Another of Scott's Homes on the Web

for dinner last night. (See their web site at http://www.psychosuzis.com/) We had the onion rings, deep-fried asparagus, and The Surly Sausage & Triple Mushroom pizza. We liked it, we'll probably go back - but not on Friday or Saturday night!

Yes, I know a number of my friends have recommended it in the past. The recommendations did not sound like something my 50-something wife and I would enjoy. What convinced us to try it was seeing Suzi on Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. Suzi out-personalitied Guy! And the food looked good, too.

Anyplace that shows up on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives is worth trying at least once. It's our fourth place he's pushed us to try - we've also gone to and enjoyed Colossal Cafe, Emily's Lebanese Deli, and Kramarczuk's.

Thursday is our standing dinner date with Don & Margo (WANOLJ), with the occasional addition of Karen and/or Gin (WAANOLJ).

Tonight, we went out for dinner at Hazel's Northeast for Dining Out For Life, where participating restaurants give some percentage of their take for the night to AIDS/HIV relief - in Minneapolis, it goes to support The Aliveness Project.

We were joined by Julie and Deanna (WANOLJ). We had Fried Green Olives for an appetizer - I had one, that is all of that I'll ever have to have. I had the Swedish Meatballs, iraunink had the Runestone Steak, Deanna had the Daily Risotto, Julie had the Pasta Pomidoro (sp?), Don & Margo each had burgers. For dessert, iraunink & I had banana chocolate bread pudding, Don & Margo each had chocolate pecan pie with Vanilla ice cream, Julie had a banana split in home-made waffle-cone bowl, and Deanna skipped dessert.

We were all very happy with our meals. It was fun. They ... were fairly obviously overwhelmed. We had a reservation for 7pm, we finally got seated about 7:45, and got out of the restaurant about 9pm. It's out of the way for us, but will go onto the list of 'stop by if it's convenient'.

kalikanzara - it's 2-4 blocks north of your place, on Johnson. If you haven't tried it, you should. It would be a nice place to go eat at from a party at your place.

My father & step-mother are abandoning their life on the road and setting down roots in Kansas City, starting next month. I've been trying to get them to dim sum for a few years now, and have been failing miserably.

At some point in the next 6-12 months, we'll go down to visit them. Anyone have suggestions for a (hopefully) good dim sum place there?

iraunink and I went out to dinner at La Bahia this evening. They opened on Saturday - they're where Mazitello's used to be, a block & a half up the street from us at 38th & 11th. I hadn't realized it was under new ownership until tonight, otherwise we might have gone earlier!

We were very happy. It looks like they're doing better than Mazitello's already. We suspect we won't have the same problem with them that we did with Mazitello's - Mazitello's told iraunink she couldn't spend two or three hours sitting there in the afternoon when they had maybe one other table occupied. We're looking forward to going there in the future.

We went up to Duluth yesterday, to finally deliver Mom's Christmas present. It was a sound card for her computer, and a new-to-her 17" monitor (Thanks, mrissa, she likes it!). I turned it on, the old monitor did this shimmery thing, I turned it off to swap monitors, and ... you guessed it, it didn't turn back on. That was the point at which she told me that she'd been having to power-cycle it two or three times to get it to boot recently. :-( OK, it's time for a new computer. She's buying, the major limit is that it has to be up and running, with most of her software reinstalled, before I came home. My first thought was to get her a new new computer - that survived about 3 minutes once I hit Best Buy. Windows Vista. There was no way I was going to give my mother a new computer with an operating system that I'm not either currently running, or have been running relatively recently. Let alone one that I'm unlikely to be touching for a year, minimum! OK, off to the local Computer Renaissance. They didn't have anything I could take away with me Thursday late afternoon, but did have a bunch of Dell desktops running Win2K Pro that they' have available soon. Soon ended up being about 1:30 Friday afternoon. Dashed home with the new computer, installed Quicken, WordPerfect, Wheel of Fortune, and a MahJongg program. Now she has a working system, all I have to do is get the data off the old hard-drive. There's this box that won't power up sitting on my dining room table right now...

Other than that, she took us out to dinner Thursday and lunch Friday. Dinner was at a newish restaurant in Superior, WI, called Le Bistro. Total bill for the three of us was about $85 - mom had scallops in lemon butter, iraunink had broiled walleye, I had cioppino, and then iraunink and I split a serving of Raspberry Chambord Cheesecake for dessert. It was a good dinner!

Lunch was the Nokomis Cafe, which was about 20 minutes up the north shore. (Yes, I found the thought of a Nokomis anything that far north a little bit set destructive.) Appetizers were a salad with blueberry vinaigrette dressing for mom, and a smoked whitefish cake for iraunink and me. Entrees were a walleye cake po-boy for mom, iraunink and I split the meatloaf with herb polenta, and then had a Meyer Lemon curd creme brulee for dessert. We didn't like the ratatouille side dish that came with the entree, and the sauce that came with the smoked whitefish cake had a touch too much mayo in it for my taste, but it was still a pretty good meal. I'd go back there in a few months, after they change from their winter menu to their spring or summer menu.

We also came home with some silver serving pieces that mom wanted to get rid of. I think we'll get reasonably use out of them - after we get the tarnish off.