Sugar Cubes Tea Room

Sadly, the tea room I’m about to “review” no longer exists.  I had many a pleasant outing to this Bennington haunt, but early last year they closed their doors.  I saw on their website something about a move to Fremont, but then I checked back and that must have changed to simply “closed”. However, on their website they note that they still do catering for events.  So I’d recommend it if you have that option. 

I’d never been to a “tea room” prior to approximately 3 years ago.  Frankly, the idea never appealed to me.  It sounded to “frou-frou” for this “uptown” chick.  But the women’s ministry team from our church that I was working with at the time thought that might be a good location for a ladies outing, and I agreed.  We were trying to incorporate all types of venues into these outings.  So we set it up and I arrived, ready to be underwhelmed.  I was surprised.  The venue was cute: a little old house on Bennington’s main street, complete with a gazebo in the far back corner of the dining room.  (Yes, inside.)  There were several different seating areas and the place was packed with women from our church, excited about this kind of offering.  The service was good and the options were scrumptious.  I like tea, especially with milk & sugar.  (Thank you, Mandy Smith, for introducing me to this finer style.)  And Sugar Cubes had tea options galore.  I think I had the Tutti Fruiti, maybe.  I know I had that on one occasion, at least. 

Here is a sample menu from their website, which pretty accurately portrays the food you are served:

Fresh Fruit
Cool Cucumber Dip with Pita Chips
Scones and Welsh Cakes with Devonshire Cream and Jam

Rosemary Chicken Salad in Cucumber Cups
Salmon and Dill Quiche
Roasted Turkey and Spinach on Foccacia

Raspberry Truffle
Bread Pudding with caramel sauce
Choice of two teas.

Recognize that from the list above, only the desserts are options you have to choose from.  Otherwise, you get everything listed on that menu.  For about $15 a person, which isn’t cheap, but the food was good enough to command that every once in awhile, especially considering how much food you get for your money.  And did I mention it’s all good?  The Cool Cucumber Dip with Pita Chips was amazing – creamy yet tangy and light somehow.  This girl is not a fan of scones, as they’re usually the driest of the bread offerings around.  But the Devonshire Cream – some kind of rich, light exotic cream that combines the textures and tastes of cream cheese & sour cream – really makes the scones much more palatable.  I can usually do without rosemary.  I like the flavor, but the texture is much too close to grass in my experience.  So unless it’s chopped up finely or ground, you can skip it.  However, the Rosemary Chicken Salad in Cucumber Cups is a nice delicate offering.  I still take issue with the texture of rosemary in general, but find it less irritating in this dish than in some.  Every time I’ve gone to Sugar Cubes (approximately 4, perhaps), I’ve had a different kind of quiche.  And I’ve really liked them all.  I think my favorite was a bleu cheese quiche that at first was a bit off-putting.  I’m not always a huge fan of strong cheese and I don’t think I’d ever had bleu cheese prior.  But after several bites, I really enjoyed the strength of the cheese in relation to the mildness of the quiche.  And several months later I woke up really craving this, only to find out that the tea room had closed.  I’m sure you can imagine my disappointment. 

In any case, my favorite offering of their menu is probably the bread pudding.  And yes, I do not like bread.  I’d never had bread pudding before attempting it here.  I was very skeptical.  And very surprised.  I loved it!  It’s much more like a custard than bread.  (Due to the large amount of eggs added to it.)  And Sugar Cubes made their own caramel sauce that they drizzled over it.  So good!  A warm, tasty treat.  However, I ordered this on every occasion, and once – to my horror – they’d made it with raisins (apparently a traditional ingredient to bread pudding, but a tradition I believe should go the way of petticoats) and whole wheat bread.  I think that was also the time the cook burnt the caramel sauce.  So sad. 

The food was always good at Sugar Cubes.  However, the service was not.  The owner apparently had a difficult time of finding good help and keeping organized.  She didn’t always keep good record of reservations, or at least didn’t refer back to her records well.  At least twice she had waitresses not show up or call in sick when I was there.  And several times we waited (& waited & waited) for long periods of time to get our food.  I believe it took 2 ½ hours for our whole meal once.  Granted, this type of meal comes in many courses, so that 2 ½ hours was stretched across those courses.  But even given that, it was a long wait period at times.  I really felt for the owner, but she was clearly unorganized and contributed some to the mess of it all.  A most pleasant woman, though.  She did the cooking too.  And she was good.  I think if she’d had a manager and could just do the cooking, she’d have been well off.  But in this age of economic crisis, I’m sure a tea room in the little town of Bennington, Nebraska, just couldn’t make it for long, especially with some of the service issues.  Which is a shame.  I loved taking friends and family there.  It was always a fun time to get away, just us girls.  (The first time, with the women’s ministry ladies, was one of the best times I’ve had – us girls had some very lengthy conversations about topics we don’t normally discuss but that were meaningful and frank.  Maybe that’s why this place has such a warm place in my heart.)  I’d had plans to take my sister, my niece and my sister-in-law there.  Maybe we’ll have it catered instead. 

http://www.sugarcubestearoom.com/index.html

I Don’t Do Fancy Eggs

Growing up our parents always made a hot breakfast for us before school, with few exceptions.  (And if we did not have enough time to eat it before the school bus arrived, we missed the bus.  No exceptions.)  Most of the time this hot breakfast consisted of an egg.  Sometimes they threw in a homemade hot cereal of some kind.  A favorite was Dad’s grits with butter & honey.  Sometimes Mom made a rice or bulgur cereal, which sounds kind of nasty but I always liked them.  Instant oatmeal was on hand as well.  And rarely – so rarely – we were allowed to have cereal.  But only non-sugar cereal like Rice Krispies.  The good stuff was saved for weekends, though even that was limited to Frosted Flakes & Fruit Loops, never Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs.  (Marshmallows and chocolate are apparently not breakfast approved, though that has drastically changed in my home.  But let’s be real – is there more sugar in those than Frosted Flakes?!  Nope.  In fact, I recently discovered that there are more calories in Honey Nut Cheerios than in Lucky Charms.  Let that sink in for a bit.)

Back to the egg bit.  I grew up on eggs.  I like eggs.  Most of the time we had a fried egg, where the yolk is broken too.  And usually the eggs were dusted with Lowry’s Seasoned Salt.  Delicious.  (But if you sprinkle too much it's quite nasty.)  My younger brother had a habit at an early age of topping his eggs with mustard.  Gross.  He’s since seen the error of those ways, but somehow passed that weird gene onto our 10-year-old nephew.  I’m confident that someday he too will denounce that food faux pas. 

Anyway, I can make decent scrambled eggs.  I always “scramble” mine with a whisk in a large bowl before adding them to the pan, usually adding a bit of milk or water (yes, water – my mom did this to make her eggs lighter & fluffier, though it sounds nasty & when my husband was diagnosed as possibly lactose intolerant I went the water route myself, to great success; no one’s ever suspected).  I don’t love when people scramble the eggs in the pan, since you end up with bits of white and bits of yolk.  (I do believe professional chefs tell you that you shouldn’t have bits of white in scrambled eggs.  But my husband professes to prefer that.)  I love to add some cottage cheese to the mix before I pour it into the pan, but of course that doesn’t suit Jake too well.  The cottage cheese melts into the eggs when you cook it, so you wouldn’t be able to see it, but you can taste an added creaminess and rich tanginess that’s just great.  A lot of times I add cut up ham into the mix as well.  And Lowry’s Seasoned Salt.  I guess it’s because I grew up on it, but it’s the perfect compliment to eggs.

I can also make a great fried egg, as described above.  However, I do NOT make sunny side up, over easy or over medium eggs.  I do not make eggs where the yolk is not broken but has to be flipped.  I have not, will not, “can not” do this.  (I probably could, but don’t want to learn how.)  Jake can, though.  This is one of the few areas where Jake is less fearful in the kitchen than me.  He is normally very unsure of himself.  (He was very nervous the other night when I asked him to cut up the chicken breasts before I got home so I’d have time to put dinner together when I got there.  He did such a good job, though, that I asked him to do it again.  He told me he shouldn’t have done such a good job.) 

It’s not that I don’t like those kinds of eggs.  I enjoy a good runny yolk as much as anyone, though I would rarely dip a piece of toast into it like a lot of people do.  I just spread it around like gravy for the rest of the egg to dip into. 

In any case, now you know who does the fancy egg cooking.  And it ain’t me.

Pie In My Eye

I could come up with all kinds of catchy, corny “pie” titles!  Just sitting here, I’ve come up with three in no time flat.  But enough of that.  (See the silly rhyme?!  I’m much too cool for these kind of shenanigans, I know, but sometimes I delve into the trite on accident.) 

In any case, this post is inspired by my recent trip to Village Inn.  Every so often my maternal grandmother comes to town for an eye doctor appointment due to her macular degeneration.  My uncle normally brings her and I meet them for lunch, sometimes accompanied by my lovely husband.  At first we attempted to try out several different lunch locales, but my grandma finally settled on Village Inn as the most acceptable venue.  And since grandma pays, grandma picks. 

Now, Village Inn isn’t at the top of my restaurant pick list.  However, they do a few things fairly well.  I’d say breakfast food is a strength.  But nothing – absolutely NOTHING – on their menu beats their pie.  Among pie distributers, I think Village Inn is pretty high anyway.  I don’t care for their “cream” on their coconut cream pie, but aside from that I have very few complaints when it comes to this sweet treat.  And although I loves me a good key lime or a rich pecan, I am rarely tempted away from the kingpin pie in my eye: French Silk Pie. 

French Silk is creamy chocolatey goodness.  It is topped by whipped cream delight and dusted with chocolate shavings/curls.  If I could change but one thing, it would be that this delicacy would be seated on a crust of graham cracker crumbs rather than the thick pastry shell that accompanies it.  However, I know I am mostly alone in that pursuit, as I equate pastry crust to bread most days, which would only increase it’s worthiness in some of your eyes, but definitely diminishes it in mine.

Thus, I am a big fan of Village Inn’s meal deal that lets you pick half a sandwich (from a specified list), a side salad or cup of soup and a piece of pie (no list necessary, thankfully).  And yes, I do get a sandwich, which probably blows y’all’s minds.  It is a carved turkey sandwich, though – not some pressed sandwich meat, so the scale is a bit more lenient.  But I’ll be honest – mostly I order this meal for the end result: the pie.  French Silk Pie, to be exact.  (I did, most graciously, let my husband have a bite.  One.)  If I was to get any other meal, it would be a breakfast one.  Which I’ve done.  But I normally do not get pie at the end of the breakfast meals, since they usually come with pancakes.  And not that I’m opposed to pancakes topped with pie, but I’m normally too stuffed to think that sounds all that wonderful (sadly).  And I would be hard-pressed to justify the added cost of pie (especially since Gram is paying for it!).  But the pie COMES WITH this meal!!  Delightful! 

Note: there are days (right now Wednesdays) that you can get a free slice of pie at Village Inn with some kind of other purchase.  So that’s a bonus.  But unless Gram is requesting, I’m still hard-pressed to choose Village Inn as a restaurant of choice.  Even if it comes with pie.

Wedding Cake Update

So, after posting on how much I couldn't care less about most wedding cakes, I have to say that my brother's wedding cake was delish!!  Karen, their cake lady, did an excellent job.  I have to eat my words. :-)

Not only does this cake look amazing, it tasted amazing!  The frosting was truly rich buttercream (you can tell it was good because it didn't stand up for days on end - only chemical byproducts do that!).  That's not to say the frosting wasn't good & delicious & didn't stand up well.  Just that you could tell it was really real stuff.  

Each layer was a different flavor of cake: apple spice, vanilla, and then chocolate with a chocolate cream filling.  They had an additional sheetcake of red velvet, which was what I had.  It didn't have the red food coloring, so it just looked like the chocolate yumminess it was.  It was rich & dense.  I loved it!  I've never really cared much about the red velvet cakes I've had before, so that is a true compliment.  Hats off to the chef!

(Picture compliments of Abby Snyder, photographer extraordinaire.  No really, she's amazing!)

My Wine Styles

(There is a store in Omaha called WineStyles and this post is not to be confused with it. I just thought it was catchy.)

I love food.  And most food connoisseurs love wine.  And I am not most food connoisseurs.  I want to like wine.  I do like some wine, but not usually the wine I’m “supposed” to like.  Not the fancy stuff.  I like the cheap, cheap stuff that’s made with high fructose corn syrup.  You know, the stuff with the screw top cap.  Yes, I’m talking about Arbor Mist, my friends.  I prefer the Blackberry Merlot and one of the white fruit blends, but I can never remember which one it is.  It’s either the Tropical Fruits or the Island Fruits, but seriously, isn’t that about the same thing?!  Actually, no.  One is gross and the other is good, but I can never remember which one is which and I almost always end up buying the nasty one and then swearing I’ll remember for the next time and then forgetting before I end up purchasing it again. 

I also like sparkling wines.  And those are usually fairly inexpensive as well.  I really like most Riesling wines, though some are definitely better than others, and one that I like a lot still comes with a screw top cap.  (One other that has an actual cork has a German name and can only be found in one store in the city so far as I can tell.  And it’s a bit more expensive than the readily available screw top cap one.)  Some friends introduced us to the Amana Colonies fruit wines recently as well.  And, yes, they have screw top caps, as apparently all good wines should. (I know this will completely outrage you wine connoisseurs out there!)  But even some of those are too sweet for me, which is surprising.  (One bottle we recently opened of the Plum variety was NASTY.  We honestly wonder if it somehow went bad.)

I know that a good chef can pair a tasty meal with the perfect wine to complement it and bring out the right flavors.  But that will probably never be me.  (And not just because I don’t ever intend to be a chef.)  Though I’m making progress.  I actually drank a fairly dry red wine the other night and noticed some of the “hints” of flavors in there that before might have completely escaped me.  And I didn’t completely hate it.  But I’ve also never really understood the concept of “developing a taste” for something.  If you hate it, why would you want to consume so much of something you hate in order that some vague and uncertain day out there you might actually not hate it as much?!  Sounds like torture to me.  So I'll just continue to sip my Arbor Mist and be happy.

Wedding Cake

I truly am not a huge fan of wedding cake.  Usually it’s fairly bland cake topped with way too much too-sweet frosting.  And the whipped kind is nasty, people.  Buttercream is the only way to go (chocolate buttercream works too, since it’s still buttercream).  But I’m pretty sure some people don’t use real butter or real cream when they make it & Crisco just doesn’t taste good either. 

My brother’s wedding is coming up very, very soon.  And I’m excited for them.  I know that picking out the cake was kind of an ordeal for them, too.  And probably expensive.  Which is ridiculous to me since the ingredients for cake are probably the cheapest things around.  But I guess if you know how to make those ingredients look incredibly pretty, you get paid the big bucks for it.  And sometimes people that know how to make cakes look pretty also know how to make them taste good, but I find that’s rarely the case, sadly.  Again, note the blandness or too-sweetness that just masks the lack of any real flavor or texture.

There are cakes I like, make no mistake.  I recently did a whole post about my friend Lisa’s Darn Good Chocolate Cake.  And a bakery in Grinnell, Iowa, makes amazing Pink Champagne cakes & cupcakes and will even make it in sheetcake form, which my sister did for her wedding.  (The cake is a pink sponge cake, filled with a creamy pudding filling & topped with a light pink frosting.  Yum!)  But most cakes just don’t do it for me.  So I’m a fan of the new-ish trend of selecting something other than cake to celebrate your nuptials.  Some people have had donuts, some have had brownie ice cream sundaes, some have had cookies, some have had root beer floats.  I think this is all due to the fact that the wedding cake industry has become a bit overblown price-wise and a bit underwhelming taste-wise.  I know that cake decorating shows are all the rage now, so I should be impressed rather than depressed.  But I just can’t jump on the bandwagon, for some reason.  I have yet to taste a wedding cake that blows my mind.  Fun fillings sure help, though I’m not that big of a fan of fruit jam products, which are usually the “impressive” filling. 

That said, I am a fan of cupcakes.  For some reason, I think cake usually tastes better in cupcake-form.  Maybe because the paper cup keeps moisture in better and the frosting is more proportionate?  I don’t know, but I do know that some couples have chosen cupcakes as a substitute for wedding cake now too, and I usually applaud that as well. 

I hope my brother’s cake is everything they want it to be.  I hope they didn’t have to pay an arm & a leg for it.  (I should have appreciated my mom more for making my cake & having a lady in our church decorate it!!)  And I hope they don’t freeze the top of theirs for a year, let it sit in their fridge for a week after their first anniversary, and then throw it out without tasting it because it just sounds nasty to eat a year old frozen cake.  (I do appreciate that my mother carefully froze it for us & purchased a cake carrier for us so she could keep hers but still bring us our cake nice & neatly.  I never, ever told her we didn’t eat it.)

Calling All Guest Bloggers

I recently had someone (a close friend that I trust) offer to be a guest blogger for me on this blog.  I love that idea!  I wondered if anyone else might want to take a stab at writing a few “guest spots” from time to time.  If you’re interested, please feel free to send me your work! 

Email: christiancari@hotmail.com