This year my wife and I have a goal. After watching Oprah’s Final Season where she held her favorite things multiple times, my wife and I decided we want to start keeping track of our favorite things. So I am going to create a new series of posts discussing what we find over the year. I realize this steps slightly outside of the topics of this blog, but food is definitely something we enjoy, and I do not mind including praise for companies that provide great products.

This past weekend we had a pretty busy day and when we got home, we decided we all really had a taste for hot dogs that my wife had just bought from Trader Joe’s. When I started to get things ready to grill, I realized we did not have any canned hot dog chili (or buns for that matter), so I ran up to the store.

Let me preface my chili discussion by saying growing up, my mother always made Castleberry’s Hot Dog chili. It was cheap and good, and always gave hot dogs a really great flavor. My dad and I would even eat all the extra chili with some chips. So in my mind I was going to the store to buy Castleberry.

So as I went down the chili section of the grocery, I started to realize all the other available options. It just goes to show how often we actually eat hot dogs or chili. I finally decided on a brand called Chuck Wagon’s Own, made in North Canton, Ohio. (Please note if you go to their website, there is a really annoying music in the background that I can not figure out how to turn off, no matter which page you go to. Obviously no one pays attention to their website and what can quickly annoy customers.) So I decided on the Zesty Coney Sauce and figured it was worth trying. As a backup, I still bought a couple cans to have on hand of the Castleberry chili.

For a quick cost comparison, the Castleberry’s cost $0.55 for a 10 ounce can, while the Chuck Wagon’s Own cost $1.50 for a 16 ounce jar.

So I fired up the grill, diced some onions, and heated the Chuck Wagon’s coney sauce. Let me just say both my wife and I were blown away by this sauce. We are definitely converts and will not be purchasing Castleberry’s if Chuck Wagon’s is around. It has an awesome, slightly sweet flavor, with a spicy kick that comes in after a couple of seconds and no doubt is the “Zesty” part. We are not at all big fans of “hot” spiced products, and the Chuck Wagon’s coney sauce had just the right amount to give it a superb flavor.

Tonight I surprised my family with some last minute plans. I had heard earlier in the day that Disney was promoting the new movie out this summer, Cars 2, and their tour stopped this afternoon at one of our area shopping malls. I can not even tell you the last time I stepped foot into a mall. It was definitely before I was married, I think. I could not pass up the oppurtunity tonight though to show my oldest son Lightning McQueen, Mater, and some new character, as well as various promotions for the new movie.

Overall it was a great experience, and it is always rewarding to see the reaction of our son. He is at the age where he loves the Car movie characters, so getting to see them and get his picture taken was I think enjoyable for all.

After our encounter, we headed next door to try Smokey Bones restaurant. We normally are not a big fan of chain restaurants, but it sounded good, it was getting later and our son really needed to have some dinner, and we always wanted to try it since we heard good things about the food.

It was a Monday night, and upon entering the restaurant, we were rather surprised how empty the place was and should have taken that as our first clue. After a short time, a host finally greeted us and took us to our table. After sorting through the short menu, personally, I was rather dissappointed in the selection. Keep in mind we are foodies, and we can typically always find something worth ordering. We quickly ordered an appetizer of homemade chips with assorted dips and drinks. The appetizer took around 20 minutes to arrive, which would not have been that long had it been earlier and our kids were not hungry or if the place was really busy. There was no excuse for it taking so long on this night though. In addition, we rarely saw our waiter again to get drink refills. After being there almost an hour, our dinners finally arrived. My wife had a salad and I had a brisket dinner.

The food overall was rather good, it just took way to long considering how few people were actually in the restaurant. I can not tell if they were just understaffed for the night or whether the service was really that bad. Finally at the end we took a cue and requested our check while we could. The whole check request and payment took shorter time than it took just to get napkins and silverware after receiving our food. We have not had that slow or bad of service in a really long time. My wife and I have actually been bragging a lot recently about the long string of really good servers and restaurants we have been experiencing. It is too bad, because I was rather looking forward to getting to write a raving review of Smokey Bones, or at least adding another fine eating establishment to our list of highly recommended places to dine.