It's been a long day, but somehow ultimately successful.
The day began with Actual stuck in a 6 hour meeting where people were deciding to be extremely frustrating. By the time she got home she was very wound up and in a very bad mood.
On the other hand, I spent the day trying to figure out how the hell monster.com is still in business. Maybe people figure that if you can put up with the ugliness and lack of functionality of that website, you will be able to deal with whatever legacy company application they are going to force you to use as part of your job.
After a day of frustration we headed out to dinner. I have been having a raw oyster craving for weeks, and Sacramento has a significant lack of places to have raw oysters at anything resembling a) a realistic price point b) a selection of oysters more robust than what I refer to as "Louisiana Brown". So, despite our beter judgment, we went to the one place that would serve us oysters at a reasonable price: Hooters.
When we arrived Hooters was jam packed. Apparently it was UFC fight night which meant a) no tables available until after the fight and b) all bills had an automatic 18% gratuity. Now this last one threw me for a loop until I realized that they were perhaps practicing some hilarious socioeconomic profiling. Just like the lockup case in your supermarket's liquor department contains not the highest priced stuff but what is most often mentioned in rap songs (and thus, goes the logic, most likely to be stolen), Hooters was probably practicing a similar strategy. I'll let you connect the dots on this one.
Not wanting to wait for hours for a table, we hopped in Dave (our Prius) and headed out looking for another place to eat. Across the street I saw Olive Garden. The line stretched out onto the sidewalk. Seriously, America, as long as that many people choose to dine at Olive Garden I don't believe there's actually a recession of any sort.
Further down the street we encountered Tex Wasabi's, Guy Fieri's original joint. Now, most of you know that I ate at Guy Fieri's restaurant Johnny Garlic's and gave it a one-star review for general mediocrity and lack of anything interesting. I was so disheartened by the experience that when I got home I went into our DVR and cancelled my series recordings for the two Guy Fieri shows that I had set up. The same part of my brain that decides to taste Arby's Horsey sauce once a year fired up and I said "Let's go eat there."
This place was also jam packed. 45-55 minute wait for a table. In this economy? Are you kidding me? For a place where just about every online review site is full to the brim with lackluster reviews. And it gets better. The entire 50 foot sushi bar was empty. We asked if we could sit there. "No, you can't, because we don't have waitstaff here to cover the sushi bar." WHAT? Sigh. We left this place too.
Finally we decided to go to Whole Foods because we needed snacks anyway to take over to Cake Sister's house. By this point, Actual was way past starving and was losing the ability to make decisions and was very agitated. We circulated the store twice trying to find something she wanted to eat, but Actual was so hungry that nothing sounded good.
On her third rotation she decided to take advantage of their meal deal and get a meal of three sides, as the chicken entree they had there looked very unappetizing. Upon reaching the window she noticed lamb shanks braised in Guinness. SCORE!
So before I go through the rest of our haul, I must share that I reached a milestone today.
A year ago, a food meme was circulating. It was a list of 100 foods and you had to mark down which ones you had consumed. So I went through the entire list and it turned out there was only ONE thing I had never consumed: nettle tea. We found some at Whole Foods today and I had it. So here's to my 100/100 on the food meme!
And while we're here, here's a closer shot of my favorite t-shirt...
This is Actual's meal deal from Whole Foods. Lamb shank braised in Guinness. Her sides were asparagus and mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes were good but the asparagus was cut and not snapped (aka, Whole Foods got lazy) and thus had some wood-like stems. I had some of the lamb and it was phenomenal.
Whole Foods is still having spelling problems by the way...
We also bought these. It's nice to be able to eat your car.
Actual's dessert kit to be shared with Cake Sister. Fresh strawberries, our favorite Straus heavy whipping cream and Straus ice cream. Worth every penny, which is impressive considering had we substituted Straus for Walmart supermarket brand we would have saved 6 dollars!
By this point I was too tired to find real food for me to consume and I suspected Actual had found the only really good hot food in the store. So we stopped at Wienerschnitzel where I got their pastrami sandwich. It's not Katz's, but it's really good for something from a hot dog chain.
And there's my Saturday. Hope yours was better.
