Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Hows my little Blank Slate?

I had a really difficult time figuring out a title for this post, which is uncommon.

Thank you everyone for your insightful comments about my stupid food post. Sarah you're right I have leaps to go, but as Sam pointed out I think I'm making great strides from eating Doritos smothered in cheese for dinner weekly. None the less I plan on broadening my horizons a bit more from here, and as many of you now learned, I do live in the middle of nowhere. I started doing a bit of research on some CSA farms and crop share programs but alas there is nothing to be had here...yet. If I lived about 100 miles north I would have TONS of choices. I did find an organic pick your own place sort of nearby (35ish miles?) which will be helpful come canning season. In the meantime I will be extremely happy with the winery a few miles down the road and our garden in the back yard.

Anyway, this weekend Laura and I headed out to Indianapolis with my Mom and Dad for a grand time. Side note, Indianapolis has continually blown my expectations as far as coolness goes. It seems to have a lot of the hustle and bustle of Minneapolis, some of the cleanliness of St. Paul, and much more prominent history than either.

For whatever reason I didn't bring my camera with me so I apologize for a lack of pictures. We went to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway which is really a HUGE place. If we lived in the wizarding world of Harry Potter, this is where the Quiddich World cup would take place. I've known about the speedway since I was a wee lad, My mom is big into racing, and I've grown up with many of the familiar Indy car racing names. So it was pretty neat to finally walk around where the famed Indy 500 takes place. Our purpose today was to race around the track in a car, so we got all checked in walked right onto the road they drive on and got to walk all over the brick finish line and zipped around the oval going over 100, which was really cool! I can't imagine what it would be like with thousands of spectators but I would imagine it would feel like you're going twice as fast as you really are.

Next we headed out suit shopping for me and I finally found one! I can get really picky with things I wear (hard to believe I know) and months ago I spotted something I liked and for whatever reason wouldn't accept anything else. Aside from that hard to find style, my gorilla arms and skinny body make it hard to find a suit that will even fit me nicely. It was kind of an odd experience getting all of my bits measured up for a proper fit, I found out my left shoulder is higher than my right and my right arm is longer than my left, weird, but fun.

After those shenanigans we made our way to one of the coolest ideas for a Bar I've heard of. It was called Tastings, you load up a card with the cash you want to spend and go around to these different wine vending machines (for lack of a better description) and put your card in and pick out a wine you want to try. Its an awesome concept because if one was really serious about trying all sorts of different wines you could get a whole bunch in one evening without committing the money for a whole glass or bottle. I think I could have sat in that room for the rest of the evening just walking around and trying all of the different wines, they had to have close to 150 different varieties. Since we had other plans we sadly had to leave.

We went out to dinner, I've been impressed by a meal in Indianapolis before at St. Elmo's Steakouse (try their shrimp cocktail sometime it will melt your face off! Honestly!) so I had high hopes with this one. We made our way into a Brazilian Steakhouse called Fogo De Chao. I'm sure its a chain but if you're not familiar with it this is what its like, you go in and pretty much immediately head over to the salad bar, your food will be out whenever you're ready to eat it, no ordering needed aside from drinks. At the "salad" bar, which for me was awesome because instead of usual salad fare there is all sorts of meats and non-lettuce veggies to choose from and even a few cheeses. I had to show restraint though because of what was to come.

After you finish your salad you flip over this little card from the red side to the green side and a few minutes later a gaucho with a giant Skewer and Knife comes to you and slices you a chunk of the meat he has, different gauchos come all the time until you flip your card back to red. From what I can remember I gorged myself on Top Sirloin, Bottom Sirloin, Pork Sausage, Rib-eye, Chicken Leg, Fillet Mignon, Pork Tenderloin, Pork Ribs, Beef ribs, and Lamb. But there were even more things I didn't/couldn't fit into my belly no matter how I tried, the most exciting sounding was the pork wrapped in bacon. We even had sides to munch on that they would constantly replenish of Mashed potatoes, fried bananas and some rectangular vegetable thing. The star of the show though was definitely the meat, each slice was delightful and left me yearning to try to eat more, the only thing that wasn't out of this world was the chicken, but that was because it was just good.

Sunday I made some excellent progress with our honeymoon in Spain and I'm getting more and more excited for it, especially as we start to learn more Spanish. It should be a grand time. In general its going to go something like this: Art, Pictures, Walking, Food, Wine, Touring, Kite Surfing, and whatever else honeymooners in Spain can find to do.

Today I pooped out all of my Fogo De Chao and actually lost 3 pounds.

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