Restaurants - Here We Come!

DRINK UP!
When it comes to restaurants, we are not normally big alcohol drinkers. Frankly, it’s expensive to get drinks. And we’d rather use the extra calories on dessert anyway. So, before insurance gave us the go-ahead, we were a: Share an ice tea between the adults, and the kids get water, family. My, how things have changed! Now, we’re a: Everybody gets your own non-alcoholic drink and why not some wine or a strawberry margarita here and there for the adults, family.

GETTING USED TO MAGIC!
For the first batch of receipts we sent to our insurance, we were a bit scared. They said eat whatever you normally eat. Okay, but did we really cook like this at home? Heck no! Our agent questioned a couple things in the beginning; I answered her honestly and she was fine. In May, it was my first Mother’s Day I couldn’t have in bed, but we made up for it at brunch at The Marriott in Dana Point. We were freaking out a little until we got the big insurance check back. We were freaking out until we got a couple more checks too. You should have seen the Father’s Day brunch receipt from the St. Regis! By the way, some of the best Eggs Benedict I’ve had, and some of the worst pancakes. The “pancake chef” could not make a decent pancake for the life of him! He had all these amazing fixins’ but kept burning the pancakes. We’ll just blame the portable grill. ☺ Everything else was excellent. Best part — We got to sit right next to Magic Johnson and his wife! He was cool to give our boys a high-five after the photo he posed with them. That was a memorable Father’s Day.

THIS CHEF HAS SOME NERVE
At The Peppercorn Grille in Big Bear, David just ordered a pizza, but since it looked like a very classy restaurant, the boys and I decided to get fillet mignons. We order them medium rare. When the steaks arrive and we cut into them, they are all medium well, so we sent them back. About 5 minutes later, the waiter brings all 3 plates back out to us with a message from the chef. “The chef wants to know if you’ve cut all the way to the center and to make sure you want to send them back.” We are astonished, and yes, we are sure! The waiter says he is only the middleman and he agrees with us, “These are not medium rare.” When he returns, the waiter says, "The chef said he will take these back for you.” Really? Like he was doing us a favor for cooking our food improperly! To top it off, the new fillets came back raw in the middle. I didn’t want to deal with the chef again so I just ate the outsides and will never return.

NEXT POST
More restaurant stories and our kitchen remodel progression to come. Stay tuned! Scroll down for the photos.

Over 300 Restaurants in 5 Months

LAST MEAL AT HOME
The story starts with our Holiday dinner. All the relatives... My husband, David, looked down and saw our darkened wood floor and called me. He knew the signs of water damage and it didn’t look pretty. Some quick detection work led us to the kitchen where water was actually dripping out of the ceiling soffet. The drywall squished in with my finger. All this, right in the middle of making Baked Alaska! We had just had a slab leak, so we called the same plumber. He came, happy to get a piece of cake, and cut a hole in our ceiling to fix the pinhole in the copper pipe that was spraying water out. I was still trying to get over the other 15 holes in our house from the slab leak, but deep down, I knew this was worse.

 RESTORATION & MOLD
The plumber gave me the name of a restoration guy and said to call him before we called our insurance. We followed his advice and Robert was signed up the next day. He discovered all the places the water damage had actually traveled. It was like playing hide and seek. The water went down both directions of our soffet, down the walls, and back up again. It soaked under our travertine floor, the cabinets, the wall and the wood floors on the other side of the drywall encased post. Inside the soffet, mold had grown as fast as Robert and crew was able to knock down the walls. David and I were happy we had contacted Robert; he knew he had to “act” responsibly to avoid any more damage, take photos, and call the Hazmat people for mold testing. The kitchen had over 100,000 mold spores! Full containment was needed — the space suits, showers in and out of the house, scraping of wood, removal of all floors etc… Our young sons could not use the family room (i.e. T.V.) for about 3 days. This spelled disaster. The furniture got moved to a PODS on our driveway.

 THE GOOD NEWS
Robert told us we have “Loss of Use” through our insurance. This means we can eat out, through our insurance, for the time that we can’t use our kitchen. Our insurance agent, Allison, confirmed.  April 2010; I don’t think I will ever forget her words. “You can get appetizers, desserts and even a glass of wine.” This was too good to be true! I adore going to restaurants. This meant no shopping, no cooking, or cleaning… Now, don’t get me wrong, I love to cook. Well, I did before my kids got so picky. My husband’s not too easy to cook for either. So lately, all the fun of cooking’s been slowly drained out of me. I was due for a break. Hey, this way I can order what my kids call ‘fancy stuff’. We set up a breakfast nook for when the boys’ were at school. For the rest of our meals, it was restaurants all the way!

 5 MONTHS LATER
It is now September. This has taken far longer than we had ever thought it would. We are just getting started with the construction. We’ve gained weight, but have a lot of fun stories eating at so many restaurants. That’s over 300 restaurants! We also have good tips and stories for our construction. Please follow us on our journey...