chelsea ma

Monday Munchies: Floramo’s Restaurant- Chelsea, MA

March 16, 2015

As part of my Monday Munchies series, I will feature a different eatery for a review on the third Monday of every month. Hope you enjoy!

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Price and I have only had a few ‘Date Nights’ since Autumn was born. I think 4, maybe 5 of them. And 2 of them were on the cruise that we took in January. And since then we have been talking about how we needed to get a babysitter so that we could have a Date Night soon.

As it was our first time using our sweet babysitter at night so we wanted to pick a place that was close by. We weighed our options and decided to go to Floramo’s restaurant, which is about a 3-4 minute drive from our house. We’ve lived in Chelsea for about 3 years now so we were excited to try a local place.

When we arrived shortly after 7pm we were told it would be able a 25-30 minute wait. We took our pager to a bench off the lobby to wait while discussing upcoming wedding stuff. But before we knew it a few minutes had passed and our pager began to go off. I’m glad our wait was much faster than originally predicted.

We debated getting an appetizer but once we checked out the Appetizers menu we decided we had try the Buffalo Fried Calamari ($9.95). We both really like traditional calamari that is fried and served with marinara sauce. Or the Rhode Island Style that has spicy cherry peppers.

But this was different as the crispy fried calamari was tossed in Buffalo wing sauce and blue cheese dressing was for the dipping sauce. It all worked together perfectly. A cool mashup between calamari and buffalo wings.

As Floramo’s is known for their steak tips and delicious meats, Price decided to order the Mixed Grill ($16.25) for his entree. It included Sausage, a Steak Tip, a Turkey Tip, Chicken a Tip, 1/4 Rack of Ribs. It was a good introduction to the selection of meats that they serve. All of their barbecue is meat that is cooked to your desired level of done-ness and marinated in Floramo’s secret barbecue sauce recipe.

Price really enjoyed everything on the mixed grill. He was really impressed by the amount of food served, although he wished there was more steak tips as the piece was really good. The piece of sausage was really big and grilled nicely. The slogan for Floramo’s is “Where the meat falls off the bone!”and it really is true as the meat on the ribs was fall off the bone tender.

As well, Price decided to get a baked potato, between his choice of fries, rice, mashed potato, baked potato, or pasta. It was served with butter and sour cream on the side.

I had originally thought I’d order steak tips, but once Price ordered a meaty dish I decided to check out their selection fish entrees. I ordered the Haddock Italiano ($13.95), which was lightly battered and sautéed haddock served over pasta with onions, diced tomato, spinach and crushed hot peppers in a wine based sauce. It was fantastic! I picked angel hair pasta and I think it worked well with the sauce. The 2 large pieces of fish were tender and very flaky. The sauce was spicy from all the crushed hot peppers in the sauce. It all just worked together really well.

Both of our dinners came with a simple salad. There were a handful of dressing to choose from, like ranch, blue cheese, Italian, but we opted just for oil and vinegar.

Even though both of us only had half of our entrees we were stuffed. I would have loved to have hung around and ordered dessert but we were just too full.

As the entrees were so large (for us) we enjoyed the leftovers the next day, making our dinner a great deal.

I’m so glad that we finally had a chance to make it to Floramo’s Restaurant. I’m already thinking about the next time we can go so I can have some of my own steak tips!

Floramo’s Restaurant

213 Everett Avenue

Chelsea MA, 02150

617-889-1330

Monday- Wednesday: 11-9pm

Thursday – Saturday: 11-10pm

Sunday: Closed

Out for a Stroll

March 10, 2013

Price and I are volunteering our time to work on creating a plan to revitalize the Downtown Chelsea area. It’s a bit tired so the City is looking to developing a strategy in enforcing established ordinances, creating new (much needed) ordinances, educating people about the area, and ultimately re-branding Chelsea while creating a master plan for the area. It’s important to first document the current conditions to create help create this master plan and development program. So, we took a walk this morning to take some pictures of Downtown area along Broadway.

Here are some pictures from the area around Dorothy M. Griffin Square, J.J Mahoney Rest Area (a memorial park), and the police station.

Mr. Kemper enjoyed the walk too

Blizzard 2013: Nemo

February 10, 2013

snow snow snow and some more snow. That is what the blizzard named Nemo dumped on the northeast this Friday and Saturday. It was the 5th largest snow storm in Boston’s recorded history dumping 24.9 inches of snow at Logan Airport.

What does that snow look like?

Before:

Pricer took these pictures at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon

After:

Pictures taken on Saturday starting at 11.15am

Our front door on the left, our kitchen door to back steps on the right. Since we couldn’t get out the front door and didn’t want to dump snow on the hardwood floors we went out the basement.

Which still had a lot of snow in front of it.

Looking up and then down our street.

Kemper was not too thrilled by the snow since he coudn’t get to the yard where he has been going to the bathroom. (Sure to take a back step in house-training him. Oh well, just gotta deal with it)

Sunday:

We spent some time shoveling more snow to the car could get out of the driveway now. We did have Kemper out with us for a bit and I got home pictures of him running on our front walkway. SQUEE!!!

Can’t wait for it to thaw!!!

Just taking a stroll {Chelsea, MA}

October 19, 2012

Last weekend I took a walk around our town to get out of the house and get some breakfast & butter, as I was running low and the urge to bake hit. It was a rainy, gloomy Sunday morning but I still enjoyed the walk to stretch my legs and get some fresh air. When I’m out in town I’m typically on a quick mission to get to/from the bus but this time I had the chance to walk around and enjoy the sights.

I highly suggest that you go out in your town with you camera and snap a few photos. I bet you will enjoy opening up your eyes and exploring. Find some beauty. Enjoy it.

Monday Munchies: Katz’s Bagel Bakery- Chelsea, MA

October 15, 2012

As part of my Monday Munchies series, I will feature a different eatery for a review on the first and third Monday of every month. Hope you enjoy!

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While Price and I were in the process of our house this spring, we saw a special on Chronicle about Chelsea, which added to our excitement about the city that we would be moving into. It gave us a lot of information about the history of the tiny city just outside of Boston as well as some great places to go to in Chelsea to see or eat. One place in particular was Katz’s Bagel Bakery. Who doesn’t love a great bagel? (Carbophobes- just stop reading…)

Katz’s Bagel Bakery (pronouced Kate’s) has been open in the same location since 1938 and has been run by 3 generations of Katz men; Harry to Richard and now Jimmy and Jeremy. They make bagels the authentic way by boiling them, letting them dry in a dryer, and then baking them. This process is applied to all of their varieties of bagels. The time, care. and quality ingredients they put into their bagels, and other bakery products, really shows.

So whenever we are in town we go to Katz’s bagels for breakfast on the weekends. I love bagels but I love really good bagels. Bagels from Katz a crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside. When split open you see a perfectly worked dough that has lovely air pockets giving it an all around great texture.

Katz’s is home to Pizza Bagels. Harry Katz came up with the idea in the 70’s to close a bagel and flatten that out a bit and use at as the dough. This makes their ‘pizza dough’ thick, chewy and the perfect base for a cheesy individual pizza. I did the biggest blogger faux pas and didn’t take a picture of my bagel pizza. I heated it up and it was so amazing looking I just dived in. once I was staring a an empty plate… oh crap! picture!! So here’s the deal, trust me when I say their pizza bagels are awesome and just go to get one.

No matter if you go for bagels, pizza bagels, bagel wrapped hot dogs, muffins, or eclairs (Friday & Saturday) you will have a great product, for a great deal. In this particular visit, I walked out of there with a bagel, cream cheese, pizza bagel, and a very large bag of bagel chips for just $8.

Check out Katz’s on a Chronicle segment.

Katz’s Bagels

139 Park Street

Chelsea, MA 02150

617.884.9738

Closed Mondays

Our Fourth of July Fireworks

July 5, 2012

Yesterday my neighbor asked me not to move out soon. I was at first taken back… Move? How could we move? We just bought our place and moved in! Shit we just spent the day off putting up curtains! But quickly I could see it was a lovely sweet little comment about enjoying our company (past crazy neighbor didn’t speak to her) and her hope that we wouldn’t feel out of place with the community or with the neighbors*.

Basically, the neighbors a few houses down spent the afternoon setting off fireworks (as well as the past week). We had been talking about various things, including her skilled counted cross-stitch pieces that I was inadvertently recruited to measure for a frame, and we had to contastly pause between booms. I am all for fireworks but please explain to me the point in setting them off during the day. You can’t even see them clearly. It really was maddening. I love me some naps but there was no way that was happening on my day off. So I would roll my eyes with every bang and boom and go about doing things around the house.

Thankfully, they didn’t blast through their whole supply during the afternoon since they did manage to put on quite a show for the neighborhood once the sun went down. In fact, its seems everyone, everywhere was setting off fireworks as there were booms and flashes that could be seen all over from the front were Price and I sat while swatting off beastly ants. There was lighting storm off in the distance so that put on a nice show as well. It was amazing to see fireworks being set 150′ away, hearing deafening booms, & large colorful explosions over our heads. Major safety and fire hazard, but that’s part of the reason we sat outside with my phone at the ready.

It was not the Fourth of July that we were used to but it was just as great with some massive donuts, grilled lunch, and cold showers to cool off at night. And best off was that we didn’t need to travel into Boston for a great fireworks display.

How did you celebrate Independence Day?

*Price and I moved into a tiny city that is largely Hispanic. In fact 62.1% of folks answered “Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin” on the 2010 Census. In comparison, the MA return for the same question is 9.6% and the previous town we lived in was at 4.1%. None of that matters to us, but it just means that we are densely packed together and there is a pretty consistent stream of Spanish music blasting from a neighboring house or yard on the weekends. I think I have heard every Shakira song, twice.

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Our House

May 2, 2012

Is a very, very fine house…

(back unit- furthest from street)

WE CLOSED ON OUR HOUSE ON MONDAY!!!!!

HORRAY!!!!!

We’re really excited about the new adventure at hand. We have been discussing where different pieces of furniture can go around the house. What new pieces we can get, what to get rid of. It’s all about making this space our own. I’m super excited about the kitchen and open first floor, Pricer is excited about a man cave, and we are both really excited to have an outside space again. 🙂

Exciting first purchase (besides something I ordered online) for the house were trash cans.

And these are some pics…