You're in for a treat when . . .

...the menu is the placemat.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for dear family and friends.

I'm thankful for my job; please keep in your thoughts and prayers, my 7,000 colleagues that lost their jobs and for many others facing the same challenge.

I'm thankful for our new church.

I'm thankful for those that are fighting for our country and who will be missing their families and friends this Thanksgiving.

I'm thankful for the many blessings I've been given and don't deserve.

The City that Never Sleeps

We flew to New York on Friday evening. Even at 9pm, there was a line out the door for soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai. Nevertheless, after a brief wait, our reason for New York was complete. (kidding)

On Saturday, we visited J&R (every imaginable electronic device you could imagine). There was browsing; no purchasing. In between eating our way through New York, breakfast at the Soda Shop and lunch at Mon Petit Café (recommend the La Soupe a L'Onion Gratinee and Le Croque Monsieur), we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Of course on the way to see "White Christmas" on Broadway, and despite temperatures in the 20's (and wind chills even cooler) I couldn't pass up the Pomegranate Paradise at Jamba Juice.


We went to church at Redeemer Presbyterian with our closest 2500 friends at one of their five services. Truly amazing. Dr. Keller is doing a series, Bible: The Whole Story - Creation and Fall, which includes passages from Genesis, Romans and Revelation. We walked by Rockefeller Center, and saw the ice skating rink and huge Christmas tree, but no lit lights yet. We arrived at B&H, which can only be described as a photographer's heaven. Brian found a new tripod and camera bag. With new tripod in hand, he took some fabulous photos of the World Trade Center construction area from the hotel, which looks directly over the site and Times Square. We closed out the evening by seeing Stomp (go on-line to see/hear clips). What an entertaining show and well worth seeing!

Happy Anniversary!

Our Anniversary dinner was at Marcel's. It's a very lovely, French Belgian restaurant that we had not been to before, but had heard rave reviews. We splurged on the 7-course tasting menu. This time, there was no spoon confusion!

They have a pre-theater menu, which includes 3-courses and will be perfect when we are on the way to the Kennedy Center.

The "amuse-bouche" was a small demitasse cup of a velvety corn chowder soup.

• lobster bisque en croute, lobster salad
• pan seared la belle farm foie gras served with toasted bread
• Marcel's boudin blanc, red wine essence (probably our favorite)
• pan seared sea bass with a light sauce
• Australian venison, sauteed spinach and pureed root vegetable; Brian had bison, potato
• cheese course described like this (brillat savarin, candied walnuts, honey humoldt fog, roasted apricot & vanilla mimolette, medjool date epoisses, quince, marcona almonds)
• hazelnut souffle with a chocolate sauce and pistachio ice cream; Brian had a triple chocolate creation (both were yummy!)

A small plate of five different sweets and a coffee topped the evening

Our dessert plates had a beautiful scroll of Happy 11th Anniversary written in chocolate. It was a real treat.

A New Hallelujah

Two of my favorite artists are Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman. Tonight, we got to see both for the price of one! They both sang a lot of their classics, and Michael W. Smith sung several new ones from A New Hallelujah. It was so much fun. I took a couple of pictures. Of course Brian took some fabulous ones!



This is for my best friend, Special K Mom!