August 31, 2015 - Yen Ching - Mesa, Arizona

I visited on August 31, 2015 with Sandy Wilts and Sheila Lagrimanta.  What a lovely dining room setting…and the food was very good.  We started with drinks – Sandy: wine – Sheila:  Long Island Iced Tea – Lynda:  Bloody Mary…then the Crab Puffs as an appetizer – Oriental egg flour skins filled with imitation crab meat and white cream cheese, deep fried to golden brown. Served with a sweet sauce and a hot mustard sauce.

Sandy ordered Beef with Broccoli – sliced steak sautéed with broccoli shoots in brown garlic sauce.  I really liked this dish. 

Sheila ordered Kung Pao Three – shrimp, chicken and beef sautéed with diced celery, zucchini, bamboo shoots, onion, green pepper, red pepper, peanuts in special spicy sauce. 

I ordered Orange Chicken – deep fried chicken breast meat, sautéed in orange sauce, garnished with lettuce.  We were served steamed rice…and we all shared each other’s dishes.

Yen Ching

126 S. Power Road

Mesa, Arizona 85206

(480) 985-4801

Hours:

            Monday – Friday 11:00 – 2:30 p.m.  4:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.

            Saturday – 4:30 p.m. -  9:30 p.m.

            Sunday – 12:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

August 26, 2015 - The Harp Pub - Mesa, Arizona

Sandy Wilts and I visited The Harp Pub on Wednesday afternoon after a shopping trip to Barnes and Noble in the Dana Park Mall. We decided to do Happy Hour.  Sandy ordered the house wine.  I ordered a Smithwick's (my favorite beer during my first two-week visit to Ireland...yes...even better than Guinness.)   I decided to try their Cornish Pasty.  It was a flakier pasty than my favs in Montana.  It was filled with ground beef, cubed potatoes, carrots and onions...served with brown gravy.  It was homemade and tasted delicious despite the fact that I am used to more of a bread dough...pieces of chunked roast...large cubes of potatoes, carrots and onions.  It was more refined than those eaten by the Montana miners.

  

I am showing you two views so that you are able to see the crust and the height of the pasty.

The Harp Pub

1722 S. Val Vista Drive

Mesa, Arizona 85204

(480) 507-7827

Hours:  Open Daily 11;00 a.m. - 12:00 a.m.

Casa Denogean - Superior, Arizona

Revised:  September 9, 2018.  This restaurant shuttered for good in approximately 2016.

During the 4th Annual Prickly Pear Festival Irma Heasley and I ate lunch at this small homemade Mexican food restaurant.

It is small but was packed and that’s how we knew the food was going to be good..and it was .  We ordered off the special festival menu…and chose Green Chile con carne and Nopales Combo Plate served with rice and refried beans.  OMG!  Green chile con carne was chunks of beef (like a pot roast) in a sauce of nopales (prickly pear) and topped with green chopped chiles.  The beef was cooked to perfection…mostly like simmered for hours in the sauce.  That came with one huge flour tortilla.  Irma and I split and order…and they gave us an extra tortilla.  We had the most wonderful young man as our server…just waited on must as if we were the most special   people in the whole room.  I ate my half in my favorite style…just ripping off parts of my tortilla and using it to pick up the meat sauces…beans and rice.

We were served homamde chips and salsa before out main entree arrived.  The salsa was delicious and served to us in a tall plastic bottle.  We took a chip...squeezed on the salsa...what a novel way of serving the salsa...and no salsa was wasted...and the remaining could be served to another table after a quick refill.  We like the idea...saves on a lot of waste.

Of course I couldn’t pass on the Prickly Pear Cupcake for dessert.  It was served in a glass, long stemmed dessert cup…vanilla ice cream in the bottom with the cupcake on top of ice cream (the cupcake tasted as if it was made from the pad of the prickly pear…and I could see the small pieces of pulp…that was covered with whipped cream..and then prickly pear sauce was guzzled over the top of the whipped cream.  Great lunch..and now I have two favorite places to eat in Superior, Arizona…Porter’s Bar and Grill and Casa Denogean.

Green Chile Con Carne and Napoles Combo Plate

This picture is rotated to the right but won't transfer in that position so please forgive me posting this but you must see the delicious Prickly Pear Cupcake that we ordered for dessert.

August 22, 2015 - Prickly Pear Festival - Superior, Arizona

I went to Superior for the 4th Annual Prickly Pear Festival with the Thesman Active Singles Group. Irma Heasley and I left at 5:15 a.m. - well ahead of everyone else because we were doing the 6:30 a.m. hike - the first event of the Festival.

About 2.5 hours later...after finishing the hike...and I got in 12, 920 steps before 9:00 a.m.  we drove to the site for the Pancake Breakfast served with Prickly Pear Syrup...cooked by the Fire Department crews..and located between the Fire Station and Porter's Bar and Grill.  Thick...cake like pancakes were served piping hot…made by the fireman…along with scrambled eggs and fried pieces of ham…and the great part…one of your drink choices was milk.  I love these people…I love milk with pancakes.  Sandy Wilts told me later that she thinks the prickly pear tastes like the rosehips.  I didn’t even think of that…that good information

My plate of pancakes covered with prickly pear syrup, eggs and ham.

I wanted to show you a close up of the syrup so you could see the consistency of the syrup.

August 12, 2015 - Organ Stop Pizza - Mesa, Arizona

I visited on August 12, 2015 for the very first time with Sandy Wilts and Irma Heasley.  Sandy, Irma and I shared The P.S.M. – cheese, pepperoni, sausage and mushroom pizza…Sandy had wine…Irma ordered a soft drink and I ordered a pint of Bud Light.

The music began about 5:30 p.m. with Lew Williams on the Mighty Wurlitzer…the largest Wurlitzer in the world.  He played a lot of my old favorites…Chattanooga Choo Choo…Pink Panther….Sentimental Journey…Alley Cat…Stars and Stripes Forever…and on and on…

This is a must visit for every person who comes to stay with me.

The Organ Stop’s Wurlitzer theatre organ was built for the Denver Theatre and was installed in 1927.  Organ Stop Pizza purchased it in early 1970s and undertook the mammoth task of rebuilding the instrument.  Several additions were made to the instrument  by acquiring parts from other ill fated Wurlitzers. The resulting 23 rank organ was installed in the original Organ Stop Pizza facility in 1975.

Over the years Organ Stop Pizza has enlarged and improved this organ as an ongoing project. The resulting instrument boasts 78 ranks, 17 tuned percussions and innumerable traps and effects and is the largest Wurlitzer in the world.

There is a game room for the children in your party.  I think though that any children will enjoy looking at how everything works and listening to the songs.

Here I am enjoyed the songs coming from the Mighty Wurlizter.

Organ Stop Pizza

1149 E. Southern Avenue

Mesa, Arizona 85204

(480) 813-5700

www.OrganStopPizza.com

August 4, 2015 - Taco Bell - Mesa, Arizona!

I usually don't talk about fast food chains in this blog, but I must tell you about this one.  First of all one of my passions is baseball.  I have become an avid D-Backs fan.  For every game if the D-Backs have 5 or more runs, everyone in the Valley is able to go to Taco Bell the next day between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. for three free tacos...with a purchase of a large drink.  So for $1.93 (and that includes tax) you get dinner.

Sandy Wilts and I ususally run over to our brand new local Taco Bell almost at the corner of Main and Power.  The place is always packed with D-Back fans.  Most everyone comes dressed in their
D-Back wear.  We are now seeing our neighbors over there.  We are fast becoming friends with people from the area.  What a hoot!

I spent last week with my grandsons in Scottsdale.  I now have them on the plan.  Three times last week we went to the Taco Bell in Scottsdale that is on Frank Lloyd Wright and #101 for our D-Back Special.

You get your choice of hard shell or soft shell.  Last night the D-Backs beat the Nationals 6-4!  So Sandy and I went there for dinner after our afternoon tour of the David and Gladys Wright Home in Phoenix.  This is the last residential building that Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built. David is one of his sons.

The purchase and refurbishing of this home caught my eye when I read an article about it in the newspaper:

"David and Gladys lived in the house from 1952 until David’s death in 1997 at age 102 and Gladys’ death in 2008 at age 104. They carved out a portion of their original 10-acre estate for their son, David, Jr., who built a Lloyd Wright designed home and raised his daughters on the property."

I like the soft shell and Sandy loves the hard shell.