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This evening I found myself with some extra free time after nannying late and before a coffee date with a friend. I was hungry and very tired (still getting used to this low, low, caffeine in-take thing), so I decided to do something I don’t get to do very often anymore– take myself to dinner.
There’s this small local restaurant that I like for it’s casual quietness and the best burger I have ever tasted. Period. If you know much about me or my relationship to food (mostly estranged or awkward, but I’m working on it) you know that if I am going out of my way to eat it, it has to be a pretty damned good burger. Typically I’ll look for reasons not to eat a burger.
I walk into the restaurant and am greeted by two young hostesses, I’m guessing that they’re eighteen or nineteenish. They both look at me expectantly, waiting to hear how many people are in my party and I have to disappoint them with the news that it will only be me. I learned a long time ago to expect a certain amount of weirdness at this moment, but these two girls acted as though they weren’t sure what to do with me. One of them looked around the not nearly full dining room as though she wasn’t sure where to sit a single diner, even though there were small tables set for two aplenty. Obvious choice, young lady, come on.
I’m seated (at one of the two-seater tables) and wait a few minutes before a waitress comes over. My menu is closed because this is a restaurant I’m familiar with and I came in knowing what I wanted to order. The waitress looks a little distressed when she asks to take my drink order and I’m thinking maybe she’s just had a rough table. I order water and then she notes my closed menu and asks, sounding even more concerned, “You already know what you want?” I nod my affirmation and give her my order and she hurries off, assuring me that she will be right back. I was really grateful for the attention, but she said it as though she was afraid to leave me alone for to long for fear she might come back to find me trying to drown myself in my water glass in despair over having dinner alone.
At this point I start to notice the eyes of every single waitress in the place. I also notice that I am the sole single diner in the entire place. No big deal, but apparently the staff things something horrible has gone wrong with my evening to leave me on my own for a meal. I’m kind of amusing myself with the idea of waitresses imagining that I had been stood up when my waitress brings my food. She hands me my burger with a look that I feel is meant to be sympathetic but is only coming across as pitying and she asks, “can I bring you mustard?” in a tone that implies that her desire to provide companionship is so great that she’ll do it with a condiment if she has to. I pass on the mustard and she walks away shaking her head. Clearly I have lost all hope.
I enjoy my food, I read my news feeds in peace and quiet and without rushing. I am able to ignore the staring that is unabashedly taking place and I am managing not to be annoyed by the over-attentiveness and what seems like the overwhelming urge to refill my water glass of my waitress. Then the restaurant owner comes by, I know he’s the owner because most of the occasions I’ve been in his restaurant with my Dad the two of them have stopped to speak to one another. He approaches my table with a look of alarm and I’m preparing to hear that there may have been a finger in my burger or something when he asks me how my meal is, while furrowing his brow like he’s looking at a puzzle he just can’t quite figure out.
Having finished my food and paid, I was over it and ready to get to Starbucks, a land in which it is PERFECTLY FINE to be alone… in fact, in some ways I feel like the single customer is rewarded for their independence by being left alone, by being given quiet to work, write, read, or whatever singular activity you might like. In the land of Starbucks the single coffee-sippers are in the majority and they are also the ones looking on with some frustration of parties of more than three who are probably being noisier than is appropriate for a library, which is the ideal noise level for a Starbucks save for the occasional sound of a blender or coffee grinder.
I’m not scared to eat alone. Clearly. I just remember now why I don’t do it very often. Do men go through this when they dine alone? I don’t want to believe that this is just a girl problem, but I almost feel as if the perception is way worse when it’s a woman eating alone than if it’s a man, and I bet, just considering that there are a few more female waitstaff than there are male, that single male diners probably get hit on more often than female ones do.
Anyway, I appreciate Starbucks for it’s single-diner friendliness.
Late night polenta making (for lunch this week. )
Quiet after a long day of no quiet.
Flannel pajamas in August.
Fighting off the voice in my head that wants to tell me that I’m never going to be enough.
Sleep.
This was an experiment totally worth the effort (which was minimal). I recommend these to everyone, they taste great, are simple to make and a great alternative to ice cream.
The recipe I used is here. I should mention this is a SWEET recipe. There are some that aren’t sweet.
Quick version below…
I don’t look like this right now. At all. It’s just a curl reference.
I eat eggs for breakfast a lot.
They seem to be one of the best things to have before I go to work and can’t ever be sure when my break will fall. I’m pretty simple about them, I like them scrambled on toast, or scrambled in breakfast tacos. The trouble is that at random I really hate them, and I can’t figure out why. There are some days, and I’m not doing anything different on those days, trust me, that they just taste gross. It’s annoying.
So next week I’m going to start swimming laps. Hopefully. The next several weeks are pretty busy for me and I have a lot on my mind. I feel like the water will help relieve some of the mind pressure, but it’s also exhausting, so I’m trying to be balanced about it. My goal is to get to the pool Tuesday and Thursday (at quite a painful hour of the morning).
I have to admit that lap pools totally intimidate me. I’m a good swimmer, but I’m by no means a great one and you get those people in there who have been swimming forever or who take it very seriously and look like they are training for the olympics and I’m pretty sure to them I look fairly ridiculous. I mean, it’s not really important how I look to them, but still. It’s intimidating. Usually in these situations I just have to steel myself against all of the alarms going off in my head about what people may or may not be seeing/thinking and just dive in (no pun intended).
I leave for California the 19th and I’m trying to prepare myself to pack next week. My work schedule is such that if I don’t plan to pack, bit by bit, early, then I will be rushing at the last minute and forget something important. I’m really going to try packing lightly… kind of. As lightly as I can manage to get away with. Trimming down the makeup I’m using is definitely going to help with that, but now I have to consider hair stuff. I don’t know if in cutting back on the makeup I’ve somehow transfered some of the product usage to my hair, but I kind of have a lot of hair stuff to deal with. The only thing that I’m really torn about taking is my clampless curling iron. I like the soft curls. Hmm.
I know this is just what you all wanted to read about this morning, random hatred of eggs, packing and hair, but I woke up with so much on my mind and my heart. It felt like I had been sleeping with a huge rock on my chest. It wasn’t really worry so much as concern for too much all at once. Sometimes life doesn’t give us any sort of break and no matter where we look, everything is changing, everything is dying and being reborn at the same time. It’s exciting, but there are moments when it feels like a crushing weight because you don’t know what will come next.
As my sister often says,
Oh great God give us rest.
Lunch at Wasabi- Hot tea, egg drop soup, and chicken with mixed vegetables. This was their lunch portion which amazes me. I didn’t order fried rice, I’d assumed it would come with steamed rice, oh well. I was also a little disappointed that my hot tea didn’t come with a little tea pot. I love that.
I realize this isn’t much of an adventure, but its the best I’ve got today.
Oh, and my fortune cookie was empty.
Today I went to Pluckers for the first time ever. I’m not really a hot wings restaurant/sports bar type of girl, but this was a pretty good time.
Balance is a huge theme in my life, I believe that to truly be healthy you have to intend to be balanced and take time to enjoy what’s around you, but have enough discipline not to over-indulge.
In that spirit I’ve recently learned that I love onion rings. I prefer the thicker kind to the kind of stringy kind you’ll see here. I also got a little lesson in soccer playing/watching.
Lunch companions : Jesse, Kaylan and Kristin
The baby beer is mine. It’s Dos Equis not Miller.
Kaylan and the huge beer.
food
soccer!
I’m going to be ordering this from Amazon as soon as it becomes available, and I’m going to feel pretty cool about it.
They have one that is in pinker colors, which I think is available right now, but I like this style better.
You know that your coffee snobbery has reached an all time high when you start looking into cup accessories (but let’s face it, I’m one of those who HAS to have a sleeve, or if I order an Americano I want it double cupped AND to have a sleeve otherwise it burns my little hand right off and that’s just wasteful! Hooray for being responsible!).
After a much needed break and time to get through the holidays in one piece I have returned with pictures to catch you up to speed…
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- Christmas Eve lunch and shopping with Shelby and Kristin.
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- The Awesome Gingerbread House.
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- My Dad and baby sister, Kaylan making fools of themselves in Fry’s
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- First picture of my 4th niece/nephew
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- My Dad came to Dallas to have dinner with me on New Years Eve and stayed for breakfast at Cafe Brazil as well!
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- Co-worker and Lush Buddy Jessica with the big bar of soap. Don’t tell her I put this up here.
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- The “natural” eye.
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- My Badass banana
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- The first snow in Dallas this year (better be the last too)
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- Happy me in my non-glittery eyes after making it to work safely through the “snow”
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- My buy one get one free goodies from Lush: Trip #1 The Snow Fairy
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- Buy one get one goodies from Lush: Trip #2 Summer Pudding soap (not featured because I haven’t opened it yet Snow Cakes)
Lentils with sausage and green beans
One of the challenges of working in a mall and in retail is maintaining healthy eating habits. Let’s face it, mall food courts offer little to no truly healthy options, and preparing good meal for lunches in advance is time consuming (which should be no excuse) and sometimes it just seems easier to grab something at work.
Thank God for lentils! These little guys are fast, easy, and most importantly, full of good-for-you stuff. To quote Whfoods.org –
Lentils, a small but nutritionally mighty member of the legume family, are a very good source of cholesterol-lowering fiber. Not only do lentils help lower cholesterol, they are of special benefit in managing blood-sugar disorders since their high fiber content prevents blood sugar levels from rising rapidly after a meal. But this is far from all lentils have to offer. Lentils also provide good to excellent amounts of six important minerals, two B-vitamins, and protein-all with virtually no fat. The calorie cost of all this nutrition? Just 230 calories for a whole cup of cooked lentils. This tiny nutritional giant fills you up–not out.
Lentils make the perfect on the go lunch and provide the perfect fuel for those of us who are on our feet most of the day. Give them a shot, you wont regret it.
Mmm fresh coffee, and it's fancy!
While at home the last several days my youngest sister, Kaylan, arranged for some of us to meet for breakfast at this charming little restaurant in downtown Round Rock called Friar Tuck’s pantry.
The place was absolutely adorable! It was quiet and cozy inside with dark wood floors and shelving and neatly arranged chairs and tables. It’s the type of place that you desperately hope that it gets enough business, but not so much that it isn’t just as quiet and comfortable as it is right now, all the time.
Geniusly, in the back there was an area for families with small children to sit and enjoy their food while their children played at a kids table with a little kitchen and other toys to entertain them.
My sister’s kids made a bee-line for the kids area and we didn’t hear a peep out of them the entire time!
The coffee bar
The coffee was amazing, there was so much to be excited about in this little place that I was having a hard time paying attention to details, but I believe it was french press. It was so good that it felt a little criminal to sweeten it (with cute little sugar cubes) and add cream. The taste was brilliant, rich and inviting. I’m really going to miss that coffee here in dallas.
The breakfast menu is small, but you’re not left with the feeling that something’s missing, instead it’s difficult to choose what to have. Kaylan had visited the place for lunch the day before and she said that the lunch menu was just as lovely.
We really had a wonderful time, so if you are in the area, make an effort to stop by, it will be worth it, I promise!
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