fiscal responsibility

let me start by saying that this is not a rant about the economic stimulus plan or the fact that the US government is now providing car warranties.

laura and i have decided to try actually budgeting some of our expenses. primarily because we ended up owing taxes this year and i decided that we are poor. at this point, i expect anyone who is reading this is probably really offended that laura and i would call ourselves poor (well, really just me). while we do both make a good bit of money, it manages to disappear as fast as we can earn it just like everyone else, mostly because of our habit of eating out way too often.

we've settled on a figure of $600 dollars per month which comes out to between $3 and $4 per meal per person depending on what assumptions you make. originally i had suggested $500 per month or roughly $125 per week, which is less than $3 per meal per person. we tried that for a week an went over by about $5 and cleared out most of our freezer and pantry in the process.

anyway, i've added a new gadget to my blog (over there on the right ->) so you google reader users (a.k.a phil) will have to go to my actual blog page to see it. it's our running tally for the month.

does anyone else budget their expenses? how much do you spend on food?

* for the record, i got a foot-long sub from subway today but i only ate half of it.

Mmmmmmeat.

one of the nice things about living in modern society is the fact that we are able to be pretty well removed from some of the more unsavory, but some would argue necessary chores of life. like eating meat for instance. we can go to the grocery store and buy a pound of ground beef without ever having to watch a cow give birth, feed a cow, clean up cow shit, kill a cow, and grind up a cow, etc. no, we jut go to the store and plunk down a few dollars for a nice square package of uniformly ground meat product. it doesn't look like an animal and it's all too easy to forget where it comes from. but not everyone is as blissfully ignorant as i am, no, some people are vegetarians. some people do it for health reasons, some because they believe in animal rights, and some just because they think animals are just too damn cute to eat. this video might leave the rest of us thinking that maybe meat is too damn cute to eat too.

honeymoon - day 2

today we was our first full day on the cape and we made our way all the way out to the tip. we stopped at first encounter beach, which i can only assume has something to do with pilgrims and native americans, but it could have something to do with high school kids making out. i'm not really sure.




we made our way further up to provincetown (actual landing spot of the pilgrims if you recall) which is cute little new england town and extraordinarily gay and has an unusually large number of "massage parlors". we walked around for a bit and had some lunch. we found a restaurant called "bubalas" and i had fish and chips and laura had lobster salad. i have to say, it was probably the best fish and chips i have ever had in my life.




the highlight of the day, was without a doubt, the whale watching trip. we had to bundle up because it was quite cool and windy out on the water and it was about an hours trip out to where the whales were but it was incredible. they are absolutely incredible animals and they are *huge*. we followed around two or three different groups of whales, including one group with a mother and a calf which was about the size of a small bus and according to the guide aboard the ship was still nursing. i can only imagine how sore it's mothers nipples must be. at one point one of the whales actually jumped completely out of the water, or in nautical terms, a "full breach", which of course i missed entirely. from what i understand, it was kinda a big deal.

on a whale related note, i am advocating for use of the term "blowhole" as a replacement for the overused and played out insult "d-bag".

world's best empanadas, now twice as good

laura just found half-off gift certificates for cuba de ayer in burtonsville. get 'em while you can. http://halfoffdc.com

everything should taste like bacon

with few exceptions, that is a true statement (things that should *not* taste like bacon are ice cream, coffee and maybe vodka, but bacon whiskey would be okay). you used to have to put those crusty little bacos on everything which only vaguely tasted like bacon and were made out of some sort of byproduct from manufacturing car tires. then they came out with the "bag o' bacon" product. real bacon crumbles in a zip-top bag, convenient for sprinkling on top of your salad or baked potato, but not, say for popcorn or french fries. today the game has changed with the recent discovery of bacon salt, a product from JD's. available in natural, original, hickory and peppered. it's vegetarian, has zero calories and you can put it on ANYTHING.

on second thought, maybe i should give bacon ice cream a chance.

how about some chinese?

my mom is very excited. she is planning a "mini" family reunion with some relatives who have flown in all the way from china. they'll be staying at my parents house. my uncle and his family are driving down from connecticut to meet these relatives for the first time i believe. we'll all be going out to lunch on saturday, and what better place to take them than hunan manor in burtonsville?

PETA offers $1 million reward to first to make in vitro meat...

...cows, pigs and chickens to become extinct within months of award.

seriously, when was the last time you saw a wild cow?

incidentally, does anyone else find it curious that the DoD has just announced it will be spending $250M in research on regrowing human body parts at about the same time the PETA prize was announced?

things i would hump - cuba de ayer empanadas

i just ate four of them. two beef, two chicken. they are, as dave put it, "mind blowing". fried golden brown, spicy, crunchy, a little bit sweet and absolutely delicious. now i'm no empanada expert, but i've had a few and as far as i can tell, these are the best empanadas ever made. dave told our server how much he liked the them, at which point the server claimed that argentinian empanadas are even better. now, while i find this highly unlikely, i feel that however improbably, if true, is certainly worth investigating. we asked if he knew where we could get some and he suggested an argentinian baker in miami, which was not exactly a lot of help. so if anyone knows where i can find some around DC, dave and i would love to hear about it.

cuba de ayer is off of 198 in burtsonville, between rt 29 and old columbia pike. it's easy to miss, but worth the hunt. all of the food there is excellent and reasonably priced. oh, and if you do go, try the empanadas, i hear they are pretty good.

in your face poor people

laura and i just went to the inn at little washington for dinner for her birthday. the tally, not including gas: approximately $405. was it worth it? unlikely. was it delicious and amazing? absolutely. they printed individual menus with our names on them, which we got to take home. the service was ridiculous. they had synchronized servers. two people would come over to our table and pour glass of water at the same time. food swooped in as if from no where and landed in front of us from either side. it was almost silly.

for the first course, laura had the "crispy maryland crabcakes with a trio of sauces: garden sorrel, classic tartar and roasted rep pepper" and i had the "carpaccio of herb crusted baby lamb with tabouli and rosemary mustard".

the second course laura ordered the "macaroni and cheese with virginia county ham and shaved black truffle" and i had "roasted egglplant raviolis in a tomato basil butter sauce with medalions of main lobster".

my main course was "seared alaskan halibut and a maine diver's scallop with a ruby port reduction on a rutabaga puree with local baby turnips". and yes, baby turnips are as adorable as they sound. for laura, they delivered "veal parmesan reincarnated: prosciutto wrapped, pan roasted loin of veal with spinach raviolini and parmesan broth".

and for dessert, i enjoyed the "southern butter pecan ice cream sandwich with hot caramel sauce" and laura took part in the "chocolate menage a trois: black forest mousse bombe, chocolate creme brule and bitter chocolate souffle." i think i saw her eyes tear up a little when she had a bite of the chocolate creme brule. mine had gold leaf on top.


here's a list of things you could eat with $405:

• 5 trips to the melting pot for two
• 11 trips to a casual dining restaurant for two
• 29 large one-topping papa john's pizzas
• 65 whopper combos from burger king
• 162 frozen dinners
• 314 wendy's jr. bacon cheeseburgers
• 506 cans of giant brand chicken noodle soup
• 580lbs of russet potatoes
• 3375 packages of ramen

other things you might consider doing with $405:

• buy a round trip plane ticket to california
• make a car payment
• take you and 9 of your friends to king's dominion for a day
• buy a new ps3
• invest in 2/3rds of a share of google