Salado

To say thanks to the kids who work for us, we took them to lunch today at an ancient little restaurant called the Stagecoach Inn in Salado, an antiquing town. (You know, one of those little towns that has no more industry or large employers, hence a plethora of boutiques, antiques, and eateries of ye olde towne variety that little old ladies frequent.

The inn has supposedly been around since the Civil War, playing host to a variety of now-dead white warring males (Robert E. Lee, anybody?). The restaurant proudly features 150-year-old recipies and the dining room's drapes matched the wallpaper exactly, the pattern breaking only for the view outside. A little dizzying, to be sure.

While the decor was trite and banal, lunch was really quite tasty. I had King Ranch Chicken with veggies accompanied by a banana fritter. Yes, a mashed banana battered, deep fried, and crowned with a maraschino cherry. Unfortunately, the giddy guilt-inspiring ingredients and preparation method didn't really add up to a taste extravaganza. It was merely a "meh" fritter. Oh well, the scoop of vanilla ice cream with strawberries I had for dessert made up for it.

Yes, we have no bananas

The weekend went well here. Got a lot of shopping and errands done, caught the next-to-last episode of the season of BSG, and even saw an Iron Maiden cover band crank it out Saturday night (as well as a couple other acts). For the most part, I avoided the crush of a local overblown music conference and enjoyed the company of pals and pets instead.

Today is back to ye olde grinde. I've decided to not drink alcohol until Friday. Yes, an entire week of sobriety. Can I do it? I hope so. It is definitely time for a 'reboot' on this body. It's gotta last me another 70 years, so I need to at least look like I care. So far, so good. I even got up early this morning.

And now for a restaurant review: Yesterday Baby G and I went to a local restaurant called Manny Hattan's with high hopes in our hearts for tasty NY-style deli food. What we got wasn't so good. In fact, we've decided not to return. Bypassing the menu offering of breakfast tacos (in a NY-style deli?!) I had a bagel sandwich with egg, cheese and pastrami, G had kerplatch soup and a chicken salad sandwich on rye. This food was okay; "fair" would be a good word to describe it. It was the 2 "fancy" pickles brought to our table on a bed of saurkraut when we sat down that did us in. We, being the curious eaters we are, of course ate some of each pickle. One was bland and very cucumber-y with a severe aftertaste of vinegar. Blech! The other was an overcured shriveled offering that had been seasoned with too much pepper. It hovered somewhere between "sweet" and "dill" without capturing the essense of either. This noncommittal pickle left both of us with a grimaced face. Even worse, the two samples of pickle kept repeating on us all afternoon, thereby erasing any goodwill inspired by the lovely subway tile decor of the restaruant, the one thing the place really had going for it.