The Four Chefs

Okay, LOVE the chef's table at Alexander's Steakhouse. After the minimoon dinner at French Laundry, I went in search of other culinary adventures. Hmmm...I like cooking, Mike likes cooking, we like dinner out with friends. Hey, I know let's combine it all and try a chef's table.

That decided, I enlisted the help of my trusty friend, Google, to search for the best Chef's table in the Bay Area. Given, high points for interactivity, Alexander's won our dinner vote. So Last weekend Mark, Claire, Mike and I ventured down to Cupertino in search of Kobe beef, caviar and most of all entertainment. Okay, we weren't necessarily in search of the Kobe and caviar, however we didn't complain at all when these items found us. Super Yum!

We started off with a Caesar Salad made by Mark, followed by a scallop dish I cooked and plated...all under the watchful eyes of the talented Chef's at Alexander's. It wasn't all fun and games, really it was...I just need to set up the photo of me mopping. Yes, mopping is one of the optional chef's table activities offered. We tried to get through all ten, we only made it through nine, but consider it a great reason to go back again.

Such an amazing time was had by all that Mark even bout a chef's coat and we all decided to come back again for the special Iron Chef chef's table experience. It's not something to do if you're feeling broke, but it was $$ very happily spent for a memorable experience with great friends! Thanks for joining Mark & Claire!

Shhh... don't tell Stacy

Stacy is in the other room, watching commercials during the finale of So You Think You Can Dance. I have sneaked away into a dark office where I am frantically tickling my keyboard in an effort to bang out this blog entry before she knows I am gone.

Stacy started her new job this week. For those of you who don't know, Stacy used to work as a product manager in the clinical diagnostics division. She loved that group (honestly, she used to go on and on and on and on... seriously, she didn't know when to quit... about that group). Truth be told, there was one little rocker in that group that was her favorite, but the whole group really made an obvious impact on her.

But while she loved those people, an opportunity in another part of the company surfaced. She wasn't even sure whether she should apply for the position, and truth be told, she was pretty stressed out over the prospect of a job change. Since January, we have sold her place, bought and moved into a new house, gotten married, and now changed jobs. Wowsers.

So anyway, after someone finally talked her into applying for the position, she did the whole interview thing and it was pretty obvious that she was getting more than a little excited about the prospect of a big promotion. Well, long story short, she beat me to what is the equivalent of a director position.

To her credit, when it became clear that she was going to get the position, she did ask me if I was going to be ok with her making director first. I said I didn't mind - afterall, I still make more. But the truth is, I couldn't be prouder. I am so happy to see her energized again and challenged and excited about her new job. I think she will be fantastic.

So if you read my posts and get used to the normal laughs and giggles, sorry if this one disappoints. I just wanted to express my pride at my wife's accomplishments. But shhh, don't tell her I told you.

And if you really do look for giggles and whatnot, I will leave you with this: This blond walks into a library and says in a loud voice, "I'd like a cheeseburger!" The librarian response with a harsh "Shhhh! This is a library!" So the blond whispers back, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'd like a cheeseburger."

What do you call it when you eat yourself?

I know that it is cannibalism when you eat members of your own species, but what do you call it when you actually eat yourself?

This question will haunt me for the rest of my years... maybe for the rest of the day. Either way, for a long, long time. So why?

Stacy and I hosted our post-wedding celebration yesterday (August 2, for those of you who do not check in every day). We had loads of people over here, walking around and gawking at our stuff. We had tri-tip and chicken and other yummykins catered in. As part of this festivity, we also had a cake. And it is this cake that occupies my mind today.

Stacy and I were pretty bummed that Chloe (our almost 14-year-old Weimreiner) couldn't partake in our actual wedding. While we partied it up in Sonoma, Chloe was stuck at home, with the loving care of The Animal Nanny (http://www.theanimalnanny.com/). So anyway, we were planning this post-wedding party, and we wanted Chloe to be a part of it. Actually, we wanted her to be the centerpiece... and what a morbid centerpiece it was.

We had gathered a couple of photos of Chloe and sent them in to a cake maker. Have you seen Ace of Cakes? That show rocks. Well, this was our version of it. We had a woman who worked at Sugar Butter Flour (http://www.sugarbutterflour.com/) make a cake version of our dog. This place was awesome. The cake (picture coming soon) weighed about 40 pounds, and it looked like our own, precious, lumpy Chloe. That was awesome!

Well, it was awesome until we had to cut up the cake and serve it to our guests. There is something wrong about taking a knife to your loved ones. Can you imagine cutting up a cake shaped like your daughter or son? Yeah, creepy. So there we stood, knife in hand, grins from ear to ear, fully ready to slice up our dog. It was wrong. But it tasted so good. How can something so good be so wrong?

We managed to feed Chloe a little bit of herself. Weird. It reminded me of that scene in Hannibal where Lecter feeds the brain to Ray Liota. Chloe was there, eating a little bit of herself, and she was happy doing it. If she only knew...

Anyway, the rest of the evening was great. For those of you who have read the earlier post about Rockband, this was another example of why that game rocks so much. After the kids were gone, we wrestled the Wii away from people and brought it downstairs to melt some faces. Aubrey donned the guitar, Bruno twirled the drumsticks, and Bruno's daughters manned the mike. It turns out that you can listen to the song Dani California (or whatever it is called, the song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers) exactly 3 times before you get sick of it. So after they finally made it through on their _5th_ try, we were ready to hear another song.

I won't go into anything more about that for now, but let me just say that Aubrey is a freaking king on guitar. He put it on expert and his little devil fingers found most of the right keys. Were it not for bad calibration (I would argue it was his fingers and brain that were calibrated poorly), he claims he would have been perfect. Either way, the guy was like our own version of Slash (only he smelled a bit better, didn't have the cool rocker afro, and wasn't accompanied by a pile of groupies - no, Candace is not a groupie. She has been with him since his first days as a rocker).

Anyway, what do you call a dog that eats itself? Canineable. Yeah, it's terrible. I blame Tom (and you should too).