Memorial Day

Every Memorial Day, my dad and brother travel across the country for the Indianapolis 500, so Brett and I come up to hang out with my mom in Orange County and do something fun. That “something fun” always involves food.

This year, our special night out was spent at The Melting Pot in Brea. As you might have guessed, The Melting Pot is a fondue restaurant. It was a little on the pricey side, but totally worth it. (They are located all over Southern California and throughout the country.) The atmosphere was quiet and very intimate. I don’t think we saw or heard another customer the entire night! We opted for what they call “The Big Night Out,” which includes a cheese course, salad, lots of meat, and a dessert course. It is a TON of food. 

We got some kind of Caribbean cheese that had gouda cheese, pineapple juice, garlic, and some sweet peppers. It was a little sweet, but delicious. There were various bread cubes to dip, along with veggies and apples. Mom and Brett got a mango coconut salad, while I was boring and got a Caesar. The interesting thing about the Caesar salad was the parmesan crusted pine nuts. They actually tasted a little sweet, not salty. 

For the entrée cooking liquid we got Mojo style, which had lime, cilantro, and garlic among other things. It was so fun to do fondue! At first we were very quiet, trying to time our cooking perfectly, but that didn’t last very long. Our vegetables ended up getting over-cooked, but everything else was fantastic. There was Jamaican jerk beef, filet mignon, chicken, pork, shrimp, and butternut squash ravioli. I’m probably leaving something out, but as you can see it was a gut-busting amount of food! 

Our dessert was called “The Flaming Turtle.” It was milk chocolate (Brett actually approved!) with caramel and chopped pecans. For dipping we got various marshmallows, Rice Krispy treats, strawberries, bananas, pound cake, brownies, and cheesecake. The dessert was incredible, but after an already gut-busting entrée, they almost had to roll us out of the restaurant! Mom was warned not to hit any bumps on the drive home, or our guts might actually bust.

The next night, mom made a special drink called Pink Palaces, which is basically a virgin pina colada. It was very tasty and pretty easy to make.

Pink Palaces

2 ½ cups pineapple juice

¾ cup cream of coconut

2/3 cup half and half

1/3 cup lemon juice

1 tsp grenadine (we added a little more to make it pinker)

cherries for garnish

Just combine in a blender and pour over ice if you like. I preferred mine without ice. Our cherries sunk down to the bottom, but made a nice surprise at the end.

Here’s to our fun weekend!