Daniel J Isom

Jersey Mike's #8 Club Sub Review You know when you go to a store or restaurant and they ask you if you want to join their rewards club? Say yes, say yes every single time. It costs nothing and you might get free stuff. If you don't want a zillion junk emails, because you will, create a secondary email address specifically for this. That's a tip from me to you. I signed up for the Shore Points ™   Rewards system that Jersey Mike's offers and I was pleasantly surprised that for your birthday they send out a free sub and drink coupon. I saved mine for a while but finally used it a few weeks ago. I've had many subs from Jersey Mike's because we use them to cater one of our meetings at work each quarter. They're very similar to other sub places like Subway. They serve subs and wraps made with sliced deli meats and cheeses. Jersey Mike's also has a large menu of hot subs that include about a dozen cheese steaks, chicken parm, and a few other types. W

I love bagels. I've loved them for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I even take the time to make my own from scratch. That's how much I enjoy them. Ever since we've moved to Delaware, it's been hard to find a good bagel. The place in Dover that had decent bagels changed ownership and the quality has gone way downhill. The closest place to us now that has a good bagel is a Manhattan Bagel location about 20 minutes out of the way from our daily activities. So when we went back to NY earlier this month, we knew we would be stopping at Bruegger's at least once. As it turned out, we went three times and grabbed a dozen to freeze on our way home. Christine and I are big fans of bagels for breakfast, so Bruegger's used to be a semi monthly stop for us when we lived in NY. Unlike the "bagels" you'll find at fast food establishments and most grocery stores, Bruegger's bagels are actually bagels. They are not just a roll with a hole. The key

Red Lobster Chilled Lobster and Shrimp Rolls Review I love seafood, specifically all forms of shellfish, so I was more than happy to go to Red Lobster for lunch. This was another meal courtesy of a gift card we had received. I've had the lobster rolls from Red Lobster before and they're not bad. They aren't on the level of the seaside shacks I used to visit in Maine years ago, when my grandparents lived there, but they are worth ordering. The lobster and shrimp rolls have shrimp mixed in so there is obviously less lobster. Some may think the addition of shrimp is just filler, but the contrast in taste and texture was actually quite nice. The salad of lobster and shrimp is made with a mayonnaise based sauce similar to that of other salad sandwiches. A spring mix of lettuce lines the inside of the toasted New England style buns. It's a great sandwich construction trick to keep them from getting soggy. I'm thankful for that because the sauce was quite runny du

A Week Off Some of you may have noticed that I have been posting a lot of content on the blog over the six weeks. I made the conscious decision to have something new to post each weekday for a month, but I was able to do that and more. What I've been doing is writing pieces for the next week and scheduling them to post. Before I left for vacation I only had four posts ready to go, but I really wanted to have something for each day. So, my post from last Friday was actually done from my phone while we were on vacation in New York. I probably had time to write more to have stuff to read this week, but I didn't want to miss out on visiting with family and friends. Then we had one of the longest and most aggravating drives back home that we've ever had. Between that and getting everyone back into our routine, I decided to put off writing until later in the week. That brings us to today and me writing this post. I'm not sure I'll keep up the pace of having a new po

Every Fourth of July, we in America celebrate our independence with fireworks. Some states allow you buy your own and others force you to go see a professional show. Either way there are all sorts of booms and colorful explosions for a few weeks. We don't always go and see a show, but this year we saw the best one we've ever seen. We're currently in the middle of a bit of a road trip visiting family and friends. On Tuesday, we started that trip by trekking up to New Hampshire. I figured we'd want to bring our kids to go see some fireworks, but what I hadn't planned on was driving an additional two hours round-trip to Portsmouth to do so. I accepted the suggestion to drive further out to see a better show instead of waiting until the next day to see a lesser one close by. However, after 7 hours in the car the last thing I wanted to do was drive for another two hours. We arrived about an hour before it started and walked the couple blocks to find a place to w

I haven't played a lot of roll and write games but when I heard that one got nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres, I really wanted to check it out. Over 100 games later, I'm addicted to Ganz Schön Clever . You might not know what a roll and write game is but if you've ever played Yahtzee, then you've played one. The object of this type of game is to roll a set of dice and then write on some sort of scoring sheet. In Yahtzee , you're looking to roll a certain combination of dice to score the most amount of points possible. In the past few years, these types of games have evolved into some really strategic and enjoyable designs. Ganz Schön Clever (roughly translated as “Pretty Clever")  plays 1 to 4 players but all of my games have been solo. Over six rounds in a solo game, you "roll and choose your dice and enter them into the matching colored area, put together tricky chain-scoring opportunities, and rack up the points. The dice you don't use a

One of my fondest food memories was having a bagel with mozzarella cheese melted on top for breakfast as a kid. It's not a revolutionary thing but it's one of my absolute favorite things to eat. My love of bread is no secret. If you've followed my posts here or on social media, you'll know that I make bagels from scratch a few times a year. That's how much I love them. When I'm not making them myself, I buy them from a local place. It used to be much better before the ownership changed. Now their bagels are big and bready, like ones you'd find at a grocery store. This past weekend's batch was so poor that it looks like I'll need to exclusively make them myself going forward. But that's not the point of this post! My brother and I coined the term "Mozza Bagel" to refer to this creation that we both enjoy. All you need is a bagel, some butter, mozzarella cheese, and an oven. Cut the bagel on half, spread a very thin later of butter o

Starbucks Chicken Sausage & Bacon Biscuit Sandwich Review Starbucks needs to stop making food. Offer a muffin or a danish or a slice of pound cake because they all go with a cup of coffee. But I've probably had a half dozen different sandwiches and none of them are ever any good. So why did I stop and get another one? Well, I wasn't feeling any of the breakfast items at home and had a gift card that I received. I was just going to get a muffin or chocolate croissant but I wanted something with protein and I love biscuits. The description of the Chicken Sausage & Bacon Biscuit from the Starbucks website: "Our baked-from-scratch cornmeal biscuit is the base of this sandwich and it gets even better from there with chicken sausage, double-smoked bacon, country-style gravy and spiced honey butter." Sounds pretty good right? I mean it looks pretty good. Well, it's not. Let's start off with the positives. The chicken sausage patty was one of the bette

It's been half of a year and I'm nowhere near stopping on these resolutions. Now that I'm past the halfway point, it should be smooth sailing to the end of the year. 1) Bake more bread from scratch We were down to just one serving of tomato sauce left in the freezer, so I made more a few weekends ago. When I make sauce it only makes sense to have pasta for dinner that night and what goes great with pasta? Garlic knots! These things are ridiculously easy to make and came out really great. I found a recipe that quickly showed that it wasn't going to work but I was able to fix it. The 1:1 ratio of flour to water made no sense so after doubling the flour and adding a little bit more during shaping, I got the consistency I wanted. All you knead (haha) to do it make a pizza dough, cut off pieces to roll into a rope, and then knot them. After they came out of the oven, I tossed them in butter, garlic, parsley, and salt. I think I'll start making these more often o