Birthday!
Haven't posted in a while, so I'll do an update on my birthday weekend. Most of it centered around food, like all of my vacations!
I started early, of course, because more is better. On Friday we went out to dinner to Tyler's, a kind of brewpub place that does not brew their own beer. They serve about a billion different specialty beers (Katy gets the crazy lambics), but you pay a bit more because it's mostly nonlocal. I've discovered a new favorite: barbecue pork ribs, served on a pile of garlic fries. Cheap fatty salty foods! Goes very well with more beer.
Saturday we went to the dog park like we do every weekend, and watched Bruce continually pick fights with dogs you wouldn't think it would be wise to wrestle with if you were a 12 lb poodle: big hounds, great danes, and lab puppies. Bruce isn't happy until he has batted every dog at the park in the face, and it's a blast to watch. Later that evening we went out to dinner with friends to Squid's (great name for a seafood place). I had raw oysters on the half shell for the first time ever
, discovered I really liked them, and got more. Dinner was a pound of snow crab legs + fried calamari. When I eat seafood, I prefer the pure food undiluted by other stuff. Awesome! After that was hanging out with another bottle of pomegranate wine.
Sunday was back to the dog park! As the day drew on it was cold, gray, and rainy, so we did dinner at home. Katy made an excellent batch latkes with green onion in them, and we tried the Rogue christmas beer. Next was the annual assembling-of-the-fake-Christmas tree while drinking mulled wine and listening to the Nutcracker. The dogs being both tired and adorable slept on the couch like a pair of poodle bookends.
Katy gave me my birthday pie, a black bottom butterscotch pie (as good as it sounds), and presents! I know have a carnivorous plants terrarium (it's large enough to grow a full variety) for my desk which will be awesome. Because Katy hates waiting and likes to schedule, I also gave her her birthday gift: tickets to the Nutcracker in Raleigh.
I started early, of course, because more is better. On Friday we went out to dinner to Tyler's, a kind of brewpub place that does not brew their own beer. They serve about a billion different specialty beers (Katy gets the crazy lambics), but you pay a bit more because it's mostly nonlocal. I've discovered a new favorite: barbecue pork ribs, served on a pile of garlic fries. Cheap fatty salty foods! Goes very well with more beer.
Saturday we went to the dog park like we do every weekend, and watched Bruce continually pick fights with dogs you wouldn't think it would be wise to wrestle with if you were a 12 lb poodle: big hounds, great danes, and lab puppies. Bruce isn't happy until he has batted every dog at the park in the face, and it's a blast to watch. Later that evening we went out to dinner with friends to Squid's (great name for a seafood place). I had raw oysters on the half shell for the first time ever
, discovered I really liked them, and got more. Dinner was a pound of snow crab legs + fried calamari. When I eat seafood, I prefer the pure food undiluted by other stuff. Awesome! After that was hanging out with another bottle of pomegranate wine.
Sunday was back to the dog park! As the day drew on it was cold, gray, and rainy, so we did dinner at home. Katy made an excellent batch latkes with green onion in them, and we tried the Rogue christmas beer. Next was the annual assembling-of-the-fake-Christmas tree while drinking mulled wine and listening to the Nutcracker. The dogs being both tired and adorable slept on the couch like a pair of poodle bookends.
Katy gave me my birthday pie, a black bottom butterscotch pie (as good as it sounds), and presents! I know have a carnivorous plants terrarium (it's large enough to grow a full variety) for my desk which will be awesome. Because Katy hates waiting and likes to schedule, I also gave her her birthday gift: tickets to the Nutcracker in Raleigh.