Work is killing me today. It’s too nice out and there’s only 3 people here today, and I’m the only one in the office. Zzzzz.

Must keep working at plans on computer screen…

I know you’ve all been waiting for me to say something about food. Isn’t that what I always talk about? So let’s recap some of the highlights from the past month or two.

My Grandma’s birthday was April 1st, on the second a bunch of people got together at my Aunt’s house for a party. It was really fun to see everyone for the first time in a while. Luke and his second cousin (my first cousin once removed), Soren, played well together and wrestled with me a bunch. Soren is a year or so older than Luke. It was interesting to see Luke watching Soren and kind of following his example on a few occasions. We of course had a big tasty lunch and birthday cake afterwards. My aunt made the cake and it included like a pound of butter and multiple cups of sugar. Let’s just say it was very moist and tasty, and I’m not even that big of a chocolate cake fan.


On one weekend my parents, Matt, Jenny, Luke, and I went out for brunch to the Green Mill. They had a Sunday Brunch buffet going and they have good food. It was after 11 so my mind was basically in lunch mode and the buffet didn’t entice me all that much. So my mom and I ordered a deep dish pizza while the rest of the people got the buffet. Matt said that he just can’t have pizza for the first meal of the day. I thought that was a pretty silly philosophy as I could eat good pizza for every meal in one day. I’m pretty sure everyone at the table was jealous of my mom and I.

Even though I consider myself a pretty shy and quite guy most of the time, I often have a problem with opening my big mouth when I shouldn’t. Most of the time there’s no harm done, and most of the time the only harm is my own embarrassment. A couple of things that I almost always will voice my opinion on are food and movies.

If I’m watching a bad movie by myself, I’ll just groan internally and maybe not even finish it. But if I have an “audience” I’ll more often than not voice my concerns about the quality of the product we’re watching. Some groups are more receptive to this practice than others. The best people to do this with are Steve (especially for cheesy kung-fu movies.), or my brother Brian, like when we watched “I, Robot”. Matt or Jenny, for example, usually aren’t quite as thrilled at my Mystery Science Theater 3000 impressions.

With food it’s kind of the opposite. I’ll voice my opinion about what I’m eating, but especially when I like it. My old roommate in Bozeman used to make fun of me for enjoying my food too much at the table like Bob at dinner in What About Bob?.

A month or so ago, Matt and Jenny, Tom and Emily, and I (back to being the 5th Wheel, I love it) went out to dinner at Andy’s Garage in St. Paul. It is an old gas station/garage turned into a 50’s diner. Burgers and malts–two of my favorite food groups. On a whim I decided to get the onion rings with my basket instead of fries, which I normally get. When it arrived I enjoyed the rings quite a bit but when I tried someone else’s fries I lamented the fact that the fries were even better than the rings and I wished I had ordered those instead. It wasn’t that I was upset, since I was enjoying my selection, but I felt compelled to comment on the fact that there was something even better out there. Matt just laughed and shook his head and observed that even when stuff is good I critique it. He thought that I should try to become a famous movie/food critic: I could sit in my custom built theater at my house and have movies and food delivered to me for critiquing and reviews. I thought that was a pretty good idea.

I did decide to try a new way of evaluating a dish at a certain restaurant. Usually I just think of something as good or bad or excellent or horrible. But I was out to dinner at Woody’s with my parents a number of weeks ago and our server was explaining that their salmon was so good that people come back specifically to have it again. I didn’t really think about it too much at the time. Then a few weeks ago we were out to dinner at Don Pablos and I ordered the Grilled Parilla Chicken. Wow! It was good! Maybe I was just lucky, but I thought back to the salmon at Woody’s and realized that I would come back to Don Pablos to have this chicken. That’s how good it was. It is fine and dandy to enjoy food and remember it fondly–but the special dishes are the ones I would go back to the restaurant to have. Pizza at Giordano’s is another example of something so good that I specifically go back for.

Well, is that enough about food for you?