Changing Lives, One Pot of Chili At A Time

Thanks for all the birthday wishes for Hannah yesterday!  I actually didn’t even talk to her until I was on my way to the restaurant.  She slept in, went thrifting with friends, had lunch out and dinner out too – she said she had a great day!  Ah, to be 22 again!

Tony has to have his blood checked about every 2-3 weeks.  He’s on a blood thinner for his artificial heart valve – the number has to be in a “safe” range – not to thin so he’ll bleed out if he gets cut, or not to thick so he gets a blood clot.  At the clinic he goes to, there is a woman there named Erin who routinely takes care of him.  She totally gets Tony’s sense of humor.  Except he doesn’t call her Erin, he calls her “Sister, Sister” because she looks like one of the Maury twins.  Do you remember that show??

So a few weeks ago she said she saw the article about my Buffalo Chicken Chili and said it sounded really good, but she’s not a very good cook.  Tony told her that I’d make her some and bring it the next time he went.  He went back to the clinic this week and brought home a Thank You note for me.  And while Erin’s husband’s name is John, Tony always refers to him as Maury.  That was so sweet!  She and her husband got married last summer and she has a food processor – but it’s still in the box unopened.  I may have to give her cooking lessons!

I still had $$ left on a Starbucks gift card from Heather, so I stopped there on my way to work and picked up one of their protein boxes for breakfast.   I have to say, I really liked this!  Although if I didn’t have a gift card, not sure I’d shell out $5 for it – but it was convenient.  OMG, the Justin’s peanut butter?  How did I not know about this peanut butter??!!

Work was painfully slow.  Our server was down all day – no access to Word, Excel, our printer networks.  The only thing working was the Internet and email.  To say it was a long day is an understatement!  Luckily I had a great break to my day – Tony picked me up for lunch!  While I still have a major burger jones going on, it was Lent, so we went back to Wok N Fire.  Tony got two sushi rolls and I got this spicy Shanghai noodles with tofu.  So good!  They also give you cucumber water – so refreshing!  Next week I am definitely making a batch of Detox Water again – completely forgot about it.

I was so happy as I was driving to the restaurant that the weather wasn’t too bad – 44 degrees and partly sunny.  So I was surprised that we weren’t as busy as I thought we’d be.  I had a 5 table station, and I was only able to flip one table.  But the customers were great, my service was excellent if I do say so myself.  One strange request though – a woman asked for a baked potato dry, no butter or sour cream, but asked for Worcestershire sauce and doused her potato with that.  Huh!  Ever know anyone to do that??

One of the special appetizers last night was calamari fries.  They looked so good!  I took this picture and showed it to my customers and each table had these for appetizers.

I ended up walking with $120, and was home by 11:00 – not too bad.  Although I was starving.  I normally have soup and bread for dinner but the soups were cream of corn and New England clam chowder – not two of my favorites.  So I stopped by a pizza place on the way home and got pizza bread.  It looked like this, but with sausage instead of pepperoni.  I ended up eating 3/4 of it. 

We ended up watching a couple shows off the DVR.  I can never come home from work and go straight to bed.  Do you guys watch Gold Rush?   There is a family called the Schnaubel’s.  Parker is grandson to John Schnaubel who has been mining gold most of his life.  He has stage 4 prostate cancer and wants Parker and his brother to mine one last place where the grandpa things there is still millions of dollars of gold.  The only problem is that time is running out – winter has almost set in and the grandpa doesn’t have long to live, but the grandsons consent to their grandpa’s wishes to show him before he dies that there is gold there.

To see the relationship between the grandson, the parents and the boys is just remarkable.  And at the end of the show, the grandpa said “all you need in life is health and family.  And when the health goes all you have left is your family.”

I found this youtube video of John’s 93rd birthday.  Who knows how many more he has in him, or for any of us for that matter!

Alright, time to get my cleaning pants on.  Hope you have a great weekend!  Looking forward to seeing Hannah tomorrow for bowling.  See you Monday!  I’ll be picking the winner of the free Spartan entrance fee on Monday – good luck!