Here it is mid-January and the sharp Christmas presents just keep filtering in. In addition to the Wüsthof knife Mom gave me, last week a shiny new Mandoline showed up in the mail from my Uncle Roy & Aunt Joyce. Note the “e” on the end there; No I did not take up playing a stringed instrument, it’s a kitchen utensil. OK actually maybe it wasn’t an official Christmas present; More likely they were just tired of listening to me repeat how much I’d always wanted one and when they saw a good sale they jumped at the chance to shut me up. It’s happened before. Anyway I was pretty excited to get to slicing, and finally decided on eggplants. I can’t explain how I arrived at that decision; I’ve probably only had eggplant once or twice in my life. It made sense at the time though, so we had Eggplant Parmigiana for dinner on Thursday. I have to imagine the recipe we used (out of our Betty Crocker cookbook) was some type of crime against true fans of the dish. But, having no idea what good Eggplant Parmigiana is, it tasted pretty darn good to me. Fried stuff with lots of cheese… What’s not to like? And, I’m sure it tasted considerably better with each piece of eggplant at an exact, uniform 3/8″ thickness.
Friday we again did happy hour with the Wilcox’s. We have established something of a routine, revolving around John’s new PC. Long story short, I “helped” John with his shiny new super-spec gaming computer, and after a few short weeks of “Call of Duty” nirvana it quit working. Over the last several weeks I’ve been over there a few times trying different things to get the beast revived. I’ve been slowly running out of ideas though, and by now my troubleshooting sessions have degraded to giving it a few sharp raps on the side, shaking my head, then going out to dinner. Not very productive as far as the PC goes, but fun. We went to Bobby Bakers for a while, then went over to Tanner’s and picked up some takeout. In keeping with our New Year’s diet, we ordered all “small” foods to keep the calories down; mini corndogs, mini burritos, and mini baked potatoes, a.k.a. cheese fries. I figure anything with the word “mini” in it has got to be low-cal. Armed with this delicious dinner, we headed over to their house and played cards for the rest of the evening. We enjoyed the meal, and team Kenagy pulled out the victory in the Pitch game. As a side note, if you ever go to their house for cards, here’s a little tip for you: Throw the game. Susan may only come in at 4′ 8″, but she can get extremely aggressive when provoked and does not take losing well. That reminds me, I need to call and check on John, she was still pretty upset about that last bid when we left. (We said we were going to refill the Cheezit bowl and crawled out the kitchen window; It was very clear we were not allowed to leave until she won a game.)
Saturday rounded out pretty well. We got around rather slowly in the morning, then headed out to Mom’s for lunch. My intention was to do a little winter maintenance on my motorcycle (under the “better late than never” category) but after driving all the way out there discovered I had forgotten the key. Whoops. Oh well, no worries, I’d have probably electrocuted myself trying to take the battery out anyway. So, we headed out and had a solid lunch at the Best Burrito. After lunch Donette went home and I went over to my friend Ron’s house (a.k.a. “Flop” if you don’t recognize that name) to watch the MU game. Ron lives in the quintessential bachelor pad down in Brookside; A big 3,000 square foot house furnished with a leather recliner, big screen TV, refridgerator, and a microwave. What else do you need? You want to watch the game sitting down? Bring a chair. You want to be warm? Wear long sleeves, ’cause the thermostat stays on fifty-eight. Want to cook something? The grill’s out back, coals are on the porch. Cigar smoking isn’t just allowed, it’s encouraged. I swear, the guy could charge a $5 cover and make a mint. I spent most of the day over there, watching the unfortunate MU game and then the first NFL playoff game. After that I went back home and watched the second game, then played Wii games the rest of the night.
Sunday we started the day off right with a trip to the gym. We worked out for an hour or so, then replenished our systems with a 2500-calorie trip to their brunch buffet. (I thought I heard the cook remark that he’d never had to replenish the sausage gravy so many times in one day.) Thusly stuffed, we pretty much hunkered down at home for the rest of the day. Football season is coming to a close rapidly and I intend to waste every possible remaining day watching the rest of the games. That was really about the whole day, other than a good hour and a half of Rock Band later in the evening.