Okay, my last name might be Cleaver, but I definitely DON'T enjoy cooking like June Cleaver every night.  Actually, I quite enjoy the dining out experience.  It is just so much fun to eat delicious food that you didn't have to prepare and that you don't have to clean up afterwards.

One of my family's favorite restaurants to visit for a night out of the kitchen is Chili's!  I absolutely love their Skillet Queso and Chicken Sandwich!  The folks at Chili's gave me a very hard task to complete...go out to eat at Chili's and sample something from their brand new menu!  Boy, what a tasty chore!  :)

PROMOTIONS: Do you wish you didn't have to cook tonight?  Put your reason for not wanting to cook on video, and you might be one of the daily winners of a $50 Chili's gift card!  Visit their Shout Out to Eat Out website and submit your own video or just watch some of the hilarious ones already there!  Contest ends August 30, 2010.

Join Chili's Email Club and automatically get a FREE Order of Chips & Queso! My husband and I were very excited to have the opportunity to try some of the new menu selections from Chili's.  We each have our standard favorites that we always seem to order over and over, but this assignment forced us to branch out and try something new.  We walked in, were welcomed warmly by the Chili's hostess and were shown to our table.  We wanted to start off with an appetizer and thought we'd try some of Chili's new Ranch Salsa with chips.

Our waiter didn't seem very knowledgeable about this and told us that he would bring us out some salsa with a side of ranch dressing.  That's not really what the menu stated, so we thought better of it and skipped the appetizer after all. Next, my husband decided to try one of the new selections from Chili's menu and ordered the "Tacos Wrapped in Flavor:  Smoked Chicken & Crispy Shrimp Tacos".

He was VERY EXCITED to eat his tacos and was VERY HUNGRY too!  I think in the picture below he was starting to get a little "food crazy"!  (Actually, he was just being a total goof when I took these pictures!)  :)

For the last few weeks, I have elected not to eat any animal products due to an upcoming juice fast that I will be undertaking.  Because of this, I decided to try Chili's Bottomless Express Lunch...for dinner!  This was a fabulous deal and something that I had never ordered before!  You got UNLIMITED house salad, salsa & chips, plus all the soup you can eat for only $2.00 more than the lunch price!  I thought this was a great deal and it was so yummy too!

Michael thoroughly enjoyed his "Tacos Wrapped in Flavor" as evident from the upper right picture!  :)  He said that although he liked the smoked chicken taco more than the crispy shrimp taco, he would definitely order this dish again.  He also really enjoyed the charro beans and rice too.  As part of my "Bottomless Express Lunch", I tried the Chicken & Green Chile Soup as well as the Sweet Corn Soup.

Both of these soups were delicious, though I enjoyed the Chicken & Green Chile Soup more.  The house salad was delicious as always and the toppings were fresh and crisp. We had a wonderful dining experience at Chili's and really enjoyed the new menu selections we ordered.  This trip has taught us a valuable lesson:  Although it's great to have your favorite "usual" dish, you might be very surprised at what you'll find if you decide to branch out once in awhile and try something new!

Disclosure:  I received a $50 gift card from Chili's in order to facilitate my review. No other compensation was received. This product review is based on my own personal experiences with this item and is completely honest and objective.