fulfillment

Last week after the track day I was able to indulge in one of my culinary quests that I previously mentioned. Coming back from Willows, CA we took a short detour into Woodland, CA and had dinner at the Ruby Tuesday's restaurant there -- it is apparently the only Ruby Tuesday in Northern California and would typically entail an hour and a half drive from home but since we were up there already I suggested it to my friends and they were up for it. Of course I was going to order their Triple Prime burger since I keep seeing ads for this burger on TV, but I was sorely tempted by the giant photos of ribs, steaks and other scrumptious items in their menu.

Obviously you can tell a lot about a restaurant by its menu, and the Ruby Tuesday's menu is no exception. It's a 6 page menu of which 2 pages are dedicated to the different variants of burgers that they offer. Say no more, I clearly came to the right place.

To recap, the triple prime burger patty is made from 3 freshly ground prime meats: prime tenderloin, prime ribeye, and prime sirloin. It's also sandwiched with a fabulously fluffy bun with a sort of crescented top; it's like eating a steak burger surrounded by a croissant bun. And oh momma, it was good. The wait for the food once we had ordered was a little long, but in the end it was truly worth it. Their french fries that accompanied the burger were not bad either. I shall have to come up with more excuses to swing by Woodland from time to time.

That's not the only food craving I satisfied last week though, I finally succumbed to the siren call of some fried chicken. After a late night of work I stopped by Popeye's Chicken in Newark and picked up a 10-piece box of fried chicken, some mashed potatoes and a few corn-on-the-cobs. The corn was a mistake, because it turned out to be bland, but the spicy-flavored chicken and mash were every bit as good as I had hoped, and it's another item I can cross off my gastronomical to-do-list. There's definitely some guilt after a meal like that, but hey, it's only a momentary thing, and then you're picking up the next chicken wing.

While I'm on the binging confessional, I also did the unthinkable this Labor Day weekend -- we hit up a buffet today. I haven't been to a buffet in a long while, must have been years since the last one. But for the long weekend we went up to visit my Dad in Lincoln, CA and of course we had to pay a visit to the nearby Thunder Valley Casino. They offer a buffet lunch and dinner called "the Feast". And on weekdays it's only $9.99 for lunch. Need I say more? We ate ourselves silly -- for me the high point was the beef fajitas, some italian sausages, and the delectable dessert bar. I tried to stick to mostly protein and veggies, keeping the carbs to a minimum. But we walked out of there hurtin', man. To compensate I didn't really eat much of a dinner, I had more than enough nourishment for the day.

Tomorrow is a new day, and we'll probably eat like monks for the rest of the week to atone for our weekend indulgences.