FLIP + CHING

Newbie Night at Chicken N Pickle

Posted on March 25, 2024 by Ching under Pickleball, Things to Do.

I’m on a mission to get all of my friends.. Scratch that. I’m on a mission to get every single person I meet into pickleball. Recently, I met a couple of friends (Jarrica Briedenthal, a friend from Zumba, and Teresa Winfield, an former coworker) at Chicken N Pickle for Newbie Night.

Me and Jarrica

Me and Teresa

Michael Harris, director of pickleball at our Chicken N Pickle in Wichita, did a wonderful job of leading the session.

Newbie Nights are a great way to introduce friends to pickleball because of the fun casual environment. Besides that, they also provide all the equipment so you don’t even have to have your own paddle. Most people who are eager to get into the sport have already bought a starter set from Amazon and usually show up with their own paddles but it is not required.

I remember dragging mom and dad, and even some of my Leadership Wichita classmates, to a Newbie Night a couple of years ago when they were first getting into pickleball also. Anyway, if you would like to check it out, the next one is on Tuesday, April 16.

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Buffalo Brew Coffee Company

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Ching under Food and Drink.

Buffalo Brew Coffee Company is a coffee shop from Valley Center that recently opened its second location at the National in downtown Wichita.

In addition to the yummy drinks, they also offer yummy breakfast burritos and sandwiches. My friend Chris Townley got a sausage, egg, and cheese English muffin while I tried a bagel sandwich with sausage and bacon last week.

I highly recommend checking out Buffalo Brew if you haven’t already. There’s still time this month to try the March specialty drinks. And, if you find something you really, really like, you can even get it in the giant 32 oz. size!

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Local Flavor is So Delightful

Posted on March 18, 2024 by Ching under Food and Drink.

Ever since I’ve discovered Local Flavor and their “local delight” pie I have been completely obsessed. In fact, I dragged Brian and Chris (my friend from work) there again for lunch recently just so I could satisfy my pie craving. Here are some pics from that visit and previous visits (because the place is now on our regular dining rotation).

The smoked chicken bacon wrap normally has greens and tomatoes. Brian doesn’t like tomatoes and so there’s none in this pic. After having this version, he decided he didn’t like the greens either. So now he gets it without greens and tomatoes and it’s absolutely perfect. This wrap has the best smoky flavor. It’s our new favorite thing to get there.

Brian also loves their rib tips. They are good but a bit too spicy for my taste buds.

Parmesan potatoes – not that special but good. And they’re the perfect additional side to complement your meal specially if you’ve decided to just split a chicken bacon wrap like we sometimes do.

Chris had the fish at lunch the other day. He got two huge fillets, battered and fried. Not gonna lie. It looked pretty good. I would have had fries instead of the fried okra, though.

The smoked salmon dip is also something that I have really enjoyed there. You can’t see the dip under the pretzel in this pic. They give you quite a bit of it along with the pretzel, Ritz crackers, veggies, and chips.

I had so much dip left over one time that I took the rest home and made a sandwich out of it the next day. It was great that way too.

And then here’s the best part – the local delight pie. It’s got the best fruity flavors.

The place doesn’t really look like much when you first pull up but, as soon as you get out of the car, you’re immediately greeted with that smoky barbecue aroma. That place smells so freakin’ delicious. Besides barbecue, they also serve tacos and burgers. Much like everywhere else, Tuesday is “Taco Tuesday” and Wednesday is burger day ($2 off any burger). You can see the rest of the daily specials in the pic of the menu below.

Happy hour is 2 to 5 PM Tuesday through Saturday and there’s a bonus late night happy hour from 9 PM to midnight Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I’ve yet to come out to enjoy their happy hour but I’m very tempted to because the food and drink specials are pretty darn good.

Here are some of their specialty drinks.

I’ve also yet to come out to Sunday brunch but those $15 mimosa buckets are calling my name. Anyone wanna go this Sunday?

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Team League at West YMCA

Posted on March 15, 2024 by Ching under Pickleball, Things to Do.

I played in the first ever team league at West YMCA and it was such a traumatic experience. Just kidding. It was so much fun. The only thing that sucked about it was that I’ve had the yips since the beginning of the year and so all my servers were basically points for the other team. That wasn’t the league’s fault.

Here are some pics that we took throughout the league.

Susie Ternes and I wore our blue Halara dresses on one of the days. I absolutely love this dress but I just hate being so short because it’s sooo long on me! Anyways, if you shop at thehalara.com, remember to use discount code CHERRIE for 20% OFF! (Discount doesn’t work on SALE items but works on everything else.)

Here are a couple of pictures of Austin Winter and Matt Von Feldt. I love that these boys were into being matchy-matchy also.

I really struggled this league because of the rally scoring and my yips situation. Because I couldn’t serve, we were pretty much playing with a handicap. We didn’t perform well enough to be in the upper division so we ended up in the lower division on tournament night (final week of league) and we ended up winning that division. I think it was kind of a blessing because I’m not sure we could have won the other group. So at least we medaled. That’s the silver-lining, anyway.

This kind of reminds me of last year’s Picklemania tournament. My team missed the elite group by mere points (we were in the toughest pool with three teams with the potential to advance to elite and we ended up being third) and then ended up in advanced group. We obviously won it because we really should have been in elite but just got edged out. LOL.

Speaking of Picklemania, we are having it again this year. This year’s event will be at Crestview Country Club on May 25. Hope to see you there!

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National Margarita Day

Posted on March 10, 2024 by Ching under Life.

I know National Margarita Day was a few weeks ago so this is a super late post. Most people usually go for Mexican food on National Margarita Day — because tequila — but my favorite stop is Chicken N Pickle because they have these super cute margarita flights on pickleball paddles that’s available one day only — on National Margarita Day.

However, friends had other plans this year so I didn’t get to have my annual margarita flight. First stop was a meet up with my Leadership Wichita classmates at Social Tap, also one of my favorite spots in general. Our Leadership Wichita class celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. I love how many of us from the 2014 class still get together ten years later.