A La Carte

Ken and I don't cook for ourselves much these days. We're just too tuckered out by 6pm to face shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Maybe we should try harder. Sometimes I think so. But it's so much easier to pay someone else to hand over a plate of food.

Sometimes we throw caution to the winds and eat whatever. All day breakfast with really fatty salty bacon. Big, juicy burgers with fries and onion rings. Chinese food glossy with oil and cornstarch. Last time we went to Asian Legend, the lemon chicken was like a sweet, citrusy chicken donut covered in gooey sauce. At a certain point "decadent" becomes "gross".

For my birthday we went to Baton Rouge, the ultimate Canadian slightly-classy pig-out destination. They specialize in grilled meats, especially ribs, served on large oval platters with your choice of sides, usually a pile of fries big enough to choke a horse. This one time I was eating dinner there, and a horse actually came in, gobbled all the fries off my plate in one mouthful, and then choked to death right there on the floor. No one was willing to attempt mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Well, it seriously could have happened.

Like I said, it was my birthday. We showed up on a Monday, which happens to be the day for discounts. 10 oz. of ribs usually goes for $19 and 16 oz. is usually $25, I think, but on Mondays the 16 oz. is only $ 20. So of course I ordered the larger portion. That's why doggie bags were invented.

We also ordered up a couple of strawberry Daiquiri's. If you can believe it, neither of us had ever tried one before. They are very easy to drink. I could barely taste the rum. We waited for our food to arrive. Ken took advantages of pauses in the conversation to thoughtfully lick sugar crystals off the rim of his glass.

Ken ordered a second Daiquiri when we were partway through our meal. He said that it tasted stronger than the first one. By the time he got to the bottom of the glass, he was claiming that either they made that one a triple or someone had slipped him a roofie. He did seem a little loopy.

"You've seen me drink!" he said. "I can have six drinks before I get tipsy!" I'm not sure sure about that. The fact is that when you're at home on your couch, drinking to unknot a stiff back at the end of a long day, it's a lot easier to miss how tipsy you're getting because you're not expected to get up and walk around, or carry on a civilized conversation. Ken doesn't drink all the time, don't get me wrong, but when he has one of his nights I do notice that the Most Watched YouTube videos suddenly seem much funnier to him than usual. By which I mean, there is uninhibited giggling. Therefore: tipsy!

But not after only two drinks. This was something unusual.

Fortunately we were within walking distance from home. On the way back I held Ken's elbow just in case. He walked in a gentle slalom pattern, and serenaded me with an improvised song about how there are a lot of condos.

I wonder what the hell Baton Rouge put in that drink.