Of all the people in the world...

...to forget an anniversary. All day, Jenny has been telling me how glad she is that we've been married for the past year. She's figured out what were were doing a year ago today at various times during the day. We've received cards in the mail (thanks Eleanor and Don, Kathleen and Kevin, Butch and Misty, Sarah and Cody, Heather and Clint), text messages (thanks Emmy, Kyra and Brad, Makenna), voicemails (thanks again Eleanor and Don!) and phone calls (thanks Regina). Amanda even sang to us in the car on our way to Farmer's Market. Which brings me to this afternoon.

Jenny and I went to Fresco tonight for our anniversary dinner. I had her call them this afternoon to make the reservations. I'm paraphrasing, but this is generally how the conversation went:

Jenny: I'd like to make a dinner reservation please.

Dude on the Phone: How many will be joining us for dinner?

Jenny: 2, please.

Dude: We have reservations available for 7pm or 7:30pm.

Jenny: Do you have anything available around 6pm?

Dude: Let me check that for you ma'am.

...

Dude: Yes, we can accommodate 2 this evening at 6pm. Is this for any special occasion that I can make note of here on the reservation?

Jenny: Nope.

...

Jenny: Oh! I mean, yes! It's our anniversary.

So I told Jenny that I was just going to have to take someone who was enthusiastic about our anniversary, but Makenna, Emily, Amanda and Kyra were all busy. Just kidding. Jenny and I had a wonderful time at dinner, even though she almost forgot why we were going.

What actually happened (boating)

Jenny mentioned briefly what happened to my face on Sunday...

In the interest of accuracy, I'll tell you that the story actually goes like this:

(Scene 1)

(It's overcast and dreary. The lake is calm and eerily silent. Apparently no one thought it would be a good day for boating. These absentees have no idea just how right they are; these waters are about to turn darker... with blood!

Our boat sidles closer to the dock, but we're still about 10 or 15 feet away. The dock worker makes an under-hand throwing motion with the ski flag. I hold out my hand to indicate that I am ready to catch the flag when he throws it. Oh, how wrong I was. If only I knew what was in store for me, I would have worn a hockey mask, or maybe my grinding face shield (picture below).

The dock worker, sullen and grumbling about having to step out of the comfort of his rickety shack and into the squall that was now mercilessly battering the lonely dock, viciously hurled the ski flag at me like a blunted dart of fury. I, expecting it to tumble end-over-end like a baton, and not straight at my face, like a javelin of suffering, misjudged its speed and the projectile rammed into my face, just under my right eye, then ricocheted into Jenny, who was sitting just beside me.)

Dock worker: "Hey, sorry about your face!"

Jenny: "It didn't hit my face! It hit my boob!"

Me: "Uh, I think he was actually talking to me."

(Jenny turns her head up to look at me, and as the realization dawns on her, her face turns into a mask of horror and concern.)

Jenny: "Oh my gosh! Are you ok?"

My face: A Grinding Face Mask:

Random Photos

I went golfing a while ago. We saw a fawn (that's a baby deer, for all of you who never saw Bambi and who can't figure out how this internet thing works). I didn't get my phone out in time to snap a picture of that, but I did get a picture of this squirrel that was hanging out around our cart, probably hoping for handouts.

It kind of looks like I'm dancing. Or maybe I'm a puppet. Make up your own caption and post it as a comment.

O'Falafel

790 East 2100 South, SLC

http://www.ofalafel.com/

Last week (or maybe it was the week before), a couple of guys from work and I went down to O'Falafel for lunch. This was my first visit and I was not disappointed. Check out the menu on their website. I made sure to take pictures of the dishes that everyone got. I am going to try to remember what is what (sorry for the poor pic quality... these were taken with the camera on my phone).

My meal was called Yakhni Khudra. It was one of the less flavorful that I have tried here, but it is still very good. It is served with basmati rice. If you're not sure you will like Mediterranean style food, this would be a good dish to start with. There was some kind of vegetable in here that I didn't really like, but other than that, this was delicious.

One of the guys I work with had the Kifta (the near plate in the photo below), and he also ordered a Meat Pie (the far plate in the same photo). The Kifta is described below. The Meat Pie is seasoned, ground beef stuffed into pita bread (I think), then grilled like a panini. I haven't tried this (yet), but the guy who ordered it said it was really, really good.

I like the place so much that I made Jenny come with me to lunch the next day.

We both like the Fatoush from Mazza, so we decided to give it a shot here. It was very good; very fresh, and very colorful.

It looks kind of funny here because I forgot to take pictures until after we had started eating it. Actually, I forgot to take pictures until we were about halfway done eating everything.

Imagine that everything in these pictures looks much better than it does in the pictures.

The Baba Ganouj was excellent. It was chunkier than the stuff at Mazza, but still just as flavorful. I think this is because it's not made in a food processor.

We also had something called a Spinach Pie. If you're not a spinach fan, try something else. If, however, you do like spinach, definitely give this a taste. These kept pretty well in the fridge over night too (especially with the left-over baba ganouj).

Jenny got a sandwich called Kifteh. It is made out of ground, seasoned beef, and served in pita bread with some kind of magical sauce made out of pixie dust. It makes me salivate just thinking about it.

The Good, the Bad and the Charcoal

Every time I eat something new that makes me smile, I immediately want to try to duplicate it at home. Usually I forget about my aspirations, but sometimes I actually remember to try a recipe later. Almost always, I screw stuff up the 1st time I try to figure out a dish without a recipe. Which leads me to my next point...

Jenny and I have had sweet potato fries at Salt City Burger Co. a couple of times and have loved every minute of eating them. They're good with fry sauce, ranch, mayonnaise, A-1, or just plain. They are just plain good. When you get the cooking time right.

Also, the fries need to be turned over every 10 minutes so they don't turn out looking (and tasting) like mine did. Jenny and I were able to try a couple of the fries with the aioli sauce that I made for them. I will describe the aioli sauce in more detail in a later post. I made my 1st batch of fries a while ago and, after 3 attempts, am finally able to pay attention long enough to get them to turn out ok. They're still not nearly as good as the fries at Salt City, so I think I'm going to (mostly) give up on trying to make them at home.

Salt Lake City Farmer's Market

Yesterday morning, Jenny and I went to the Salt Lake City Farmers Market to browse around. We got there around 9.30am, so it was already pretty packed. There are a ton of booths for veggies, honey, fruit, arts, crafts, food, bread, etc. We ended up getting a couple of (huge) zucchini to make stuff zucchini, a 2 pound bottle of honey from Knight Family Honey, and lunch from a Sudanese vendor. We knew the Sudanese food was going to be really good because we've been to their restaurant out in West Valley already (someone remind me later to do up a proper review on that place... it's very tasty). The next time we head out there, we'll have our choice of Caribbean, Mexican, BBQ, Argentinean, Indian, Thai, fresh made noodles, blah blah blah. The Caribbean place was serving these jerked kabobs that smelled amazing, so I'm thinking that's where I'm going to pick next. I'll let you guys know how that is.

Another fun thing about the Market is sampling various things. While wandering around, we sampled honey from 5 different booths, hummus (the company is called Freaky Monkey, or Happy Monkey or something), jerky, watermelon, cantaloup, cherries, and greyhounds. Yeah, you heard me. We sampled some greyhounds while we were there. There was a booth for the GPA in Salt Lake where you could sample the affection of a retired racing greyhound. The Indian booth (mentioned above) also had samples that were pretty good, although I have to admit that eating Indian food out of a little plastic cup was almost too challenging for me.

Blog Confessions of a Honeybee

I hate Saturday mornings. I get to work this morning to discover that all of the honey is gone AGAIN! Completely gone. The other workers and I have been haulin' pollen all week long to make up for our hive getting cleaned out last week, and the week before, etc. We are all getting pretty sick of it, so we decided to knock off early today and just cruise around for a bit.

Imagine my surprise when I fly into Farmer's Market in Salt Lake and discovered what has been happening to all of our honey!

I'm cruising down the aisles and decided to stop in at the Knight Family Honey stand to sample some of the competition's wares. The guy giving out samples squeezes some honey onto a cracker and I'm thinking "man, this smells almost exactly like our honey". Then I take a taste. That is our honey! Oh man, and now this dude's trying to pawn my own honey back to me for $8 a pound! Do you have any idea how long it takes us to make a pound of honey?!