My husband and I went to Cheesecake Factory yesterday to celebrate an accomplishment and after having a two tiered burger called 'Tons of Fun' and some really tender Mahi Mahi fish tacos (Janet and Jason are having multiple servings of this in Cabo. Lucky!), we had decided to get a strawberry cheesecake for dessert. Our waitress asked if we wanted recommendations and though we already decided, we were still curious. We ended up ordering one of her recommendations because it sounded so good! They're promoting it during the Valentine's season and it is a White Chocolate Red Velvet Cheesecake. It was layered Cream Cheese Cheesecake, Red Velvet Cake, Cream Cheesecake Cake and Red Velvet Cake. The outside was covered a lot of white chocolate shavings. We had it with black coffee, no milk no sugar, and it was perfect. My friend Anna and I both really love red velvet cakes and are in our continued search of the best red velvet in this area. If you know any good ones, please recommend! but as for this cheesecake, she loved it too! Two approvals. My top 2 choicse for Red Velvet is the longstanding #1 Burgers and Cupcakes Red Velvet cupcakes or this Red Velvet Cheesecake. Still in limbo for the #1. It's that good! This cake was good and HUGE!
So going back to the meal, I had a glass of Shiraz which goes very well with beef, Indian, Mexican, and other spicy foods and has the essensence of blackberry, plum, and peppery flavors.This wine is rich and full, and should be served from a large glass at 64F. This makes Shiraz claim the warmest temperature a wine should be served at. Those who say red wines should be served at "room temperature" need to remember that homes in France were very cold a few hundred years ago!
On wine, we went out to the Olive garden for their endless Soup, Salad and Breadsticks since my husband was off and we had some leisure time. Olive garden was a childhood favorite that sitll holds it's old-time goodness and we had endless helpings of Zuppa Toscana, salad and breadsticks . We found that they had a $.25 wine tasting where you can get a 1oz pour for a quarter and each person can get up to three. We got six total and luckily, I think our waiter poured a little more than 1 oz in some glasses. Kee and I went down the wine menu and chose all the expensive ones and ended up with Asti, Prosecco, Merlot, Chardonnay, Super Tuscan (most expesive red wine but least tasty) and the Chianti. Though we prefer red over white, surprisingly my husband and I liked the Chardonnay out of all of them. Health Note: Red Wine has more health benefits against heart disease because white wine is made by taking out the grape seeds and skin to give it the white color while the red wines is made with the seeds and skins of grapes. In hindsight, for all six tastings, we got probably a full glass of wine for $1.50. Sweet. :)
So in the evening after our errands, we ended up coming home and opening up a bottle of chardonnay (I originally bought as our cooking wine =P ) with our homemade leftover Chicken Marsala. We threw in the leftover fish tacos from the night before and topped it off with some more red velvet cheesecake.
Olive Garden, Red Velvet Cheesecake, dinner with cooking wine...you gotta try it.
Bon Appetite!
Foodie Yoodie
