We went out to dinner for our anniversary last night at a pleasant restaurant in St. Paul (Muffuletta, for you local folks). I continued my tradition/policy/whatever of, when out to dinner celebrating, announcing to the waiter that we were out to dinner celebrating.
And was rewarded with a half-bottle of bubbly on the house!
(Italian Prosecco in a cute little bottle with a beer-bottle type cap. I doubt it was expensive or they wouldn't have given it to us free. We should look into buying more of that kind.)
The kids were well behaved, even though MJ wanted to visit the bathrooms many times. Our practice of taking the kids out to a "real" restaurant once a month or so, which we began last year after an unexpectedly generous pay increase, seems to be paying off. (So is my practice of taking little boxes of Legos everywhere.)
We ordered a big platter of what the menu called "pomme frites" for an appetizer to make the children happy. They arrived steaming and vertical, like a salty, sizzling-hot bouquet, in a big napkin-lined metal pitcher. The smaller kids turned up their noses at the spicy house-made catsup and the remoulade sauce, and the waiter, noticing, asked, "Shall I bring you a portion of Heinz, madam?"
Yes, please!
Mark had spent the day ice climbing and had forgotten to eat lunch, so he was starving. I'd had an afternoon snack and wasn't. What to do?
When the restaurant menu confuses me, my rule of thumb is to order vegetables as if I were two people and other stuff as if I were half a person. So I had a salad of marinated beets with hazelnut and orange to start, and then for dinner I had another salad (baby greens, goat cheese, crostini with duck-liver paté) and a crab-cake appetizer. Sparkling water is something else I've learned to order, since I don't really need more than one glass of wine, but it is still a nice touch that I don't get at home.
Reader, it was still too much. I was about a third of the way into the second salad when my "getting full" alarm started to vibrate gently in my consciousness, but (maybe because I was embarrassed at the prospect of ordering 3 plates and only eating parts of 2?) I kept going until I'd done some damage to everything. I felt so stuffed and a little guilty. And then I got a little perspective -- look, at worst I ate an extra salad. Here I am feeling bad because I ate more beets than I needed. Chill out, please. It's a celebration! Bring on the beets!
I was full enough to know better than to eat dessert, though; that's a quick way to turn "a bit too full" into "oof, yuck." So, while Mark and the kids chowed down on flourless chocolate torte and peppermint-stick ice cream, I had a double espresso -- another thing that feels like a treat.
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