100-point restaurant review

because my timing is awesome, my first week of weight watchers started the week of my birthday and anniversary. we had made reservations at an atlanta restaurant, Dogwood, on the actual night of my bday to fancy-celebrate both. these plans were made long before the institution of the WW point system, and there was no way i was going to change them for the sake of a few pounds. here is the course by course rundown of the night i bet i achieved 100 points (my normal daily allowance is 28).

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"dear, sweet mummy, if you have to leave me with a sitter please at least promise me you'll eat until it hurts while you're gone." okay, judah, just for you i will.

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if they didn't charge me points for it, i'd eat up both of these boys. (i think judah knows this and fears i will)

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no better babysitters than a set of grandparents (dukes' this time)

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0 points, be still my heart.

we started off inauspiciously be driving past the restaurant in downtown atl and realizing that it was attached to a hotel. aka no parking lot. amid my grumbles of, "shit, people, we're about to drop some major money at your restaurant and we have to pay to walk to it?" we circled back around and celebrated the fact that we found a lot 2 blocks down for only 3 bucks. here we are by our parking lot.

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hahaha drowsy smearedface jesse.

unfortunately when we walked up to the door, we had to maneuver around a big ole sign that said "dogwood: complimentary valet, stop here" fantastic. i tried to let it go and not have a bitter ragefest so we went in.

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now, jesse and i have a history of overdressing big-time to go out on dates and then we get there and there are people in t-shirts or jeans that make us feel like urchins for dressing up for and obviously thinking that Red Lobster was the fanciest place on earth. so this time we were smart. i wore a dress and tights plus my never leave home without it jean jacket and jesse wore a polo and khakis with RUBBER old navy flops (i didn't get wifely oversight before we left the house). so we open the door upon which shiny sign was posted "appropriate attire required." i quickly barked back to jesse that even though we were celebrating our anniversary too, "i will not hesitate to eat by myself if i make in it but your attire gets booted". from the door we had about 10 paces to reach the hosts' station where two men were waiting to greet us behind their little podium/desk. we both knew if jesse could make it to there and hide his feet under their desk without them seeing his shoes then we'd be safely on our way to our table. it was pretty funny how swiftly we covered that distance and how obviously we were trying to be nonchalant and high class about it. we were in the clear.

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so we are escorted through the place. its mostly tables but the wall is lined with booths. i hate tables, i love booths. especially at fancy places where you get to sit in U-shaped booths that face all the peons at their silly 4-legged tables. i notice that the 3 booths in front of us all have confetti on them. so i was like, "hells yes, its our anniversary AND my bday, double confetti." unfortunately jesse hadn't told them we were celebrating anything when he made the reservation. score a confetti-less table right in front of 2 outtie-facing booths of confetti sprinkled splendor. oh the shame.

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whatever, i wasn't there for the table, i was there for a hot date and some banging food. our plan was to split one item from every course on the menu (grits, appetizer, soup, salad, dessert) a then get an entree apiece (yes, i know) so we told our waiter that we weren't ready to order entrees yet but that we'd like to go ahead and order one of everything else. he goes, "are you serious?" i was thinking, yes okay, i know we are piggies but come on, don't make us feel like it, you're the waiter, just enable us! but turns out he thought we meant one of each and every other item on the menu. ta-ha, we shared a warm laugh and became fast friends.

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onto the damage:

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grits bar: grits with Bay scallops, sherry cream, mushrooms

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i give these a solid A. there was bowl-swabbing with fingers which i will not use to point out the culprit. it was a lot like risotto, i wouldn't have known they were grits unless i had ordered them myself.

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appetizer: Smoked pheasant meatballs, apricot brandy gastrique, black pepper, summer truffle aioli. cant explain my face.

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i give them a B- just because there weren't enough of them and they ended up costing $4 apiece, yikes! they were really good but if i'm stuffing $4 in my face, i am looking for fireworks from lips to loins

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*NOT PICTURED salad: Arugula, manchego, red grapes, shaved red onion, marcona almonds, apple cider vinaigrette *

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fact: jesse and i will order almost anything that has manchego in it. its our love cheese. we discovered it in spain with his parents on the best 3 days of our dating, purchased from within an actual don quixote windmill turned wine/cheese shop. the salad was a B+. could have used even more of the cheese, but everything was working together well. raw red onions usually kick the snot out of all their topping-buddies, but these were tiny and wonderful.

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soup: Acorn squash soup, parmesan, maple crème fraiche, pecans

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check out that photography! i reviewed this pic on like 10x zoom and that little droplet looks SO cool. i give this number an A+. it was amazing, but maybe more so because i wasn't expecting a lot from squash soup. but every one of the things in the description was taste-able...which isn't always the case for our inexperienced pallets at these fancy places. more bowl-swabbing.

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at this point we were super-tight with our waiter and i said, "if i told you today was my birthday, could we have some confetti?" he came right back and sprinkled our table with birthday stars which i immediately used in conjunction with my oily-tending complexion to fashion an elven tiara for myself.

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dusting your dreams with fairy wishes and hobbitty dreams

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entrees! for jesse: Grilled flat iron steak, warm lobster and fingerling potato salad, green herb garlic sauce

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i give it an A-. the steak was perfectly cooked and well seasoned. the lobster in the potato salad was huge chunks, not just the flakes that are in "lobster" recipes normally. the fingerling potatoes were sweeter than i thought, but maybe that's how they just are.

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uh-oh, looks like the salad from 3 courses ago makes an unexpected appearance IN MY HAIR! holy crap, talk about a fat kid. and yes i did extract the rogue leaf and eat it. anyway, my entree: it was the special of the night so i cant find the exact description anymore but it was a huge chunk of salmon topped with a basil crisp over black pepper and mustard dumplings.

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A motherfreaking PLUS. we rarely order (or even listen to) the specials and i NEVER get salmon because i only like it raw as sushi unless its covered in some kind of sauce, but i took the plunge and it was amazing. the chef recommended medium rare so it was still a little sushi-like in the middle and the basil crisp on top was more like a yummy polenta. the dumplings were tiny little pasta balls in delicious mustard peppery sauce. i did not want to share with jesse. there were no to go boxes.

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we were riding high on our food-phoria at this point so i asked the waiter if i got any bonus confetti for the fact that we were celebrating our anniversary that had been the day before as well as my bday. here is what he added to our birthday stars in response:

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the symbols of marriage: wedding bells, rings of commitment and a big fat roll of the dice!

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and i got a free birthday dessert. it was chocolate cake with molten filling and a peanut butter and chocolate ganache plus peanut butter ice cream

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and the shame of it all was that we ordered another dessert on TOP of this! we got a warm strawberry bread pudding with some other junk in it that i cant even remember because it all started hurting at this point. it was good until the pain though.

so, no, weight watchers will not be calling me up asking for my week one tips for their orientation guide. i don't even care, this was delicious, so much fun and 100% worth it. we managed to only talk about judah 50% of the time and to laugh together and make fun of each other the rest of the time (our favorite thing to do). we had such a blast with each other and i'm so glad i have a hubs that can go to a fancy place like this and pick the exact same things off the menu that i would and pretend to be a foodie by using all the words we've learned on top chef and then immediately laugh at how pretentious we are. 10/2/2009 date: A+++

it's instinct

lil' umpire says you're "safe!"

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jesse and i went to our favorite dessert place, Rita's, last week after our weekly sushi date. we had the bug with us and the kid behind the counter asked if we wanted a baby cone for him. i was like, "uh, he's 4 months old, he doesn't really eat things yet." but we thought we could get him to hold it and it would be a good picture, especially since he was looking so all-american already in his baseball hat, boat shoes and middle school softball coach shorty-shorts.

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he's getting much more portable and needing to go places in his carseat (the plastic maiden) less and less.
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outside Mr. Fuji. i thought this would be a fun idea to take a pic of all 3 of us. it took us several tries. then i realized that although the upper blinds in the restaurant were closed, the bottom ones were wide open making us into the very people that we love to rip on who use reflective surfaces to look at themselves, oblivious to the people on the other side mocking their vanity.

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we got awesome new insurance that includes vision, so i got glasses for the first time since freshman year. lisa loeb?

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sweet boys. with our new car in the background
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heaven somewhere in between

sorry, too many cute pics and no place to put them...ok so back to the ice cream (frozen custard, actually) cone story. well not only did he hold it, he immediately put the correct portion of the cone in his mouth (and nose). and not in a "i'm a baby, i aimlessly put things in my mouth to experience them" sort of way. he put it in with a "i know this is ice cream and need to eat it NOW" way. so i quickly snapped a picture.

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.5 seconds after handing it to him

well, after a few seconds i realized this was video material. he went to TOWN on that cone as if he knew we were going take it away soon and needed to get as much of it in his face as time would allow. we couldn't even believe how well he was doing. but, i started to feel less amused and more like a horrible mom for giving the 4 month old an ice cream cone. you can hear me asking the worker, "why did you do this?" like it was his fault. i guess there's some things you don't have to teach kids, they're just born knowing how to do. (to be fair though, he already had months of practice extracting dairy materials from "cones" before we ever walked into Rita's that day)

outsourcing

i have been meaning to post about two fun weekends-past, but was too lazy. luckily my laziness paid off and two other moms posted for me! so click each pic below to find out more about who judah has been hanging out with lately. thanks merran and tiff for being better bloggers than me!

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first was two weekends ago when we met up with the tatum's at atlantic station. luke was born on 4/29 (of this year, in case there was confusion) and judah on 5/25 so they are almost exactly 4 weeks apart. that said, they are almost 10 lbs apart too. luke is SOLID. i was a little intimidated by this man baby who is in the 99th percentile of both height and weight, but luke has the sweetest and happiest disposition of any baby i've ever seen. you just have to smile at him and he starts laughing. such a sweetie.

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his mommy merran played volleyball at GT too and would have been a senior my freshman year, but injured her shoulder and had to stop playing (ahem, definitely not because of a certain smellton). we missed out on that bond (ha, gtvb pun) but made up for it years later at CCF. merran and her husband phil were missionary team members in Chile when jesse did his student exchange there in 2003 and we've gotten to know them at retreats and other ccf events since then. love them! too bad they now live in indianapolis because phil works as a recruiter for their missionary organization, CMF. fun facts: phil is from duluth just like me and enjoys playing paper games on his state of the art cell phone and merran is 6 feet tall (jealous!) and gave natural childbirth to her 9 pound tatum tot.

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both in overalls that day AND both sets of parents forgot strollers. friendestiny! i have no idea what i was going for here. looks like i wanted the bug to tickle the tot's chinnie chin chin. creepy weird.
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yay, the first weekend in october we travelled to our friends becky and josh's wedding in gorgeous weaver, NC. it was great seeing so many second generation CCF babies, as it seemed like almost every couple who has sprung off in the past few months was their with the babes! of course judah spent the most time with his original GF madison del angel. and their love was even sealed with eerily IDENTICAL mosquito mites on their right cheeks. exact placement, diameter and height of the bites. PLUS matching outfits that were not planned.

this is funny because madison was CLONE of her mexi-daddy jorge at birth but here she looks EXACTLY like tiff. either way, she's one adorable babe. great pic of the del angel ladies...and then here i am playing ape-mama during the photo while judahs jowls succumb to the earth's gravitational pull.

no link on this next pic from the wedding reception, its just bonus because he looks so cute and thuggy in his hoodie and sneakers (and i look so charming). i was really proud of myself for changing him from the pjs he's wearing here to this overall/oxford shirt outfit below AND his diaper while he was strapped into his carseat on the way to the wedding. this feat is my motherhood dissertation so far, since he didnt even cry once or get any excrement on him or the seat. i try to put overalls on him now on his changing table and its so freaking hard, i have no clue how i did it that day.

thanks also to judah for blocking a potential up the dress shot. i get a little reckless when i wear tights.