No, it is not the happiest of Mondays. There is never, ever anything happy about a Monday. That’s just my eternally optimistic outlook shining through once again. (Like most weeks, it didn’t work out for me.) But then, this generally covers the weekend, and that wasn’t too shabby at all. Friday wasn’t overly eventful. The weather has been just fantastic here, so I’ve been more than content to sit on the back porch and watch TV in the evenings. I turned on the heaters, started up the TV, and decided to watch Caravan of Souls for entertainment. I’ve been wanting to watch it for some time, as I thought it interesting that much of it was filmed in Lawrence KS. Predictably, I fell asleep about 10 minutes in and missed the majority of the movie. Keep that one on the list.

Saturday I ran down the grocery and picked up a 2.5 lb steak, and we invited another couple over for dinner. I was planning to throw it on the Traeger, but at the last moment decided to switch it up and go the sous vide route. It worked out pretty well, if I do say so my darn self. Better than the Traeger, you may ask? Well I just can’t for sure, I’ve had good luck on that too. I’ll have to do them side by side some day and have a little taste test. The problem there is you’re looking at 5-plus pounds of steak on the table. Nothing wrong with leftovers I guess.

Sunday came together very nicely. I’d really planned on firing up my new griddle out back and making brunch. I even had my menu picked out, breakfast burritos. Luckily I kept this plan to myself, as when I got up in the morning it was immediately clear I’d over-committed. Just didn’t have it in me. Instead, we met up with some friends at El Dorado Cafe. They’ve got a website but it’s pretty sketchy so I’ll skip the link. Anyway, it’s one of our favorite places, and a good breakfast is notoriously hard to find around here, so we make the 15 minute drive out to this place now and then. By the time I’d finished enjoying my delicious chicken fried steak, it was about 75 degrees and sunny outside so we dropped the top on the convertible and had a nice drive out to Amador county to visit one of our favorite wineries. We were somewhat surprised when they told us we hadn’t been there in a year, and they’d been holding four club shipments for us. Oops, sorry about that. We’re trying to cancel most of our wine clubs, we just can’t seem to track them. Afterwards as we were driving home, some friends texted us and invited us to chili on their back patio for dinner. Uh, yes please! That was a fine ending to the weekend.