Hi All,

So here is the deal; My best friend and I are going to be celebrating her birthday in Manhattan, and I want to take her out for a special birthday dinner. I was thinking restaurant week options would be good since they are 3 course specials that will be a break from our norm of "entree and share a dessert, check please" I have made reservations for Le Cirque, but my foodie boss told me to skip it and wasn't worth it. I am also having seconds thoughts. So I put my full trust in your foodie minds to pick a place for me here are some specs about the two diners: We are both 21 year old young ladies who like to be in chic trendy places, but please quality is still super important, a look can not make a place worth while. We like all foods, but we usually end up at either Greek, Japanese or Italian places. I have posted the link to the restaurant week list and hopefully you guys can guide me in the best bet.

http://www.nycgo.com/restaurantweek/

Cheers!

I am hosting a pot luck dinner of sorts in my flat for about 4 or 5 friends. As the host, I get the honor of cooking a main course for the dinner. I know I want to have sweet potatoes as a side to go with the main, but I am not sure exactly what to cook. Here are a few things:

I don't eat pork
I like to cook healthy
I like crock pot type of dishes
I am a student...so the more frugal the better.
I live in Aberdeen, Scotland...so interesting and crazy ingredients are not the easiest to come by

With this in mind, can you guys offer me some interesting suggestions on what to make..and also maybe how to utilize. the sweet potato ... I was thinking of either making fries or just a mash

Cheers!

I was just thinking back to when my brother and I used to make ice cream floats back in the day. I use the term ice cream float instead of root beer float because I always used to make mine with Coke and Chocolate ice cream instead of the usual root beer and vanilla. It would drive my brother mad. Anyway, I never thought it too strange. So here is my question for you: what is your ice cream float combo?...and on from that, do you have any strange adaptations to standard snacks?

I want to make a veg. bake, basically lasagna minus the pasta, plus strips of zucchini. However, I know that the zucchini has a lot of water in it and I don't want the bake to be soupy. Does anyone have a good technique to remove some of the liquid from the zucchini?

When you guys make pancakes...does anyone else seem to have the thing where their first pancake doesn't brown like the proceeding ones....whats the deal with that?, is there some science to it?

So I have a bag of Scottish Oatmeal, same as Steel cut if I'm not mistaken...Anyway, I followed the directions and prepared the oatmeal with 1/4th a cup of oats to 1 cup water. Added the oats to the water at a boil, let it boil for about 5 min and then simmered for about 20 min. after (that is 10 min longer than the directions on the bag) It was good but too soupy; I like my oatmeal pretty thick. The next time I made it I used almost less than half the amount of water and yet it still came out a bit water....Is there something I am missing here?

Plus, whats the best consistency for the oats to be?

Plus, Plus, if anyone had any healthy and interesting ways to mix it up in the oatmeal department feel free to shout em' out.

Thanks a bunch