Reaching My "Dining Out" Limit for 2007

Already?

Just like the classic comic strips, each time I open my wallet to pay my portion of the restaurant bill, little gnats humiliatingly fly out of my wallet and buzz around my head as if I hadn't showered in several days.

But just before I am done dining out for 2007, I want to relive a meal that I enjoyed at a retirement party at Faz Restaurant in San Francisco just this last week. Perhaps that way, I can later look back at 2007 not as the year that I blew my "dining out" spending limit in the first month, but as a year (or month) that I ate pretty darn well.

Eating "darn well" included starting with Faz's organic salad of mixed greens which helped to refresh and ready my tired palate for my second course: pomegranate chicken. The dish included a sizable half of a fire-roasted chicken, bronzed and caramelized from the glowing coals and dancing oven flames. The chicken was served in a thick pool of reduced pomegranate sauce and was garnished with crunchy and nutty pomegranate kernels which exploded their abundant juices into my mouth with each bite. The chicken also came with paper thin-skinned, roasted fingerling potatoes which were steaming and creamy on the inside; and crisp and verdant haricot verts.

Last course? A fluffy, cream-saturated mattress of tiramisu, adorned with two angular strawberry spears and crunchy chocolate chips. The tiramisu was topped off with a generous dusting of superfine powdered sugar and equally ample drenching of a luscious creme anglaise.

Although I hit my spending limit relatively early this year, because I also hit my waist-size limit, I consider myself victorious!