While I’m definitely no gourmet cook, I do find that I enjoy spending time in the kitchen. Almost as much as I enjoy watching all the amazing programming on the Food Network. And I just noticed that a sister network has been launched called the Cooking Channel.

I didn’t get much time to watch the offerings on Cooking, and since it’s yet to be offered in HD on Dish Network, I’m not likely to spend that much time on that channel till they do. Yeah, I guess I’ve become an HD snob!

photo credit: maura

Anyway, I’ve been here in Chicago a day and a half or so, and this trip I’m determined to to get over to Chef Rick Bayless’ Frontera Grill. I watched him on Top Chef Masters last year and just really took to him personally and professionally. I even recently purchased his seminal Mexican cook book. If you’re interested in cooking food truly from South of the Border, this is a must have book for your collection.

The great thing about coming to a place like Chicago, in addition to the food and other entertainment opportunities, is the fact that there are 2 Major League Baseball teams! Someone is guaranteed to be in town! I got busy on Sunday and couldn’t get to see the Cubs play the Sox, but that must have been a super crazy time for the local fans. Both Chicago teams playing each other! Cool.

If I can do it, I’m going to try and catch the Cubs vs. Oakland A’s tonight. I really want to eat at Frontera and do the game, so I may have to do an early dinner.

Thank goodness I found a really nice, but cheap hotel in downtown Chicago. Otherwise I’d never be able to do something like enjoy a gourmet Mexican dinner and catch a ball game. We’re not living in the 1940’s you know!

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Well, phoey! I was really hoping to be able to catch more live baseball this summer. So far, my trip to San Diego was a single day off from catching the Padres at home.

Now I’m in Houston, Texas, home of the Astros and they are in the middle of a 10 game road trip! ARGH!

Well, fortunately for me, there were a ton of Houston hotel deals which has allowed me to make some extra room in my travel budget to find some cool stuff to do when the work day is done.

I’m hoping to find some real Texas BBQ and be able to chow down on some authentic south Texas cuisine. At least I think they call their food cuisine down in these parts. The last thing I want to do is offend anyone’s culinary sensibilities in these here parts!

After a bit of quick online research I can already tell I’m in for some competition. Texans take their BBQ quite seriously. Several of the review sites I’ve been reading are chock full of folks that take the time to really write detailed reviews of restaurants that specialize in all things barbecue.

In fact, I was just on one site learning about Burns Bar BQ and was mildly amused to read about competitors leaving negative reviews just to try and sway folks into coming to their place. Wow, now that’s pretty hard core!

But I figure if the food is good, folks are going to come in and come back time and again. These review sites are really most beneficial to business traveling folks like myself. We’re not necessarily going to get all the normal local word of mouth that people living in the city might get. I just try to take anything overtly negative written about a restaurant with a grain of salt (and pepper :p )

Anyway, I’ll let you know how my dining experience goes. Have yourselves a yummy weekend, “ya’ll”!

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It was either my last trip to the Dallas area or the one before that I made a stop into the very cool Café Brazil. But this trip was such a quick one, and filled with what seemed like non-stop meetings and new client pitches that I had very little time to do anything remotely fun.

Normally I do my best to try new things, see new places, etc. More importantly, I very much enjoy revisiting my friends at the various restaurants and other businesses that I frequent when I hit town again.

My Comfort Suites DFW Airport Hotel was so close to the actual airport that I really had no time to even travel the 20 minutes or so to spend some time at the Café Brazil Addison. And even though there seems to be at least 10 stores in the local chain, I just couldn’t get over towards any of them.

But that’s groovy. They know I love ‘em there. I just hope that they are featuring their Turtle Cheesecake the next time I’m there. Not sure just how they might interpret it, but I love, love, love cheesecake and recently found a place up in Cottonwood where they make it fresh daily.

I go up to visit my mother as much as I can, and she told me about the La Bella Cafe. She and some of her church going friends decided to adopt the place as their own little gang clubhouse. When she told me the wife/co-owner made fresh cheesecake nearly every day, I knew I had to go and check it out on my next visit to see Mom.

Glad I did. In fact, I have to be back in Phoenix for a convention next week, so I’m planning on driving the 2 hours or so to take Mom to have brunch at La Bella on Sunday for Mother’s Day. Yeah, okay. I’m making the “sacrifice” because I want some more of their great deserts! Hey, their meals are pretty darned good too!

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Are you as much a sap as I am when it comes to getting your mother (or father, I suppose) gifts from the places you travel to? I love to see the look on her face when I present her with something I know she loves. If it comes from Ghiradelli Square in San Francisco, she is going to love it!

She is just like any other person that has a love affair with chocolate, so I’m ensured that she’ll always smile when receiving one of their great chocolate sampler packs. One time I got so caught up in the chocolate thing that a gift I purchased for her never even made it to her hands (or her mouth for that matter!)

My only challenge with getting Mom stuff is that she’s a collector. If you read that last sentence and accidentally inserted the word “hoarder” for collector you would be well justified. I was trying to be polite.

Mom comes from a long line of “collectors”. Her father owned just about any and every toy manufactured from the early 1950’s till he passed away last year. Family members are still having a field day selling his stuff on ebay.

Mom is more a collector of other themes. Refrigerator magnets? Yup, she has literally tens of thousands of them. Post cards? Yup. While no longer actively collecting them, at the height of that phase she had over 70,000. That’s SEVENTY THOUSAND post cards, most of them mounted in little corner bracket things inside of 3 ring binders.

Can you imagine? And the list goes on, but you get the concept. Which brings me to buying things for dear Mom when I get the great fortune of traveling to places she’s either not been or rarely gets the opportunity to see.

Tomorrow I travel back down to Los Angeles. While I’m not sure my LAX Airport hotel will have much in the way of interesting memorabilia I’ll be sure to pick her up something here in San Francisco. Like I said, she loves Ghiradelli Chocolate. Now I just need to make sure I don’t love that chocolate more!

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One of my fondest memories growing up was when I got to go to Disney World in Florida. I’ll fly down from San Francisco next Wednesday, on St. Patrick’s Day to eventually end up in Anaheim. Being oh so very close to the original Disneyland got me recollecting.

My Mother took us kids to have probably the most memorable, defining meal of my young life to that point. We actually got to eat dinner in the big, awesome Cinderella Castle.

Did you know there was a dining establishment inside the actual Disney Castle? Yupper. Not sure if there’s one in Anaheim, but since I’m going to hang out there all day on Saturday with my Sister, and some of her friends (and about 50 kids! yikes!!) I’m hoping to find out.

The Anaheim Convention Center hotel where I’ll be staying at is close enough that I can easily catch a cab over to the park’s entrance. And this is definitely my preferred travel arrangement. While I might have exaggerated about the number of children going to the park, the last thing I’d want is to be picked up by all of them and then get the joy of slogging through the traffic to get to a parking space at the park.

But being able to just meet up with my Sis and everyone else is clearly the way to go. It lets me show up fashionably late and everyone is happy. Including me!

I’m sure once I meet up with everyone it will be a great time. I think the last time I was at Disney was with an ex-girlfriend (well, she wasn’t an ex at the time) and her 2 children. It was a nice time, however, it really felt paternal. Probably too much as our relationship didn’t last much longer after that trip to Disney.

Oh well! I’m sure the fault was mine on that one. But on this trip, my goal is to have a great time with my Sister, her friends and every one of the kids that end up there having a great time. Tell you all about it later!

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In the past I’ve mentioned how great it is to fly into San Francisco airport and stay at the SFO Airport Hotel. And this trip to the City is definitely no exception.

People don’t realize just how much business and industry there is on that side of town. Sure the big Wall Street type of businesses are located downtown San Francisco, but there are a lot of small to medium sized businesses thriving over in the South San Francisco / San Bruno side of things.

Just because I use accommodations near the airport doesn’t mean I have to only stay near where I am sleeping for the night. When I travel I first and foremost make sure I’m taking care of business. Literally.

But when I know that attending meetings is taken care of, when new sales calls will be handled in the course of my day’s travel, then I work hard at figuring out what I’m going to do to play.

And to eat. I’ve mentioned it time and again hereabouts that I very much enjoy trying new cuisine and that my business travel life is all about seeking new experiences in the world of food.

Definitely would not consider myself a gourmand. Don’t even think of myself as a foodie. But I do enjoy a well prepared meal and all that comes with the experience. On the flight up from L.A. I read in one of the magazines from the seat pouch about an amazing Vietnamese restaurant called the Slanted Door:

The Slanted Door is a modern Vietnamese restaurant that showcases the abundance of produce as well as ecologically farmed meat, game and poultry found at farms around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Having only tried this style of food once many years ago, I was ready to learn more about it. The added value of this food being so focused on sustainability and local food production enticed me that much more.

I’ll report back just how great (or not ) my time at the Slanted Door ended up being. Have a great one!

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So the flight into Los Angeles (LAX) was pretty typical. Nothing of outstanding misfortune occurred that would make me want to write about it. There was a lovely woman I sat next to that engaged me in conversation for the last bit of the flight.

Normally I won’t go out of my way to get involved with fellow travelers during a flight. Why, you might ask? Mostly because I figure if they want to be chatty the will be. Please don’t misunderstand my intentions. I’m no scrooge when it comes to meeting new people. I’m as friendly as the next fellow.

Unfortunately, after all of my years of traveling this country, one truth I’ve found self evident is that people like to be in charge of their space, time, and tend to interact accordingly. I’m very much the same way. There have been plenty of times when I don’t care much to interact with those sitting near me on a flight.

Long or short flying times, if someone’s not interested in communicating you just cannot take it personally. And early on in my business travel career I think I did just that. When I wasn’t able to engage my fellow seat mates, I thought there must be something wrong with me.

Did I smell funny? I know it wasn’t because of my cologne, so maybe it was my bathing habits? Or perhaps my diet that leaked odors out through my sweat pores? I just didn’t know.

As I was taking the shuttle to my room at the LA Convention Center Hotel I remembered back to one conversation I had with an older gentleman on a cross country flight. The essence of our talk was him sharing lessons from his quarter century of traveling for a living.

Only rarely have I had the opportunity to be in the company of individuals I’d consider professional mentors so I basically asked questions and listened with my mouth shut and my ears wide open!

The biggest take away from that time dealt with simply focusing on other peoples needs. This man shared with me that by giving to others what they needed in the moment of my interactions with them, I was doing everything possible to be a great sales person. I was learning about the other party while not worrying about getting something in return.

Amazing advice. I’ve followed it ever since both in my sales career as well as learning more about the person sitting next to me on a plane. Or not as the case may be with that particular individual.

But back to this lovely woman. For some reason she was stuck on visiting Pinks Hot Dogs in Hollywood. I’d heard of them of course, but to hear her go on about the made me want to figure out how to make a visit happen. And while I’m not sure I can make it this trip to L.A. I am going to be back here in less than 2 weeks, so perhaps I’ll be able to have a bite then. We shall see!

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Clearly I talk about food a lot in my little web site here. If that offends you, I’m really sorry. My apologies. But when you travel as much as I do, you need to have hobbies. Eating just happens to be one of mine.

When I’m home, I cook for myself. When I’m not eating pizza all weekend of course So, it’s more than just stuffing industrialized, overly processed food stuffs in my gullet in order to fill up my belly (side note: for some strange reason, when I typed that last line I was speaking in the Fat guy character from the Austin Powers Movies “Get in my belly!” Not sure why that cracks me up )

Anyway, I was saying that I like eating. Very much have enjoyed taking up cooking and actually try to do some amount of my own food preparation when I am out on the road. Usually I find that the kitchenettes in the extended suites help in this regard quite a bit. My place here at the Comfort Suites DFW airport hotel has a nice little cook place with all the tools and whatnot as well.

But, I don’t think I’m going to get to use the facilities in my room during this trip because some of my clients are taking me out to this place: Café Brazil!!

Oh, yeah, baby. Have you been to these types of restaurants before? They are the ones where the food servers are ripping around the tables carrying large skewers of meat, chicken, lamb, etc. You have large medallion coin with green on one side and red on the other in front of your plate.

As long as you have the green side facing up, when they come by, they’ll carve you off a slab of whatever they have and serve it up right there, right now. It’s the best kind of place I’ve ever eaten at.

Not sure about this place but, other’s I’ve been to in the past have amazing buffet tables filled with just every imaginable fruit, vegetable and the widest variety of side dishes as well. Oh, my!

Please, some one roll me out and get me back to my bed after this meal. The things we have to do to make our clients happy

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Wow! How great does that look? I ended up taking a ton of pictures with my BB Storm while I was in the restaurant but only the ones of the food on my plate actually seem to be exposed correctly.

It took me a while to figure out that the easiest way to get the photos off the phone and onto my computer was to just email them. I actually hadn’t done that before, so it took me a while, however I finally figured it out.

If there’s a better, easier, faster more technically correct way to take pics with your phone and then get them onto the web site I am all ears. Don’t be afraid to hurt my technically challenged self if you have the right way I should do it.

Anyway, there you go. I was able to have some amazing deep dish pizza and share the photo of it with you. Have to say, however that only sharing with you the visual aspect of that meal is almost criminal. The flavors were AMAZING!

Muwahahahaha!! Have a good weekend!

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After finally having made it from the airport to the Sleep Inn Midway Airport Hotel, I have to find something yummy to eat. It’s still early in the evening, as I sit here in my room, however, room service just isn’t that appealing.

Even given the falling temperatures outside, I just have the yearning to get out and move around. Probably as a result of sitting on the plane while they fixed flat tires and who knows whatever else.

Normally, I like to save pizza meals for the weekend. Do you do this as well? I’ll buy the super deluxe, jumbo large everything plus kitchen sink special pizza from my local place. Unless buddies come over for the games on Saturday or Sunday, that one pie purchase makes it through till lunch time on Monday!

Really, it does. I mean, come on. Who is not a fan of French pressed French Roast coffee and cold pizza in the morning? Oh, yeah!

But it’s not Friday and I’m not at home. However, when you’re in Chicago there are just some foods you HAVE to eat during your visit. Pizza usually tops most folks list (it certainly tops mine!), followed by Chicago style dogs (love those hot peppers. Yumbo!!). Steak houses are also big here from what friends and business associates tell me.

Pizza it will be however. There’s nothing better than Chicago deep dish pizza (when you’re in Chicago. I might be saying something different when I hit NYC And I’ve always want to go to Pizzeria Uno, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do!

I need to get out of here now. I’ll try to take a picture of my feast (if I can figure out how to get a photo from my phone to the website. Don’t count on it, but hey, miracles do happen!)

Catch you later.

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