Check, please.

One of my dreams is to own a restaurant with Chip. I'd love to serve up some of my Grannys' chocolate syrup and biscuits and runnin' butter beans and cream-style corn (not all together, mind you). Chip's forte is BBQ and steaks and fish and pasta and, well, I guess everything is his forte.

Truth be known I do enjoy cooking, but my passion is baking. Since it would be nutritiously unethical to feed my family pastries for dinner, I decided I needed to expand my cooking repertoire.

Thankfully my mom gave me a cookbook filled with family favorites, but even with this resource I find myself falling back on a select few recipes: meatloaf, pasta/meat casserole, peach cobbler, etc. To prevent my family from refusing to eat the same meals every week, I subscribed to a food magazine in order to expand my cooking horizon.

The magazine proved helpful time and time again.

Last Sunday I plopped myself down, sipped on some tea, and thumbed through the latest edition of the magazine. The pantry was bare, and I needed to make my grocery list. I settled on some good looking recipes. One of the recipes that caught my eye was "pico de gallo." The helpful editors paired the pico de gallo picture with a picture of baked plantain chips. Just in case there was any doubt as to what you should serve the pico with, there was a helpful hint that said, "Serve with baked plantain chips."

Hey, I liked how the recipe looked, and I liked that the editor took the guess work out for me by suggesting a side dish (plantains).

*Just for your information, I'm sure many of you know what pico de gallo is. I had never heard of it before. It looked good, so I thought I'd give it a try. I assumed it was some sort of tomato-y entree. But I digress.*

Last night I decided to whip up some of that good looking pico de gallo and baked plantain chips. We were especially hungry, and I didn't want to wait the required half hour it would take to bake the plantains. I decided to fry them instead.

All the while I'm chopping up the veggies for the pico de gallo, I'm thinking, "Man, this sure doesn't look very hearty." I kept chopping, and then I started fryin' up the plantains. I was fully aware that the plantains would fry up like French fries because I've fixed them like that before.

Once the food is done I get each of us a bowl for the pico de gallo, and I get us each a small plate for our plantains and ketchup. After I sit down, I realize how odd our meal looks: a bowl of diced tomatoes, onion, and jalepeno on one side and a dish of plantains and ketchup on the other.

Chip kept commenting on how good everything tasted. I agreed. After a few minutes of quiet, Chip said, "Honey, I think this is some kind of salsa that's supposed to be served with plantain chips."

How on earth did I not realize pico de gallo was salsa? Talk about feeling inadequate, in terms of my culinary knowledge. I just laughed.

Salsa and French fries for dinner. Awesome. Maybe tonight we'll have saltine crackers and ice cream.

Progressively Shocking

Chip and I found that the best way to maximize our dates is to have a progressive dinner. Instead of having dinner at one place and then wondering what in the world we were going to do with the rest of our time (not that we couldn't be creative...), we decided to go to different places for each course. One of the oddest meals we've ever had was due to this plan: appetizers - sushi; entree - Wegman's supermarket cafe; dessert - Cheesecake Factory. Weird? Yes. Fun? Absolutely.

We went on a date last Friday night, and in keeping with our newly established progressive-dinner trend, we decided that we would have dinner at a barbeque restaurant, walk around the mall, and then end the date with dessert.

After gobbling (quite literally) our dinner, we rode around and then decided to walk the mall. We found ourselves wandering aimlessly through the stores, which is such a pleasure considering we can't normally do that with the kids in tow.

Of course we wound up in the Mac store. It's hard to resist the brighter-than-the-sun fluorescent lights. Wait, what? That's not the reason people go in there? Oh yeah. Must be all those gadgets they have. Chip would really like an iPad. I'd really like a stand mixer.

We perused several other stores, but the time to decide on dessert was drawing close. There really wasn't much debate over where we should go.

Surprisingly there was no wait at the Melting Pot. We told the hostess we were only there for dessert, so she seated us and gave us our menus. The waiter took our drink order. Chip wowed me by ordering a bottle of wine (although I told him I'd have been happy with a TALL glass of milk). We decided against our usual dessert choice and went instead with the "flaming turtle." The waiter assured us that was his favorite. Sure.

Chip poured us each a glass of wine and we eagerly awaited our flaming chocolate. I'm not sure what happened - maybe the wine was extra effective or maybe our giggle boxes were turned over - but Chip and I just started acting silly, and I mean SILLY. There was just something about the dark booth and wine that made it seem like no one could see us.

I'm sure we broke a rule or two when Chip decided to turn up the heat on our burner. The chocolate wasn't as hot as we would have liked, so Chip took it upon himself to kick up the heat. I just knew our waiter was going to catch Chip fumbling around under the table. Soon after the chocolate was bubbling, much laughter ensued.

It all started with the music. It was strange, strange music. I commented to Chip that it sounded like electricity, as if someone was being shocked. That's all it took for Chip to start acting like he was being electrocuted. I mean, he was acting full-out electrocuted. Then I started in with the acting. We took turns shaking violently, laughing, eating chocolate covered stuff, and then shaking violently again. We were having ourselves a good ol' time.

Not long after the "electric" song went off, a man in a suit came to our table.

"How is everything tonight?" he asked.

I replied, matter-of-factly, "Oh, it's wonderful as usual."

"That's great," he said. "I'm the manager and I just wanted to stop by."

The manager had no sooner stepped away than Chip said, "I bet he was making sure we were okay. I imagine he saw us acting crazy on the hidden camera."

I almost spit the wine out of my mouth. I almost... well, I laughed really, really hard - harder than I've laughed in a long time. Just the idea of someone witnessing our electrifying dance was hysterical to me.

We laughed and laughed (and I'm still laughing). That was such a good night.

I can't wait 'til our next date. Shocking, I know.