Ho Ping House Review

There is a new Chinese restaurant in town. I find it intriguing that Dale and I were completely on the same page with regard to the service and the food. He said, “Well, the customer service makes up for the food.” DH was like, hush! be polite! And I was thinking to myself, exactly! The jumbo shrimp was overcooked and bland. My entree, which sounds good in principle, was kind of awful. Prawns wrapped in bacon and eggs and fried. Served on a platter of vegetables in hoisin sauce. I think I’m going to reschedule my trip to the lab to get my cholesterol checked. Now, the rest of the food was actually quite good. Bob ordered the Honey Chicken. O. M. Gosh. Amazing lemon and honey sauce on batter fried chicken. The beef sticks were also good, and the crab rangoon was EYE ROLLING delicious. I mean, get a room. DH had the Dragon Meets Phoenix, (General Tso’s chicken and a seafood that he can’t remember). He said it was very good. Dale had Orange Beef; he said it was pretty good. Farley and Tori ate bits and pieces of every one’s food. We had a very sweet and competent server.

The ambience of the restaurant was very nice. Simple but elegant decor. It wasn’t overdone. Pleasant music barely audible, just the way I like it. Beautiful place settings and white tablecloths.

Ho Ping means peaceful harmony, and it seemed to work, because Farley and Tori, neither one known for their patience at restaurants, were very well-behaved. Seriously, if you can take your child with Autism to a busy restaurant, and not have a meltdown the entire time, you’ve got Peaceful Harmony going on. It was, however, pricey. It made me glad we haven’t eaten out for the previous two weeks, because that’s about how much it cost for the one meal out. Oops! So, good service, substandard shrimp/prawns, but heavenly Crab Rangoon and Honey Chicken with Lemon Sauce. I’ll give it a four out of five stars.

Breakfast for the Girls

DH gets up EARLY and takes Dale to early morning seminary and Kevin to school. I get to sleep an extra ten minutes, then I get the girls up for school. Breakfast is always a challenge. The usual choices are prepared cereal and milk, bagels with or without cream cheese, depending on the time of the week, toast or hot cereal. But, the girls usually say no to almost all of the above. Fun. So then we play a game called, ‘Mom gives me food ideas and I shoot them down one by one’.

Here is a list of some of my common breakfast ideas: PB and banana bread or toast, jelly toast, jelly bagel, hard-boiled eggs, American cheese slice, brownies, leftover birthday cake, chocolate chip cookies, whoa. Looks like my list degenerated into a dessert list. It just occurred to me that I often spout off about nutrition by the week. With a list like that, I’ll have to forcefeed the kids fruit and vegetables all on one day. Anyway, I really am pretty relaxed about breakfast. If there is a tray of brownies on the counter come breakfast, (it does happen, believe it or not), then everybody gets a brownie for breakfast. A milk chaser, and we’re done. I think I must be the epitome of laziness. But only at breakfast time.

I actually feel really good about the breakfast I gave the girls this morning. Aldi sells these packages of pre-cooked frozen sausage patties. Each patty takes one minute in the microwave. The girls loved them! I would say’ Hallelujah’, except I don’t know if I’m spelling it right. I also stirred up OJ. All in all, it was a good morning. I’m trying to decide if I should save the remaining patties for tomorrow’s breakfast, or scarf them up myself. They are really yummy. If I had brownies, then there wouldn’t be any question.