#a classic sirloin it said

[theninjamouse]

I treat myself to a steak after the hard weekend, and it's too spicy for me to eat

[tvjust]

Red lobster menu

Democratic prices at Red Lobster ensure that every family can taste their famous, delicious seafood. In terms of meals, these are some of the customers’ favorites: Wood-Grilled Shrimp, Southwest Style Tacos with Tilapia, Live Maine Lobster, and Crab Linguini Alfredo. And given the fact that they provide a nice, cozy atmosphere, it is no wonder that so many Americans are in love with Red Lobster. Indeed, Red Lobster restaurants are any seafood lover’s dream. What Red Lobster Restaurants Are Known ForĪs you may well guess, the first and foremost thing Red Lobster establishments are known for are their emphasis on seafood and fish meals. Nonetheless, if you want to enjoy seafood or fish meals at a restaurant, you can be sure that the Red Lobster prices tend to be among the most affordable ones. However, this might be a result of a particular focus on the seafood. Secondly, a bowl of Creamy Potato Bacon Soup costs $5.99 at Red Lobster, while the Cheddar’s Homemade Baked Potato Soup bowl comes for $4.49.Īs you can see from the comparison above, the Red Lobster menu prices tend to be slightly higher than those ones at Cheddar’s. While the Classic Caesar Salad costs $9.79 at Red Lobster, the Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad comes for $8.49 at Cheddar’s. On the other hand, Red Lobster menu prices tend to be average, in comparison to other casual restaurants.įor example, you can easily compare the Red Lobster prices with the menu prices at Cheddars. Mealīroiled or Fried Bay Scallops, Chicken Breast Strips, Crunch-Fried Fish, Hand-Breaded Shrimp, Garlic Shrimp Scampi, Garlic Grilled Shrimp Skewer or Lightly Breaded Clam Strips)Ĭonsidering that this restaurant chain is a chain of casual restaurants, it is normal that the Red Lobster prices are higher than at fast-food restaurants, such as Taco Bell. Your Own Lunch Meal is served with a choice of side. Wood-Grilled Peppercorn Sirloin and Shrimp $7.99 (substitute Lobster Bisque for $1.00)įarm-Raised Catfish (Golden-Fried or Blackened) $7.99 Lunch Specials MealĬlassic Caesar Salad (With Shrimp or Chicken)Ĭup of Soup and Grilled Shrimp Salad (With Choice of Soup) Wild-Caught Flounder (Baked With Seafood Stuffing and Crab)Īvailable every day from 11:00 A.M. Wild-Caught Flounder (Oven-Broiled or Golden-Fried) Tilapia, Atlantic Salmon, Rainbow Trout & Local Selection Garlic-Grilled Shrimp, Garlic Shrimp Scampi, Walt’s Favorite Shrimp, Garlic-Grilled Sea Scallops, Seafood-Stuffed Flounder & Parrot Isle Jumbo Coconut Shrimp)Ĭhoose any two for $18.49, any three for $21.99 (additional $1.99 more) Peppercorn-Grilled Sirloin, Wood-Grilled Fresh Salmon, Shrimp Linguini Alfredo & Steamed Snow Crab Legs)Ĭhoose any two for $18.49, any three for $21.99 (additional $2.79 more) Petite Green Beans, Broccoli & Asparagus (seasonal)ħ oz. $7.99 one side, add shrimp for $1.99, $3.99 additional side Lobster-Crab-and-Seafood-Stuffed MushroomsĬrispy Calamari and Vegetables, Stuffed Mushrooms, Chicken Breast Strips, Mozzarella Cheesesticks and Clam Strips)Īny two for $8.99, three for $10.99 (and $1.99 additional)Ĭreamy Lobster Mashed Potatoes, Creamy Lobster Baked Potatoes, French Fries, Baked Potato, Mashed Potatoes & Wild Rice Pilaf) 3 What Red Lobster Restaurants Are Known For.Marilyn Custer of Roanoke, Va., visiting a Red Lobster on International Drive on Monday, said she was pleased with the menu options the restaurant had unveiled. The wood-grilled lobster, shrimp and salmon, features the largest shrimp the chain has ever offered. One new menu item, lobster scampi linguine, includes 6 ounces of lobster. Red Lobster's research into customer habits showed that most customers visited the restaurant for seafood and many wanted a greater variety of seafood dishes, said Danielle Connor, the company's senior vice president of menu strategy and development. Many steakhouses have been adding seafood dishes, meaning Red Lobster will have to work harder to deliver unique dishes, he said. "They really have to continue to find ways to differentiate through seafood and make it more approachable," Tristano said. Making major changes to an established brand such as Red Lobster will be tough and take time, said Darren Tristano, executive vice president of the restaurant research firm Technomic.

[theculturedmarxist]

Pentagon Video Warns of “Unavoidable” Dystopian Future for World’s Biggest Cities

The year is 2030. Forget about the flying cars, robot maids, and moving sidewalks we were promised. They’re not happening. But that doesn’t mean the future is a total unknown.

According to a startling Pentagon video obtained by The Intercept, the future of global cities will be an amalgam of the settings of “Escape from New York” and “Robocop” — with dashes of the “Warriors” and “Divergent” thrown in. It will be a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers.

At least that’s the scenario outlined in “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a five-minute video that has been used at the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations University. All that stands between the coming chaos and the good people of Lagos and Dhaka (or maybe even New York City) is the U.S. Army, according to the video, which The Intercept obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.

The video is nothing if not an instant dystopian classic: melancholy music, an ominous voiceover, and cascading images of sprawling slums and urban conflict. “Megacities are complex systems where people and structures are compressed together in ways that defy both our understanding of city planning and military doctrine,” says a disembodied voice. “These are the future breeding grounds, incubators, and launching pads for adversaries and hybrid threats.”

The video was used as part of an “Advanced Special Operations Combating Terrorism” course offered at JSOU earlier this year, for a lesson on “The Emerging Terrorism Threat.” JSOU is operated by U.S. Special Operations Command, the umbrella organization for America’s most elite troops. JSOU describes itself as geared toward preparing special operations forces “to shape the future strategic environment by providing specialized joint professional military education, developing SOF specific undergraduate and graduate level academic programs and by fostering special operations research.”

Megacities are, by definition, urban areas with a population of 10 million or more, and they have been a recent source of worry and research for the U.S. military. A 2014 Army report, titled “Megacities and the United States Army,” warned that “the Army is currently unprepared. Although the Army has a long history of urban fighting, it has never dealt with an environment so complex and beyond the scope of its resources.” A separate Army study published this year bemoans the fact that the “U.S. Army is incapable of operating within the megacity.”

These fears are reflected in the hyperbolic “Megacities” video.

As the film unfolds, we’re bombarded with an apocalyptic list of ills endemic to this new urban environment: “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” and a “growing mass of unemployed.” The list, as long as it is grim, accompanies photos of garbage-choked streets, masked rock throwers, and riot cops battling protesters in the developing world. “Growth will magnify the increasing separation between rich and poor,” the narrator warns as the scene shifts to New York City. Looking down from a high vantage point on Third Avenue, we’re left to ponder if the Army will one day find itself defending the lunchtime crowd dining on $57 “NY Cut Sirloin” steaks at (the plainly visible) Smith and Wollensky.

Lacking opening and closing credits, the provenance of “Megacities” was initially unclear, with SOCOM claiming the video was produced by JSOU, before indicating it was actually created by the Army. “It was made for an internal military audience to illuminate the challenges of operating in megacity environments,” Army spokesperson William Layer told The Intercept in an email. “The video was privately produced pro-bono in spring of 2014 based on ‘Megacities and the United States Army.’… The producer of the film wishes to remain anonymous.”

According to the video, tomorrow’s vast urban jungles will be replete with “subterranean labyrinths” governed by their “own social code and rule of law.” They’ll also enable a proliferation of “digital domains” that facilitate “sophisticated illicit economies and decentralized syndicates of crime to give adversaries global reach at an unprecedented level.” If the photo montage in the video is to be believed, hackers will use outdoor electrical outlets to do grave digital damage, such as donning Guy Fawkes masks and filming segments of “Anonymous News.” This, we’re told, will somehow “add to the complexities of human targeting as a proportionally smaller number of adversaries intermingle with the larger and increasing number of citizens.”

“Megacities” posits that despite the lessons learned from the ur-urban battle at Aachen, Germany, in 1944, and the city-busting in Hue, South Vietnam, in 1968, the U.S. military is fundamentally ill-equipped for future battles in Lagos or Dhaka.

“Even our counterinsurgency doctrine, honed in the cities of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, is inadequate to address the sheer scale of population in the future urban reality,” the film notes, as if the results of two futile forever wars might possibly hold the keys to future success. “We are facing environments that the masters of war never foresaw,” warns the narrator. “We are facing a threat that requires us to redefine doctrine and the force in radically new and different ways.”

Mike Davis, author of “Planet of Slums” and “Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb,” was not impressed by the video.

“This is a fantasy, the idea that there is a special military science of megacities,” he said. “It’s simply not the case. … They seem to envision large cities with slum peripheries governed by antagonistic gangs, militias, or guerrilla movements that you can somehow fight using special ops methods. In truth, that’s pretty far-fetched. … You only have to watch ‘Black Hawk Down’ and scale that up to the kind of problems you would have if you were in Karachi, for example. You can do special ops on a small-scale basis, but it’s absurd to imagine it being effective as any kind of strategy for control of a megacity.”

The U.S. military appears unlikely to heed Davis’s advice, however.

“This is the world of our future,” warns the narrator of “Megacities.” “It is one we are not prepared to effectively operate within and it is unavoidable. The threat is clear. Our direction remains to be defined. The future is urban.”

[satans-helper]

50 questions you’ve never been asked before

thank you for tagging me @beautifulcinephile ~~

1. what is the colour of your hairbrush? 

Black

2. a food you never eat? 

Mushrooms! Never.

3. are you typically too warm or too cold? 

Well, it’s winter here for 6 months, so 

4. what were you doing 45 minutes ago? 

I was talking to @mountainofthesunn via MP while on my lunch break

5. what is your favourite candy bar? 

Whatchamacallits (?) and Take 5 bars, which are almost the same thing

6. have you ever been to a professional sports event? 

Yes! Last one was a baseball game and I’d like to go again this summer and I literally just realized we won’t be able to...

7. what is the last thing you said out loud? 

“Take a sip, babes” to literally no one while walking outside the building. 

8. what is your favourite ice cream? 

Chocolate-vanilla swirl 

9. what was the last thing you had to drink? 

Water

10. do you like your wallet? 

Yes, it’s tiny and has done me well over the past number of years! 

11. what was the last thing you ate?

Strawberries

12. did you buy any new clothes last weekend? 

god, I miss Target 

13. the last sporting event you watched? 

The Superbowl! My first one.

14. what is your favourite flavour of popcorn? 

Caramel corn or classic movie theater. God, I miss the movies! 

15. who is the last person you sent a text message to? 

@mountainofthesunn

16. ever go camping? 

Of course! And I’m going again in July with, you guessed it, @mountainofthesunn

17. do you take vitamins? 

Hell yes I do, I am a huge advocate for vitamins and supplements! Everyone needs to take a probiotic and vitamin D at the very least 

18. do you go to church every sunday? 

I’m Satan’s Helper...

19. do you have a tan? 

It’s still winter

20. do you prefer chinese food or pizza? 

Pizza

21. do you drink your soda with a straw? 

I don’t drink soda

22. what colour socks do you usually wear? 

Black

23. do you ever drive above the speed limit? 

I’m going 10 over every day and people are still passing me

24. what terrifies you? 

Everything

25. look to your left, what do you see? 

A whole slew of phone numbers and a map of NYS

26. what chore do you hate? 

Dusting 

27. what do you think of when you hear an Australian accent? 

I’m not even sure...I’d have to hear one in the moment

28. what’s your favourite soda? 

Again, I don’t drink it, and I think all my favorite sodas have caffeine so I wouldn’t be able to drink those anyway lolol 

29. do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive-thru? 

I also don’t eat fast food LOL 

30. who’s the last person you talked to?

My coworker

31. favourite cut of beef? 

This is an advanced question...I love all red meat, really. I always buy sirloin steaks for myself. 

32. last song you listened to? 

“Electric Love” by BORNS

33. last book you read? 

Uhhh the last book I FINISHED was The Prophet, thank you @woman-ina-dream

34. favourite day of the week? 

Wednesday

35. can you say the alphabet backwards? 

Not for very long

36. how do you like your coffee? 

I will take coffee literally any way. If I make it myself, I have it with just cream, if I get it from DD, I get cream and caramel syrup ~ 

37. favourite pair of shoes? 

Black Chelsea boots

38. at what time do you normally go to bed? 

If I am not in bed by midnight I will be thrown into a tizzy. Then it’s time to read or, more accurately, read fan fiction and masturbate 

39. at what time do you normally get up? 

7:30

40. what do you prefer, sunrise or sunsets? 

Sunrises.

41. how many blankets are on your bed? 

4

42. describe your kitchen plates? 

White

43. do you have a favourite alcoholic beverage? 

Whiskey sours, gin gimlets, gin and tonics, hard seltzers

44. do you play cards? 

Sometimes...when we’re not in quarantine 

45. what colour is your car? 

Like a steel blue...that’s the best way I can describe it. It is named Steele. 

46. can you change a tire? 

Sadly, no

47. what is your favourite state/province? 

NYS baby!!  

48. favourite job you’ve ever had? 

LMFAO literally none of them 

49. how did you get your biggest scar? 

I don’t have any cool scar stories 

50. what did you do today that made someone else happy? 

Lord only knows

Tagging @mountainofthesunn @woman-ina-dream @nightrainkiszka @supersonic-darling @sunshinesinhereyes @shesdigging @lildishsoap @roseyzeppelin @therealswanqueen @valleyd0ll @pennylane-gvf @satingrass-maidensfair @lazingonsunday @kissthesun @love-philautia @talk-on-the-street @imacrowcawcaw @oblvions @karrotkate @michaalien @silver--storms

[littlethingwithfeathers]

Quarantine Cuisine: Classic Pot Roast

A lot of my recipe repertoire is based on things that are quick. I don’t usually have a lot of time to make dinner... two hours at most, but sometimes... there’s just no substituting time. And hey! We’re all quarantined, so that’s what we all have a lot of, so lets make something that takes all day. Pot Roast! This is more or less a ripoff of my best friend’s recipe, and it took me a long time to get it right. Mostly because I thought his cooking time was insanely long. And it is. But it’s right, and it’s worth the wait. Maybe you can save on time with one of those Instapot contraptions, but I barely use my crockpot so I hiss at those devil machines. But you do you. Before we begin, a note on roast choices: my favorite cut for this is a rump roast. There’s a nice fat layer that sears and melts nicely as it cooks and it’s marbled but not as much as chuck so the roast is neither dry nor greasy. Shoulder and chuck both work well, but are often riddled with bones or a lot of fat. Round roasts by comparison don’t have enough fat, so they often are dry. You do want some fat because that’s what makes a roast moist and delicious, but you don’t want it to be too much. And do NOT use a nice sirloin or rib roast for this. There are better applications. Also some additions and substitutions: Parsnips are great in this. They go with the carrots. As are mushrooms added with the onions! Another great way to add flavor to the braising liquid if you don’t have wine is tomato paste. Just add a couple of tablespoons along with the garlic and let it brown just a little. Then add the broth and stir well. Ingredients: 1 beef roast, weighing about 3 pounds. 2 Tablespoons of salt (yes really. I said it was good, not healthy) 2 tsp fresh black pepper (yes fresh makes a huge difference 1 tsp chopped rosemary (fresh or dried is fine) 2 TBS olive oil or butter 1 large yellow or sweet onion cut into large chunks 4-5 cloves garlic, smashed 1/2 cup red wine (go for something dry and full bodied for this. There’s so much of it, it does make a difference) 1 14oz can broth (beef is best, but chicken works) 2-3 sprigs of rosemary (or 2 tsp dried. Thyme is also good here) 2 bay leaves 4-5 carrots cut into 1 inch chunks (I used rainbow carrots for this because they’re tasty and fancy) 4-5 potatoes, cut into quarters (red-skin or Yukon Golds are best... I used mini mixed rainbow taters because again... fancy) salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 275º, making sure there is room for a large oven-safe pot in there. I prefer either my heavy-bottomed stock pot or my enameled cast iron dutch oven here. You want something heavy. Combine salt, pepper, and the first quantity of rosemary in a small bowl. Liberally coat the roast in this mixture, making sure to get all sides. In said large pot over medium heat, add butter or olive oil. Sear the roast on all sides, allowing it to get good and dark. Remove and set aside. Saute chunked onions in the same pot until they start to take on a little color. Add garlic and saute for one more minute. 

Deglaze bottom of pot with the red wine, and scrape. Return meat to pot, and add stock to cover halfway or a little less. Allow stock to *just* begin to bubble toward a boil. Cover with lid or foil and stick it in the oven. Roast for at least 2 hours. At the two hour mark, add in your carrots and potatoes and make sure there is still plenty of stock in the pot. Season with more salt and pepper and allow to roast for another hour to hour and a half. The roast is done when it can be pulled apart with just a fork and the potatoes and carrots are fork tender too. When in doubt, go longer. It won’t hurt. 

[itsalliepg]

50 QUESTIONS YOU’VE NEVER BEEN ASKED

Thank you for tagging me @boneandfur  and @scalpeljockeybrycelahela <3

1. What is the color of your hairbrush? Black and green

2. A food you never eat? Canned sardines

3. Are you typically too warm or too cold? Too warm, that’s why I hate the heat

4. What were you doing 45 minutes ago? Having dinner

5. What is your favorite candy bar? Snickers

6. Have you ever been to a professional sports event? My school’s championships when I was nine counts? LOL

7.  What is the last thing you said out loud? “Farofa!” it’s my cat’s name :)

8. What is your favorite ice cream? Anything with chocolate!

9. What was the last thing you had to drink? Guava juice

10. Do you like your wallet? When there’s money I love it LOL

11. What was the last thing you ate? An apple

12. Did you buy any new clothes last weekend? No

13. The last sporting event you watched? Campeonato Paulista (the professional soccer league of my state, but it was interrupted because of the Covid)

14. What is your favorite flavor of popcorn? Classic salted popcorn

15. Who was the last person you sent a text message to? My boss!

16. Ever go camping? I’ve never did but I’d love to

17. Do you take vitamins? No

18. Do you go to church every Sunday? I go every Monday and Thursday (not going anymore because of the Covid again)

19. Do you have a tan? My skin is naturally tanned LOL

20. Do you prefer Chinese food or pizza? Both! I can’t choose, these are my favorite food

21. Do you drink your soda with a straw? No, in a cup or directly in the can

22. What color socks do you usually wear? White

23. Ever drive above the speed limit? I don’t drive

24. What terrifies you? Frogs, spiders and heights

25. Look to your left, what do you see? My wardrobe

26. What chore do you hate? Ironing

27. What do you think of when you hear an Australian accent? That it’s cute :)

28. What’s your favorite soda? Guaraná, Brazilian typical soda

29. Do you go into a fast food place or just hit the drive through? Into

30. Who’s the last person you talked to? My mother

31. Favorite cut of beef? Top sirloin (I had to search the name in English LOL)

32. Last song you listened to? HandClap by Fitz and the Tantrums

33. Last book you read? The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson

34. Favorite day of the week? Saturday

35. Can you say the alphabet backwards? Huh, no?

36. Do you like your coffee? Yes

37. Favorite pair of shoes? My pink Converse

38. At what time do you normally go to bed? Around midnight

39. At what time do you normally get up? 8am

40. What do you prefer, sunrises or sunsets? Sunsets

41. How many blankets are on your bed? 1

42. Describe your kitchen plates: It has some white porcelain, blue porcelain and glass

43. Do you have a favorite alcoholic beverage? Cold beer, red wine and tequila

44. Do you play cards? No

45. What color is your car? Black

46. Can you change a tire? No

47. What is your favorite province? The one I live

48. Favorite job you’ve ever had? I worked in a school in 2016 and the team was amazing

49. How did you get your biggest scar? I had a scar in my right thigh that I don’t know how I got it. Now my tattoo covered it!

50. What did you do today that made someone else happy? I washed the dishes so my mom could rest, she didn’t sleep well last night

Tagging @missameliep @lorirwritesfanfic @thequeenchoices @mangoruby @zigortega4life

[honeymoonjin]

pasta la vista

In which you, a food critic, wonders how the hell Kim Seokjin manages to stay in business considering how horrendous his food seems to be. 2.3k words.

A/N: I’ve been holding off on writing a Jin one-shot for a while, because he’s my bias and I really wanted to get it right, but this is probably my favorite one-shot so far. Tell me what you think! 

Everybody loved a failure. Your scathing reviews on abysmal meals and grimy plates got far better traffic than anything positive you had to say about exciting flavor combinations and wonderful service.

At one point in time, you had selfishly decided to chase that coin, and thus your blog changed to The Idiot Sandwiches of Seoul (who could toss up a good Gordon Ramsey reference?) and your mission became to seek out the worst restaurants in the city.

Recently, you had been going to one restaurant multiple times, and you were getting a little concerned that Pasta la Vista was still in business.

The owner, a Mister Kim Seokjin, was a complete conundrum to you. You had been to his restaurant when it opened in 2015, and a couple times in the following years, and only had a few critiques, but it seemed that although his yelp reviews were still as immaculate as ever, the food quality and overall dining experience had taken a complete nosedive only a few months after your blog changed over.

You weren’t complaining, since your reviews of his place were some of the most popular on your site, prompting you to create a sub-series titled ‘What Is He Even Doing Back There?’ which focused entirely on reviewing every item on his constantly-changing menu.

That was another thing; he treated almost every dish on the menu like it was the daily special, re-printing menus every other week, far more than could be economically advisable.

Today you were back in the brightly decorated restaurant to try out his new-fangled three-course meal. You had gotten an anonymous comment on your most recent blog post from an account called ‘worldwidehandsome6969’ saying that it was the worst thing they had ever tasted. Likely an exaggeration, as the nature of your blog attracted a lot of whiners and complainers, but if it would pay your rent for another month, then so be it.

The building itself was in a rather wealthy part of town, but more so the hipster side than the old-money areas. The walls were covered in bright patterns and the chairs and tables were glossy white plastic.

The kitchen was quite visible from the main dining area; in fact, he had designed it so that instead of a solid wall, it was glass from the bench-height up. If you picked the right seat, one against the wall but near the center of the room lengthways, you could get a good look of the head chef himself, basically bouncing off the walls as he checked on all the other cooks, threw spices into pots like that old meme, wiggled happily as steaks sizzled on the grill.

One thing you always made sure to include in your reviews was just how happy he was. You could admire that, and you wanted your readers to not write him off as some oblivious rich kid throwing money at the Titanic. It was clear this business of his was somehow in the black, judging by how busy it was every time you came, so good on him for living his dream.

Still, you didn’t understand how content all the other customers seemed to be. After putting your order in for the three-course meal, it was only ten or so minutes before a dish came out.

It was a classic gazpacho with some crusty sliced bread on the side, but what gave you pause was the wobbly smiley face drawn in piles of chili powder on the surface of the cold soup. “Are you serious,” you whisper under your breath, chancing a look up at the kitchen.

You lock eyes with Kim Seokjin, who is beaming over at your table, but looks back down at the fish he’s seasoning when you catch him staring.

Even after he looks away, he has an odd smile on his face. You sigh and pick up your soup spoon. If there was one thing you did always love about coming here, it was how he managed to surprise you every time.

The surface tension of the soup holds enough to keep the powder on top right until the point that you go to delicately scoop off the chili powder. The moment the edge of the spoon breaks through, the powder around it goes sinking into the red depths of the gazpacho. You curse under your breath, giving up and just stirring it in as best you can.

If he wanted to give his customers a cardiac arrest’s worth of chili powder as decoration, he could deal with the feedback you’d give on his childish antics.

The cold soup was hot with spice and, as you expected, you barely got three mouthfuls down. You couldn’t taste a single thing around the burning of your tongue, but you had the feeling that the soup itself actually wasn’t that bad. It was a shame.

A waitress asked you how you wanted your steak cooked, to which you of course said medium rare, but when your mostly-full bowl of soup was taken away and the main brought out, there wasn’t a hint of pink left.

It was closer to concrete than it was a fine cut of sirloin, and he had again presented you with the smiley face motif, this time actually cut into the meat with a knife of some sort, clearly after he had done all but cremating it, and you flipped it over gingerly with your fork and knife only to see the same on the other side.

The vegetables accompanying the meat were, like most things you ate here, an absolute atrocity. There was some broccoli and cauliflower split into the smallest of flowers, so that they littered the bottom of your plate and fell through the tines of your fork when you went to scoop them up.

Worst of all was the entire carrot that was lain parallel to the meat, so large that it hung over the rim of the plate. Confused out of your mind, you stare dumbfoundedly into the kitchen, seeking out the man that thought this was an acceptable meal.

He was bent over the industrial oven, one hand holding onto the handle for support, the other clutching at his stomach. He had tears coming from his eyes, actual tears, and when a waiter pushed through the double doors and into the restaurant, for a second or two you heard the squeaky peals of his hysteric laughter, before they were cut off again as the doors swung shut.

A couple of guests heard the abrupt noise and glanced around the restaurant, but you were too busy watching the chef laugh so hard his tall hat fell off his head.

What the fuck was going on?

You ate enough of the steak and the odd selection of vegetables to form a solid basis for your review, then hailed a waitress to take your plate away.

Your stomach growled as you waited, but you dreaded the arrival of the dessert. Kim Seokjin had calmed himself down enough to go back to reading over tickets and calling out orders, and you hoped to god that it was tolerable enough that you could actually eat it.

The wait took a little longer than normal, so you slipped out your phone to begin typing away in your notes app, ready to capture your thoughts in the heat of the moment.

“He can be called a chef just about as much as you can call a man driving off a cliff a pilot. It would seem he was completely apathetical to the culinary profession, were it not for the complete joy I could see on his face when he saw I had received the dishes. I continue to be confounded by the total contrast between my experience and what others have-”

“The dark chocolate and raspberry cheesecake, ma’am. Please enjoy.”

You stuff your phone back into your pocket and do a double take at the dessert. It’s nothing like you expected, and while you haven’t tasted it yet, you suspect that will surprise you, too.

A velvety-looking slice of cheesecake is what greets you. You can see just by looking at the texture of the cut that it’s so light that it would probably just melt in your mouth, and a small ramekin of vanilla ice-cream sits as a perfect little scoop beside it. What gives you the most pause, however, is the vibrant raspberry coulis that’s been poured out in a little love heart on the side of the plate.

You hurriedly take your cake fork and slice off the inner corner of the cheesecake, feeling the satisfying clink as it breaks through the biscuit base. The second the creamy goodness touches your tongue, you’re a goner. The bitterness of the dark chocolate mixes in beautifully with the tart yet sweet raspberry sauce marbled through it, and the golden crumb provides some texture to break up the smoothness. It’s perfect.

For the third time that night, you find yourself searching for a glimpse of the head chef in his kitchen

Was he just great at desserts? Surely not, or he would’ve simply transformed into a bakery or patisserie. Besides, you recalled last time you came and tried the lemon meringue pie, and how it had arrived with actual sour lemon juice drizzled on top, and a large heap of whipped cream underneath the pie, so that by the time it reached you, the pastry had gone soggy.

No, you decided, there was most certainly something afoot here. You had no idea what you were going to write now, but you desperately needed answers.

It was winter in Seoul, and your nose had just about frozen off by the time Kim Seokjin finally waltzed out the front doors.

You pushed yourself off the pillar you were leaning on and rushed over to him, grabbing the front of his jacket to make him stop in his tracks.

He lets out a startled yelp, opening his mouth wide to scream, but calms down when he recognizes you. “Oh, it’s you?”

“Yeah,” you grumble, “it’s me. What the hell was that?”

He avoids your beseeching gaze. “The three-course menu. I hope you enjoyed it.”

You huff and shake him back and forth a little. “I’m serious! Two and a half years of atrocious food, and then one beautiful dessert. What the hell was that?”

He squeezes his eyes shut once and blushes. “You thought it was beautiful?”

“Argh, that’s not the point! You’re driving me insane! How is it that you have a full house every night, perfect reviews, and yet I get served an entire carrot on a plate, huh?”

He snickers.

“You think it’s funny? Is your business just a joke to you?”

He composes himself a little, letting his warm hands clasp your frozen ones gently, peeling them away from his thick jacket. “No, it’s not that,” he admits, “it’s just that when you started only reviewing bad restaurants, you stopped coming here.”

You let him remove your grasp on him but note that he doesn’t let go of your hands, leaving them to dangle between the two of you. Your breath is visible in the cold, and your soft speaking still seems loud in the heavy quiet. “Sorry, what?”

He shrugs breezily, but the bouncy energy you saw in the kitchen has vanished. “I knew you would only come to my restaurant and review it was if you thought the food was bad.”

You feel a fire die inside you as the truth dawns on you. “You just wanted free advertising. All publicity is good publicity, I guess.”

“No!” His outburst is punctuated by him giving your hands a squeeze, and he blinks down at where you’re joined like he’d forgotten. He drops his hold and brings a hand up to ruffle his hair nervously. “I just…I like having you around. I didn’t know how to talk to you.”

“The love-heart,” you ponder out loud, and he nods meaningfully. “This was you flirting?”

He winces. “God, when you put it like that, it sounds stupid.”

“It is stupid,” you concur, “normally when a guy wants to impress a girl, he shows off how good his cooking is, not how much chili powder he can fit on top of a bowl of gazpacho.”

He perks up after hearing your joking tone. With a cheeky grin, he nudges your shoulder playfully. “Hey, you, it’s not my fault it took you over two years to finally realize. Who seriously puts an entire carrot on somebody’s plate?”

You can’t help but laugh at his antics. He joins in, and you feel a strange kind of warmth inside you when you get a full version of the sneak-peek you heard earlier in the restaurant. He laughs with his whole body, throwing his head back and shaking his shoulders up and down with the force of it. You calm down before he does and watch him curiously. “You are an enigma, Kim Seokjin.”

He quiets down too, but still carries a self-satisfied grin on his face. “Ah, Kim Seokjin, incredible chef, talented comedian, and worldwide handsome guy.”

The smile is wiped off his face when he realizes what he said. You narrow your eyes at him. “Wait. Are you worldwidehandsomeguy6969?”

He shrugs sheepishly.

“Have you no shame?” you chide, but you can’t smother the beam on your face that hasn’t left since he told you the truth. “You have two and a half years of bad food to make up for, mister. You better start tomorrow night.”

He holds out his arm, jangling his car keys. “Why not start now?”

[venivivividi]

50 QUESTIONS YOU’VE NEVER BEEN ASKED 

tagged by @revengeisalwaysanoption

(sorry I changed the lower case aesthetic on the questions but it was bugging me out lol)

1. What is the color of your hairbrush? Black

2. A food you never eat? Just from a "I don't like it" point of view, almost every type of mushrooms and legumes, but there are a lot of things I can't eat bc my body is weak like that

3. Are you typically too warm or too cold? Well, during winter I'm too warm on public trasportation and too cold outside, during summer I'm almost chilly on public transportation and way too hot outside

4. What were you doing 45 minutes ago? I was having lunch

5. What is your favorite candy bar? I'm really blanking on this bc I don't  really eat a lot of sweet stuff, but I'd agree that Kinder Bueno was really really good

6. Have you ever been to a professional sports event? No, I have not

7. What is the last thing you said out loud? LMAO it was "Ci sono i fantasmi qui, huh?" ("It seems like we have ghosts in here") and it was a sarcastic remark bc one of my flatmates quickly sneaked in and out of the kitchen very quietly while I was doing the dishes without even say hello. I mean, that seems rude to me but maybe I'm wrong

8. What is your favorite ice cream? I'm a simple gal, I like chocolate, but I also like to pair it with mango, berries or passion fruit. Once I tried salted caramel and it was good.

9. What was the last thing you had to drink? A boring glass of water

10. Do you like your wallet? I guess I do, it's cute

11. What was the last thing you ate? Now I regret doing this right now bc I have to publicly admit that the last thing I ate was.. a formaggino MIO. In my defense, I was still hungry after lunch and I had nothing else! (For those of you who do not know what a formaggino MIO is, it's a type of processed cream cheese very popular here as baby food. I'm pretty sure 98% of italian babies are actually raised on bread&formaggino and pasta&formaggino)

12. Did you buy any new clothes last weekend? I did not. Everything is closed, I have not left my home in forever and I'm not one for online shopping tbh

13. The last sporting event you watched? I think it was some sort of volleyball tournament last December, I'm not sure tho

14. What is your favorite flavor of popcorn? Just salted

15. Who is the last person you sent a text message to? @starkgazing​

16. Ever go camping? No

17. Do you take vitamins? I try every now and then but I honestly forget easily

18. Do you go to church every sunday? No, never actually did

19. Do you have a tan? I have not seen the sun in so long I'm not even sure it's still there

20. Do you prefer chinese food or pizza? This is actually hard because I like pizza but I cannot eat it, and when I tried chinese food it was sooo good and it didn't hurt my body the way pizza does lol

21. Do you drink your soda with a straw? No, but I also very rarely drink soda

22. What color socks do you usually wear? I either go very classic (black, grey and white) or buy the most stupid ones in fucsia with a bear that says *hello*, there's no in between

23. Ever drive above the speed limit? I don't have a license but in general I get very anxious when I'm in a car with someone that drives fast

24. What terrifies you? What does NOT terrify me is the real question. The easy and not deep answer would be spiders

25. Look to your left, what do you see? My bread dough raising under two blankets and a rag

26. Wat chore do you hate? Cleaning the shower in particular but in general the fact that I have to climb over random things to clean half the house bc I'm too short to reach anything

27. What do you think of when you hear an australian accent? I like it! I don't really understand it sometimes, but I like it

28. What’s your favorite soda? I'm always confused by what is considered a soda, but I think that Schweppes lemon counts

29. Do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive-thru? I can ONLY eat seated at a table (and I don't have a car), so i definitely go in

30. Who’s the last person you talked to? My other flatmate (not the ghost one)

31. Favorite cut of beef? I just realised that I actually rarely eat beef if not minced; if we talk about bovine meat, I usually buy veal (the veal sirloin steak is one of the most delicious thing in the world)

32. Last song you listened to? Remedios la bella by Modena City Ramblers

33. Last book you read? I'm trying to read Doktor Živago (It's not going well), the last one I finished was 10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world by Elif Shafak

34. Favorite day of the week? Probably Saturdays

35. Can you say the alphabet backwards? I tried. No.

36. Do you like your coffee? I was forced to buy a different brand bc I don't want to go to a supermarket far away where I usually buy my fair trade coffee; it's not terrible but it's not my usual strong south american/african/indian blend that is somehow called arabica

37. Favorite pair of shoes? I used to have a great pair of leather combat boots that sadly got destroyed rip

38. At what time do you normally go to bed? I try to be in bed by 11:30 pm and asleep by midnight but I'm not afraid to fall asleep while reading or watching a tv show at 10pm lol or even stay up until 3am

39. At what time do you normally get up? I trained myself to stay in bed until at least 8am now that I don't have anything to attend to in the mornings

40. What do you prefer, sunrise or sunsets? Sunsets

41. How many blankets are on your bed? Well, just one where I live now, but back at home in the mountains last winter I had two wool blankets and two duvets (and a fleece blanket ready on the side just in case)

42. Describe your kitchen plates. Boring white. My sister bought them and I'm very disappointed; luckily I have a small plate for dessert in this great shade of dark anthracite grey a friend of mine gifted me a while ago

43. Do you have a favorite alcoholic beverage? I like red wine but if we're talking strong ones, I like tequila

44. Do you play cards? It's a holiday tradition with my family. Things can get scary, believe me

45. What color is your car? I don't have a car

46. Can you change a tire? Nope

47. What is your favorite province? I.. don't have one? (I'm not sure I understand the question tbh)

48. Favorite job you’ve ever had? I loved working in the bio-preparation lab. I was not involved in the actual process but still I felt very badass operating the autoclave and all the other sterilizing machines and going around with a cart full of glassware

49. How did you get your biggest scar? An incadescent flatiron

50. What did you do today that made someone else happy? I sent a stupid video on my family's groupchat, I hope I made someone happy at least lol my sister seemed amused

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Weary of many disasters? UN says worse to come (AP) A disaster-weary globe will be hit harder in the coming years by even more catastrophes colliding in an interconnected world, a United Nations report issued Monday says. If current trends continue the world will go from around 400 disasters per year in 2015 to an onslaught of about 560 catastrophes a year by 2030, the scientific report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction said. By comparison from 1970 to 2000, the world suffered just 90 to 100 medium to large scale disasters a year, the report said. The number of extreme heat waves in 2030 will be three times what it was in 2001 and there will be 30% more droughts, the report predicted. It’s not just natural disasters amplified by climate change, it’s COVID-19, economic meltdowns and food shortages. Climate change has a huge footprint in the number of disasters, report authors said. In 1990, disasters cost the world about $70 billion a year. Now they cost more than $170 billion a year, and that’s after adjusting for inflation, according to report authors. Nor does that include indirect costs we seldom think about that add up.

Small businesses plan to raise prices (Bloomberg) About 40% of U.S. small businesses intend to raise selling prices by 10% or more amid decades-high inflation, according to a survey from the National Federation of Independent Business. Overall, more than two-thirds of the respondents plan to increase prices in the next three months, according to the survey, conducted between April 14 and April 17 among 540 business owners. Almost half of the small firms are planning increases of 4% to 9%. The report suggests that many businesses are planning increases that are above the current rate of national inflation—the consumer-price index rose 8.5% in March, the most since 1981. Nearly nine in ten employers in the NFIB survey said they’ve had to raise prices to absorb some of the costs.

Inflation Got You Down? At Least You Don’t Live in Argentina. (WSJ) Shopkeeper Jonathan Faez has a word of advice to people around the world obsessing about inflation: Chill out. “I have friends in the United States and Spain and they’re telling me they’re going crazy with their annual inflation of 5% or 7%,” says Mr. Faez, owner of a lingerie store. “Here, we reach 4% almost every month!” Welcome to Argentina, where high, nearly uncontrollable inflation—now at an estimated 55.1% over the past year—is as natural as the country’s juicy sirloins and sensual tango shows. Most Argentines have developed strategies to cope with rising prices and other features of the country’s economy, like the falling value of the currency, the peso. It’s a bit like the old “Dr. Strangelove” classic about nuclear war, with a twist: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hyperinflationary Policies.” With money sitting in a banking account quickly losing value, Argentines drain their paychecks nearly as soon as they get them. A trip to the supermarket often yields weeks’ worth of food and supplies, from nonperishables like shampoo and canned goods to frozen meat that is stuffed into freezers. People seek to exchange their pesos for U.S. greenbacks, which provide protection against inflation. Hoarding is a must. “I came to this market and bought as much toilet paper as I could for the month, more than 20 packs,” Melanie Lichtensztejn, a 24-year-old university student, said on a recent day.

Sinn Fein calls on Dublin to plan for constitutional change (Reuters) The leader of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland said the Dublin government must start planning for the possibility of a referendum that could result in a united Ireland. Speaking to Reuters ahead of May 5 local elections in the British-run province that could see the nationalist party become the largest in the devolved government for the first time, Michelle O'Neill said she was not "fixated on dates" for the referendum. But people "know constitutional change is coming" and it was irresponsible of Dublin to "not to be planning at this point". It could take place before the end of this decade, she said. Under Northern Ireland's 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, which largely ended decades of violence between mainly Catholic nationalists seeking to merge with Ireland and Protestant unionists who want to remain part of the United Kingdom, the British government can call a referendum on Irish reunification if a "yes" majority looks likely.

Macron’s win a mixed victory (Eurointelligence) Outside France, most were relived to see Emmanuel Macron winning the elections. A very mixed picture emerges in France, where according to an Ipsos poll the French are divided between relief (20%), indifference (20%), disappointment (20%), and anger (18%) after his election. Never was the country so divided, and never have the far-right held such a grip over the country. Based on the data from the French interior ministry, in fact, a majority of the 35,000 communes actually voted against Macron in 2022.

Guterres Meets Putin in Moscow (Foreign Policy) U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres visits Moscow today for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where he is expected to push the Russian leader to order a cease-fire in Ukraine. Efforts to end the war have appeared to sputter, as both sides face off in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. A Financial Times report on Sunday suggested Putin has largely given up on peace talks; his focus now appears set on a land grab. Zelensky was also reported to be wary of talks, telling European Council President Charles Michel last week that Ukrainian public opinion was against them and was in favor of taking the fight to Russian forces instead. The elephant in the negotiating room is territorial control, with neither side in agreement as to where to draw the borders if the conflict were to cease. “Everyone seems to have decided that they’re going to play that one out on the battlefield,” Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist with the Rand Corporation, told Foreign Policy.

The new U.S. goal: A weaker Russia (Bloomberg) The Biden administration [on Monday] laid out a striking redefinition of success for America’s goals in the conflict: making sure Russia’s military can no longer threaten its neighbors. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at a news conference in Poland, following his secretive trip to Kyiv with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “It had already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.” The assertion signals a transformation of the conflict, pitting the United States more directly against Russia. It also reflected an increasingly emboldened approach from the Biden administration. But the new U.S. stance could also play into President Vladimir Putin’s narrative that the war in Ukraine is really about the West’s desire to choke off Russian power and destabilize his government.

Putin gets what he didn’t want: Ukraine army closer to West (AP) The longer Ukraine’s army fends off the invading Russians, the more it absorbs the advantages of Western weaponry and training—exactly the transformation President Vladimir Putin wanted to prevent by invading in the first place. The list of arms flowing to Ukraine is long and growing longer. It includes new American battlefield aerial drones and the most modern U.S. and Canadian artillery. Also, anti-tank weapons from Norway and others; armored vehicles and anti-ship missiles from Britain; and Stinger counter-air missiles from the U.S., Denmark and other countries. If Ukraine can hold off the Russians, its accumulating arsenal of Western weapons could have a transformative effect in a country that has, like other former Soviet republics, relied mainly on arms and equipment from the Soviet era. Despite its early failings, the Russian military still holds some advantages that will be put to the test in the eastern Donbas region, where they are assembling more combat troops and firepower even as the U.S. and its NATO allies scramble to get artillery and other heavy weaponry to that area in time to make a difference.

Raising the stakes (NYT) The U.S. convened more than 40 allied countries today in an effort to organize more military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, which is to include the first batch of heavy weapons from Germany. “The group will be a vehicle for nations of good will to intensify our efforts, coordinate our assistance and focus on winning today’s fight and the struggles to come,” said Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, after the meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Responding to Austin’s declaration yesterday that the U.S. wants to weaken Russia’s military, Russia’s top diplomat accused the U.S. and its allies of pursuing a proxy war, and warned that their involvement could lead to nuclear war. “The risks are quite considerable,” said Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in an interview on Russia’s state-run TV network. “I don’t want them to be blown out of proportion,” he added, but “the danger is serious, real—it must not be underestimated.”

Russia’s war heats up cooking oil prices in global squeeze (AP) For months, Istanbul restaurant Tarihi Balikca tried to absorb the surging cost of the sunflower oil its cooks use to fry fish, squid and mussels. But in early April, with oil prices nearly four times higher than they were in 2019, the restaurant finally raised its prices. Now, even some longtime customers look at the menu and walk away. Global cooking oil prices have been rising since the COVID-19 pandemic began for multiple reasons, from poor harvests in South America to virus-related labor shortages and steadily increasing demand from the biofuel industry. The war in Ukraine—which supplies nearly half of the world’s sunflower oil, on top of the 25% from Russia—has interrupted shipments and sent cooking oil prices spiraling. It is the latest fallout to the global food supply from Russia’s war, and another rising cost pinching households and businesses as inflation soars. The conflict has further fueled already high food and energy costs, hitting the poorest people hardest.

Beijing to test 20 mln for COVID in bid to avert Shanghai lockdown misery (Reuters) Three-quarters of Beijing's 22 million people lined up for COVID-19 tests on Tuesday as authorities in the Chinese capital raced to stamp out a nascent outbreak and avert the debilitating city-wide lockdown that has shrouded Shanghai for a month. Having seen the struggles of China's commercial hub to meet the basic needs of its increasingly frustrated 25 million residents, people in Beijing were stocking up on food and supplies. Videos on social media showed people leaning out of Shanghai windows to beat pots and pans in anger, or play "Do you hear the people sing?", a protest anthem from the musical "Les Miserables", on flutes and trumpets. Beijing hoped to avoid such drama by acting swiftly. Officials have urged residents to refrain from leaving the capital and avoid gatherings for the upcoming April 30-May 4 Labour Day holidays.

China’s Covid restrictions pressure supply chains (Bloomberg) China’s stringent rules to curb Covid-19 are about to unleash another wave of summer chaos on supply chains between Asia, the U.S. and Europe. Beijing’s zero-tolerance approach amid an escalating virus outbreak brings the pandemic full circle, more than two years after its emergence in Wuhan upended the global economy. Shipping congestion at Chinese ports, combined with Russia’s war in Ukraine, risks a one-two punch that threatens to derail the recovery, already buffeted by inflation pressures and headwinds to growth. Even if the virus is reined in, the disruptions will ripple globally—and extend through the year—as bunched-up cargo vessels start sailing again.

Brisk Walking May Slow The Biological Aging Process (Science Alert) Scientists have reported a possible link between brisk walking and biological age, as measured by leucocyte telomere length (LTL)—one of the biomarkers that scientists think we can use to assess the rate at which the human body gets older. This 'biological age' essentially means how worn out the body's cells are getting. A lifetime of walking at speeds above an amble could mean the equivalent of being 16 years younger—cellularly speaking—by middle age using the metric. Walking requires no training and no special equipment, and the researchers suggest it could be used more often in treatments as a way of improving health where appropriate.

[exclusivitisms]

✦————unprompted ✦ accepting !

roskaarotta said: " Oi oi, y'Karamatsu, right? Well, seems like nobody else wanna take up the offer but seems like there's a couple discount at some steakhouse. If you wanna fake it till we make it, can cut ya on some prime beef. Deal? "

There were two true loves in life: WOMEN and STEAK.  Couples discount, indeed————if he were overlooking the perks behind this.  Classic NEET behaviour oft leads him to scheme for profit when in search for the benefit; this time around giving him the perks of stepping higher on the social pyramid.  For no one else to take up on the deal was astounding; budgets were what he lived for.  ❛ You’re telling me it PAYS to have a girlfriend ? ❜ Not so much pay but save his dazzling change purse from the inevitable burden of breaking bank ? Standing up, the second Matsuno has made up his mind.  And without further ado:

❛ I’m in ! ❜

SIRLOIN FILET, MY HONEY————GET IN MY BELLY !

[speedytreefart]

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[sohannabarberaesque]

Rather unlikely conversation overheard at the recent Hanna-Barbera convocation during the Minneapolis Aquatennial:

SNAGGLEPUSS, nursing an iced cappuccino: So, King--aside from the obvious nature of this convocation and reunion, what drove you here to converse with moi?

THE KING, in this instance nursing iced cold-brew coffee: I was "just in the neighbourhood," you might say, and being somewhat close relatives, I felt it might be worth our common while to kill an idle moment or two in a modest little chat such as this.

SNAGGLEPUSS: Well put, King. And say, is that iced coffee you happen to be drinking there?

THE KING: Not just any kind of iced coffee--ICED COLD-BREW COFFEE! The big new thing now, in case you haven't heard!

SNAGGLEPUSS: Thanks for the little reminder--or is it deminder? No matter....

THE KING: I still admit that your sense of humour can drive me rather hilarious at times, as if Yukka-Yukka's own warped sense of humour wasn't bizarre enough!

SNAGGLEPUSS: Now let me guess--that's the hyena of your outfit?

THE KING: Make no mistake--Yukka-Yukka is a real stickler for the old "practical joke" sort of gags.

SNAGGLEPUSS: Let me guess: Whoopee cushions?

THE KING: Especially when filled with mayonnaise for maximum hilarity!

SNAGGLEPUSS: Joy buzzers?

THE KING: Of course!

SNAGGLEPUSS: Rubber vomit?

THE KING: Most certainly!

SNAGGLEPUSS: Canned snakes?

THE KING: Guaranteed to deliver the bellylaughs!

SNAGGLEPUSS: Onion chewing gum? Garlic gum, even?

THE KING: Somehow, that wore itself out. Especially after a rather lavish Italian dinner once, when Yukka-Yukka made the mistake of passing around garlic gum in a packet of Wrigley's Spearmint ... and we make it a point to include a roll of Tums when we have rather substantial buffet-type meals; after all, stomach gas is NOT a very pleasant side effect to have, and that garlic gum only makes it even worse!

SNAGGLEPUSS: And I understand you have this rather hungry hippo in your troupe, by name Big H?

THE KING: How did you know about him?

SNAGGLEPUSS: I sat close to him during the Midnight Turkey Dinner, remember?!

THE KING: His motto is "I always think best on a full stomach" ... but you wouldn't want to enter him into any and every eating competition there is out there. And he certainly can't resist those challenges that offer a free dinner if you can eat it all within one hour!

SNAGGLEPUSS: Like at the Big Texan Steak House in Amarillo--

THE KING: If it's anything to you, Snag, Big H could NOT resist that famous challenge of a Free 72-Ounce Steak Dinner if You Can Eat It All Within One Hour! Like, we was on a road trip across the classic Route 66 once, and not wanting to be seen as fools, we made a stip at the Big Texan so Big H could partake of that offer. And believe you me, us having more conventional steak dinners while Big H chowed away in that challenge couldn't believe the spectacle Big H was making there! Imagine, a full four-and-a-half-pound sirloin steak, baked potato, shrimp cocktail, garden salad, breadroll and root beer--in all of 28 minutes!!

SNAGGLEPUSS: Have you ever considered trying those eating challenges for yourself?

THE KING: It's alright with Big H; personally, though, I wouldn't have the stomach for it. Especially if it does a serious number of the mane; believe you me, I take much pride in it, and spend quite a bit on Brylcreem just to keep it that way! Now Clyde--he may be a rival to Big H in the eating arena, but he's a little clumsy to boot!

SNAGGLEPUSS: Oh, and the two "laydeez," so to speak, in your crew--?

THE KING: Sheena, I must admit, is the pne I'm the more attached to. She's quite the gal to be around, and I can assure you is rather wonderful in especially the lovemaking department! Zelda may be an ostrich, but she's alright in her own way, taking as much of life as we enjoy putting into it!

SNAGGLEPUSS: So I understand.

THE KING: In any case, it was rather nice meeting you here over coffee and conversation....

SNAGGLEPUSS: And the same, I say, to you. So long, then, and don't take any wooden nickels, as they say...

THE KING, chuckling at the thought: As I said, you certainly have a sense of humour that is no doubt infectous!!

[making-a-supperer]

3. Five O’Clock Steakhouse

2416 W State St, Milwaukee, WI 53233 Feb 15, 2019   5pm

Five O’Clock Steakhouse, formerly Coerper’s Five O’Clock Club, has been a family-owned Milwaukee supper club since 1946.  Five O'Clock is simply known as Milwaukee’s finest steakhouse and it oozes in old school ambiance.  Throw in The Alley Cat Lounge, featuring live music, classic cocktails and a 1940’s retro-lounge ambiance, and you have quite a supper club atmosphere.  Lauren and I dined here five years ago or so and we were long overdue for a return visit.   See Lauren’s blog post on her early sales days of bringing clients to this hot spot.

The Victims

Tonight’s victims (aka guests) are Lauren’s granddaughter, Riley, and her lifelong friend Will.  Riley attends UWM and is in-between last fall’s semester in Italy and a likely return back this summer as a holiday sales intern.  Will attends Marquette and is looking forward to a 10-day trip to Panama with his school later this spring.  Rough lives.  These awesome kids also joined us last year for an epic Jackson Grill dinner, another must stop for later this year.  Such a treat for us to hear their fun school stories and treat them to a fine supper club experience.

Classic Bar Atmosphere

Da Bar

Five O’Clock is another fun club where you order dinner from the bar before you are seated.   That always makes the bar a fun little hangout place before the main event.   Our waiter Joe entertained us with stories of The Man in the Van parking lot history (see Lauren’s post), his favorite New York steak, scallops, Manhattan order, and his feeling that Steven Avery, and anyone from Manitowoc for that matter, is certainly guilty of something.    On the heels of a classic whiskey old fashioneds, sweet of course, we all agree that the unofficial rule of unique entrée orders across the group should continue.  So Lauren leads off with the Steak and Cake (12 oz. Delmonico steak and crab cakes), vegetarian Riley orders the French Onion soup and green beans, Will orders the big school New York Strip Sirloin, and I order the “petitie Surf and Turf – 8 oz filet and lobster.  Bring on the meat!  And a bit of surf.

Get It Started

After our lovely server Stephanie sat us in the dark and cozy dining room, we jumped in on the relish tray, family salad, sourdough bread, epic bacon sticks, and giant crab stuffed mushroom caps.  Oh my.  Save room for the meat.  As thick and tasty as the intriguing bacon sticks were, the stuffed mushroom caps stole the early show.  The bar is being set very high.  

Bacon sticks, crab stuffed mushroom caps

Alongside the old timer photos along the wall, Stephanie shared a great story about a women from one of the pictures who was married here over 70 years ago – and just returned a few months ago for a heartwarming visit, and probably a nice little 8 oz’er.  The current owner has been in play for around 12 years and I dropped Stephanie a direct hint about our Making-A-Supperer tour in 2019.  But I guess it wasn’t enough to garner an owner visit or free round of drinks like we got in our previous round.   Gotta lean on Lauren for the sales part.    

Lauren and I really loved the dark, old school ambiance of the place, with mirrored walls to enlarge the view and vintage patron photos placed all over.  But the kids thought the xmas-like lights were a bit out of place and talked us down to still a very respectable 4.5 ambiance rating.  Hmm, maybe we gave the kids too much say in this category.  Us old timers should probably carry more weight – like we’ll have after these steaks…

The Steak Is King.  Long Live The King.

Will’s 21 oz. New York Strip is dwarfed by Mega-Potatoe

Enough with the dinner prologue.  The steaks arrived and they looked – spectacular!  Will’s eyes were popping out at his 21 oz. New Yorker, and Lauren was speechless in front of her 12 oz. Delmonico steak and 2 beefy crab cakes combo   My little 8 oz filet was miniscule in comparison, but I made up for it with a 7 oz. lobster tail.  Poor Riley had to put up with us drooling carnivores for the rest of the meal.  Lauren is the foodie in the group so you will have to check out her post as she dives into the delicious details.  I’ll just say that everything was a 5 (it is the Five O’Clock Steakhouse after all), except for the lobster.  Will and Lauren agreed that my lobster was really void of much taste, quite surprising for this caliber of dining.  So that bit moves the food meter down to a 4.75, but still pretty top notch.  Certainly a 5 for the Steaks though.  So the lesson is to stick with just The Turf in the future.

Lauren’s Delmonico Steak and Crab Cakes

Continuing the cocktail tradition, Will had another old fashioned and I ordered a stinger in memory of my dear old dad, once a stinger man way back in his business trip days.   We also ordered a unique tiramisu martini as an after dinner drink along with a group crème brulee as our parting dessert. Classic and delicious little touches to end the night with.

I asked Stephanie about anyone famous from Manitowoc visiting this place and she started to perk up about Steven Avery and the case.  Shocker.  She said after watching season 2 and the Chicago lawyer that she thinks Avery is 0% guilty.  I told her about our Making-A-Supperer theme and its tie to the Avery case.   She said we should bring our supper club book and have the server and or owner sign it for each visit.   Great idea Stephanie, but maybe an even better idea is doing that with our fine postcard invite.  To round out the guilty predictions, Riley was at 60% guilty (a hunch based on only seeing a few of the first episodes) and Will was at 85% guilty (only saw an earlier documentary on it).  Lauren and I stay on our 50% and 90% ratings as no new evidence for us has popped up in the last few weeks.   I need to do some digging.

Highest Rating Yet!

For the most part the service was fabulous and would look like a 5 rating.  But another server Courtney popped over towards the end of our dinner and plopped down her name tag on the edge of our table.  We saw another server tag placed on a table close to us and scratched our heads about what type of game this was.  Courtney returned a few minutes to remove the tag without explanation.  Hmmm.  Later Stephanie told us that was a way to reserve the table by that server for the next round.  Seemed a bit odd to interrupt our dinner with that little exercise and not inform us of what was going on. That little rating ding was balanced out by Stephanie’s extensive Avery feedback.  But then she did forget to serve Lauren’s rice side so that dinged it back down.  Of course we did get a nice little $20 dining gift certificate just as we exited the building.  When the over active service rating meter finally stopped, it still showed a whopping 4.9.  We just can’t call it perfect when a little side dish is forgotten.  That really can’t be ignored.

So our overall rating comes to a 4.75, which is our best of the year so far and may end up as the best at year’s end.  This was really a top-notch vintage supper club experience.  But I should also mention it was very pricey.  Including everything, it came to around $105 per person.  That would have been even higher if Riley wasn’t a vegetarian.  So it was around double what each of our first two outings were this year.  But certainly worth it – to us.  We are 100% Guilty of splurging on this occasion.

Supper with the kids was great again!   It was very entertaining to hear about their college escapades and the stories surrounding their high school buds.  Certainly a different type of discussion from when we’re dining with our older friends.  I love the mix of victims that are playing out with this tour.   Hmm, I wonder if any of our Indian friends have dined at a supper club before…

[junker-town]

Baseball can’t rebuild Puerto Rico, but its return is a comfort after Hurricane Maria

Puerto Rico has been focused on its recovery since the devastation of Hurricane Maria. This week, MLB comes to San Juan for what will be a welcome distraction.

Bob Saget is joking about milking an Omaha cow.

Outside, New York City is frigid and windy but the air inside midtown’s Hunt & Fish Club in mid-November is far warmer, thick with money and the smell of catered sirloin. And in some sort of record for the most unexpected non sequitur from a celebrity guest, Saget is riffing about cows on stage.

He’s not doing stand-up. Saget is standing on a makeshift platform inside the high-end steakhouse alongside millionaire restaurateur and Hunt & Fish Club co-founder Eytan Sugarman, former Yankees star Jorge Posada and his wife Laura, and other wealthy friends who helped make this event — a fundraiser co-hosted by the Posadas in support of The Foundation for Puerto Rico’s Hurricane Maria Relief Fund — happen on short notice.

Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard steadily cycles through the crowd. A top investor grabs another glass of wine before chatting with Yankees legend Bernie Williams, who applauded the Posadas for being a leader among a group of current and former players who all want to help Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Carlos Beltran, the newly minted World Series champion and advocate for Puerto Rico’s recovery, stands off to the side taking everything in and dispelling rumors that he has aims to be the next Yankees’ manager.

“We have been working tirelessly to show the world that we are open for tourism and business and the MLB celebration will play a significant role in doing so.” - Puerto Rico governor Ricardo Rosselló

It is less than two months since Maria hit Puerto Rico, destroying nearly everything in its path and leaving the island’s more than three million residents without electricity, water, or channels of communication. For Posada, the effort was personal. His parents are some of the many U.S. citizens who refused to evacuate despite multiple months without power and extensive hardships on the ground, which in some of the worst-hit areas included dangerous caiman-filled flood waters up to 16 feet high.

MLB is coming to the island at a good time. On Tuesday, the Indians and Twins will meet in San Juan for the start of a short series that was announced long before the hurricanes occurred.

For some of the players fundraising in Manhattan, Puerto Rico isn’t just their home, but the reason they were able to play professional baseball in the first place. Posada was an all-star shortstop at Alejandrino High School in San Juan, and he has spoken about how even if his father wasn’t a pro scout, baseball would have been impossible to escape as a kid. As a continuation of his own baseball legacy, Beltran opened The Carlos Beltran Academy in Puerto Rico in 2011, aimed at using kids’ love of baseball to maximize their educational and scholarship opportunities. Williams was signed as an undrafted free agent out of Puerto Rico on his 17th birthday.

Baseball and Puerto Rico are inextricably linked. The support of MLB players and teams after Hurricane Maria is emblematic of how strong that relationship is. By the time a Hamilton star is singing to a room full of donors and players in this gilded room, the Posadas have already made multiple aid trips, starting out helping the most at risk people — families, children, the elderly, and those who needed immediate medical attention — before moving on to “Phase 2” of “cleanup, rebuilding, and infusing the economy.”

It will be a long time before Puerto Rico is back to normal. In the meantime, baseball is always welcome.

Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images

Before the game between Puerto Rico and Spain during the first round of the World Baseball Classic at Hiram Bithorn Stadium on March 8, 2013.

A namesake stadium

Hiram Bithorn Stadium is Puerto Rico’s most famous baseball field, named after the first Puerto Rican player to play in Major League Baseball, and as good a symbol as any of the island’s storied baseball tradition. Maria all but destroyed it.

The batting cages, the outfield fences, the statue of Bithorn that welcomed fans to games, all gone or mangled. Not many structures can stand up to the nearly 150 MPH winds that stemmed from a storm bigger than the island itself. Hiram Bithorn was no exception.

The last MLB series to be played in San Juan was back in 2010 between the Mets and the Marlins. While Hiram Bithorn may not be restored to its former glory quite yet, the stands should be packed for the return of some of Puerto Rico’s favorite sons, like Francisco Lindor and Eddie Rosario.

Puerto Rico worked hard to make sure this series would happen as planned. Carla Campos, acting director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company, told me her hope is that the island can leverage one of the most challenging situations in a generation to make Puerto Rico even better than it was before. In 2016, tourism directly or indirectly supported 6.9 percent of all employment on the island, and contributed to 8 percent of the territory’s total GDP. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council’s analysis, those figures were projected to rise in 2017 before being interrupted by Maria.

Right now, the company’s efforts are focused on high-trafficked tourist areas, like around Hiram Bithorn in San Juan. That includes renovating hotels that were damaged in the storm and building new ones, getting cruise ships (one of the largest pieces of the tourism sector) back into port as soon as possible, and stabilizing air access.

Campos says the perception of the island’s condition has been difficult for the rebounding tourism industry to overcome, that travelers misunderstand how ready Puerto Rico is to welcome them back. And travelers are important for far more than the money they are spending on a surface level. The rebounding tourism industry allows people to get back to work and back to a routine — as Campos puts it, to “get to that sense of normalcy again.”

The series, with all of its coverage and ceremonial MLB trappings, can show how far the island has come in such a short time and encourage the necessary influx of vacationers.

Governor Ricardo Rosselló told SB Nation about Major League Baseball coming to the island: “We have been working tirelessly to show the world that we are open for tourism and business and the MLB celebration will play a significant role in doing so.”

Just as importantly, the coverage around the games has the chance to serve as a reminder of how far the island still has to go.

AFP/Getty Images

Aerial view of the flooded neighborhood of Juana Matos in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Catano, Puerto Rico.

Traditions to hold on to

Puerto Rico’s first baseball game was played in 1989 in San Juan, and the island’s professional league (approximately equivalent to the AA circuit) the Liga de Béisbol Profesional Roberto Clemente (LBPRC) has existed in some form since 1938. In all of the years of its existence, it has only missed one year of action — a restructuring in 2007. It was renamed in honor of Roberto Clemente in 2012.

After Maria, the league was almost forced to take the year off, but organizers decided the league had become a tradition that was too important not to play. Four teams were able to take part — the Mayaguez Indians, the Cangrejeros de Santurce, Criollos de Caguas, and Carolina Giants — in a limited series of games in January all played during the day, free for fans. The Criollos won their 18th title, tying the Indians for the most all-time, and went on to defend their Caribbean Series title.

Caguas and Mayaguez were lucky when it came to their baseball stadiums: neither was damaged beyond use and all four teams rotated using those fields for the season. They moved forward during a difficult period of time for the same reason the Twins-Indians game needed to (as the league decided in January): to try and insert some normalcy into life after the hurricane.

“People have been used to these traditions year after year for 50 years … they all expect the season.” - Dr. Ismael Pagan-Trinidad, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez

Dr. Ismael Pagan-Trinidad works in the civil engineering department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez with a focus on coastal resilient infrastructure. He explained how important the series would be for the community. In December, a month out from the league’s truncated season, people in Mayaguez were still using car batteries and converters to power their homes, or taking batteries from their computers and jerry-rigging them so that they could use their televisions, refrigerators, and lights.

In addition to his work at the University, Pagan-Trinidad is a member of the NCAA D-II Management Council and the co-owner of a team in Puerto Rico’s women’s volleyball league. He explained that after the hurricanes, sports largely came to a standstill in Puerto Rico. The women’s volleyball league canceled their season due to Maria, and the men canceled their planned tournament after only a few games played. Athletes on professional service contracts aren’t able to receive necessary benefits, and training on their own was almost impossible due to the lack of facilities.

Even if sports could be played normally, it’s hard to tell how many of the usual players would be around to participate. A significant portion of Puerto Rico’s population shifted to the mainland United States, and those who stayed often understandably had more pressing priorities than sports.

With baseball still being played, even on a limited basis, it gave the community something else to focus on. Before it was confirmed that baseball would return, Pagan-Trinidad said in Mayaguez, “people have been used to these traditions year after year for 50 years … they all expect the season … and people are waiting for that.”

He said fans were shocked at even the possibility that baseball wouldn’t be played this year.

WireImage

Carlos Beltran hitting an RBI single for Puerto Rico against Cuba during the 2006 World Baseball Classic at Hiram Bithorn Stadium.

“Sometimes it takes a toll on you”

If you took a bird’s eye view of Puerto Rico and drew a line down the middle, north to south, you would only miss passing directly through the small city of Coamo by a hair. Home of AAU Baseball district director Normand Valliere, it is still dealing with setbacks more than seven months after Maria.

Coamo’s baseball fields weren’t as lucky as those in Mayaguez or Caguas, and it didn’t have the same repair priority as Hiram Bithorn. Valliere’s AAU program, the 61st district in the AAU baseball system (similar to the ever-present AAU basketball circuit on the mainland), is only a little more than a year old. Before Maria hit it was growing and expanding as well as anyone could have hoped, hosting a tournament last May. Now, Coamo’s fields are destroyed as Valliere is trying to get the available kids back on a field any way possible.

Southern cities and towns were hit hardest by Maria, and their geographic location made them more difficult to reach during rescue efforts and supply distribution. Valliere is an Air Force veteran and described looking at the area in the aftermath as like looking at the photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombs dropped. Brown land as far as the eye could see, with no trees left standing and “everything they cherished” gone in less than a day.

After the storm, with local and federal government support all but invisible, Coamo’s residents started stringing up power lines themselves. Valliere is critical of the ways in which he feels both the U.S. and local governments failed Puerto Rico through slow responses or inaction. After coming back from a few weeks with family in Tampa he found that it hurt especially hard to return to what felt like a lack of progress in his community.

Valliere noticed an immediate change in people’s behaviors and attitudes after Maria, that people were worried about whether something of this scale could happen to them again, and whether they were ever going to get back to normal. Local sports being “put on the back burner” only exacerbated this mood. Valliere is trying to help by doing “things that could be really enjoyable for [the] kids and our families, just to have something to share and to get their minds off of all the problems [they] encounter.” Valliere’s goal is to get the baseball fields fully rebuilt, and to have the kids in his program be able to play freely and without daylight or location restrictions.

The wider AAU organization has shown nothing but support for District 61, helping with fees and logistics in the lead up to the National and Grand National tournaments that will take place this summer in Florida. Valliere is hoping to send at least two teams in hopes of giving the teenagers in his program something to prepare for and accomplish rather than linger on Coamo’s continuing struggles.

According to Secretary of Sports and Recreation Adriana Sanchez, the government is working with FEMA and others to get all complexes, but baseball especially, back up to snuff so that kids can be back outside and playing. While they say they are on track with their efforts, things are still far from where they were.

During our conversations, Valliere didn’t miss a chance to remind me of all the help still needed on the island — of the magic they need to start having normal lives again, and how important it is for people in the 50 states to not forget how tough life is for hundreds of thousands of people living only a short flight away from their mainland homes.

Getty Images

Hiram Bithorn Stadium before a game between the Texas Rangers and the Toronto Blue Jays in 2001.

A little hope and happiness

No matter their current situation, Puerto Ricans are largely happy the MLB series is happening, and that Puerto Rican players are returning at this crucial time. MLB could not have known the circumstances these games would be played under when it first announced the teams and dates last June, but the series is resonating with people who desperately need a break.

Sanchez said that increased tourism could help create future opportunities for lower profile sports on the island. She specifically cited Alex Cora’s clause in his managerial contract with the Red Sox that guaranteed a relief trip, one that donated 10 tons of supplies to the island and $200,000 to Cora’s hometown of Caguas to help restore electricity. In tandem with MLB and this series, her department is offering clinics for players between 14 and 18 years old in multiple municipalities.

Other events have been held on the island since Maria hit — including an Iron Man, and an unofficial PGA Tour event — but Campos is excited for the magnitude of the Indians-Twins series, and the boost it will provide now that the island is better prepared to welcome visitors.

For all of the fury that Valliere carries about the ways in which government has failed Puerto Rico, he was grateful for what MLB owners and players have done, and are still doing, to help those in need on the island. His only complaint was that more of them could have followed the lead of Astros owner Jim Crane, who deployed a plane full of supplies within weeks of the hurricane (“I wish everyone would have done the same thing”). But, he acknowledges, overall he thinks MLB has showed an incredible display of support.

“They have done an amazing job, OK? They’re going to continue doing it because one of the things we do have is we just love our island. We love our people and we do whatever it takes to get it back to normal. And they’re doing a heck of a job.”

The most unabashed excitement I’d heard in Valliere’s voice throughout multiple conversations was when he praised the two-game series.

“It was like they’re mad and ready to get going. To pick themselves up and dust themselves off and just keep going.” - Bernie Williams

“We need things like that, because it will take your mind off of all the problems that we have and we get a week,” Valliere said. “A week of happiness. Because we do have kids that are athletes, and we’ve got players like Francisco Lindor and Roberto Perez and Eddie Rosario ... and Eddie Vargas and I’m just mentioning a couple. They’re going to be here and it’s going to be the first time, and I’ll bet you their hearts are beating probably a thousand times harder than they used to because they want to play in front of people.

”Just to bring a little bit of hope and happiness to us, that’s all that matters right now.”

Hurricane season is mere weeks away, and it’s impossible to predict what setbacks could arise over the next few months. The phrase that came up most often in conversations with Valliere and others is that the communities will keep working. They’re working together, working as a team, working for the kids, and “working their butts off” to get back to some kind of normal.

In Mayaguez, Pagan-Trinidad is already helping his community prepare for next time, despite how tough it is to imagine that this might happen again. Students are learning practical applications of their civil engineering studies — how to create hydro power in emergency conditions, for one — and the area is planning how to live for months without clean water, or how to get through the early stages of an emergency more effectively knowing they won’t be able to communicate with other parts of the island for multiple weeks.

Puerto Ricans are resilient, one of the first things they will tell you when looking back on the last seven months. Bernie Williams said as much back in November when I asked him what struck him most when visiting his hometown for the first time after Maria.

“People still manage to find happiness,” he said. “In the midst of this tragedy they still find a way to make humor in light of the fact that they are going through one of the worst natural disasters that have hit the island in the past hundred years … It was like they’re mad and ready to get going. To pick themselves up and dust themselves off and just keep going.”

Williams is singing the national anthem to start the series and Carlos Beltran is throwing out the first pitch. They’ll be leading off two days of excitement for fans all across the island. Two days for fans to be distracted from hardships on the ground, the lack of basic necessities and all of the problems still gnawing at the back of their minds waiting to be solved.

Then after it’s over, when both team planes have been packed up and pointed back to the mainland so that the Indians and Twins can continue their seasons, Puerto Rico will get back to the many problems at hand. Because there’s still so much work to be done.

[melaniescholtz]

more for your taste buds ... less on your wallet - Dining in and out in The Big Apple

Location : East village, Manhattan 

Late morning snack/ bargain : Nothing extravagant unfortunately .... Only apple cinnamon flavoured Greek style yoghurt with fresh blueberries and banana - The yoghurts were 3 for 2 at Ctown :) 

Recommended listening : Some East village birds that think Spring is on it’s way. Later .... An impromptu duet of Let’s call the whole thing off while stuffing a sirloin :)

So, If someone told me a couple of years ago that I would be moving to the US, let alone NYC, I would have said, you’re soooo pulling my leg, but hey, here I am :) 

There is no place quite like NYC on the planet. It is a proverbial Mecca of everything. Art. Music, food, fashion. A smorgasbord of inspiration and effervescence. You are so spoiled for choice on all these fronts and when it comes to food, restaurants are hard pressed to deliver as the competition is among the toughest in the world. The competition for your tastebuds and all your other senses starts here. 

Well, as the focus of my article today is trying to eat well for less in NYC , let’s start by saying that eating out as a twosome with drinks could easily cost you 80 to 100 dollars a night. But fear not , cause there are some amazing restaurants of some popular cuisines that will definitely leave you satisfied and with a doggie bag for the next day :) 

Eating out : 

Affordable Italian : 

John’s of 12th street provides the bustle and organized mayhem of a family run Italian Trattoria. I had the spaghetti and meatballs, that to my surprise, happily resembled a portion in the animated classic, Cloudy with a chance of meatballs :). Brian, my boyfriend, had another Italian classic called Chicken Parmigiana with spaghetti. Nicely washed down with a glass each of Montepulciano D’abbruzzo, our meal came to 58,90 USD. Then you’re supposed to leave 20 percent tip. ( Yup they really nail you when it comes to tipping in NYC ) 

For a romantic and typical red and white table clothed experience visit https://www.johnsof12thstreet.com/

Affordable Mexican : 

Tortuga on 14th Street is your typical Mexican cantina fully equipped with a salsa and taco chip bar as well as frozen margarita dispenser. You can have a breakfast special for 10 dollars with tip :) 

The huevo rancheros is particularly good and you get to choose two dishes for 7,95 USD when choosing from their breakfast/ brunch menu.

Muy bien :)  .... for more information visit http://hoteltortuganyc.com/

Other cheap and delicious restaurants : 

Dumpling man -  visit http://www.dumplingman.com/  (Asian )

Crif Dogs - visit  http://www.crifdogs.com/ ( American) 

Sarita’s Mac and Cheese - http://www.smacnyc.com/ ( American/ Southern) 

Eating in : 

New Yorkers generally tend to eat out as their lifestyles are beyond busy but there are the few that steer away from the crowd and decide to cook at home. 

The main places to grocery shop would be Whole foods, Trader Joes, Associated Supermarkets and Ctown. 

Personally I have found Ctown to be the most affordable and to have good quality meats, fruits and vegetables. 

Today’s bill came to 61 USD and the ingredients we bought can easily make 4 meals. 

I bought some beef sirloin for 3,39 USD 

A packet of beef chuck mince - 4,40 USD 

A packet of spaghetti - 1, 49 USD 

A packet  of macaroni - 1,99 USD 

Cheddar cheese for 1,99 USD each 

A pack of chicken thighs - 2,49 USD 

Eggs per dozen - 1,49 USD 

So, not going to run down my whole receipt, but just to give you an idea...

From those core ingredients, I will make a mac and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs and a thai red peanut butter chicken curry. That’s on tomorrow’s menu ... Brian’s favourite  farewell dish before he goes on a mini tour this weekend. 

The Special of the Day today is feta, cherry tomato and herb stuffed sirloin :) Served on a bed of oven roasted sweet potato and a steamed broccoli,green bean, iceberg and avocado green salad... Yum , right ?:) 

It’s such an easy recipe : 

The filling : 

a handful of finely chopped cherry tomatoes 

half a bar of crumbled feta 

Handful of chopped cilantro ( coriander/ Dhania) (don’t forget the stalks) 

dried oregano 

pepper 

finely chopped garlic 

a glug of olive oil 

Mix well and set aside 

Then put the filling all the way down on the shop flattened sirloin and start to roll. Toothpick to keep in place and place in an oven try on top of chopped sweet potato. Drizzle the stuffed sirloin with olive oil, a little salt and pepper for seasoning and bake in the oven for 35 mins at 400 F/ 200 C.  

Remove at round about 35 mins and let rest. Pop the potatoes back in for another 20 mins and serve ....  (I know, I am super impatient too, but nothing worse than a potato or sweet potato that’s not quite there yet ! )Enjoy : ) 

PS... if some of the filling spills out the side of the sirloin, just pop it on the potatoes before putting in the oven! 

Here’s one I made earlier ( hehehe) 

Before 

After 

[discovercreate]

European Garden-Inspired Wedding on the Eastern Shore

I’m typically not one to be at a loss for words but when this European garden-inspired wedding landed on my desk, I was left utterly speechless. It’s the design genius of Lauryn Prattes that made for incredible details like the bride’s favorite poem calligraphed on the table runner, not to mention floral works of art crafted by Sweet Root Village. Lisa Ziesing for Abby Jiu Photography told the story behind her lens and this glimpse is only the beginning.

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  I’m typically not one to be at a loss for words but when this European garden-inspired wedding landed on my desk, I was left utterly speechless. It’s the design genius of Lauryn Prattes that made for incredible details like the bride’s favorite poem calligraphed on the table runner, not to mention floral works of art crafted by Sweet Root Village. Lisa Ziesing for Abby Jiu Photography told the story behind her lens and this glimpse is only the beginning.

European Garden Inspiration: Lauren has the most incredible sense of style and decisive nature, making her an absolute dream bride! From the start, Lauren knew she wanted a long sleeve Berta Bridal Gown, which set the tone for the rest of the planning. Bridesmaids were dressed in chic black long gowns and the gentlemen donned a classic black tux. The venue is a private estate nestled along the Wye River in Maryland. Florals featuring lisianthus, greens, and other white blooms lined the ceremony aisle and guests tossed white rose petals and olive leaves at the couple after they said: “I Do”.

Upon arrival to the Eastern Shore of Maryland wedding guests were welcomed with custom curated welcome boxes featuring treats from a few special places to the couple – a postcard welcome note featured dogwoods from Virginia where the couple had previously lived, pralines from Charleston, New Jersey blueberry jam homemade by the bride and her grandmother and of course crab chips, a Maryland favorite.

The ceremony took place outside overlooking the Wye River. Pre-ceremony cocktails allowed guests to mingle until ready for the ceremony to start. As the couple walked back up the aisle they were showered in rose petals and olive leaves. During cocktail hour guests sipped on signature cocktails named after the bride and grooms pets, such as Pippa’s Prosecco Punch featuring a silhouette cut out of the bride’s Persian cat Pippa.

In lieu of a tent top, guests dined al fresco under a vine-covered structure and antiqued bronze chandeliers. Signature cocktails were named after the couple’s two pets and featured a silhouette cutout of each. Lauren and Randy danced their first dance together to The Four Season’s, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” a tribute to the groom’s Jersey roots. Place settings featured Art Italica plates with gold matte flatware and menu’s tucked into vellum envelopes with each guest name delicately calligraphed and sealed with a custom wax seal of the local Wye Oak tree. Green vine and a flower also adorned each place setting. Dinner included fresh ingredients from local farms and featured a Chesapeake rockfish and Old Bay rubbed sirloin. Lauren wanted each guest to enjoy the food that reminded her of home.

The head table featured a white paper runner with Lauren’s favorite poem from Pablo Neruda calligraphed on each end. This was covered with a hand dyed silk runner from silk and willow. The cake was a lemon elderflower cake decorated with white bas relief and green sugar vines. Guests also indulged in a local favorite, Smith Island cake, a traditional cake in Maryland with a true love story history.

Photography: Abby Jiu Photography | Event Design: Lauryn Prattes Styling and Events | Floral Design: Sweet Root Village | Gown: Berta Bridal | Bakery: Buttercream Bakeshop | Makeup: Carl Ray Makeup Artist | Hair: Jewel Hair Design | Calligraphy: Spurle Gul Studios | Ceremony Music: Two Rivers Chamber Music | Venue: Wye River Estate | Tent: Sugarplum Tents | Custom Dyed Silk Ribbon: Honey Silks And Company | Invitation : Cavanaugh Press | Linens: Nuage Designs | Reception Band: Jump Street with East Coast Entertainment | Rentals: Party Rental LTD | Vintage Rentals, Custom Bar and China: White Glove Rentals

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