Grillin' with Grands

It's way too late in the evening to think of anything clever but I wanted to share the latest photo (taken by Uncle Neil) of the kids. Here are Pat and Donna with their four grandchildren. We had a great visit last weekend. Good food, good company.

Going out to dinner

As the family got larger, going out to dinner gradually went by the wayside. It was about the time that Robert started needing his own meal, then Colleen came along and took up space and attention and made it a lot more expensive and less enjoyable to just sit around a table anywhere, let alone out to dinner.

But lately we've ventured out a little bit, and it's been downright pleasant. The kids can read the menu for themselves and decide what they want. We don't have to do the talking for all the kids when the waiter comes. There's no wrangling a highchair.

Tonight we went out to dinner courtesy Mom and a gift card to The Cheesecake Factory from about 2002. It's been in my wallet for the better part of a decade, unused. With a brand-new baby in the house, we weren't going out anywhere, and in those days finding babysitting wasn't a given. The Cheesecake Factory has been loud and difficult to get into -- who can wait 40 minutes for a table with kids in tow? Dinner out for a while was destined for pizza places or semi-fast food (Cate and the kids eat McDonalds while I walk over to grab takeout from Chipotle), or the occasional trip to Applebee's.

And not that The Cheesecake Factory is so darn fancy, either.

So it sat, unused. Mom would ask (bug) me about it on occasion, and you know how gift card issuers used to like to charge a fee for not using the card. So I thought perhaps it might have had its money run out. When cleaning out my wallet I would see it and wonder if it was still good, but always hang onto it, even while assuming the worst. I told Mom many years ago that we had used it, just to get her off my back about it. (Nagging me about something is a sure way to keep me from wanting to do it.)

But today I looked up the phone number of their gift-card balance check line, punched in the number and was somewhat surprised to find it was still good for the full value, so we packed up our somewhat larger and older family and went. We got there about 5:30, so seating was not an issue at the only Cheesecake Factory in Minnesota. We had a nice meal, everyone ate until they were full, and you can see above that there are plenty of leftovers for future meals.

The only downer: Elizabeth is too old for the kids menu. We knew that already and loyal readers of the blog have already seen her tastes run to the expensive end of the spectrum, but we have a no-steak policy. She had a Thai chicken pasta dish, Robert had pasta with marinara, etc., and all the dishes were gigantic.

And Robert had a good time afterward playing around the gigantic horse, which is actually part of the P.F. Chang's exterior next door, but so be it.

So, Mom, thanks. Finally we used it.

Pizza on the grill, round two

We went back to the pizza-on-the-grill concept last night for dinner and I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. We'd planned to do this a couple weeks ago but the propane tank ran out at the wrong time, so we ended up cooking them inside, which took a lot longer and was a lot less fun.

We didn't have Neil's expertise rolling out the dough, and that's my least favorite part so Cate took care of it and I stuck with the grilling part. Cate and the kids had plain cheese pizza, nothing too fancy. (We'd eaten up all the pepperoni from a couple weeks ago.) Elizabeth had red onions on hers as well.
By the time we got to mine, we were basically out of pizza sauce, but I wasn't too broken up about it. There was plenty of other stuff to work with. Mine has pesto, red onions, artichokes, chopped basil, sun-dried tomatoes and a little bit of cheese on it. (My camera's phone doesn't do justice to anything with colors in it, I'm afraid.)

The best part was that there was leftover crust from the kids' pies for me to eat, so I only ate half of this pizza. Heading downstairs to go reheat the other half and eat lunch now!

With this blog post, we reach the 200 mark for Colemans' Couch. Once upon a time I thought we might do something more creative with post 200 but it took a little longer to get here than I anticipated with just three posts in May and five in June.

Someone's hungry

Cate had to leave for work before finishing her dinner. Colleen had no problem finishing it for her!