Gally

who's buying on sale easter choco tomorrow? >P

also, watching Nigella Express:
who knew that a quick chocolate mousse can be made with chocolate chips, a little butter, a little water, and marshmellows?! mmmm...

Hump day was lazy food day, meaning no one felt like cooking. After a long day at work, and trying to eat more healthy we tried for at least 20min to come up with a restuarant to hit up that wasn't chinese and grease-filled. How we settled on Dante's... well, I do know. The guys said they hadn't been there in many moons and I've never been, though I've heard a rave (and semi-drunken) review from my cousin about the spaghetti there. When we arrived at Dante's, I kid you not, there was a fleet of take-out cars lined up outside the place. I counted at least five. Five! Your regular pizza joint doesn't even have a fleet like this little Mom&Pop's. The food was good, the portions huge, and the bill was average. In fact, the menu has a wordy disclaimer about paying a fair amount for the food that you get... as the prices aren't mom&pop type, though not expensive. (eg. 12" 'small' pizza was $24) We had chicken cesear, pizza, and gnocchi and I think the salad did us in as it was huge. We bagged enough for a 2nd and 3rd meal, so it was actually not bad economically :P

Though the highlight of going out to Dante's wasn't Dante's itself, but its' culinary neighbour, Gourmet Chinese. Yes. Featuring "Empress Fried Chicken". I did not know that the Empress fried chicken, or that you could get the Empress herself to fry it for you! The boys noticed that Dante's had a new express take-out section. So, the Empress may have downsized. We left Dante's around 9pm and the lights were still on next door. The Empress must still be frying her chicken. Way in the back, because there wasn't a soul out front.

I have to go back there, if only to take a picture of the sign XD

Another day, another con, and more loot and props to bring home. Again we hung out with Mom's crew, and Vario was awesome helping out tear down the display and carting away all the heavy stuff. After last night's bad italian food, Mom said she felt like having "good fish", meaning not fried a la fish and chips. So I called up jlunar out of the blue and asked about good seafood restaurants. After going through a few of them we settled on Mediterra, a few blocks north of us. Awesome choice, and six appreciative props to jlunar for the pick - we didn't just have good fish, we had excellent fish. I highly recommend their chilean sea bass, which I will go back for because it just melted in your mouth, as well as the mango sorbet and tiramisu. So very, very, delicious.

Oh, and just for myclevername, I partook in my first PearlDay! Only, no pics this time. Maybe next time ;)

This weekend has been really cool so far. I've been hanging out with my Mom at her first convention ever, where she's exhibiting (dealer table like) and even has had a few speaking sessions! Go Mom! :D Vario has also been awesome in attending with me and hanging out with Mom's crew, even though I know he's mostly bored at these kind of things. Though, he did get a nice massage at the convention and I think I'll get myself one or two today (oh, happy feet!) too! We even splurged a bit on some cool titanium cookware, which is the love child of cast iron and teflon. I think we might splurge a bit more and buy a super awesome mixer today :O Maybe we're just suckers XD;;;

Afterwards we all trundled down to East Side Mario's for dinner, and the service didn't blow, but it was definitly not on par for a restaurant that was NOT hoppin' busy on a Saturday night. They took their sweet time seating us, and then the food wasn't that great, and they practically forgot about us after we recieved the bill. The lasagna didn't even fill half of the dish it came in, and the two guys that split it thought it was gross. Vario and I are trying to eat more healthy, so we went for the whole wheat pasta. Bad idea. The sauce was good, the ingredients were good, but the pasta killed it. The sad thing is, the whole wheat pasta that I bought at Zellers was better than ESM's.

Well, I know now why I eat at ESM so seldomly!
Next time, it's worth the longer wait for a table, or a longer walk in the biting wind for a decent meal.