Dining in Mayberry

As you know, yesterday was my birthday.  BestFriendMommy offered to watch the kids and Brad and I planned to go out to an early dinner (6:30pm, which is very early for us) be back to BFM's house by 8:30ish, have birthday cake with ours and BFM's children, come home, put the kids to sleep and rock the pictures off the bedroom wall.

That was the plan.

Let me say this:  Aside from the occasional McDonald's playland/Chuck E Cheese or Applebee's outing, we don't go out to dinner often.  Much of that is because of me.  I'm a good cook and it just kills me to spend all that money when I can cook something just as nice at home for ⅓ the cost (nevermind the cost of wine:  $30 for a bottle of Yellowtail?  I could buy 3 of them for that price!)

But it was a few hours out without the kids, and that was all that mattered.  The problem is, I live in a growing but still rural area.  And I gave up meat a few months ago.  And I am now at the point where eating meat would make me physically sick (as has been proven a few weeks ago when I "sneaked" a bite of Brad's steak.  Same thing happened when I started eating meat again 10 years ago after being veg for a few years).

So picking a restaurant wasn't a simple task.  First, unless I wanted to be stuck with nothing but pasta with marinara or alfredo sauce, some research had to be done.  Enter the Internets.  Can I just say what a wonderful thing it is that so many restaurants now put their menus online?  It helped me just completely eliminate 8 local restaurants.  Sorry - but I don't care how good a reputation you have....there is no way that I'm paying $26 for vegetable lasagna, unless it comes with 2 Belvedere martinis as a side dish!

I had it narrowed down to 3 restaurants, only 1 of which had their menu online.  Time to make some phone calls.

I swear to Belgium:  this was my phone call with both of them:

Me:  Hi - do you have any seatings for 2 left for about 6:30pm?

Restaurant:  yes we do!  Can I make a reservation for you?

Me (thinking to myself - "I assume that you can.  I don't know yet if you may", but that's just me being bitchy):  I just wanted to ask one thing first:  do you have any vegetarian entrees on your menu?

Restaurant:  we have several fish meals

Me:  that's nice.  Do you have any vegetarian meals?

Restaurant:  we have a lovely scampi

Me:  just vegetables?

Restaurant:  shrimp scampi

Me:  ooookkkkkkaaaayy.  I'm going to have to call you back

Perhaps it is us Catholics who screw everything up, with the whole "No meat on Friday means you can still have a Filet-o-Fish", but I would think that a restaurant would know that fish aren't generally considered vegetables.  I guess we need a few more city-folk to move out to this area before that lesson sinks in (hey - we have a Chico's and an Ann Taylor outlet now.  If you build it, they will come!)

Anyway - we ended up at the third restaurant, where the vegetable lasagna was only $14 and I drank 3 martinis.  In 2 hours.  After only having had a salad, yogurt and a pot of coffee all day.  After not having had anything harder than beer or wine in a few months.

I think I had cake.

I know I had sex.

I know that I fell asleep at 10:30pm

And since I am used to only getting 5-6 hours sleep per night, I've been up since 4:23am. 

My ass is dragging today (but thankfully not sore...I wasn't THAT drunk!)