In August, my husband and I had our marriage blessed in his church. We did it on our five year anniversary and it was very important to him that we do this. During the short ceremony, there were some parishioners (who we didn't know) in the church watching us. Afterward, this woman came up to us and congratulated us. She handed us a gift card and said "I want you to have this so you can enjoy a night out!" We thanked her and walked away feeling a bit baffled. We appreciated her kind gesture and figured there was $10 or $20 on this card.
The gift card was for a restaurant called Rodizio's Brazilian grill and when I checked the balance of the card, I discovered there was $100 on it! Holy moly! This woman, who neither of us had ever met before, gave us a gift card for $100 to Rodizio's! I couldn't believe it. This kind of stuff never happens to us so I checked the balance again. Sure enough, it was right the first time.
This was back in August and I finally made the reservation to go to Rodizio's for dinner the night after my 38th birthday for a date night/birthday celebration with my husband. We're all ready for our dinner because we didn't eat any lunch in anticipation of a monstrous feast of fabulous foods! Now, let me just say, for this night out, I put the weight loss on hold, baby! I wasn't about to go into this experience with limitations. No-sir-ee!
We walked into the restaurant and came face to face with a wall (an entire wall) of wine. I'm not much of a wine drinker but this wall made me want to get a paper bag and become a drunk! Jim and I stared at it with all it's interesting design and rolling ladder and thought to ourselves, "that's a lot of money up there. Wow!".
See what I mean? Wow!
Well, if anyone has been to a Brazilian grill restaurant, you know that they immediately, I mean IMMEDIATELY start feeding you.
First, they bring out the appetizers. Fried pollenta sticks with Parmesan cheese (very Italian, not Brazilian but our server said that many Europeans migrated to Brazil and so there are dishes from many countries...works for me), small biscuits with cheese baked inside and pieces of apple dipped in some sort of wonder batter that included cinnamon sugar and then they're fried up! Oh. My. Word. These little bits of rainbow filled joy melted in my mouth with just the right amount of sugary crunch on the outside and sweet soft banana on the inside. My mouth is watering, sprinkling really, right now as I write this blog. I think I ate about six of those little devils! Did I mention that all the food is unlimited!
We then move on to the salad bar. This is not your normal salad bar; it's filled with interesting foods and salads. I only went to the salad bar once but I came back with one small, hard-boiled quail egg of which I only ate half because it was odd; Rodizio salad which consisted of lettuce, cheese and bacon (Yum); roasted pineapple slaw which was the best slaw to ever touch my lips; strawberry salad which consisted of lettuce, strawberries and coconut and equated to a evening dream on a sandy beach. I also tried the mashed potatoes but wasn't too impressed with those. My husband went to the salad bar at least twice and I'm pretty sure he tried everything up there. He wasn't going to miss one bit!
Then....they bring out the meat. They have these dudes dressed in funny outfits and poofy shirts come around with giant skewers of meat. The come to the tables and cut off small portions of the offerings for people to try. The first one that came to our table was a glazed pineapple and my eyes got huge! I love pineapple and this one was no exception. It was warm and slightly caramelized and quite possibly, was the most tender pineapple on earth! Luckily, that treat came around a few more times and I jumped at the chance to have more!
One odd little food that came around was the chicken heart and a piece of lime. We both tried it because we figured, why not. I immediately cut into mine to inspect the insides as my husband laughed at me. Then I tried it. I sliced off the tiniest piece of chicken heart which I'd already doused with lime juice. All the lime juice in the world would not make this palatable. Blech is really the only word to describe this. If that's not enough to keep me on a diet, I don't know what is.
The other dishes included: sweet and spicy chicken, pork sausage, rattlesnake and jalapeno sausage (not yummy), some sort of glazed pork, tenderloin, roasted veggies and a slew of other goodies which I have forgotten because my food coma that ensued when we returned home must have impacted my brain. I do, however, remember the bacon wrapped turkey.
I am not a fan of turkey because, in my mind, it's usually dry and tasteless. This turkey must have been a very magical turkey who was very hydrated or something because the turkey juices practically ran down my chin. Forget about the bacon for now (Yes, I said "forget about the bacon"), this turkey was bred to be consumed. His life goal was to tickle my taste buds and in turn, make my eyes sparkle with joy! I just can't say enough about how much I loved this treat! Now, back to the bacon in which the turkey was wrapped. It was like the well-hydrated turkey was in a little bacon sleeping bag and he didn't want to come out! They were married together like a couple of people who were never meant to be apart! Unfortunately, the turkey-bacon man only came around twice. But, that's okay; twice is better than once!
Since we were celebrating my birthday and we had the gift card, we decided to go for dessert. The server had already gone over the dessert tray with us but once he said "creme brulee" I didn't hear anything else he said. Creme brulee is my all-time favorite dessert and is a treat that I rarely pass up; luckily, it rarely is offered.
This might possibly have been the best creme brulee I've had in my entire life! The custard was a wonderful consistency and was set to perfection and the bruled sugar crust on top was like crystallized heaven! Mmm.
We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant and although we thought they should have wheelbarrows outside for patron use, we made it to the car, groaning the whole time. Well worth it, though!
Okay, so, this post really had nothing to do with weight loss but one can't have a dinner like that and not share the delicious details!
I did lose three pound last week, just to update you on that front!
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