Relative Something

*this* John W. Hays' take on things and experiences

Posts Tagged ‘restaurants

Core Four

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Well, I’m glad that’s finally over. We got all that crazy birthday celebrating out of the way for Cyndie yesterday with a dinner out for the core four –us and our two adult children. That takes care of that for another year.

Oh, have you met Cyndie’s family of origin? Last night was far from the end of birthday festivities for her. There still remains almost a week of planned events, including family coming in from out-of-town, more dinners out, music and dinner at the Dakota downtown, a dinner in, and who knows what else they have yet to reveal.

Yesterday, Cyndie treated herself to a spa/massage session in the morning and topped off her day with the core four dinner at the very trendy “Young Joni” restaurant in North Minneapolis. It was too popular to get an open reservation, so we settled on sitting at the bar to eat.

I would say the popularity is deserved. We had an excellent experience.

After we got home, we learned the restaurant was a product of our friend Mike Wilkus’ architectural firm. No wonder it felt so comfortable to us.

While walking Delilah when I got home, I remembered to tend to a tree that caught my attention when touring the property on Sunday with the DNR Forester.

Don’t be this guy: Five years ago we had a wicked spring snowstorm that dropped 18 inches of snow on the 2nd/3rd of May. Many trees were damaged. To save one pine, I tied a rope to secure it to another tree to keep it from tipping all the way over. Then I forgot about. For five years.

In an attempt to save the tree, I girdled it by neglecting to check and adjust the support.

Oops.

Never mind.

That’s not what I meant to do.

At least the birds appear to be getting something out of the tree, but I guarantee you, they are not getting anything close to the fine cuisine the four of us enjoyed for Cyndie’s birthday dinner last night.

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Written by johnwhays

June 5, 2018 at 6:00 am

Pizza Delivered!

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We had pizza delivered to our home last night! We learned from our friendly neighbors, George and Rachel, about more local food options when they invited us to join them for dinner at the El Paso Bar & Grill after we finished baling hay over a week ago. They suggested a Chinese take-out restaurant in Ellsworth, which we’ve already tried, and a pizza place that will actually deliver to our location.

With Cyndie now working long days in Anoka, MN, and my food prep skills under-developed, we’ve been relying on restaurants more lately. Even if I was doing the cooking, I wouldn’t have time, as the outdoor work has been keeping me busy until 7 or 8 every night. That’ll change when the sun starts setting noticeably earlier. Gotta get as much done as possible while the days are long. So for now, our dinners haven’t been making much of a mess in the kitchen.

The pizza was good, although the crust was a little under done. It definitely stayed hot on the drive to our house, but probably came out of the oven a tad too soon. It would have made sense for us to put it in our oven for a short bit to crisp it up, but we couldn’t get it separated from the cardboard box well enough to allow that. At least it was covered with plenty of good cheese. We must be in Wisconsin.

We’ll try them again sometime, choosing a different selection of toppings before we make any rash decisions about the overall quality of their pizza.DSCN2157e

The food I have been serving has been to our animals. Here is a shot of Dezirea enjoying her morning feed with Delilah looming close in search of any morsels that she can reach. The way that dog fixates on horse and cat food, and even… our pizza, you’d think we never gave her anything of her own to eat.

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Written by johnwhays

July 30, 2014 at 6:00 am