What’s your best White Zinfandel?

While it was chilly yesterday, somehow if the sun is out, it puts me in a better mood.  The drive in was so pretty – look at that sky!

And when I got to work, of course, more treats.  This time someone brought donuts.  I am not going to say what the long john and two donuts on the left look like.  My Mom and MIL read the blog.

I avoided the treats and heated up another omelet – this time with egg beaters because I left out my container of egg whites on the counter all day the day before.  Gah.  I had when I do crap like that.

I was all set to go to the gym.  I tested my blood sugar – NO!  95.  Which is great, but too low to work out.  I already ate my fruit and I didn’t think it made sense to eat more to work out, so I ran a couple errands.  My office is having their Christmas lunch on Friday.  We are having an ugly sweater contest so I went to a thrift store by my office.  It’s huge! (that’s what she said).

While I was looking for an ugly sweater, I couldn’t help but find snowmen galore!

I didn’t buy any though.  I have enough at home.  In fact, I haven’t even started decorating and may only at this point put up the tree.  Tony really doesn’t care about decorations at all, so it’s really all about me.  Like it should be, right?!

Tony made me a spicy chorizo minestrone soup for my lunches this week.  Yes, the man who thinks soup is not a meal makes me the best soups because he knows I love them.  Here’s the deal though – he made this soup using just what we had on hand.  Because there was so much flavor in the chorizo that was leftover from my Thanksgiving stuffing, he ended up just using water.  He sauteed garlic with sriracha, added in the chorizo, and built the soup up from there.  Orecchiette, or little ear pasta, was added. Black beans and corn.  Then the green shit aka baby spinach.  He said he tried it at the very end to season it for salt and almost passed out over the heat level on this soup – but it’s flavorful spicy.   The best kind in my book!

So flipping good!  So happy I have more for today and tomorrow.  And the best part?  When I got to the end of the bowl – I got to see this!

And later in the afternoon I had a skinny latte.   And even though Skippy is not blogging anymore, I hope she still reads my blog and sees all these wonderful snowmen pictures!  She loves snowmen just as much as me!

I had to go straight from work to the restaurant.  It being a Wednesday, I had no idea what to expect.  Word of mouth is getting out about our restaurant.  After Christmas signs will be posted outside that we are now open, and after the new year they will start advertising. 

My first table sat down.  We have a signature dipping sauce that is complimentary to every table.  Fresh bread with a dipping sauce – a base of olive oil, aged balsamic vinegar, fresh garlic, grated Parmesan cheese, crushed red pepper, fresh basil and then a drizzle of balsamic glaze.  I could do some damage with that stuff!

So my table sat down and I said “Welcome to Zeal, my name is Biz and I’ll be your server tonight.”  They both looked at each other and said “we are confused – what happened to Vidalia?”  Well, Vidalia was the previous restaurant that went out of business six months ago.  I explained that we opened two weeks ago.  They were expected another couple, so I just told them I would give them a few minutes to look over the menu.  I have no idea what the price point was of the old restaurant, so if they decided to get up and leave, no big.

They decided to stay, when the gentlemen asked me to recommend our best White Zinfandel.  Snap.  Um, I really don’t consider white zinfandel to be a wine, and we don’t actually carry one.  We do, however, have amazing house wines that are very generous at $5 a glass.  I recommended an Oregon Riesling, that I can’t remember the name of, but since he liked a sweet white zinfandel, I thought it would work.  He actually enjoyed two glasses of it and asked me to write it down for him – he’d never had a riesling before!

My service was excellent, they enjoyed the food.  They told me it was the gentleman’s birthday, so I told him what desserts we had and he chose the tiramisu cake.   It’s heavenly!  I put a candle in it, we sang happy birthday, all was well!  They asked for the check.  They looked it over and said “there must be some sort of mistake, because you charged us for the cake, and it’s his birthday.”  I explained that since all of our desserts are made in-house with the highest quality of ingredients, we will never give away any of our desserts.  I guess they didn’t like the $8 price tag, but it’s worth every penny of that and more.  I got a $10 tip on a $100 tab.

But, I got home early – I cleared $50 bucks and was home at 9:30, so I am not complaining at all.  And check out some of our specials from last night!

• Sliced NY strip steaks with caramelized onions (ew!) and horseradish sour cream with a baked potato
• Jumbo shrimp and scallops in a Diablo red sauce served over linguini
• Rolled stuffed chicken – stuffed with spinach, asiago cheese and roasted red peppers served with a light creamy pest sauce served over orzo
• Burrata salad – burrata is a delicate mozzarella that is served with roasted peppers, fried prosciutto and then drizzled with a balsamic glaze and topped with shredded basil

The salad looks a little bit like this – and if you like cheese, you would love this dish.

I ended up having pizza for dinner again, with a bit of wine.  I think after the new year I’ve got to ditch the wine again, it’s slowly creeping back into my life.  I still have 20 pounds to lose to get to my goal weight, and the wine isn’t going to help me get to my goal.

No stats for the day – I have no idea how to figure out Tony’s soup and overall, I don’t think I did too bad.  Today at lunch me and one of my co-workers are going to GOODWILL!  It opens today and I am hoping to find my ugly sweater – if not, I’ll have to hit up the local thrift store by my house after work. 

Alright, time to get this show on the road – only two more work days, and then I am off from my day job until next Friday!  Not sure what the restaurant schedule will be until Saturday night – I know we are closed on both Christmas Eve and Christmas day.  But New Years is supposed to be good – the Rod Stewart impersonator will be back!

Make it a great day!