It's Back!! Pizza Inn Returns to Abilene

As a youngster growing up in Arlington, Texas, I lived right down the street from a Pizza Inn. I can't remember which night it was, but my mother would take my brother and I once a week to eat the buffet. We didn't go out to eat too often, so I always looked forward to it. The best part: getting a couple spoonfulls of pudding off the salad bar for desert!

Years later, I enjoy pizza buffets -- probably, because of fond childhood memories. My wife, on the other hand, despises them. She says they're "gross" because food is sitting out everywhere and there's only type of food available. Huh?

When I heard the new Pizza Inn was open off Judge Ely in Abilene, I had to check it out for myself. The place was absolutely packed with guests...and with employees. I joked with someone that there was an employee for each pizza on the buffet. They were so busy keeping the pizza's organized that one worker moved the pizza tray out from under me as I tried to put a piece on my plate.

As for the pizza, it was pizza. It wouldn't call it amazing, and I wouldn't call it bad either. It was better than Cici's and not quite Double Dave's.

The atmosphere of the place was decent. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but they did have a couple flat screen televisions showing two of my favorite channels: news and news (Fox News and CNN).

If you're in the area (in front of the old Cisco College), check it out. It's worth a try...

As I was leaving, they placed Buffalo Chicken Pizza on the buffet, and I didn't get to sample it! If you go, have a piece for me!

Lunch au naturale

I tried the Natural Foods Center in Abilene (on South 7th near Rose Park) for the first time on Saturday, and I will DEFINITELY return!

The food was so good and was reasonably priced. In fact, my husband just asked me if I'd like to go back for lunch today. (Maybe later in the week.)

I got the special which just said "Salmon and Avocado with Wasabi" or something. I had no idea what it was going to look like, but figured the ingredients sounded good. It turned out to be two types of salad served with chips and lettuce. One salad was salmon with avocado, onion, pineapple and who knows what else. The other was avocado with onion, papaya and maybe cilantro? It was kind of strange to be eating two different salads of the same consistency, but both were tasty.

My husband got a burger, which he really enjoyed. The whole lunch cost $15. Not bad at all!

The Natural Foods Center is really large, but the restaurant portion takes up much more room than the store portion. I was also surprised not to find produce... maybe I missed it or maybe it doesn't sell fast enough or something.

There were dozens of tables set up, and about half of them were full at 1 p.m. on a Saturday.

I'm excited about Thursdays there. They have live music and serve tapas, both a la carte and a la fixed price menu. Sounds great, and can't wait to go back! (Well, I guess I CAN wait a couple of days, at least.)

Use Twitter for great dining deals

Do you use twitter?

• Yes - skip to paragraph 3 (Twitter isn't too popular in the Big Country yet)
  
• No - oh, are you missing out on some deals! Keep reading.
  

First of all, you don't have to sign up to see what people or businesses are writing on twitter, but you do have to sign up to see more than one person at a time. Then, just find who you're looking for and click "follow" and their tweets will show up on your home screen.

Not sold yet? Check out this pretty little micro-example of what deals are out there if you follow the right people. Unfortunately, this is a screen grab, and not an actual feed so you can't click on it. But if you want to be able to interact with these local savings, go to http://twitter.com/bigcountryhome/local-businesses.

Do you want @bigcountryhome to follow you? We love finding out about what's going on in the community in 140 words or less. And if your tweets involve me getting something for cheap, all the better. Ha!