Rice Paper and other stuff

This post is not to brag that I am done with my Christmas shopping, because I am too big a person for that.

Instead I wanted to note that timprov and I had lunch at Rice Paper and found out two things that I thought might be of interest:

1) They are having a special deal Tuesday nights where you can get two appetizers, two entrees, and one dessert for $30. While this is not in the fast food price range, for the quality of food involved, it's a pretty good deal.

2) We got to try the new appetizer, edamame with a sesame dipping sauce. Ohhhh my. I rarely feel like it's worthwhile to order edamame in restaurants when you can just get them at the grocery store and snarf to your heart's content. This appetizer is an example of why I am wrongety wrong wrong. It was warm both in temperature and in taste, a toasty sort of lovely thing that coated the edamame pod and came off beautifully when you bit the beans out of the pod. So very fine.

(We got given this free, and also free spring rolls, apparently because they were so happy to see us, and the owner always asks how I'm doing. The food is good enough that I would keep coming back even without these little personal touches, but they certainly don't hurt anything.)

Also it gave us this theory about sesame yams. We may try this theory out tomorrow when Mom's over for baking, since we all like yams and Dad and markgritter don't. One of the things I like about Rice Paper is that it seems like we often go away with ideas for things to make at home.

It's not quite as horribly cold as it was yesterday around here, but it's still pretty bitter out. There is, however, snow, steady snow, lovely snow. Ideally there will be enough snow for the driveway guy to come, because there's already enough that it has to be cleared one way or another. I have a good supply of hot cocoa and tea, and I have snow, and I have all my Christmas present wrapping taken care of. Time to dive back into one of those short stories.