Monday, Monday

Breakfast? Hah! I had nothing until after the meeting tonight (I lost a pound).

On the way home, I stopped at Living Green for some various vegetables, and at Albertsons for Watermelon and some other stuff.

I had defrosted some shrimp the other day, so I opened cans of diced tomatoes, straw mushrooms, and artichokes, and added some garlic, capers, peperocini and pearl onions.

I brought all that to a simmer, then added the shrimp. Just a few minutes later, it was ready. Sorry about the photo quality... there was some dirt on the lens of my phone.

 

While all this was cooking, I cut up a TON of vegetables to roast. Unlike tonight's dinner, everything was fresh... no cans. 

There was an Eggplant, Four Celery Stalks, three Sweet Potatoes, sour (small) Regular Potatoes, Baby Carrots, a Green Pepper, a Red Pepper, two Onions, sliced Mushrooms, two Cubanelle Peppers, two small Jalapeno Peppers, three Yellow Squashes, two Zucchini Squashes, a bunch of Garlic Cloves, and two heads of Broccoli. They're currently roasting in the oven. If I eat any tonight, I will add a new post.

I am going to have some Watermelon now.

Smokey Bones - Game 2

Target had Strawberries on sale, so I had some in a defensive move. They were some nice Strawberries.

 Phyllis, Jeff and I watched Game 2 of the NBA Finals at Smokey Bones in Wellington, on Forest Blvd.

Ashley served us, and she did a great job. Normally, they flash-fry their smoked wings to warm them up, but she talked the kitchen into grilling them for me. I had 15 of them; Jeff ate the other one. Who says that I don't share?

The Heat won, by the way.

Brick Oven Pizza - Delray

I drove to Delray to see my friend Sandy before he moves to Cleveland. Lee was there, too. We went to Brick Oven Pizza on Atlantic Avenue. We split a pizza with pepperoni and tomatoes. Despite my best efforts to behave, I ate half the pie.

Some watermelon at night before bed.

Texas Hold 'em BBQ

Texas Holdem BBQ has moved around Ft. Lauderdale for years, and, like a cat who knows which house puts out the treats, I have followed them from Sunrise Boulevard to Downtown Ft. Lauderdale, and now to their new location on US1 and 26th Street.

Their building that they are now in has housed many different restaurants and bars over the years, and I have probably tried all of them before they went belly up and out of business. One of their incarnations had a big []_[] on the wall, so we went there for a game, and they even managed to screw that up. I decided that the location was cursed.

Texas Holdem has always had good food, and they've gone out of their way to take care of their customers. I told Jim and Angela that this would be a good test to see if the building was, indeed, cursed.

I believe that it is.

Their food has never been cheap, and it remains that way. The waitress finally shows up for our order -- there were two servers and a total of four tables occupied. Jim and Angela each ordered the Half Baby Back Dinner with Two Sides. It was listed as $18.95 on the menu. I ordered the 'bucket' of Rib Tips (also $18.95). They promise three pounds of the stuff. I figured that I would take home the rest.

Angela and Jim get their food. The half rack consists of six very meaty ribs. They both enjoyed it.

 When my order finally comes, it hardly looks like there is three pounds of food on the plate.

When I asked about it, she told me that I didn't order the bucket (I had two witnesses), but if I wanted to change my order, she would do it. A little later, the Chef Guy brought another plate with about twice as much as the one in the picture.

For those of you keeping score, I ate them all.

The check comes. It has the Rib Meals listed for $22.95. When I questioned it, she told me I was wrong (again!), muttered something about Baby Backs costing $3 more, and stormed off to get a menu. When she brought the menu, there was nothing on the entire page that cost $22.95. Nothing. And there it was: Half Baby Back Dinner with Two Sides... $18.95. She stormed off again.

Ten minutes later, she brought a new check and said, "It's fixed. Sorry about that." We were impressed that she didn't yell at us until I saw that she had the two rib meals for $19.95. Closer this time, but still not $18.95. When I told her that it was still wrong, she argued again, finally storming off a third time, and telling us to talk to her hand.

When she came back again, Jim and I were on the phone. She told us (while we were talking) that "the restaurant has only been open THREE MONTHS, and they're still working on the computer system." We ignored her and finished our calls. When we hung up, she told us that she was trying to talk to us, and we should have hung up our telephones. She said that she took another $2 off of our check, and was apparently disappointed when all we said in return was, "good." She huffed and walked away again.

We paid and left like a $3 tip. I voted for zero, but Jim wanted to leave something.

For all I know, she is the same idiot waitress that worked there for all the other restaurants and came with the building. The guys on Sunrise Boulevard certainly never lectured their customers -- they thanked us for the business and encouraged us to return. The place is cursed.

It doesn't matter how good the food is, if you're putting a moron on the front line to deal with the customers, they're not coming back. I can not imagine that the management there is condoning this level of service, but that's not our problem. If we're going to drop upwards of sixty bucks on LUNCH, don't have your help abuse the customers.

I eat out a lot, and have been doing the blog since the beginning of March. Go back and read -- I don't complain about the service that often, and certainly not at the level of this place, where I will forgo good food because of the lousy service.

Tee-Jay Thai Sushi

I was sure that I was not eating a big dinner last night. Maybe not even any dinner.

So there we are: Samantha, Gino, Lonnise, Mike, and me at Tee-Jay Thai Sushi in Lighthouse point. They were all raving about the place, so I went.

Dinner was very good.

They're regulars there, apparently. We started by sharing a couple of non-menu appetizers: Tuna Something in a Wonderful Sauce and its partner, Salmon Something in the same sauce. I had two pieces of each, and some of the salad (soaked in the wonderful sauce).

Here's Mike, looking all bad-ass, in front of the Tuna Something:

There were a lot of ways that I could go for my main dish. I briefly flirted with having three appetizers, then the Crispy Whole Snapper was a front-runner, but I was still slightly butt-hurt by there not being any Soft Shell Crabs at the Rustic Inn a couple of weeks ago, so I ordered the Garlic Pepper Soft Shell Crab with Jasmine Rice and Mixed Vegetables.

Since I was Eating Too Much, I also ordered a Grilled Whole Calamari.

The Crab dish was awesome. I enjoyed it immensely, and got my soft shell fix in, so I'm good for a while. I will be at Nathan's in Coney Island in a couple of weeks. When I was a child, Phil used to take me there for the SOft-Shell Crab Sandwich; if they still have it, you can count me in.

The Calamari was good, but compared to the Crab, it wasn't very exciting. If I had eaten it as an appetizer, I think that I would have been more thrilled by it.

Tee-Jay had some very attractive looking (and expensive) sushi roll options. Two of our group ordered the Bangkok Roll. It looked good, and you get to say "Bangkok."

There were some other rolls scattered about, and a plate of Curry Something that looked good as well.

Lonnise had the Lucky Wonton Soup. I guess that she was lucky to have ordered it; she said that it was delicious. She ate a lot of it, and had what appeared to be plenty to take home. Lonnise is the leader in guest photos here on the blog, and here she is, adding to her first-place total:

Would I return? Yes. Is Tee-Jay a little costlier than many restaurants of its type? Yes again. Is the higher cost justified by the high quality of their food? I think so.

Friday - Not including Dinner

For the first time this week, I didn't eat breakfast. I know I'm supposed to, but I have a problem with it.

At 11:45, I cooked up some Asparagus. They were great, even though it turned out that the container they came in was not microwave-friendly.

 I had a Bowl of watermelon at 1 pm.

My friend Toni told me that the Spring Rolls I ate at the Vietnamese Restaurant with my mother last week were wrapped in a Rice-based wrapper. It turns out that she eats this kind of food regularly, and she told me about a place on 441 and Commercial that had the same stuff - and more.

I will be damned if I can remember the name now, but I went there and had: Spring Rolls and Soup.

The menu was huge -- I will go back again and get the name and stuff. They had the same soups as the place in Hollywood -- and much, much more. I had the Hot & Sour Seafood Noodle Soup. It was excellent, I was thrilled that I won't have to drive all over Hell and Creation to enjoy this stuff now.

To thank her, I brought Toni an order of Spring Rolls. She now makes her Blog Debut!

I am eating too much lately. I will type up dinner in the morning.

Thursday... Game 1

For Breakfast today (third day in a row!), I had 7 ounces of Turkey Breast roll-ups with Mustard.

A little later, you could have caught me enjoying a bowl of Watermelon. And then, a bag of raw String Beans.

After telling Dave and Cherie that I was not going out for Lunch, I found myself downing four bowls of Chicken Noodle Soup at Boston Market on Atlantic and 441. The black specs are ground peppercorns. There are grinders on every table.

I met Jeff at Flanigans in Boca for Game 1 of the Heat series. We won Game 7 against the Pacers with us there, so we had high hopes.

I had the Tuna Steak (blackened) with Dirty Rice. I also ordered the side salad, no cheese, so croutons, and no bacon. They have fat-free Sun-dried Tomato dressing, so I used that.

The Tuna steak was really good. They do a good job with that. The salad was, well, a salad.

The Spurs just outright beat us last night. We will see on Sunday.

It's Wednesday!

Day Two of Operation: Eat Breakfast started with me nuking a Lean Cuisine Steak Tips Portabello. It wasn't great, but it is food.

Yuri had brought some Grapes to work. They weren't frozen, so I only had two of them.

I finished the morning section of my day with a bowl of Watermelon.

We ordered Lunch in from Joe Knows Lunch. I had the Vegetable Wrap, minus the cheese, and had them add grilled chicken breast. It was surprisingly good.

Johanna recently returned from Colombia, and she brought me two native lollipops (one chocolate, one milk flavored), and a key chain with coffee beans that smells like, well, coffee. I had the chocolate pop today. It was chocolate-ly.

Around three, I had a package of Strawberries. They're in season, so they're good. And cheap.

At 4:30, some bananas.

During the day, Sergio had told me that one of the things that he enjoyed about reading my Meals was that I 'mixed it up' and had different things every day. So what did I do? I had the same thing for dinner as I did yesterday.

For dinner tonight, I had more Smoked Turkey Wings. Why? First, they're good. And second, they were already in the refrigerator.

Well, I will try to have more varied meals tomorrow, but I suspect that there will be Watermelon involved.

Tuesday, June 4

Viv told me to eat breakfast every day. She defined breakfast as a food eaten withing two hours of awakening.

I woke up at 7:09. At 8:42, I had a bowl of Watermelon. Hah!

Another bowl later.

Later, I was hungry, so I cut up some yellow squash, added some seasoning, and nuked it.

I'm glad that I took a photo before I cooked them, because I forgot to do so after.

At dinner time, I decided to drive over to Andrews Meat Market (or whatever it is called now) to get a whole fish. I was going to do something to it; wasn't sure what, but something.

But, they're closed at 8:37, so that was out. I went to Publix and stocked up on fruit, vegetables and Smoked Turkey Wings..

 They were great. Five pieces were one too many, but five it was.

 A little later, I had six plumbs. That's it for the day.

Heat Crush Pacers; Rich Has Dinner

I was too excited to eat today, so I was pretty hungry by the time Jeff, Lonnise and I got to Flanigans on US1 in Boca Raton tonight.

Once the game started, I ordered a bowl of the Zesty Seafood Gumbo.

It wasn't all that zesty, but it was good and full of stuff.

For my main dish, I ordered the Salad with a piece of Blackened Dolphin.

The fish was good; so was the salad. And there was plenty of it. I used the fat-free raspberry dressing. With the salad, I had a side order of Black Rice and Beans.

Lonnise ordered a rack of ribs. There were a lot on this rack.

I helped her with three of them. She wound up taking home enough for Lunch tomorrow.

After the game, and the wild dancing on the streets of Boca Raton, I had a bowl of Watermelon. Now... bedtime.

Sunday, June 2

I spent the afternoon with Loretta. She came over tho check out the Murphy Bed, and then we went and inspected a rehab place for when she gets her knee operated on next month.

For lunch, I took her to Pho 79, the Vietnamese place where they have the wonderful noodle soups.

We started by splitting an order of Spring Rolls.

She liked them a lot, and so did I.

This time, I ordered the Large bowl of noodle soup (Loretta got the small). I had it with three meats this time: Brisket, Rare Roast Beef, and another cut of beef (I don't remember).

It was really great. Loretta had the seafood version: Shrimp, Scallop, Calamar and fake Crabmeat. She really liked the soup and the noodles and the Shrimp and the Scallop, but could have lived without the Calamar and fake Crab, she said.

Back at the house, I had some watermelon. A little bit later, four or five oranges.

Later, in a surprise development, more Watermelon.

At around 11:30, in a move that nobody saw coming, I found myself in Denny's on University and Sunrise. I ordered the Egg White Vegetable Omelet with Hash Browns and dry Rye Toast.

It was every bit as horrible as it looked. The only thing that saved it was when the waitress brought me a fruit cup to go with it.

And that was every bit as wonderful as it looked.

On that high note, I rushed home before any further damage could be done and went to bed.

Saturday - Waiting for Game 6

I might as well have just stuck myself in the eye with a hot stick.

It started off normal: Bowl of Watermelon. Strawberries. I guess they're in season... they are cheap and delicious.

Then I finished off the frozen grapes while the installer guys installed my new Murphy Bed.

More Watermelon. Three Pickles. They still aren't that good with mustard -- I tried two different mustards than the day before. I guess I need to keep searching for more Mustard Delivery Devices.

Around 4:30, I was hungry and didn't think that I could hold out until the basketball game.  I nuked a package of Hormel Compleats Steak Tips & Mashed Potatoes.

I'm never surprised when the food looks nothing like the package, but this one looked less like the package than usual. All of the products in this line are tasty, there's just not a lot of it, and they are really not all that picture-worthy. But for $2, what can you expect?

For the game, Lonnise and I drove up to Boynton to meet Jeff at Alabama Joe's. It's a good midpoint between where Jeff lives and us Broward County residents. And they have Grilled Wings.

I ordered 25 Cajun dusted, with Minced Garlic.

We've previously had success at Alabama Joe's, both sporting- and food-related. There was none of that last night. The Heat was apparently allergic to making baskets or catching rebounds, and the restaurant really didn't give a damn about the people buying food. My wings came almost immediately, which meant that they had pre-cooked them. And, they were dry, further evidence of pre-cooking and laying around waiting to be re-heated. The service there is usually, um, confusing? lethargic? don't give a shit-ic?, and last night was an extremely strong example.

Bus Girl: Can I take away these dirty dishes?
Rich: Please. And I would like some more Club Soda with Lime.

(Bus Girl returns with my soda)
Rich: Can I have some Lime, please?
Bus Girl: We're out of Lime.
Rich: There's no lime in the entire Bar? You're shitting me.
Bus Girl: Well, we have some whole limes in the back. But I would have to cut them.
Rich: OK. I'll wait.
Bus Girl (looking at me like I'm an idiot): You don't understand. I will have to cut them.
Rich: OK. (Bus girl leaves)
Lonnise: Did I hear that correctly?
Rich: Yes. I should have told her to bring me a Lime and a knife.

She came back less than 30 seconds later with cut-up limes on a plate for me, so why give me a hard time? It was that kind of stuff, combined will lower-than-average food (Lonnise didn't finish hers; I trudged through with mine) and the Heat loss, that made us decide to find somewhere else in lower Palm Beach County to watch Game Seven on Monday.

Friday, 31 May

Big day today.

It started out with a pickle before I left the house. It turns out that pickles and mustard aren't all that great. Individually, yes. Together... not so much.

Later, I had some Watermelon and a Banana.

For Lunch, Jennifer was going to the chicken place, so she picked up a Chicken Bowl (chopped up breast, rice, black beans) for me, and a more classic quarter chicken meal for herself.

I went to the Marlins game with my friend Caleb. It was his first baseball game ever. He had a great time. He got a ball during warm-ups, and the girls just love him.

 

I let him pick Dinner, so we had Ballpark Pizza. It was absolutely horrible, but at least it wasn't all that big.

After I dropped him off, I went to Albertsons for Strawberries and Watermelon. They're back to the old containers.

I had a bowl on the ride home (so much for not eating in the car!), and then some more while I was on the computer and watching SportsCenter.