Five Dollar Steak

A couple days a go I was cramming for my final homework for class, so Andy decided to cook dinner from a recipe. The recipe came from a book called "The Best 1001 Short Easy Recipes" and it was chicken made from a can of lemonade concentrate. You basically marinate the chicken in lemonade concentrate and soy sauce and then bake it for 45 minutes. I was a bit dubious, but grateful to be getting fed.

The recipe is called Lemonade Chicken, and it was indeed Short and Easy. I am not used to all this truthfulness from my cookbooks. I am used to Martha Stewart trying to tell me I can make my own buttercream frosting by churning my own butter, or Rachel Ray trying to tell me that she makes all her food in 30 minutes for $40. But Lemonade Chicken was the most delicious chicken ever, so much that Andy and I are quitting our jobs and opening a Lemonade Chicken stand.

When life gives you lemonade concentrate...

...make chicken

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I was mentioning to Ben that I was slightly disappointed that I only had 6 or 7 responses to my birthday dinner email, so he sent me this lovely tidbit, and I thought it needed to be posted for everyone's enjoyment:

Dear Beth,
I am very excited for this event. I will be there absolutely without a doubt 100% confirmed yes for sure. I've created a little advent calendar filled with chocolate sculptures of you to help countdown the days until this occasion.

Also, I hope this place has a gigantic $50 steak to make bets on, cause that tradition needs to continue.
Love always,
Benjamin Scott Ackerman, Esquire

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Tonight was the single day between my last batch of Portfolio classwork and my Flash class which starts tomorrow, so to celebrate Andy and I went down to REI and checked out bikes, and had dinner in South Lake Union at the Southlake Grill. We were walking around near REI and I noticed a sign that said "Wednesday is $5 Steak Night!" and it was a done deal. It was only a 6oz steak served with bleu cheese and fries, but that's actually about the size of my fist, and therefore probably a good sized serving for me. No winning $50 steak bets for Beth.

I am not fond of South Lake Union. It reminds me a lot of Bellvue, which in turn reminds me a lot of LA. I love LA, but I'm talking about the bad parts of LA. Maybe more like the OC. I dunno. Every guy in the Southlake Grill was wearing some sort of buttondown polo or striped shirt, and every woman was wearing some generic patterned dress with a leather purse that could have been real leather or could have been from Ross. Everyone was in their 30s and seemed really generic, like they belonged in a real estate ad. I guess South Lake Union basically is a real estate ad. But it's like they saw the ads and were like, "Hmm, I need a Labrador and some slacks, pronto. Now, where did I put my martini?"

At REI (and also at Target actually, and probably most sporting good stores) they have tiny scale models of tents. They also have regular sized tents, which confuses me, but I like to put the tiny tents inside the big ones. The tiny tents make me happy, and so we always have to go see them. Someday I hope that if I get proposed to, my engagement ring will be in a tiny tent. Then when I get married, I hope it's in a tiny tent, and when I conceive my firstborn child it will hopefully also be in a tiny tent. Later, I will put my child in the tiny tent, mainly because they seem like a good way to keep a baby ventilated but confined. And when I die, I want my funeral to be in a tiny tent, and a tiny tent placed over my tombstone. To keep the rain off.