I find Mondays to be an increasingly tedious part of my weekly routine.  This is a quite frustrating situation, given that there’s not much I can do about it.  I guess I should look at the bright side;  Monday night television now consists of Monday Night Raw AND Monday Night Football.  Gosh, so many entertainment options.

I supposed our Thursday night is worth a mention before I jump into the sparse weekend coverage.  We don’t usually go out on school nights, together anyway, so just the fact that we left the house was news in itself.  (Somebody usually has to stay home and babysit the dogs, but they are slowly getting a little better at being left alone.)  Our destination was the Peanut downtown, where our friend Anne works every Thursday.  The ‘Nut ranks as one of my favorite dinner destinations in the city, particularly when Anne is cooking.  It might not be the most heart-friendly meal, and strays a bit from our recent attempt at a healthier diet, but you have to shock the metabolism every now and then I think.  She started us off with her world-famous appetizer;  Lays potato chips served with a cup of blue cheese dressing.  Let the artery thickening begin.  We followed that up with a bakers dozen of their enormous hot wings, then rounded the meal out with a triple BLT and fries.  (The sandwich was loaded down with about a pound of bacon, and of course the fries came with another cup of blue cheese for dipping.)  Whew.  Now that’s eatin’, people.

Not a bad weekend all-in-all;  A little bit of partying intermingled with some thrilling culinary adventures.  OK, maybe “thrilling” is a stretch, but we did actually cook at home a few times.  Friday was shaping up into a non-event, so we decided to hunker down and cook some dinner.  After taking a quick inventory of the freezer and the cabinets, we decided on grilled fish with a white wine and rosemary reduction sauce.  It came out fair.  Sounds better than it actually was.  For the most part I just like saying “white wine reduction sauce,” the rest is secondary.  That was essentially our Friday;  The rest of the night consisted of bad television intermingled with a few riveting games of sudoku on the computer.

Saturday afternoon wasn’t much to speak of, for me anyway.  I walked the dogs quite a ways, while Donette hit the Plaza Art Fair with her friends Susan, Anne, Lucy & Katie.  Luckily (miraculously) she didn’t buy anything.  After that, we met up with a crowd down at the New Point Grill to celebrate Carol Brown’s 40th birthday.  We had a good time but couldn’t stay long, because I had to work later that night.  But, I never miss a chance to party on Kevin’ s dime so we stayed as long as we could.

Sunday we spent our afternoon cooking and watching football.  I was volunteered to smoke some turkey and brisket for our neighborhood block party that night, so that ate up most of the day.  I used the Red Buffalo’s award-winning turkey recipe, and was quite pleased with the results.  For the most part it consisted of brining the bird all night, then smoking it at around 225 with a generous amount of butter and fresh herbs.  Meanwhile, while the smoker was running, Donette took a shot at a new chicken recipe.  She smoked up a bunch of chicken thighs, and I must admit they came out more-than-passable.  Too bad girls are strictly prohibited from competing on the TFB team, we could use the help.  But, rules are rules.  Since food is the general topic of the moment, I suppose our lunch bears mention too.  I made my first-ever frittata, and it came out very nicely.  If, like myself, you’ve never heard of a frittata, I would liken it to some kind of cross between an omelet and a quiche.  Here’s the recipe I used, if you feel adventurous:  Italian Frittata.  Our Sunday evening was spent at the aforementioned block party.  It was as much fun as standing around trying to talk to a bunch of people you don’t know can be, I guess.  It was mercifully short at any rate, and broken up with frequent trips back to the house to “check on the dogs.”  I won a door prize though;  That made it worthwhile right there.  A gift certificate to a nearby restaurant…  More food!!