Text 15127, 97 rader
Skriven 2014-07-23 10:20:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: Happy day 705
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The continental breakfast - the hotel literature mangles
this and calls it an "international" one - was about as
meager as I've ever seen. A loaf of discount supermarket
white bread with the little packets of spreads, some
minimuffins with an Otis Spunkmeyer sign on top of the
cabinet holding, two containers of cereal. I tried a
blueberryish muffin, which was dotted with small blue
dots that had nothing to do with real fruit, and then
retreated to the cereal - I thought the cornflakes looked
rather peculiar, so I went with a handful of O shaped
things that tasted as though they were made of charcoal,
even they were not substantially darker than the normal
ones. I gave up without checking out the white bread.

Hap was supposed to pick me up at nine, but somehow
things got balled up, and at half past he still hadn't
shown up, so I left a message on his phone describing
the somewhat arcane way of getting here (you go down
past the Clarion sign and to the cul-de-sac, and there
it is). Eventually he showed up, having had a late start
but also having gotten lost trying to find the place;
he allowed as he hadn't had a proper breakfast, but I
was unsympathetic. We eventually compromised, finding a
Taco Time (local fake Mexican food chain) and getting a
couple crispy beef burritos, which Hap swore were worth
eating and which he claimed the Shipps had also endorsed.
Yeah, I said, okay, crispy is good, beef is good.

This turned out to be the case - the food was tasty,
the meat filling only moderately adulterated with weird
starchy and soybeany substances. Somewhat spicy though
oddly neutral in flavor. The shell was indeed crispy,
as well fried in decent oil. Oddity - the shape was
what I'd say was flauta, only these were about 4x as
long as a flauta, so they bent precariously in the
middle. The girl in the drive-through asked if we
wanted hot sauce; answer: affirmative. This sauce was
quite spicy and made our snack sort of delicious.

Annie and her sister Chris were off at school, but we
arranged to meet for lunch at Tom Pantley's place (one
of the events at the 2001 picnic was at Tom's previous
restaurant), Toscano's in Puyallup.

Hap and I took the scenic route, partially owing to
our not being hungry yet - the burrito-so-called was
pretty filling - and partially to our getting turned
around somehow while sightseeing; so the ladies
preceded us by a few minutes. We didn't see them at
first, but it turned out they were at a private little
table past the far end of the bar.

Annie is looking pretty good, though her chemo has
done odd things to her complexion; Chris, by contrast,
has a more ivorylike coloring.

A jolly and celebratory meal.

The waitress, who knows these folks pretty well, did a
deft upsell, getting three of us (including me) to
order quite unnecessary cups of onion soup for a starter.

The soup stock was incredibly rich and concentrated;
there were relatively few onions but a thick layer of
croutons that were glued together with what Hap said was
provolone but I thought was mozzarella. I did check
beforehand to make sure I had abundant pills.

I didn't get to try Chris's chicken piccata, which
came with some kind of butterfly pasta on the side.
Apparently, the girls weren't brought up with the
freewheeling plate sharing that many of us are
accustomed to.

Annie had had a dish, a favorite of the McDonalds,
whose home was the site of one of the 2001 or earlier
picnic events, whose name she'd forgotten, but we
were sure wasn't on the menu; she described it to the
waitress - penne in a vodka cream sauce with sun-dried
tomatoes and pieces of chicken, which the on-the-ball
young lady recognized as chicken Rosa and said that
the kitchen was equipped to do it as a special order.
I did ask for a taste of this when it came out - it
was good, but I still don't see the point of vodka in
sauce; nor of white meat chicken in general. The
portion was big, and she took half of it in a doggy box.

Hap had a pepper steak wrap, which looked to be packed
generously with meat but not worth asking for a taste of.
It was also of moderate size (and price), so I'd have
felt funny taking food out of the mouth of the hungry.
I did give him a nice cup or more of mine to help even
out the calories.

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