One Year Ago Today

One year ago today, Glenn and I were in Minneapolis, MN awaiting Lucian's Baptism. One year ago today, I was oblivious to what was to come, enjoying the company of my family, and looking forward to sledding with my nephews. One year ago today, Glenn was sweating bullets and wondering how he was going to get me away from my family long enough to "pop the question".  What a difference a year makes!   It's hard to believe that my new baby nephew has teeth and is/will shortly be walking.  It's a miracle that in a year, we planned a long distance wedding (with the help of a wonderful supportive team of South Dakotans!) got married, squeezed in a mini-honeymoon and a honeymoon...and filed jointly on our tax returns (of course all this was in addition to a whole host of other, more normal things that happen in a year).  So, being the good Catholics that we are, this day called for a celebration... and celebrate we did.

Beef ribs slow roasting away in the window

We decided that we would go see a movie (in the theatre!) downtown and go out for dinner.  We opted to see The Kings Speech. If you haven't seen it, it really is a delightful movie, and I highly recommend it (not for young ears due to some profanity). Afterwords we walked the 5 blocks to  Fogo de Chao and arrived only a bit early for our dinner reservation  Oh... my sweet carnivorian heaven!  The meal at this restaurant is a fixed price.  Everyone pays the same amount, and you get the unlimited salad bar and meat selections (15 different kinds-and mostly all steaks!) and because it was "restaurant week" the meal was $5 off and included dessert.  Let me tell you about the salad bar. I know what you're thinking...big whoop. Salad Bar.  I'm here for the meat.  Yeah, I thought that too, until I saw it.  The salad bar was beautiful.. and not like any salad bar I had ever seen.  It was filled with trays of marinated mushrooms, artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, peppers, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and asparagus spears all beautifully arranged on oval trays.  In addition to the marinated goodies, there were about 5 different kinds of cheeses, generously sliced and several different kinds of cured meets including bacon, prosciutto and smoked salmon.  Then of course there was the lettuce...no ice-berg in sight!  Just beautiful piles of spinach, butter lettuce and romaine, and there were a couple of pre-made diced vegetable salads of the cucumber tomato pepper and onion variety...all superb and very fresh.  What a treat.  And then, there was the meat.  When you were ready for your meat, you flipped over the coaster at your table from the red side to the green side and servers came over to your table with huge skewers of meat. They brought rib eye, prime sirloin, top sirloin, bottom sirloin (my favorite), fillet minion, leg of lamb, lamb chops (Glenn's fav), pork ribs, bacon wrapped chicken, pork loin, pork sausage and garlic beef. 

Glenn's lamb chops

And you could eat as much as you wanted. When you wanted a rest, or to take another trip back to the salad bar, flip your coaster to the red side until you wanted more.  Only when we were stuffed to the brim did our server clear away our plates and offer dessert. For dessert they offered two different kinds of cheese cake, a chocolate lava cake, something with ice cream, i can't remember, flan, tres leches and papaya or strawberry creme.  We are both huge fans of tres leches cake (if you haven't tried it, you should) and opted for that as our selection.  For those of you who may not know what tres leches is, it is a dense, semi-dry vanilla cake that is soaked in a blend of 3 milks: heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk. MMMM, MMMMM, MMMMM! 

And this one did not disappoint.  It was one of, if not the very best tres leches I have ever had. Needless to say, we waddled/rolled away from dinner with happy contented smiles on our faces repeating "wow, that was sooo  good" to each other as we slowly made our way back down the street to the El.   We went straight to bed at 7:00 due to food coma.  Definitely night everyone should experience at least once!  Happy  1 year engagement anniversary honey! Looking forward to many more!