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Five Guys is a delicous disaster

I'm working from home today, which gave me a chance to check out our new Five Guys for lunch. It was busy, but I got through the line quickly. And then I waited.

They seemed to be getting orders out pretty fast, but I was number 88, and they served 79 right as I paid. So I waited.

When I finally got my lunch, I checked the bag to find two burgers instead of one. Since no one else would eat a second burger (I'm home alone, the wife wouldn't eat the meat anyway, and the cat probably wouldn't care), I took the bag back to the counter. As they were trying to figure out what happened, a woman missing a burger from her bag came up beside me.

It wasn't difficult to figure out what happened, and they quickly fixed it. So I came home and ate my delicious pile of fried calories. And now I have to get back to work.

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Delicious frozen custard

We waited too long to try out the "new" Rita's Water Ice in Columbia Heights. Their frozen custard is awesome. It's like ice cream, but creamier. If that doesn't sound awesome to you, you must be either crazy or lactose-intolerant. Or vegan. But probably crazy.

As we were walking, the wife and were talking about how nice it is to see so many people out and about. The intersection of 14th and Irving is full of people, all the time. Even a year and a half ago when we moved here there weren't half as many people around. Of course, that was before Target and everything opened. And it doesn't hurt that this is the nicest evening we've had in a while - it's cool and breezy and we've already opened the window in the bedroom in anticipation of sleeping without the air conditioning.

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Pregnant wife bonus

One of the nice things about having a pregnant wife is that, when a recipe calls for white wine, she can't help you finish the bottle.

Just kidding.

We have a bottle of white wine, a 2006 Primaterra pinot grigio. So, now we can calculate the Complaint Hub Wine Score.

  1. Alcohol Review gives it 3.25 stars. We'll convert that to a 100 point scale, multiplying by 20 to get 65. They say it costs $7, and it was on sale at Whole Foods, so we'll give it a PPD of 9.29. That's a pretty decent score.
  2. It's Italian, so no California Penalty.
  3. Again, no Australia or New Zealand Bonus.
  4. It's got a pretty solid label. It's a cheap wine, so I don't expect much, and the label is different, but it's not doofy. Plus 10.
  5. Multiply by Planck's Constant.
  6. Planck's Constant is really small. No one wants a wine score in scientific notation. So let's open up Open Office Spreadsheet and do some formula magic. First, let's take the arc cotangent, which gives us 1.57. You can quibble about significant digits in the comments.
  7. That's still not a good number. So we divide one by the natural log of that, which gives us 2.21.
  8. I'm not a huge fan of white wine, so let's multiply by 50 and subtract a 25 point White Wine Penalty.

Then we round down, because the digits after the decimal were never really significant anyway. And we're left with 63.

So you see, this is clearly a good wine rating system, since it's right in line with the score from another website!

The wine tastes fine. Not too sweet, not too dry. It pairs well with a seitan picatta from Veggie Times. It probably has some flavor notes of something. Maybe fruit? White's usually have fruit notes, right?

In conclusion, it's a nice value at $7.

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Awful website, great restaurant

The wife and I had dinner at Rumba Cafe in Adams Morgan last night. It was a 1000 point reservation at Open Table, which puts us almost to a $50 gift certificate to any restaurant that deals with Open Table, which is awesome.

The Rumba Cafe website seems to be under maintenance this morning (I think it should be euthanized, personally (And did you know that "euthanized" isn't in the default Firefox dictionary? Weird)), but no matter.

We sat outside, since it was so nice last night. The service was very good, the beer mediocre, and the food was excellent. I had the steak with a fried egg on top, served with rice and black beans and a fried plantain. Reminded me of Costa Rican "casados", which I love. The wife had some kind of fish, I forget what, but it was good, too.

I highly recommend Adams Morgan when it's not overrun with kids (By kids I mean 23-year-olds). 8PM on a Tuesday it's alive with people (Plenty of kickballers and others just out for dinner or a drink) but doesn't have that "everyone around you is wasted" vibe that it gets on the weekend. It was just a nice spring evening.

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You WILL like tofu and brussels sprouts

Caramelized Tofu Recipe - 101 Cookbooks

Here's how it came together: a quick survey of my kitchen revealed tofu and a cluster of brussels sprouts. There was also a vibrant bouquet of cilantro tucked into the refrigerator door begging to be used. I scanned the cupboards and pulled down a small bag of (already toasted!) pecans and the remnants of a once full bag of my favorite sugar. Garlic? Check.

I know that a lot of people have a very strong reaction to brussels sprouts and tofu. Kind of like my reaction to Hillary Clinton. But the wife LOVES brussels sprouts, and so when I saw this recipe, I tried it out.

It's really excellent. If you don't enjoy caramelized tofu with pecans, you're crazy. Or allergic. And not only is it delicious, but it's also made in only one pan (Two if you cook rice with it, which I recommend) so it's pretty easy to clean up.

Anyway, you should try it. I didn't bother toasting the pecans this time (I did the first time I made it), and I didn't notice a difference.

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Eat Well DC hires new chef - Washington Business Journal:

Eat Well DC hires new chef | Washington Business Journal

Eat Well DC Restaurant Group has hired a new chef to oversee the company's four D.C. restaurants.

Branden Levine, who was formerly chef and owner of The Tavern Restaurant in Heathsville, Va., replaces Sal Del Rosario, who was with the company for 18 months.

This is interesting news. I've been to Merkado once, and to The Heights numerous times (How smug are we about being there opening night?).

I have no idea what's going to change with a new chef. The food there is good, although I liked what I had at Merkado better than most of what I've had at The Heights. There's something about the food at The Heights that knocks it down a notch. It's not that the food is bad, because it isn't. It just feels like they could tweak some recipes just a little bit and be much better.

So, we'll see what happens.

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Nano
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