Meat Parade

Let's start this post with a reminder of my latest contest and the first entry I received....



The lovely and ever popular sophanne sent me this spectacular silvery stuff. That's 2 skeins of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk and one skein of Rowanspun 4 ply. It's roughly 400 yards of Fabulousness which gets her 2 entries in the contest (one entry per 200 yards). I was so excited when I opened the package but then I remembered it's for the Yarn Bouquet. sigh. It's for the children. (That was for you, Rachel!)

Last week we had a visitor. Our dear friend D'lynn came for a visit. D'lynn is the godmother to our kids. We love her and wish she could visit us all the time (as in, she should move here!). The last time she visited was 4 years ago!

She was able to visit to visit us on her way home to Arizona to visit her parents. When my husband was 12, his family moved to Wilcox, AZ. It's a tiny town with literally one stoplight. Still. He met D'lynn somewhere around high school and they've been friends forever.

So when she came to visit, it was a pretty big deal for us! We let the boys have a sleepover at their grandparents house (their first time doing this) and took D'lynn in to Denver for a night on the town.

First, we ate at this Brazilian Grill restaurant. Wow! What an experience! You have a small cylinder of wood that's painted into 3 sections - red, yellow, and green. The red is for when you want to go to the salad bar or when you "need a break" (as the waitress told us. Perplexed us initially but when flipped it, we understood). The green is for when you're ready for the meat and when you're finished with your meal and would like your check, you lay it on it's side which means yellow.

We hit the salad bar - 35 items! All your hot sides and all your salad stuff was over there. Along with the usual suspects you'd find in a salad bar, I had a tiny hard-boiled quail egg and some cooked yucca root. They had this really amazing paprika-colored mushroom gravy for the mashed potatoes, too.

Then when we were done with the salad bar, we flipped to green. Oh. Dear. God. The meat just kept coming! There were 16 different kinds and we tried them all! You have these little spork tongs at your plate and the meat guys cut off a thin slice of whatever they are carrying and you grab it with your tongs as they are slicing.

If you go to the restaurant link, you can see that they bring the meat to your table on these giant sword skewers with little plates underneath (to catch the juice). And they just. keep coming. We had rattlesnake sausage (which tasted like... sausage), buffalo meat, wild boar ribs (kinda dry), chunks of turkey wrapped in bacon, marinated chicken chunks, spicy chicken chunks (one of my favorites), some other kielbasa-type sausage, whole sirloin, garlic beef (D'lynn's favorite), some other steak tenderloin (Dave's favorite), ham with pineapple, whole tomatoes with parmesan (on a stick!).

Sheesh! At one point we had a meat guy on either side of the table cutting stuff and one waiting to have at us! There was one guy walking around with two really long skinny skewers. One had little tiny round somethings and the other skewer had equally small triangles of lime. We were on red at that point, trying to eat the meat on our plate and catch up for round 2! We flipped, just to see what the guy had - chicken hearts! (ew) We passed.

D'lynn and I couldn't get enough of the pineapple. It was rotisserie cooked like everything else and if you've never had grilled pineapple - it's so warm and juicy. We were absolutely stuffed and at the end of our meal. We'd turned the cylinder on its side to signal surrender, er, I mean for the check. But the ham/pineapple guy came around again and I told Dave, "Go green! Go green!" D'lynn and I found enough room for one more slice of pineapple each. YUM!

It was expensive as hell and overall very tasty. Dave and I had seen this type of thing on TV during a BBQ around the world type show. It looked so delicious and juicy! In real life, it was all just a bit dry. The steak stuff was rare and tender and juicy but everything else seemed kind of dried out! Especially the buffalo. It was like jerky! D'lynn said buffalo is really lean and cooking it like that probably isn't the best idea. And so much meat! I actually had a dream that night of meat swirling around on swords!

We went to Sweet Tomatoes (a salad buffet restaurant) the next day for some greens - to try and counteract all that meat. Whew!

After the meat fest, we went to Impulse Theater. An improv show - it was hysterical! We love those things. Last year, for Dave's b'day, he surprised me with going downtown to eat and then going to Bovine Metropolis (another improv show). Between the two, I liked Bovine better, it was a much more intimate venue. They had one Jeopardy-like game where the MC would give a category, someone in the audience would shout out the "answer" and the players would give their question. The MC said, "Small, dark and handsome." I shouted, "Colin Farrell" and the player, without missing a beat said, "What is a Colin in the wild." Love it!

We went to walk along the 16th Street Mall after that but it was dead so we went home. We were home by 10:30p. We're old.

I told D'lynn to pick something from my knitting books for me to make her and she picked this (Ravelry link). It's the Pimlico Shrug from Knit 2 Together. Good taste, right! And she bought the yarn from Purls of Wisdom for me to make it! It was about $120 and I asked if that was going to be OK. She said, "Are you kidding me? A beautiful sweater hand knit just for me? That's cheap!" You gotta love when they totally get it. I told her I'd have it done by Christmas. She also mentioned how cold it was in her office and her hands were always freezing, so I'll probably be making her some Fetchings, too.

Such a great time! Such a great visit! Such a dumb bunny I am as I took NO pictures. sigh. The visit was entirely too short. She came in Thursday night and had to fly off to AZ Saturday afternoon. She lives in Kansas and we hope she comes back really soon.

Missing her already, Ruth!