  After our visit last Friday, I realized that the reason why I really like going there is because it's "comforting food".  The food makes me feel good.  Probably not the healthiest foods, such as the - you'll never want any other chicken wing, chicken wings they have.  The wings just fall off of the bone and the combination of it being fried in duck fat and the right amount of spices  they are the BEST wings you'll ever eat in your life.  Things you wouldn't normally eat together Jonathon is able to combined together and it just has a way of making your taste buds so very very happy!

The Greenhouse Tavern  (http://thegreenhousetavern.com/ ) is my new place for "Comfort Food".