Photo-A-Day #2082

Tonight Allison, Eva and I went to Shogun Hibachi for dinner. It was not planned that we would go there but yesterday was just one of those days. I drove home in the snow, slowly, very slowly. I stopped and picked up a raffle prize that we won from the North Attleboro Winter Farmer’s Market (Movie passes and Kettle Corn, Yum!) Then I stopped to get gas. My fuel door would not open. For about 20 minutes I tried everything I could to open it. Frustrated I went home.

Getting home I realized that Allison would have to take my car to Master Tech Auto (to our favorite Mechanic Eric) and so I would have to move the inventory from Dick’s Sporting Goods Store from the back seat to the trunk. Yeah I still hadn’t moved everything back since I got that flat.

So we’re already feeling frustrated, cold and annoyed. I get into the house and I think the mood of frustration is prevalent throughout the house. Except for Eva, she’s loving playing with her doll house like crazy. We figure that we’ve got to do a few things for Christmas and so to catch two birds in one net (It is Christmas time after all, no killing birds with stones) we went to Shogun Hibachi which is in the Stop and Shop plaza so we could go for dinner, pick up a Christmas gift and do some food shopping.

All day long I was crazing spicy chocolate. I was crazing chocolate covered almonds with hot spices mixed into the chocolate. I went to a few of my favorite chocolate covered nut places. Antonia’s Nuts and Q’s Nuts. They make some amazing treats but neither does chocolate with something like chili powder or cayenne pepper or more.

There used to be a cookie company called Sparx Spicy Cookies. They are now defunct which sucks because they had some very cool cookies. Here are the flavors –

• Chipotle Chocolate Chip Cookies. Smoky sweetness chipotle melds with excellent semisweet chocolate chips. Those looking for the next new thing in a chocolate chip cookie may well find it here.
• Ancho Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. Not exactly your mother’s oatmeal raisin—unless you grew up south of the border. What a great idea: plump and chewy, we never want an oatmeal cookie without ancho again.
• Cayenne Toffee Pecan Cookies. Almond toffee, pecans, and brown sugar and a dash of cayenne equals fabulous. One of the most popular, for good reason.
• Chipotle Double Fudge Cookies. Dark chocolate studded with chips. Somewhere in heaven, generations of Aztecs are kicking themselves that they never got to add sugar to their cacao and chiles mixture. If only we could send them some of these.
• Jalapeño Peanut Butter Cookies. Peanut butter has always worked well with both savory and sweet ingredients (just check the menu at the nearest Thai restaurant) and these cookies are the perfect medium to show off its versatility. Sweet and salty peanut butter and spicy jalapeños come together in a crisp and tasty cookie.

So, because I told Allison this was something I was craving we found a recipe online and she decided to get the fixins to make a half batch of chocolate chip with cayenne pepper. Yum!

Oh yes, the Shogun Hibachi was awesome. We had the best, most entertaining Hibachi chef in the place. He entertained the heck out of us and was so good to Eva because she got a little scared of the fire tricks on the grill. He toned that down a bit but he did so many fun things. He even gave her candies at the end of the meal. Eva also ran over and hugged another chef. Too funny.

I also noticed that Shogun Hibachi has wi-fi available. I’m thinking that maybe we do a Southern New England Media Makers after dark event there. That would be awesome!

We had a fun time there. I took a few photos on the cell phone and today’s photo is actually two photos together for the great expressions on Allison and Eva.