New Menu Items At The Mustard Seed

Last week, Amanda and I were invited to sample the Mustard Seed’s new menu items. I’ve always been extremely satisfied with my meals there, so I was very excited to see what we had in store. Chef Jonathan Dupriest has been working with the Dine With Sal Restaurant Group for many years and his creativity constantly brings surprises to their specials menu. Jonathan, along with the other chefs from the Dine With Sal group, put their brains together and added 5 menu items to the menu.

First up for sampling were two soups:

Curried Lentil Soup with a cucumber dill sauce: 

This soup reminded me of fall – slightly spicy and comforting.

Mushroom Bisque with Parmesan Crackers:

I am not a huge fan of mushrooms, but Amanda is. She liked this soup, but thought it needed to have a creamier consistency. She did say it had a good mushroom flavor.

One of their new appetizers is a Pimento Crab Dip with Toast Points ($8):

Yes yes yes!! This was so good. You know the bread they always serve you before your meal? They’re toasted with this appetizer. The dip contains four different cheeses and the huge crab pieces make for a great texture.

The other new appetizer brings an Asian twist to the menu. Here is the Asian Beef Satay with Kimchi and Scallion Ginger Sauce ($10):

As much as we loved the crab dip, this was our preferred appetizer. It wasn’t as filling and you would never want to be too stuffed before your entrée! The beef had a nice crispy outer layer but a very tender inside. This was my first time trying kimchi and I loved it just as much as the beef. The vegetables were crispy and refreshing.

And as if we needed more cheese (of course we did!), we were then given the Creamy Shrimp Mac & Cheese with Panko, Smoked Bacon, Peas, and Yellow Cheddar ($13):

Words cannot express how creamy and cheese this dish is. I love that they used shells because each piece of pasta catches lots of the ooey, gooey cheese. Each bite is bursting with flavor!

One of the reasons I adore the Mustard Seed is that they have more chicken and fish entrees, which is my preference. I was happy to see that they added sirloin to the menu as I feel that most men scan the menu immediately looking for a hearty option. The new entrée is the Grilled Salmon with a Sweet Potato, Smoked Bacon, and Collard Hash with a Housemade Worcestershire Sauce ($19).

Even though red meat is not my preference, I can easily say that this was a good piece of steak. While the sirloin was simply seasoned, the Worcestershire added a complex flavor. And those sweet potato sticks? They disappeared rather quickly.

The last dish we tasted was the Mustard Seed “Pho” Pork and Shrimp Bowl with Lo Mein, Bean Sprouts, Soy Egg, Kimchi, and Scallions ($13):

Amanda called this dish the “adult version of ramen noodles.” The addition of the soy egg and kimchi made this a somewhat interactive meal. Eating should be fun! We both really enjoyed this entrée. If I were to order this, I would swap out the pork for chicken; ingredient exchanges are never a problem with the servers and chefs here, which is another reason I’m always happy.

Overall, I think the new menu items are a great improvement for the menu. It’s always nice to see restaurants mix their menu up to see what people are happy with. In my opinion, not only does this show their creativity, but it shows that they really try to appeal to everyone. As successful as this restaurant is, I didn’t think anything needed to be changed, but I feel like the new items will appeal to a larger crowd.

Of these dishes, which are you most likely to try?

How do you feel when your favorite restaurant changes its menu a bit? As long as the Mustard Seed never removes the Pecan crusted chicken from the menu, I’ll always come back!

The Weekend Is Only Half Over!!

Okay, it’s more than half over, but I’m in denial.

Friday: Matt and I, along with a few others, went to a Riverdogs game.

I stared at this guy’s butt for half the game.

While there, I had my first pickle dog! Eeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhh! And a giant Coor’s Light. What a special moment this was.Stay tuned for later this week when I show you exactly what a pickle dog is. Trust me, this is going to be such a good post.

We also stayed for the fireworks! I like them now. They are kind of romantic when you are with the man who asks you to get married if, at 35 we are both still single. Hahahha yes, that’s Matt, my future ex husband.

After the game we went to Closed for Business for a beer. This is not one of my favorite bars, just fyi. Thankfully I was entertained by a Fashion Friday DON’T: tall socks with sneakers. Bad, bad, bad.Saturday: I spent the entire day with Amanda and we had soooo much fun! We met a bunch of our other girlfriends at the beach, and although it was almost 100*, we had a really nice, relaxing time. The ocean feels like bath water right now. Oh, July in the South.

After we left the beach, we wanted nothing else but frozen yogurt!! We decided to check out Lil Yo Yogurt, a part of Square Onion Too on Coleman Blvd. Inside a small house, Lil Yo Yogurt has four flavors of froyo:

I got strawberry & vanilla and Amanda got chocolate & vanilla. I guess we took the phrase “guilt-free vanilla” seriously, because we both got 8-ounce servings! Mmmm.

I was really proud of Amanda’s bowl – you couldn’t even see her yogurt under all the chocolately goodness! We both topped our froyo with these amazing homemade peanut butter chocolate bars…sooo good.

That evening,  we decided to continue our date with a wine tasting, a movie, and dinner. The wine tasting was at Winestyles in Town Center. For $5, we got to sample 5 different wines, shown here.

The “samples” were pretty generous. We both felt a bit tipsy walking into the movie. And that movie…we ended up seeing Midnight in Paris, a romantic comedy about an American couple in Paris. Amanda and I are both fans of Rachel McAdams and had read that the movie got a good rating, but it was just odd. I still don’t know if I understand what was going on. Has anyone else seen this? What did you think?

Our late dinner was at Mustard Seed, surprise surprise. Jonathan surprised us with an appetizer of cornmeal crusted green tomatoes with shrimp and a fresh pepper salsa. Ahhhh it was so good. So summery!

We decided to share two entrees. We started with the roasted chicken, blue cheese, & caramelized pear salad with raspberry port wine dressing. Drool. This is definitely their best salad.

Then we had the Pad Thai with shrimp and chicken. This has always been one of my favorite entrees.

Now I am at home reading this book I found in the Blackbaud “library.” Have y’all heard of this?

Just kidding.

But I really am reading it and will read the next three. All my friends read them while I was reading cookbooks I guess.

Happy Sunday!!

Pizza, Gelato, and Packing for Destin!

Three day weekends really freak me out. I felt so off today! Anyone else out there keep forgetting it’s actually Tuesday?

My friend Rob is moving to NYC in a couple weeks – sad! We went to our last work lunch today. We went to Vespa Pizza last time, so today we tried the other pizza place on Daniel Island: Orlando’s Pizza. Orlando’s brick oven pizza uses dough and sauces that are made daily and the freshness is evident in its taste. The crust was perfectly thin, with a fair amount of cheese, and lots of sauce. To me, this was the perfect slice of pizza, and for only $2.50. I will be back a thousand times.

I regretted not getting two slices!

After the salty came the sweet. We walked to Et Cetera, a small gourmet food shop. They had gelato from Paolo’s Gelato, which is located downtown on John St. I ordered the Bacio (chocolate and hazelnut) which is totally weird for me; I don’t like chocolate based ice cream. This little sucker cost $4 pre tax. What? My pizza was less than this ball of ice cream. Don’t be fooled by this pic – it may look like a full cone but it’s just a blob on the top. I ended up throwing out the cone because there was no gelato in it. Boo.

After work, I went to the gym for some cardio. It was 93* outside and it felt the same in the gym. I sweated like never before. I ran a little over 3.5 miles (1 regular mile and 2.5 miles of interval sprints) then headed over to Whole Foods to pick up my 7th CSA box. Goodies!!

I quickly showered and got ready because Mariah, Lucy, and I had plans to go to Mustard Seed for dinner. We shared an appetizer of sesame crusted tuna with wasabi ginger mayo and sweet soy sauce. We tore that right up!

I was craving vegetables like never before, so I ordered the stir-fried vegetables with brown rice and added chicken. This did not disappoint – I think it included every vegetable known to man.

It should be my bed time, but I have work to do. I’m about go to nuts with these markers – stay tuned for the fancy tank tops I’m making for our drive to Destin tomorrow.

Speaking of Destin, I thought it would be fun for Margaret and I to complete a photo challenge on the way there…kind of like a scavenger hunt with our cameras. I am trying to think of funny things we need to take pictures with. So far I’ve come up with the following:

1. A picture of SC, GA, and FL welcome signs
2. A picture of us with a truck driver
3. A picture of a “foreign” Chick-fil-A
4. A picture of Margaret pumping gas with her beef jerky and Mt. Dew – her car ride requirements
5. A picture of somebody else pumping our gas (Thanks for that one, Rob!)
6. A picture of us wearing our horribly ugly sunglasses/headbands…just you wait

Please help us come up with more ideas! I will be receiving all your comments while we’re in the car, so I can just keep updating our list! THANKS!!!

XO!

Saturday Faturday.

This past weekend was jam-packed with festivities:

• Vespa pizza lunch with Rob on Friday
• Rue de Jean dinner for Lauren’s birthday on Friday night
• Strawberry picking and Mustard Seed lunch with Justin on Saturday
• Long Point Grill for family dinner Saturday night
• Out for beverages and dancing with Mariah
• Cookout at Lauren’s pool today

I am exhausted. Let’s review Saturday Faturday.

Justin called me to take him to his car that he left at the bar. Smart boy not driving! I told him I’d only take him if he’d go strawberry picking with me. The bribe worked and he ended up having more fun than he probably anticipated. We picked SO MANY STRAWBERRIES.

8.46 pounds to be exact. I think I’m obsessed.

I was picking at warp speed and got all those in about 20 minutes. I was trying to race Justin but he wasn’t trying to race me. I am competitive about the weirdest things! And now I have a massive amount of strawberries in my fridge.

All that picking worked up an appetite so we headed to the Mustard Seed for lunch. I had the roasted chicken salad with blue cheese, caramelized pear, in a raspberry port wine dressing.

Justin had the salad special with was the crab cake salad with a creamy onion dressing. Mustard seed has the best crab cakes!That evening, I met up with my family at another Dine with Sal restaurant: Long Point Grill. Everyone’s dinners were so so good. I had one of their “fit menu” (under 400 calorie) options: Hong Kong style mahi mahi in a tangerine curry sauce with lots of vegetables.

Grammy got a manly dinner: braised short ribs in a port wine jus, with boursin-whipped Yukon potatoes, and seared asparagus.

Kelly’s meal was very interesting – and delicious. She had seared scallops with apple-smoked bacon cream, wilted spinach, and potatoes.

Dinner was delicious and I had lots of fun hanging out with my adorable cousins.

Gabrielle:

Zachary, destroying some chocolate cake:

After dinner, I went downtown to meet up with Mariah for beverages and dancing. Oh, and man hunting. We went to Vendue Rooftop bar because the weather was so nice! Later we went dancing at Trio but there were only creeps there. While we were ordering a drink, a couple of guys asked us if we wanted to go for a late night booze cruise on Shem Creek. At 2 a.m. It sounded like a great way to get murdered, so we politely declined and had our own slumber party.

Obviously we had one too many shots, because we both felt the need to “check in” at our “slumber party” at 3 a.m.

I love people’s reactions and unfortunately Mariah’s friend was exactly right. We were in bed next to each other updating our statuses, liking them, and commenting on them. Is this normal?! Noooooooooooooooooo. Was it hilarious to us? Yessssssssssssss.

What are some of the things that you and your friends do that you know is just weird but you love it anyway?

Mustard Seed Dinner with Lucy & Mum, Work Update

I was exhausted after work today, but when my English roomie asked if I’d like to go to Mustard Seed with her  and “mum”, I instantly perked up.

Chef Jonathan sent out 3 mugs of the soup of the day: Mushroom Ginger with carrots and seared tuna. It was loaded with mushrooms!

As usual, the seafood specials were hard to resist. Lucy ordered the sesame crusted tuna salad with ginger-soy glazed carrot ribbons and cashews.

I had wasabi pea crusted salmon in a Thai peanut sauce, ginger-soy glazed carrot ribbons, and roasted pepper couscous. Um helloooooooo delicious food. Nice to see you again.

…

After two full weeks at Blackbaud, I am in love. I am surrounded by very intelligent, wonderful people and look forward to working with all of them. It’s a great atmosphere and I feel right at home.

My “home” in the office is next to my coworker and mentor, Bess. Here’s a small world story for you: Bess used to live next door to my ex-boyfriend a few years back. I briefly met her over 3 years ago, and we have now reunited! We didn’t even realize it during my interview either. Thanks to facebook’s mutual friend finder, we figured out how we knew each other.

Two silly reasons why I already love this place:

1) The cafeteria has had beets on the salad bar for the past three days. Even though I brought my lunch on Wednesday, I couldn’t resist getting a plate! I can’t tell you how many random people walked by and asked, “Beets? Really?”

2) Bess put this sticker on our wall today. At that moment I knew we were meant to be.

:)

Bringing Home the Bread. And the Bacon.

Carbs, carbs, carbs. That’s all I want when I’m tired. As soon as I saw Emily’s post on her newest recipe, I had to have it. Date Walnut Bread with Chocolate? YES!

The recipe was fairly simple to make and created such a beautiful loaf! Yes, bread can be beautiful. I have little to no patience when it comes to baked goods, you all know this. Knowing that bread can completely fall apart if sliced too soon, I waited the recommended twenty minutes to remove from the pan.

I did not, however, wait to slice it. And of course, it fell apart. Crap. Who has the patience for this kind of thing? I wanted warm bread with melted chocolate, darn it!
Can you blame me?

Earlier today, my blog and I were featured on the Dine With Sal facebook page. Dine With Sal is the restaurant group that includes my favorite place everrrrr, Mustard Seed. I was pretty excited about that.

Oh, and that job they’re talking about? Yeah, that happened. As of April 1st, I started working for Blackbaud, a company that provides software for non-profit organizations. In my role as a Communications Specialist, I will be responsible for reviewing and editing client deliverables and communications. Hello, grammar and typos! My team also develops company communications and newsletters. I am so pleased with this company and am very excited to be working for them!