Our favorite diner isn’t open every night for dinner so when we have the odd BURGER-BURGER-BURGER craving, we needed a back up.
Thanks to @chicago_ted’s endorsement, we decided to give Jack’s Prime a try. PiC had heard of it before, I hadn’t, but I’m willing to try food on a single recommendation.
It’s specifically a burger place so they do more than the basic cheeseburger and hamburgers that we can get from the diner. Less complicated than the wildly popular (so I’m told) Barney’s Gourmet Burgers over here but still more complicated than I really need.
I fail to appreciate the super messy burger with spinach, or swiss cheese and mushrooms, chili and sour cream – they’re all a bit over the top for me. A cheeseburger or a hamburger loaded with fresh veggies (and bacon!) hits the spot, every time. Sometime chicken or turkey but otherwise, basic works just fine.
The Voodoo Fries, though, they sounded pretty awesome.
Their burgers are on the pricey side, in my opinion, starting at $9.00 for your basic burger. We settled on two burgers, side of onion rings for an extra $1.50, a side salad and couple of waters. If I was hungrier, those Voodoo Fries would have been MINE, plus the Rainbow Shake. Our really simple but filling meal ran about $26 after tax and tip.
Their food is pretty great and we’ve gone back again after our first taste test. It’s only not our first choice because their prices are rather hefty ($6 for specialty fries, same again for a shake, burgers start at $9) while their serving sizes are a bit skimpy. I can almost count the fries served up on the side, or the leaves in that side salad up there. I might be petite but my appetite typically isn’t.
It was a big week here at the house. A week and a half ago, we got great news that PiC’s being recognized at work for kicking butt. The reward won’t come down the pike for a little while yet but his selection for this particular recognition was definitely confirmed.
I’m VERY proud of him.
Then I had a major milestone at work, prefaced by many long days running into nights, attached end to end like the longest-running, slightly depressing train. And I wasn’t even the hardest working one on the team if you’re counting hours. Taking on one of the most risky and interesting challenges of my career has been a heck of a trip and while we won’t know for a long while whether it’ll pay off, we’re quite proud of the progress made so far.
PiC, good guy that appreciates life that he is, insisted we go out to a nice dinner to celebrate. We’re on a new budget and on deadline constantly which means he has to pick up the slack now and again but it doesn’t stop him from reminding me it’s important to celebrate our wins.
We both decided that this was the right move but I do still need to remember to feel grateful for the opportunity and to enjoy the ride instead of just working all the time.
A friend had recommended a restaurant but sadly, it closed not too long ago. He found an alternate restaurant that was really right on the shore. Absolutely amazing view, and on a quiet night, we got excellent service. We missed the prix fixe and happy hour timings but we enjoyed a lovely dinner anyway.
We tried squid ink pasta for the first time, paired with an old favorite: bolognese. He also insisted we indulge in an alcoholic bevvy and refused to split one like we might usually when drinks are called for, so I tried a cocktail with blueberries and vodka. YUM.
Their rolls, by the way, were exceptionally delicious. Piping hot, crusty on the outside, warm and a little doughy but perfectly baked inside. Salted butter on the side.
The gingerbread creme brulee was perhaps a wee bit disappointing because I foolishly believed there would be actual gingerbread involved. In fact, no, there was not, it was simply gingerbread flavored which anyone who’d ever HAD a creme brulee before might have known.
This was also our faux non-Valentine’s Day dinner. If that confused you, I understand. We don’t love or hate Valentine’s Day, we just don’t love the overpaying and underserving that tends to happen on the day of so we did our own little things. I guess PiC still feels a nice dinner is the right thing to do so this got to stand in for the dinner everyone else might have gone out for on Thursday.
Star Wars fandom weddings from @Amy_geek. That’s just darned cute. PiC made a face at my proposal of geeky themed stuff back when we were discussing wedding stuff, but I like to think he’ll come around.
via @patti_v: The Yellow Dog Project. This is a pretty cool idea for dogs who need not to be jumped, petted, or approached for any number of reasons.
I suppose there’s a lot to be said against the consumer-driven made-up (romantic) holiday but I don’t really care. As a singleton, it was a day to make my other singleton friends feel special with a flower, a card or a note; singledom never bothered me. As a coupled off person, it’s fine if we do stuff so long as doing stuff doesn’t equal overpriced goods or services and it’s fine if we don’t. My budget doesn’t stop for Valentine’s Day, birthdays or Christmas!
Do you care about Valentine’s Day, one way or the other?
Thoughts:
Remember when I said we snacked too much? Well, I was mostly pointing fingers but that totally backfired. I’ve been eating a mini drumstick ice cream for breakfast 4 days out of 7. Sometimes a second one for lunch. It’s GOOD. (Dangit.)
And what does PiC do? Brings home another two boxes. *groan* I totally asked for another box but two’s excessive.
It’s sort of mean but I had to laugh at him when I discovered that he gets creeped out when whole cooked fish is oriented so that the head is facing him. Growing up with old-school parents meant that whole fish was the norm and the head was the most favored part. The “head meat” always went to the senior diner (usually Dad): cheeks, eyeballs and meat around the head was supposedly delectable. I’d get the tail and get every last bit of yumminess off that end. Now that it’s the two of us, I get the head! But … no eyeballs for me. Never did see how that was tasty.
If I could cheat on making the chocolate ganache, I would be tempted to make these molten chocolate cakes. Just ’cause they look and sound delicious.
Edited to add an adorable video because THAT’s love:
I eat a lot less than before. No stress eating either. You’d think that’d reduce food costs somewhat but it really didn’t matter: PiC more than makes up for my here again, gone again appetite. While I skip meals when flying solo, being with him means at least one meal will happen a day. And if I’m Chef, even if I’m not hungry, I’m still compelled to make a real meal. Maybe to avoid the judgment when it’s looking like the five KitKats and a mini Snickers bar style dinner but also because cooking’s therapeutic. Besides, for someone that loves every single thing I try my hand at, even the things I think suck? Who would mind?
Anyway, the point is: this year’s food budget? Mostly for two people? Was, in a word: dammmnnn.
We spent nearly the exact same amount on Groceries as on Eating Out. Groceries included frozen meals, convenience foods, snack foods, fresh food, canned food.
With so many 12-14 hour days, there was just no time or energy to do fancy or creative meals on the weekdays. Instead, we’d make up big meals on weekends, freeze portions for later, experimented with new “quick” recipes. Not all of the experiments were successful, not in my opinion, but I evidently married a man who’d eat anything I make. Super helpful when you have a complex about food waste!
The ugliest pot pie ever. But it sure was tasty…
When I cook, I do a fair amount from scratch. Lots revolves around chicken, the affordable protein we love. I make stew, pot pies, roast our own chickens, and once every several months, put up chicken broth. We try different grains in bulk, and avoid red meat*. All of this nets pretty minor savings, but I enjoy the cooking and we both like simple healthy meals at home. Bonus: It keeps my roasting skills polished. No horrific dried out turkey for Thanksgiving for us, my favorite meal of the year. Can you imagine ruining 20 lbs of turkey?
*I love steak but have an irrational fear of ruining it so I refuse to cook it. PiC does not love it like I do.
Double roasting. The honey cooks faster and make it look like it’s burnt but it’s just extra delicious, extra crispy skin. I’m loving the new roasting pan.
We had convenience and frozen foods as patches for no-cooking days, and traveling weekends when no cooking would happen. Pretty sure we also paid for groceries for other people on occasion. That’d be included in here. Couponing is an as-and-when activity instead of a weekly past-time.
Eating Out included: fine dining, treating friends to meals or snacks or anything food, special occasion meals, casual dining, fast food, drinks.
For day to day life, where we used to have a cap on the number of times we’d eat out or order in, this year has been rough enough that I finally just stopped fussing about sticking to an artificial number. Yes, it’s more expensive, yes, it’s not always the healthy choice and no, I’m not going to sweat it. Bottom line, we needed to eat, our working weekdays were far too long some days to do anything but come home and forage, and we could afford it.
A deconstructed kebab from Tuba Restaurant. We get to try new fancy-ish stuff in the city when visitors come to town!
Food, all kinds of it, both “high-end” and the remarkably pedestrian stuff we enjoy, was a spending priority for us, a clear trade of money for time or mental health, clocking in at about $6500.
It’ll be interesting to see this coming year’s spending. I have more opportunity to make time to cook on weeknights now, and if we eat out, it’s on weekends instead. Will it balance out or stay the same?
As a general rule, I avoid going into the city. No offense to the city of San Francisco, although I do hate driving in or having to find parking there because let’s face it – Market Street mixed among other wackadoodle streets and city parking are the pits, but this homebody is far too easily fatigued and thus unmotivated so can easily push off any single errand to SF until there are at least several things to do or someone’s come to town.
We had such a confluence this weekend with mutual friends in town so PiC and I had a bit of a lark. With nearly 12 hours of sleep under my belt, I had my fingers crossed I’d make it all the way into the evening. We had one errand each, and then an open-ended “we’ll meet with you for ….. ”
We had Clipper cards with varying amounts of money on it for travel, but his card required an agent to work some kinda something on it to make it work again.
My travel: Free. His travel: $3.55, no agent at the booth and I’d accidentally left behind my backup Clipper card in case his didn’t work. Whoops.
It was a surprisingly long two-thirds mile trek through groddy-town to get to Hayes Valley. Disturbed flocks of pigeons there, along with all the smells of back alleys, discovered a freeway entrance where one didn’t seem to belong and then found ourselves suddenly in an utterly too-nice nice neighborhood. I guess this is how gentrification works/worked in San Francisco?
My errand: his belated birthday gift, a secret thing, a coffee, $42
Back again, through the puddles and the pigeons, and ponderings if we should just walk all the way to Union Square. Pondered all the way right back onto Bart. Hopped on, hopped off.
Meandered up and out, moved as part of the crowd up the way toward Powell, toward, Geary, toward Post, toward all the major landmarks of the Square. H&M (one of three), a new Uni-Glo, Bloomingdales looming(dales), Macy’s. The tree was up, the ice rink was out and holiday crowds were out in force. Oddly, I was ok with this.
His errand: a shirt, value, $80. Free with coupon.
Unscheduled stop, H&M: poke and pruned until we find a blouse, $30.44, with 20% off coupon. Still a little steep given my ambivalence (oh and I forgot to try it on), and btw, I was stung by the 10 cent bag fee, thanks a lot, forgetfulness!
I was chilled, nibblish and shaky by 2:30. We’d only been out and about for… an hour? Yeah. Stamina, spamina. The food and sugar kept me going for another several hours so even though I rarely buy random street food like this around home or go to Starbucks, we made a beeline for the first one we saw. NOM. There’s something delicious (pun intended) about just getting what you want. Street dog: $4.25 Starbucks venti Hot chocolate: $3.15, free with coupon
We settled into the Westfield for a while to wait for friends who were, in fact, much closer by than we had expected, I caught up on some Twitter and PiC snagged a free Ghiradelli square. Jealous. It was peppermint. Less jealous.
Dinner was a non-glamorous booth affair at a standard chain restaurant with children clamoring and clambering all over the place. Crayons only held their attention for as long as they could race to an ungainly win, assisted absentmindedly by one adult or another; I was starting to see how the mom was so keenly aware of the judging stares of others when they went out. As normal as it is for kids, and boys at any age if I remember growing up with my cousins rightly, to be unruly, attention hungry, wound up or full up with energy, these fellas were like sprung-loose jack in the boxes, wound up and loosed to wreak havoc. It took fast thinking to talk them down from, off of, out from under, apart, or back from wherever they’d gotten to and that was entirely apart from the chattering at hypersonic speed and three decibels higher than an inside voice. Oh, kids. It was entertaining until we started becoming public nuisances, then we had to start clamping down. Gently and teasingly since they’re not ours but still. No one around us was amused when they stopped up the doors.
We trekked back, exhausted, quiet and sleepy, late.
Through heavy lids, we watched my joints puff up like wee sausages on the ride back. Cute. Chasing down and hefting kiddies was fun but more than a little strenuous.
There’s been a lot of jaw-setting, teeth-gritting as a coping mechanism of late. November’s become my least favorite month. October catches short shrift for being a close neighbor. So while I’ve been searching for a way back, I’ve been just holding on. Holding still and keeping quiet.
The tougher things have been, the more we’ve been eating out. The spending sort of bothered me but I always knew it was really symptomatic of larger problems. Not the fact of eating out itself, but the listlessness with which I went along with it. I’ve always had a line in the sand when it came to the cooking:eating out ratio, both because I don’t like restaurant food that much, and it’s costly. It was fitting that it felt like there was a small turning point with trying a new recipe for the sake of experimenting, for the sake of pulling together the pantry. Baby steps.
Personal Edits: With a search-and-advice assist from @zenvar on Twitter, I soured up some 2% milk with a tsp of vinegar to replace the Greek yogurt that wasn’t on hand, and measured out a Cajun spices mix instead of the dried thyme and chili powder our spice cupboard never has. Surprisingly, we did have breadcrumbs so we didn’t go without a crust, though it wasn’t the fancy sesame seeds.
Ingredients:
Fresh baby spinach (~ 1 lb), blanched
1 cup quinoa to cook, makes 2 cups
1 cup milk/vinegar replacing yogurt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp. ground pepper, used black but white was called for
1/2 tsp. Cajun spices, replacing thyme and chili powder
1 shallot, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Grease a baking pan and line with breadcrumbs.
3. Cook quinoa.
4. Prep an ice bath and boil a pot of water for blanching the spinach. Blanch the spinach to a bright green (no more than 8-10 seconds) and transfer to ice bath, then set aside on a paper towel.
5. Saute garlic, shallots and spices in olive oil until translucent; transfer to a medium sized mixing bowl to be combined with remaining ingredients: spinach, quinoa, milk, eggs, sea salt and pepper.
6. Pour into baking pan and bake until golden brown, up to an hour.
I served this with roasted Lime Chicken thighs and roasted onions. Optional: burning your hair stovetop. But that did add some spice to the night.
PiC loved the pie, calls it a quiche, but I’m on the fence. It’s good, but with a sort of critical taster’s opinion, maybe it could have used double the spices and it’s possible the yogurt was more important than just as a dairy component. Next time!
In my earlier years, my triggers were as easily flipped (though eventually some money followed) to overwork, to overcommit, and to make trade-offs that went against the grain dictated by the myopic “Accountants.” Though in my case, it was more frequently a would-be Creative preoccupied with playing god instead of Accountant, instead of seeing a bigger picture and so utterly failing to make the right decisions to steer the company in a positive and productive direction so that our work would be meaningful, reducing our efforts to nothing more than one sad punchline after another.
Luckily, my clarity came after just a few years and my trajectory wasn’t . Of course, I was bearing the burden of more than just my own ego so I had to snap to, pretty quick.
eemusings is watching herIndian friends live life under a marriageability microscope. My parents didn’t force the matchmaking issue but they definitely asked me to “play along” when their friends did. There was more than one old village acquaintance who’d sidle up and propose a marriage alliance, and more than one awkward meeting with a proposed groom. I tried to be a good sport about it for the most part so endured no end of cackling from my parents over the traps their friends would lay to lure me in as I was notoriously busy and shy to boot. Since they never took it seriously, though, I didn’t worry about being pushed into anything I didn’t feel right about. Maybe it would have been less awkward if it were still a completely accepted practice or totally out of date but in the even more awkward phase of generational and cultural gaps, we just shook our heads and all sort of humored each other.
Speaking of gaps, Vanessa’s Money, Bridget and a few other bloggers had some things to say about the recent post by Shawanda grossly generalizing whether women should work in male-dominated workplaces.
One of the major issues I took with the article was the spurious logic and sweeping generalizations, as evidenced by the lumping in of STEM with blue collar jobs as “dirty,” “physically-demanding” and “masculine” as the reasons given for women choosing not to be in male-dominated professions. As if women don’t already face enough sexism in the workplace generally, women in the sciences, leaving out E on purpose here because I’ve seen many friends succeed in E, face a huge uphill battle with basic sexism, so much so that a recent study shows that there is an inherent bias against hiring and promotion of women by both men and women, all else being equal. Some areas of science are equally represented by men and women, but most areas are still male dominated and patriarchal.
For the record, this isn’t my field but I do see the results of that behavior frequently, I follow bloggers who do work in the sciences and have to deal with it, and it’s horrifying that we continue to have to fight for what I’d consider the right to make basic decisions for ourselves. Why are these questions even being debated on a political stage? /digression. My point is: The well worn mental image that women are delicate, women are weak, women would much prefer not to be taxed, let’s protect the poor little women is still out there.
For people, much less women, to be perpetuating any part of this utter gender-based bullshit on behalf of all women is not just insulting, it’s frustrating considering the kind of opposition we already have to fight. Like Alison said, we have people whispering defeatist messages in our ears at a young age, telling young women to worry about looking too smart, worry more about their appearance and not their accomplishments.
Do we need to keep feeding fuel to these same old fights too? It’s exhausting.
We were stranded between consultations for Doggle miles away from home and I hadn’t eaten a meal in several hours except for some fruit so PiC found a nearby food hut to tantalize my stressiness off the ledge. He’d been feeding me bits and bites and figured something tasty would be easier to get me to actually want to eat.
It was a bit costlier than our usual fare, but heck. A tenner more wasn’t going to break the bank and it kept me functional for the rest of a very tough day.
And look, pretty pictures for the blog too! Win-win-win!
A tin bucket of oyster crackers. Two of my favorite things.
It’s possible this makes me a huge doofus but I’m sure other things already put me in that category. I love oyster crackers, and I love tin buckets. *shrug* That’d be the 5 year old country girl in me.
A cup of clam chowder
Seems like we can’t not try the clam chowder wherever we go. And this time, highly touted by the highly excitable lady at the counter. As it turns out, she was hugely excited because she actually thought we were the same customers from the night before. Had to break it to her that we were new customers who were trying out the place for the first time, so she was really happy to see, well, strangers. But nice to meetcha!
The Maine Crab Roll
Confession: Some days my memory span = life span of a gnat. We vacillated long enough between two lobster rolls and a crab roll + a lobster roll that I just forgot what we ordered entirely. So by the time this came, I just thought it was an anemic looking lobster roll. I failed to appreciate the lobstery goodness. Then PiC reminded me it was crab. Ohhh…. uh. Yeah. Good job, me. It was fine for crab but it reminded me why I’m so particular about my crab. Go Maryland Blue Crab!
The Naked Lobster Roll
The Lobster roll was pretty delicious – I’m not usually one for lobster but I skipped the butter and mayo and with just a squeeze of lemon: perfection.
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It’s just pricey enough that I wouldn’t go out of my way to find the Shack but it was really good. Their “rolls” – the bread slices that were cut into the middle of and made to be sandwich-like things were incredibly good. They had to be buttered and fried, they were amazingly soft inside and just a bit crisped and crunchy on the outside but not greasy.
Definitely a treat I’d bring visitors over to try.
