#zio's

7. Zio's Italian Kitchen #food #foodporn #ZiosItalianKitchen #zios

hybridclover

Friday night we went out with some new friends in our ward. We usually spend our date nights in the Lee's Summit area, and sometimes just across the border in Johnson County. But, our friends were more accustomed to heading North to Independence for their nights out. And, since they were driving, we found some fun stuff to do in areas they were familiar with. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant up the street from the Independence Mall called Zio's. It reminded me of the Macaroni Grill, but the prices were slightly smaller. The food was really good. The service, well, let's just say that we concluded that our waitress must have been busy. There were crayons on the table that I used to draw myself a bread plate on the paper 'tablecloth.' After all, she brought the bread and I needed somewhere to put it. By the time our real plates arrived, I had doodled a plate, complete with detailed shadowing and ornate rim designs, along with a knife (because I only had a pair of forks wrapped up in my napkin. After dinner we went bowling, and Brookie and I were slightly surprised at how non-smokey the bowling alley was. They had 99¢ games that night until 9:30pm, so we were able to get two games in at that special price. The other thing that was nice about this particular bowling alley was that we were practically the only ones there. We're not bigs fans of crowded places. Our friends put up the white flag after we destroyed them in both games (thanks to Brookie's best game ever, which included a pair of strikes and fell just one pin short of the century mark). Saturday was typical for us: too much stuff to do, and not enough time for most of it. We had a dentist appointment that morning, so after hitting the gym, we showered, brushed our teeth, got dressed (then I brushed again), and drove to the dentist's office. Neither of us are particularly fond of going to the dentist, but we really like our current dentist, so it's not too bad. And we like our visits even more when we have good news and he can't find any holes he needs to fill. Saturday we left cavity-free, but Brookie found out that she'll need to have a wisdom tooth extraction, so that was kind of a bummer. The rest of the day was spent mowing lawns, cleaning house, and running errands looking for things we couldn't find. But we did have a really good meal that night (Rachael Ray's Caribbean Burgers with Mango Salsa). We used ground turkey, and ciabatta rolls for the buns and we fell in love with the homemade mango salsa. We definitely recommend this recipe if you're looking for something new and a little different. Sunday was church, of course, and then we had dinner with some other new friends and the missionaries. We made our famous Manicotti (which was quickly devoured by the six of us). Then the rest of the day was pretty laid-back with some visiting teaching visits, some seminary lesson pre-preparation, and a few episodes of the Cosby Show. I also forced Brookie to watch about half an episode of Nova on the mathematic phenomenon of fractals – I bet you're jealous. And that's what we did this weekend! Go to the board!

*****I changed up the recipe some.  I didn't have any pasta sauce, so I made my own.  I used wavy egg noodles, because I have TONS of them and didn't want to buy more pasta.  I left out the bell peppers.  I left out the olives also, but because I didn't have any to put in!  I DID use the red pepper flakes and it added a super nice hint of spice. It all turned out really good!  I'm glad I didn't half the recipe, because the left overs will be awesome for lunch tomorrow!