The Elvis

I didn't start the day planning to try something new to eat. I actually wasn't planning to eat out today at all, because I've been intending to make a pasta bake for dinner this weekend all week, to use up some extra cheese in the refrigerator that I'm worrying is about to turn bad. That was part of my plan for the day, after meeting up with my friends Sara and Suzy to hike one of the quarry trails at the nature center, which I haven't done since 2011. That would be right around the time that walking long distances started to make me tired, so I haven't gone back since then.

Now that I can walk for hours, though, hiking is once again possible. I need to take more advantage of it.

On our way to hiking (I picked Sara up because she's buying a new car tomorrow, and doesn't have one right now) Sara and I were shocked by how many places in Knoxville were actually open today. I'm not sure if it's a Southern thing, a Bible Belt thing, a Knoxville thing, or what, but there is a strong possibility that things in our city are closed on a Sunday, and throwing Easter in on top of that led us to assume that there was a strong chance that we wouldn't see any other traffic. We were wrong, though, and downtown seemed to be hopping when we cruised through, so after hiking Sara and I decided to head to Market Square to eat a late lunch/early dinner.

I let Sara pick, because my only preferences are "no Cocoa Moon" (my friend Kristin and I ate there once and my food was so terrible that I've never gone back) and no seafood. I don't really eat seafood, other than tuna salad, and I'm dubious of seafood restaurants in landlocked states. Sara shared my concern, explaining that the half-price sushi specials at the local restaurant are twice a week because they are the nights before they get their fish deliveries. They have to clear out the old fish before it goes bad. With that in mind, Sara picked Stock & Barrel, a new-ish burger place that I've heard about but not eaten at. I'm not usually a burger eater, but I decided to go with it because I said she could pick and hadn't counted it out, and I have been curious to try them since I keep hearing how good they are.

It turns out that they are good. I'm not sure they're worth $12 a burger, but as a once in a while meal, it doesn't feel like I overpaid, especially since I tried something completely different on random impulse, and it turned out to be delicious.

I ate The Elvis.



According to the menu, The Elvis featured "organic peanut butter, fried bananas, Benton's bacon," a locally made bacon that a lot of the restaurants around here that locally source ingredients use. I've never had peanut butter on a hamburger before, but I like everything on The Elvis, and I like everything on it without the burger part, so I figured, "Why not try it?" It was also one of the only burgers on the menu where I liked everything and wouldn't have to ask them to leave anything off. I know it's my right as a customer to ask for it the way I want, but sometimes I feel like I'm being a real pain in the ass and just want to order off the menu without worrying about onions or nuts or whatever.

I was also intrigued, and figured that I might as well try something new.

And it was good.

The bacon is both smoky and salty, and the peanut butter is salty and a little savory. The fried bananas add some sweetness, to cut all of the salt, and really my only issue with the whole thing is that you'll want to cut it to eat, since the whole thing is kind of drippy and should not be picked up with your hands unless you want peanut butter on them. It could easily have turned out the other way, and been as gross as it may sound to some people, but maybe some of those people will rethink it.

Try some peanut butter on your burger.

I Ate Ribs, and They Had Bones in Them

It's Day 6 of my 30 Days of Blogging. I don't know if anyone is enjoying it or not, although I have received feedback from one person that "it's boring. It's not funny. And they're too short. You're not investing enough energy in them." I'm still enjoying it, though, and I'm not a quitter, so today, for Day 6, I considered the words of my friend Ilona, who said:

new experiences, new foods, trying new ideas or thoughts

Ilona, I took your words to heart, and decided to do something completely new:

I ate pork ribs for the first time in my life today.

If you didn't already know this, I don't eat meat that has bones in it. I've never eaten a chicken wing, ribs, t-bone steak, ribeye, and have only eaten a bone-in porkchop once. That's once, ever, in my life, and I turn 38 this year. I have had chicken with bones in it maybe five times, total, and each time is a lengthy, distressing process where I pretty much dissect the chicken with a knife before eating it.

And don't even get me started on chicken that has skin on it.

I love barbecue, though, and I love pulled pork. Everyone always tells me that ribs are delicious, so I decided to finally give it a try now that I had a reason to just go ahead and do it.

I emailed Kristin earlier this week: "Hi. I need a favor on Saturday, and will buy you late lunch/early dinner. For my 30 Days of Blogging project my friend Ilona said that she likes it when I write about trying new things, so I want to go eat ribs and I need someone to take pictures of me doing so. Also, I need to know where one goes to eat ribs. Are you in?"

"You're going to buy me ribs? YES."

And that was that. We planned a time to meet today, and decided between two recommended restaurants. We settled on Dead End BBQ here in town because we've both had pulled pork from there and because everyone raves about it. On the way there, Kristin tried to prepare me:

"Now, it's theoretically possible to eat ribs with a knife and fork, but..."

"How else would you eat them?"

"You're gonna just have to use your hands. Like, tear the ribs apart with your hands, and then you kind of bite all the meat off."

"...what? I don't... what? With my hands?"

"They'll bring you napkins. And you'll need some for your face, too."

"My face?" Nothing can happen to the face, Kristin. That's the moneymaker.

"Well, the meat is super tender if they're good, so they'll be, like, falling off of the bone, but you'll get sauce and stuff on your face."

OK. Yeah. I'm trying new things. I'll eat with my hands. Yeah. It'll be fine.

Within minutes of sitting down, I had a half rack of ribs in front of me, with sides:



One of the good things about eating at a barbecue place is that food is always ready, so you never wait long. Kristin offered some more advice, telling me that, "It's a lot of meat, so don't feel bad if you don't finish. They heat up really easily." I nodded, laid out my napkins, and Kristin got the camera ready.

I delicately picked at a rib:







and it was delicious.

Oh my God, it was like pulled pork on a stick. I immediately grabbed the other end of the rib, reservations about eating with my hands rapidly vanishing, so that I could inhale more of the soft tender barbecued meat into my mouth:



And then I fell into a carnivorous haze where nothing existed but hot meat that needed to fall into my mouth:









For a few minutes, I'm not sure I even breathed. The waiter came to bring me another Diet Coke and I was like, "THANKYOUOHGODTHISISSOGOOD!" and he was like, "Uh... I'm glad you're enjoying it..." as he slowly backed away from our table.

Kristin looked up at once point and asked, "Are you having some kind of rib-gasm?" and that was the moment when I realized that not only had I been tearing a ribcage apart with my bare hands and burying my face in it, but I was also making a series of Chewbacca-esque sounds while eating: "Mnnnn. Nnnnn. Errrrr. Mmmmm."

I even ate a spot of fallen barbecue off of my shirt rather than wipe my fingers on a napkin.

I cleaned my plate in less than twenty minutes:



and now I kind of want to go out to get more ribs sometime soon.

Koi, Kitchens, Pinhole

My parents are on their way here, and in preparation for their visit I scheduled a few days off to clean and tidy my apartment. And then this happened:



That's my kitchen.

That's the water heater on the left (you may remember the water heater from the time they cut open my cabinet to repair it), and the stove should be to the left of that. The sink should be where that bucket is, and the dishwasher should be to the right of that. Instead I have a slow leak, a broken pipe, and a distinct lack of cabinetry.

So, yeah, this kind of blew my plans for cleaning, but I've still tried to make the best of it and squeeze in some relaxing. I've eaten out a few times, and favorite places and at new places, like Bella Luna, where I had lunch yesterday:



I thought they were a new place, since they're right in the middle of Market Square and I've somehow never noticed them, but when I asked the hostess she gave me a weird look and answered that they've been there for over a year. Oooops.

I also squeezed in some photography time at the university gardens, where they have planted gorgeous beds of poppies this year:



The poppies are all in bloom and pretty:



and it reminds me so much of the ones that grew in Alaska when I was little.

I wandered around for a while, snapping regular pictures:



and taking the pinhole camera for a walk:



and I think the pinhole was magical:









The ones with the falling water are at the koi ponds in the rose garden, where I stared at the fish for a while:









That last one, with the flower in it, I think is just fantastic.

My favorite picture for the day, though, is this one:



That's a puddle. Just a plain old puddle in the middle of the grass.

Like I said, that pinhole is magical sometimes.

Delicious

You know what the high point of the visit with my parents last weekend was?

(Other than all of us getting to see each other, I mean.)

Our trip to The Apple Barn, because we had apple fritters with our lunch:



Apple fritters, covered in apple butter, are delicious.

Ginormous Grow Frog

Since I was in New York for my birthday, I missed the traditional birthday dinner that Jeannie has thrown for me since she moved off campus, and Kristin, Jeannie, Elizabeth, and Ben decided that they would fix that by taking me out the week that I was back. Kristin and I got to the Downtown Grill and Brewery a little early, though, so we walked down to the Mast General Store to kill time until everyone else got there. Usually I only go to Mast General for nostalgic candy, but this time Kristin and I both spotted something else, something mind boggling and amazing:



The Ginormous Grow Frog.

As you can see from the picture, the frog is not yet ginormously grown there, but according to the package all you have to do is put it in water and a week to ten days later, it will grow up to three times its size! It will be ginormous! And it was only two dollars! Kristin and I immediately each bought one, and took them home.

Before I go on, I have to point out right now that I cannot explain the attraction of the Ginormous Grow Frog. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't move. It gets bigger, and as it dries out, it gets smaller. As toys go, that makes it about as interesting as a balloon, but somehow, seeing it in the package and that picture of the little girl holding it out like it was the best thing ever, I wanted a Ginormous Grow Frog. I wanted to take it home, put it in water, and watching it become ginormous.

So I did.

First, I documented the starting size of the Ginormous Grow Frog. From years of reading books about archeology, I know that it's important to put a familiar, standard sized object in a frame so that viewers can understand the size of the other, less familiar object. I chose to use a dollar:



Then I filled the bathtub in my second bathroom and threw the Ginormous Grow Frog in:



I never use that tub. I think it actually had dust in it when I pulled back the curtain to fill it with water. I was thinking, though, of the stories about how goldfish will get as big as the container that you put them in. My frog could not become ginormous in a tiny little bowl of water. He needed a tub, a veritable Olympic sized swimming pool in comparison to his tiny, not yet ginormous body.

Halfway through the week, I checked on him:



His limbs were definitely growing, but his body still seemed tiny. He was not three times his original size, and he was definitely not ginormous. Just to be sure, I pulled him out of the tub and checked him against the dollar:



Bigger, but not ginormous.

When I put the Ginormous Grow Frog back in the tub, I realized that part of the reason why he wasn't growing as fast as I thought he should be was that his legs were in the water but his body was only half submerged. Turning him over, I noticed a small air hole, so I held the Ginormous Grow Frog under the water and squeezed out all the air inside of him. Then I decided that I was being impatient, and needed to go do other things while I waited.

First, Kristin and I went downtown to go to the Christmas Parade. As we got close to the parade site, though, we decided that there were too many people and too many children, and that we should just go out to eat while we were already downtown. We went to the CoCo Moon, where I got orange peel chicken:



but we should have just skipped dinner, gone to the parade, and eaten nothing. It was that disappointing. The music was weird, the seating was weird, the art on the walls had nothing to do with the style of food, the breading on that chicken was so thick and overcooked that biting through it required real effort, and the waiter with the short sleeves and the really good biceps was assigned to some other table. The whole thing was one big letdown.

I also braved a horrible blizzard to come to work:



while pretty much everybody else in the office called in for the day because the snow was just so terrible, too terrible to drive in. The four of us there just kind of stared at each other all day and wondered why we weren't smart enough to call in, too.

Even though it was snowing, I agreed to participate in the Jingle Bell Run to support our department's team, so the night before I did some hardcore training:



and then Kristin and I got dressed up in holiday hats, went to the race, and did the "fun walk":



It actually was fun, although it was very, very cold. It might have been a little warmer if we'd actually been running and, you know, worked up a sweat, but both of us decided to just be cold instead.

As delicious as my racing eggnog was, though, I ended the week by eating something even better. Elizabeth and Ben bought me a candy bar with bacon nuggets for my birthday:



Unlike my experiment with chocolate bacon, the candy bar had a much better ratio of bacon to chocolate, with lots of tiny nuggets studded through it rather than the thick slabs that I tried:



it was so good that I managed to stretch out eating it over four days. Eventually, though, it came to an end as all good things must, just like the growth period for my Ginormous Grow Frog:



It truly was ginormous now. When I took it out of the tub and laid it on top of the dollar for a comparison, it blotted out the dollar entirely:



and I had to put the dollar on top to keep the experiment valid:



He's at least three times his size, and even though he's drying out now, someday, he will again be ginormous.

Thursday Night Mini-Adventure

Last night, Kristin and I decided we needed to get out of town for a couple hours to escape work and blow off steam before we went to the hospital for ICU visiting hours, which are oddly scheduled from 9 to 10 PM. I drove over to meet her at her car, but she was running late, so I walked around the parking garage for a few minutes, taking random photos:







I really like this one, part of my ongoing black and white project:



After Kristin got there, we headed out to Pigeon Forge, so that she could pick up a gift certificate for the indoor skydiving place for someone's birthday. I have no interest in indoor skydiving, but there was a love machine in the lobby that seemed kind of interested in me:



Sexy, you say? Me? Hmmmm... maybe I won't die alone (in the rain, as I've always suspected that I will) after all.

After we picked up the gift certificate, Kristin decided we should stop at Mel's Diner for dinner. They have a pretty extensive menu for a vintage, tiny sized aluminum trailer-style diner, with many of the dishes named after famous people:



Once I saw the Bette Davis BLT, I was compelled by the knowledge of their legendary Hollywood feud to check the rest of the menu for a Joan Crawford dish, and discovered that there isn't one. No penne in vodka sauce or viciously slapped chicken, but the diner did serve Pepsi Cola, so maybe this particular matchup is a tie.

Or maybe somewhere up in movie heaven, Bette is enjoying a good, cigarette-raspy chuckle, especially after Kristin ordered her BLT.

Lacking a Joan dish, I instead ordered the fried bologna and cheese sandwich, with mustard:



and fries. It was crispy and melty and really, really good, and then, on the way home, this happened:



No matter how sad or tired or stressed I am, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg always find a way to make me smile.

My Weekend with Superboy

One of my friends, who will remain nameless, decided to confront me this week with her worry over the fact that I allegedly "spend every weekend alone". When I casually argued that this is not true, she went on to inform me that no, it really is, and that I also "kind of hate people".

OK, for the record, I do not hate people. I like working with people, but the problem is that I spend all day, every day, interacting with people in person, on the phone, and over email, often at the same time. Because of that, I often need at least part of my weekend to just decompress, and exhale, and not have to talk to anyone. That way I'm all recharged by the time the weekend is over and I have to go work with people again. I tried to explain this to my friend, and got the response that "it's not healthy to do that."

"But it is! I'm an introvert!" I totally am. A number of reliable sources on Facebook said so.

"I don't think you are. I'm just telling you this because..." (insert weighty sigh here) "I'm worried about you. It's not good for you to be so alone."

"I'm not alone. You just think 'alone' means 'lonely', and I'm not lonely."

"I'm just really worried about you."

I kind of stewed over this all week. I understand the concern, but I also don't need an intervention. In the end, I decided that the best thing to do would be to not spend the weekend alone, so I looked around and decided to spend it with the first man I saw:



I spent my weekend with Superboy, and oh, what a time we had.

Our weekend together started with breakfast:



Superboy didn't really eat, but I enjoyed a delicious bowl of generic Kroger brand "Life" cereal. After that, I showered alone so that Superboy's paint wouldn't wash off, and then we headed out to pick up some groceries:



I didn't want my friend worrying that I spent the whole weekend locked up in my apartment with Superboy, though, so I decided to show him the town, starting with lunch:



It's hard to read the logo on the glass of Coke, but I had a nice late lunch at the S&W Grand, a nice historical restaurant downtown by the movie theatre. It was a cafeteria for many years, then closed in the 1980's. The building sat vacant and crumbling until being renovated in our new urban boom, and reopened last year as an upscale restaurant. This was my first time eating there, and it was delicious.

For a starter, we had homemade potato chips with blue cheese fondue:



and then I had the Italian four cheese pasta bake with Mornay sauce and parmesan crust:



I was so full that I didn't have dessert, and I certainly didn't get on the S&W's historic vintage scale:



Instead, we felt like walking around for a while and taking in the sights:





I even took Superboy past the graffiti boards on Wall Avenue:



to see if there was anything new painted:



Lunch out was just the prelude to the day's real excitement, though, which was roller derby. The last home bout I went to was the one at the World's Fair Park when the sprinklers exploded, so this was my first one at the Civic Coliseum even thought it was the second one there. I have to say, derby suddenly feels legit:



There are bleachers instead of folding chairs, a scoreboard that's not projected onto the wall from a laptop, and a huge flag:



that they spotlight during the National Anthem:



On the one hand, I like the changes, but on the other hand the team seems so far away now:



They still knock people down, though:



so it can't be all bad. We won both bouts, and had a great time watching:



We also saw a rather familiar halftime show:



Yes, Vinyl Michael Jackson and Lisa Turtle stopped by, and they're still dancing to "Thriller":



It did seem a lot better here than it did at the Smokie's game, but that might just be because they weren't dancing on grass this time.

After derby, we headed downtown to meet a few people at Patrick Sullivan's:



where someone who wasn't me (because I was driving) had a Red Stripe:



This morning I decided that the weekend still wasn't over, so Superboy and I headed to the university gardens:



and walked around for a while. I saw another one of those black butterflies that I saw last week, and was able to get closer this time:



I like the gardens because it's quiet if you go early in the morning and there aren't many people there, and it's pretty:









After that, Superboy and I decided to catch up on a little work at the office:



and then I decided that yeah, that was enough weekend for me and Superboy. My friend should be a lot less worried now that she knows I didn't spend the weekend alone, but instead spent it with an action figure.

There's totally no need to worry.