Random thoughts: October 2004 Archives

I had a great weekend. Brooke and I spent Saturday night at a CDWG awards dinner. The event was at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. I had never heard of the place but it is beautiful. Everything was first class. The food and the drinks were excellent, or maybe the drinks were good and so I couldn't tell if the food was good, but it did look good. Anyway, at this awards dinner they give away trips and other prizes randomly and for the first time during my time at CDW I actually won something. We got a 7 day all expense paid trip to anywhere in the 48 states. That's too many choices, I have no clue where to go. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. It's pretty exciting though, Brooke and I don't get a chance to vacation a lot. After the dinner we moved the party over to Mickey Finns in Libertyville. My boss and his girlfriend ended up meeting us there and he and I took turns tormenting each other. So, that was a great way to round out the night.

Unfortunately, Jack Daniels didn't let me out of there until I realized I needed to be up at 7 in the morning so I could make it to cooking class with my friend Brannon. On about 4 hours of off and on sleeping the door bell sprung me to life and we were off to the Calphalon Cullinary Center hang over and all, to learn some knife basics. Despite the hang over I was pretty excited about the class. Brannon and I got gift certificates to the culinary center for Christmas last year and we finally got around to using them. The class was excellent! After all these years, I finally learned how to dice a darn onion the right way and smash garlic into a beautiful sticky mess of garlic goodness. The class was only $80 for 3 hours of professional instruction and it was well worth it. Check out the link above. There are some great classes to take. I think I'm gonna go back for one of the Asian lessons. I love making Stir-fry and although I've cooked it hundreds of times, I know I'm still not doing it right.

Well, it was a busy weekend but I enjoyed every minute of it. I ate and I guess I also made some good food. I hung out with some good people and I actually won something. Hopefully, next weekend, I'll catch up on some sleep and do absolutely nothing. Don't get too excited Brooke, my definition of doing nothing is very different from yours!

Check out this crazy pic

If any one is ever in Chicago and tempted to go to a Japanese Steakhouse, avoid Ron of Japan. We went there tonight with some friends and had the worst restaurant experience I've ever had. There isn't a great story to tell and there wasn't one single terrible thing that happened. The whole experience was just bad. The service was awful the food was nothing special, the wait was terrible, and the people at the table were interesting to say the least. The big speciality of the house is this weird looking golden egg sauce that they put on everything. Everyone at the restaurant was pretty excited about it. To me it tasted like runny egg yolks whipped with butter and oil. In fact, I think that's exactly what it it was. There was guy sitting at our table who looked and acted just like John Candy in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles." The man's wife is telling us about his triple bypass as he's stuffing this sudden death sauce in his face. It was disgusting. Apparently, the sauce lubes up the digestive track as well. My wife's letting it all go as I write this. Anyway, the place is terrible so beware.

Hey Brannon and Zandra, if you read this feel free to fill in the rest of the details in the comments, there's just too much for me to tell.

Brannon's Addition:

'm in complete agreement with that disaster of a meal at Ron of Japan. John Candy was a hoot (3 sheets to the wind and embarrassing the hell out of his wife every 10 seconds) as well as the three privileged 20 somethings seated with the four of us.

Let's see. It went something like this...
Call for reservations at five for 8:00PM.
Get there on time and sit in the waiting room for 45 minutes. Only get seated after 2nd complaint which included fib about diabetes from Mr. Fayne.
Seated and ignored, diabetes be damned, until about 9:10.
Greeted by geriatric Asian waitress with WAY too much on her plate. Takes food order but not drinks. Drinks would be necessary.
Lupe, the Mexican Japanese steakhouse cook, shows up and terrifies the hell out of me, the second and much less brave heart patient at the table, with said puke yellow egg cholesterol death sauce.
Privileged kids at table order $100 worth of food and complain about $75 of it. Get Lupe, the Mexican Japanese chef tossed, and Juan shows up. I can tell you for a fact there are no shortage of Asians in Northbrook. When I go to the Japanese restaurant I want Lu Lee and Ji not Lupe and Juan.
Geriatric pours oil on skinny privileged kids $200 pants(!!!)and maitr-d tells him they look like $5 pants (nice guy)when he complains. Good entertainment that.

Summary
Food: Shrimp too small, calamari old, crab legs iffy, steak overdone, vegetables soaked in oil, fried rice soaked in oil AND egg.
Presentation: Completely non-existent(aren't they supposed to put on a show at these places?)
Lupe never spoke above a low growl through a pasty smile and Juan, the relief chef, just cooked a steak and bolted.
After Effects: Brooke and I spent the remainder of the night crapping on the throne and Danny and Zandra spent it fuming over paying $150 for the crappy-ass meal.

Moral:
Screw Zagat. Go read the

I don't really have anything to post but I promised myself I would post more often these days.

Ebay is pretty cool. Over the years I've sold a few things and it always seems to sell for more than I expected. Can't beat that. Right now I have my old 15 inch Apple Studio Display up for sale. Looks like the auction is going well. As Emeril Lagasse would say "Oh yeah babe!"

I saw Charlie Murphy, Donnell Rawlings, and Bill Burr from the Dave Chappell tonight at Zanies They were all hilarious! Charlie Murphy gave us the expanded versions of the Prince basketball game and few more Rick James adventures. He said, one time, over a two day period at Rick James' house he had so much sex his nuts went flat. He said they looked like a black potato chip. He was about to beat Rick James' ass because of his flat nuts but then Rick James called some girls to lick Charlie Murphy's ass and that took care of it. He went on to tell everyone that he wasn't into ass licking but after a while he got used to it, and it got kinda nice. He told all this with that same straight crazy looking face he has ont he show. Charlie Murphy was great but Bill Burr brought the house down. Hands down one of the best comics I've seen. Finally, Donnell Rawlings better known as Ashy Larry took the stage. He was fantastic also. Give me a call if you wanna know more. It was a great night.