This episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives took place at a restaurant called Norton's in Santa Barbara  and also a restaurant called Meat and Bread. Every episode of this show is hosted by the infamous Guy Fieri.

What I liked about this show is that it takes you to see a different perspective on food from many different places. I also liked because you can learn how to make the meals that these restaurants make while you watch. I thought it was interesting how you could learn of a new dish that you had never even heard of before. 

I really did enjoy watching this show, but one thing I didn't like is that to every place Guy sampled food, he only said positive things. This might seem like a good thing, but it gave me the impression that the situation was somewhat biased.

To get on this Food Network show you can send an email to Food Network for Guy to see. The email just has to include some contact information and a recommendation of where he should go next. 

Work Cited:
"Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives."  | Food Network Store. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
"Food Network: Full Episodes Videos : Food Network." Food Network: Full Episodes Videos : Food Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.

This homemade tortilla chips and guac recipe I made at home was delicious. I would give it a 5/5 review. One thing I really enjoyed was how fresh all of the ingredients were because they were all prepared right then and there. The hot chips were well paired with the guacamole. I liked how the guac was not too overpowering and spicy. However, the chips did help neutralize the spice that was in the guac from the jalapenos. 

There were only a few things I did not like the turnout on with this recipe. I didnt like the red onion, again just personal preference. Also, I think it would have been sufficient to use only 1/2 the jalapeno because it was a little bit too spicy for my taste. 

If I could make any changes to this recipe, I would take out the red onion and only use 1/2 the jalapeno. There was a change that I did already make though. I made homemade chips rather than using store bought ones. I think the homemade chips had a much more pleasing taste.

This steak salad recipe that I chose was excellent. I chose this because my dad's favorite entree whenever we go out is steak salad, so I decided to add some homemade flavor to it instead. My favorite part about the salad was how much flavor it had. All of the fresh ingredients blended together so well and created a great outcome. I also liked the dressing that the recipe called for because it was made from scratch rather than from a bottle at the grocery store. 

Although the salad was good, there were some things that I did not like about it. I thought that the recipe called for too much of the dressing because the romaine leaves became very soggy. Another thing I didn't like very much were the green olives, but this is basically based on preference. The final thing that I didn't like was that there was not a good ratio of lettuce: toppings. Even with these few things that I did not like, my family and I still enjoyed the meal.

If there were any changes I could make, I would add less dressing so the lettuce wouldn't become soggy again. I would also eliminate the green olives and red onion from the recipe, for preference. The last change I would make is I would probably add either raisins or some dried cranberries as an additional topping to add a sweet flavor as well. Overall, I would give this salad a review as a 4/5.

Recipe:

• 1 3/4 pounds beef sirloin steak
  
  
• 1/3 cup olive oil
  
  
• 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  
  
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  
  
• 1 clove garlic, minced
  
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
  
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
  
  
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
  
  

• 3/4 cup crumbled blue cheese
  
  
• 8 cups romaine lettuce - rinsed, dried, and torn into bite-size pieces
  
  
• 2 tomatoes, sliced
  
  
• 1 small green bell pepper, sliced
  
  
• 1 carrot, sliced
  
  
• 1/2 cup sliced red onion
  
  
• 1/4 cup sliced pimento-stuffed green olives
  
  

Directions

1. Preheat grill for high heat.
2. Lightly oil grate. Place steak on grill and cook for 3 to 5 minutes per side or until desired doneness is reached. Remove from heat and let sit until cool enough to handle. Slice steak into bite size pieces.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce. Mix in the cheese. Cover and place dressing in refrigerator.
4. Onto chilled plates arrange the lettuce, tomato, pepper, onion and olives. Top with steak and drizzle with dressing. Serve with crusty grilled French bread. Enjoy!

Work Cited: "Steak Salad." Allrecipes.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.

Food: While at Mi Casa, I ordered the chicken fajitas with corn tortillas. I really enjoyed the food because all of the ingredients were fresh and cooked to perfection. 
Cost: I think that the cost of Mi Casa's overall menu is fairly reasonable. Compared to other Mexican restaurants the food was affordable and worth it for the amount/ quality of food served.
Ambiance: I thought the ambiance of Mi Casa was pretty good. I liked how they have it decorated as an old fashioned Mexican cantina. However, I thought that the seating was a little bit too crammed. In some areas you are nearly back to back with people in the table seated behind your table.
Service: The service at Mi Casa was great. Since I am gluten free, its hard to find anyone who actually knows what that means and how to go about serving me with this allergy. But this waiter gave me gluten free chips, separate salsas and made sure I had a gluten free menu. He answered any possible questions we had but at the same time gave space to enjoy the meal. Also, at the end of the meal a manager came by as well to make sure we had a good dining experience. 
I would definitely go back to Mi Casa to eat again because I have almost always had a positive experience while eating there. Everything across the board was great. 

Work Cited: "Mi Casa Mexican Restaurant and Cantina." Mi Casa Mexican Restaurant and Cantina. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2014.

Chipotle is one of my favorite places to stop and grab a quick bite. All of the aspects of this restaurant were fairly impressive.
In my opinion, the food was great. I had a burrito and chips with guacamole. All of the food they served was really fresh. As a matter of a fact, you can see nearly everything being prepared right in front of you while you order. The nice thing about how the layout is at Chipotle is that your food is never cold or soggy from sitting in some back kitchen, its all cooked to order. Additionally, I recently stopped eating gluten. I had no idea until I looked, but the only thing that is not gluten free on the Chipotle menu is their tortillas. It definitely improves my impression on their restaurant because finding menus with gluten free food is very hard, especially fast food. 

I believe the cost is reasonable considering the accessibility you are provided from eating there, as well as the food quality. 

I think the overall ambiance of Chipotle is great. I've never been there a time where I did not have to wait in line to put in my order. Some may see this as annoying, but I see it as if the restaurant is popular, they must be doing something right. All of the employees seemed to be very knowledgeable on the menu, its options, and they are also very friendly. Another thing that added to the ambiance was that many of the materials you are served your food on are biodegradable. As far as sanitation goes, it is always very clean and I feel comfortable having a meal there. There is always a busser of some type that wipes down every table before you are even seated. 
I have a great impression on the company of Chipotle and their businesses. It also helps that they are a Colorado founded restaurant. I would definitely go back, and I plan to as a result of my positive experiences. 

Work Cited:
"MENU." Chipotle: Menu. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.

The recipe for monkey bread is as follows:
Classic Monkey Bread
1/4 cup water, warm (100-110F)
2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast (.25-oz)
3 – 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp sugar
1 large egg
2 tbsp butter, melted
3/4 cup milk, warm (100-110F)
 2 cups brown sugar
1 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 cup butter, melted

Lightly grease a standard 10-in bundt pan with vegetable oil. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer (all mixing can be done by hand, as well), combine warm water and yeast. Let stand for 2 minutes, until yeast is slightly foamy.

Stir in 1 cup of the flour, along with the salt, sugar, vanilla, egg, 2 tbsp melted butter and warm milk. Mix well, until dough is fairly smooth. Put the dough hook attachment onto your mixer and gradually add in the remaining flour, mixing at medium speed until dough comes easily away from the sides of the bowl. Knead for 3-4 minutes on medium speed. Remove dough hook and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest for 30 minutes.

In a small bowl, whisk together brown sugar and spices. Place melted butter in a nearby bowl and get a fork out, as well.

Turn dough out onto a very lightly floured surface and gently deflate so that dough is relatively flat (maybe 1/2-3/4 inch thick) Using a knife or a bench scraper, cut off small pieces of dough to form 1/2 to 1-inch balls. As you cut each piece of dough, roll it into a ball in the palms of your hands. Dunk each ball in butter, use the fork to remove it and transfer it to the sugar mixture to be thoroughly coated. Place all coated dough balls into prepared bundt pan.
Once all balls have been coated and places in the pan, cover the pan lightly with plastic wrap and let bread rise for 60 minutes, until almost doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 350F while the bread rises.
Bake for 30-35 minutes. Bread will spring back when lightly pressed.
Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a serving platter. Eat immediately (or reheat leftovers), as the bread is best served warm and gooey.

A few weeks ago, we made monkey bread in class. I think that it was pretty easy to make, especially since the group is so large. We divided out the work of the recipe evenly for sake of time management. Some changes we did make for the recipe were that we let the dough rise overnight before making it into smaller pieces and coating them with the filling. We also didn't add any type of nuts as far as topping went. I believe the two alterations that we did make, made the final outcome better.

Overall, I think that we had a pretty great turnout. Some things I liked about it was that it was in smaller ball like pieces rather than slices. It made it easier to eat, and there was less cleanup needed. I also liked the taste. The brown sugar caramelized to the pieces of bread making them softer and gooey.One thing I did not like was that some of the pieces on the bottom did become slightly overcooked. This was a result of the filling running to the bottom of the pan and burning. The overcooking also could have happened due to the uneven cooking of the dough in the pan. 

If there was anything I could change or add to this recipe I would probably fix the overcooking problem first. This way all of the pieces could be cooked evenly and correctly. I could fix this by using a different pan, using more even sized dough pieces, or not stacking the bread as high up in the bundt pan. I would definitely add a cream cheese icing to make the bread sweeter and to also keep it softer for longer. Although, I would not add too much otherwise it would become too rich. 


Work Cited:
Kim. "Monkey Bread." Relative Taste. N.p., 22 May 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.
"Classic Monkey Bread." Baking Bites. N.p., 30 Jan. 2009. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.

Overall, the process of making the loaded baked potato soup was fairly simple. For the duration of making it, our group was split up. That way, everyone would be doing an equivalent amount of work. Meanwhile, the production time for the soup was more efficient. Some people were preparing bacon and putting it into bits  for the toppings, some were measuring out all of the necessary ingredients, and the remainder of the group was either shredding cheese or dicing potatoes. As a whole, we all worked very well as a team and got the job done.

As far as the turnout went, I believe we did pretty well. I had never made soup from scratch prior, so I learned a lot throughout this lesson in class. As a group, we did a lot of taste testing throughout the process which definitely helped the outcome because we could easily add small amounts of certain ingredients to enhance the taste if need be. One thing that definitely impacted our soup was the increased addition of salt. It helped the taste as well as consistency of the soup and served to be beneficial. One thing we made sure of was that we all agreed on any recipe modifications prior. 

As with anything, our turnout was not perfect. There were areas of improvement that we could potentially expand on in the future with this recipe or to keep in mind when using similar ingredients with different recipes. One thing we could have done differently while making our soup was the lack of time we allowed our potatoes to cook for. We could have added more patience to this process. However, our faults this time will add to strengths next time!

Work cited
"Loaded Baked Potato Soup." Damn Delicious. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2014
"Loaded Baked Potato Soup | Real Mom Kitchen." Real Mom Kitchen. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.