Rehoboth, Day 1; Stoney Lonen

So I would love to start my first actual post about eating with better meals, but that is not the way its going to be. Oh well, gotta start somewhere!

Kit and I arrived in Rehoboth around 4pm and checked into our awesome hotel, the Bellmoor. We've got a very cute room adjacent to the garden area. Biggest pluses are 24 hour tea available, wireless internet in the room, and lots of relaxing fountains with adjacent seating (and abundant mosquitoes...) in the garden.

After unpacking, we walked down to the beach, but I was already think think thinking about where to eat first. Our hotel had a list of recommendations for the night, one of which was a place right next door that had half price seafood entrees. In my excitement to be at the beach eating yummy seafood, I said "Hooray, let's go!" The following are the important points that I overlooked:

1. The majority of the seafood at the beach doesn't actually come from anywhere near the beach. I bet there are some fascinating statistics on that somewhere.
2. Half-off seafood entrees on Sunday=trying to get rid of left over super-perishables from Fri/Sat nights.
3. An entree on that list that isn't on the normal menu is probably the restaurant trying to get rid of leftovers from the specials from the weekend, maybe not the best composed dishes.

Just some possible reasonable explanations for the food that followed...I am no expert in food services, for sure. So we were off to Stoney Lonen, an Irish restaurant right off the main strip, and ordered seafood with abandon.

Half a lobster with crab imperial for $10--that's a steal! I thought. Silly. Silly. Me. It comes with mashed potatoes and coleslaw?! Bring it on! As soon as the food arrived at the table, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. I bet (hope!) their corned beef entree is amazing, but my dinner was not. The plate overall had an off smell. I made Kit smell a piece of lobster shell, and he didn't smell anything. Sometimes I wonder if I have a brain tumor, because I smell all kinds of weird stuff. Or maybe it's just Kit messing with me. Ignoring the possibly weird smell, I still dug in. The lobster was stringy, although not bad tasting overall. The crab imperial was different from any I have had before--it seemed very cheesy. Well, it was stringy, too, anyway--hopefully it was from cheese....it also had a pureed texture, very smooth. Only a couple of chunks of bell pepper took it up a notch from pate. Mashed potatoes, super bland. I squeezed my lemon over them and added some of the drawn butter that came with the lobster, which made them a little tastier. Coleslaw was reasonably tasty. It was the nice fine chopped slaw that I like--the type with the long strands I find much harder to eat or to get a big satisfying mouthful of. Yay at least for that.

Kit ordered the pecan encrusted halibut. That came with mashed sweet potatoes, of which he is a huge fan, asparagus, and some sort of pico de gallo. None of it looked appetizing from my side of the table, and his overall rating was *shrug* "Fine."

So not the best experience there, not quite how we were hoping to start our eating extravaganza of a vacation. But look at me being judgy judgy when I ordered probably the dumbest thing I could have from the menu. At least we didn't spend too much money on it. My glass of wine cost almost as much as my dinner (ow, should have been an additional clue in the beginning...).

I would definitely consider giving Stoney Lonen a second chance, and ordering something that is more in line with the theme of the restaurant next time. We'll see...so many other exciting places to eat around here, so little time!

Grand ideas

So, middle age (if 30s is still considered middle aged--maybe I am getting ahead of myself?)....it has made me wonder what I am really good at. I mean, I have been alive long enough that there should be something I'm really good at, right? I should have perfected a musical instrument, or won some prestigious award for a young professional or beat a whole bunch of other athletes in a trying competition. But I haven't. I have a crazy awesome job at which I perform reasonably. I have a garden that I love working in but which looks like a crazy person planted it. I really enjoy cooking, and I like to think that my cooking comes out edible more often than not (though my husband may disagree, if he were ever able to speak candidly...). But I'm not truly great at anything. I don't think I'm alone--I think a lot of people around my age probably feel this way, like what do they really have to show for themselves after all this time taking up space and resources? Maybe that's why all of our friends are having kids now, in hopes that they'll be great parents...

But I have recently realized that there is something that I might be exceptional at. Something that I talk about more than anything else. Something that occupies my thoughts more than anything else. Wait, is that more the definition of an obsession, than a sign that I am good at this unnamed thing? Huh. Too bad, I like the first idea better. And I think I might be really good at eating.

Who wouldn't be good at eating, you might wonder. Everyone eats multiple times a day. It'd be hard not to be good at it, after all that practice. In fact, I guess there are few things people get more practice at than eating. Sleeping...pooping--I think maybe my husband would qualify for championship pooper, but to know that for sure would require us to be a little closer than I think is totally healthy--breathing...all those things that our bodies require to make us go--we get lots of practice with them. But I guess I'm talking more than just mechanically good. I actually may not be so good at eating, mechanically speaking, if the grease stains on my clothes and dirty napkins under the table are any indicator. I'm talking conceptually good. Like being able to do something for an extended time with an enthusiasm that doesn't wane. And having a seemingly bottomless want to continue to expand your knowledge and perfect your....

Ugh.

Enough of all that big-headed blathering! My point is, I really like eating and I think I'm at least above average in doing it. So when my husband suggested we write a blog about our eating experiences, I thought it sounded like a fun idea.

So why don't we? We don't really have any goals in mind specifically, no list that we're trying to eat through, no deadline we're trying to beat. But it might be fun. And maybe a few people will find it useful or entertaining or at least not a total waste of time. And even if none of those things happen, how can I pass up an opportunity to spend more time talking about my favorite thing...yum.