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As you may or may not know, kid 1.0 (aka Emma-Grace) had her first communion yesterday. To celebrate, my wife Trish and I had planned afterward to have dinner for about 15 at Dontino’s, a small Italian restaurant near the church.

Trish called Dontino’s a couple of weeks ago – and was told it would be no problem for them to accommodate us – she was told to call an hour or two ahead to give them a heads-up.

When Trish called, she was told by a Dontino’s staff member that they couldn’t seat all of us together – that we’d be split into two groups. Nice to see they kept their word.

Luckily Trish had called a couple of other places – and we resorted to “Plan B” – which probably ended up better after all. Our party of 15 – and the money it would have brought Dontino’s – ended up at a nearby Bob Evans location.

I called the Bob Evans – the manager answered and was more than happy to host us. She said they’d keep a side room for us – and when we arrived after mass things were all ready. The servers and manager bent over backwards to make it an enjoyable meal and a wonderful family and friends experience. They even gave Emma-Grace her meal for free in honor of her special occasion.

I was more than happy to generously tip the two people at Bob Evans who took care of us.

In short, Bob Evans ruled and Dontino’s drooled.

I guess the neighborhood grocery store is jonesin’ to get those Michael Phelps Frosted Flakes boxes off their shelves:

I needed my Acme Fresh Market Savings Card; but $2.01 off for a bong hit still isn’t bad money. :)

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve given up on trying “New Year’s Resolutions” in favor of giving up things for Lent.

In prior years during Lent, I’ve given up eating out for lunch, eating cookies, swearing, and other personal less-than-ideal indulgences and habits.

This year, I’ve given myself a two-pronged challenge of self-denial for the Lenten season:
1) I’m planning to give up drinking Coke, Pepsi, or other carbonated beverages. and,
2) I’m planning to give up my penchant for being sarcastic behind the wheel towards other drivers. I am going to try to ditch my “road sarcasm” during Lent.

The latter will be the more challenging of the two things I’m planning to give up. We’ll see how it goes. Updates in this blog and on Twitter. :)

One (among many) of my strange cooking creations is the “sloppy joe bread bowl”. It’s basically a sloppy joe with the ingredients in slightly different places.

I start with a pound of hamburger, brown it, toss in the Manwich sauce, and let it simmer for a little bit. While I’m doing this, I take bread bowls and warm them up in the oven for about 10-15 minutes @ 350 degrees.

After the bread bowls are warmed up, I cut openings in the top and then scoop in the sloppy joe mix and take the scooped out bread and butter it and voila! Dinner. Trish prefers putting clam chowder in her bread bowl – another really cool bread bowl dish is French onion soup.

Here’s the final result; not bad if I do say so myself…

The filling is yummy and the bowl’s pretty good too after you finish said filling…