That's What Jenni Said

  Here is your entertaining story for the weekend. Hubby and I LOVE Village Inn pies, having been introduced to them while living in Las Cruces. My craving for the caramel pecan silk supreme pie has escalated after returning from a visit to NM (where I saw VI as we passed by but did not have time to stop).  According to google there is a Village Inn in Annapolis (76 miles away). VI pie is ALWAYS worth it, so this morning I convinced husband and friends to piled into a car and make the trip just for pie. Turns out the VI we drove to is a seedy bedbug infested hotel in no way affiliated with the famous pie making Village Inn. Reality: there are no Village Inn restaurants within 150 miles of us, according to the villageinn.com website. We laughed. We laughed a lot. And inside I cried just a little bit, feeling sorry about being deprived pie after working myself into an excited anticipatory frenzy over it. Oh I'd do anything for a slice of caramel pecan silk supreme pie........

  My favorite airline (Delta) had a fantastic ‘oopsie’ mistake fare to Tokyo over the summer and so my friends and I jumped at the chance to take a 3 day weekend in Asia. After a Labor Day weekend mile run to Sydney, AU last year I swore off economy cabin flights longer than 13 hours but at less than $500 round trip it was just too good to pass up this economy fare to Asia (typical summer fares are $1400). So off we went!  A warm Thursday evening in July five of us departed the DC metro area bound for Tokyo. With the time zone changes we touched down at Haneda airport Friday evening just after ten o’clock. I’m going to be honest and share with you that it’s a bit unnerving- after growing up in the melting pot of the United States – to find yourself surrounded by a lack of ethnic diversity. The ‘sameness’ was especially highlighted as international tourism to Tokyo has dropped sharply after the tsunami. It wasn’t until two days into the weekend that I was able to stop seeing ...

  I had the opportunity to dine at Guy Savoy in Vegas during the early weeks of April when I was attending a work conference. I returned home with a souvenir menu and lengthy notes on the experience which I’ve now laid down in print for my readers. I ordered the Menu Prestige ($298 per person before tax, tip, or beverages) which was a culinary journey through the following starters and courses that I’ve detailed below. Overall it was a pleasant experience but given the menu pricing versus the technical execution of the dishes I don’t believe the value is there for the customer as compared to The French Laundry, Per Se, Citronelle or Le Cinq (my favorite fine dining experiences to date). I did like the creative touch of pairing each course with a signature bread the way other restaurants pair with wine but that is not enough to justify the pricing. Also the silverware was scratched up and the service was nowhere near as smooth and beautifully choreographed as at Le Cinq in Paris...

Prior to the start of my new job, I had a somewhat regular daily routine established. Mornings I’d wake up and after getting groomed and dressed, check email/facebook and then sit down with my bible to go over my morning devotional. Then breakfast, downstairs at the table. Work would follow punctuated with errands and projects. Afternoons meant lunch in front of the tv watching Law and Order reruns and then cleaning occasionally. After that I’d exercise, shower and start dinner. Sometimes I’d remember to do evening devotionals, sometimes not. Every 2 weeks I’d borrow a work afternoon to do finances and carve out time to grocery shop. So I started working for CSC and all hell broke loose with my new schedule. The first week just the stress of getting up at O’dark o’clock (4:30AM!) was enough to exhaust me. Add in new trainings on the job, new people to meet, new tasks to do/learn and the general anxiety of wanting to make an excellent first impression and GAH. In the mornings I was to...

It would be nice to reach a state of organization whereby I am no longer a month behind on my blog posts. To dream…to dream….     February was dominated by continued recovery from pneumonia, with a dash of fine dining thrown in. I spent the first two weeks of the month slowly regaining my health and strength, grateful that the run to Quebec had not set me back at all. I worked my way back to 4 days a week at the gym for an hour of cardio each session plus strength training. I felt on top of the world again.     I spent the first weekend in February in NYC with friends for our annual Broadway getaway. This year we stayed at the very cozy and posh 76 Park Avenue Hotel. Just our luck many guests at the hotel were in town for the Westminster Dog Show with cute little toy dogs in tow. They were everywhere and adorable! Our chosen play was Mamma Mia and I loved it. The music (all ABBA of course) was fun and at the end of the show the whole audience was up off our seats belting out Dancing Q...

The past two weeks have seen me in "catch-up" mode as I work feverishly to get back to a place where I'm caught up in most everything. I'm making slow but steady progress and part of that is catching up on my past due blog entries.     Here's the January recap:     -Dined at Inn at Little Washington This was the first restaurant my friends and I tackled on the Zagat Top 20 DC restaurants. It's a goal of ours to make our way through the entire list over the next 3 years. Perhaps under ordinary circumstances I would have been delighted with the Inn but after returning from Paris where I dined at Le Cinq, the Inn was *very* disappointing. More on par with any standard DC restaurant yet the same price per course as Le Cinq. Shameful really.     -Caught Pneumonia, went to the hospital then spent 2 weeks in bed (lost 15 pounds) I've blogged about that previously already…     -Got better, went to Quebec, Canada for the Winter Carnival I went with my friend Penny ...

I am a food snob. There, I admit it again. I don’t shun food (as my waistline sadly attests to) but I tend to feel frustrated with people who don’t live up to my expectations with regard to their culinary experience and tastes. In my defense, they’re not particularly high standards to meet. A few months ago I met a woman who rules out entire categories of food based on color- she won’t try anything orange or yellow. And she told me that her most exotic culinary tasting was…rice. Every other opinion I formed on this lady was filtered through the knowledge that she is a culinary ignoramus. Today I had a quick and healthy lunch at the Thai restaurant down the street. A woman and a young man (her coworker I believe) sat at the next table. She remarked to her guest that she was open to trying something new as long as it had familiar ingredients and was not at all spicy. First, why do people go into a Thai, Mexican, or otherwise traditionally spicy cuisine restaurant and ask for no spice...