Shelley hated Pita's in Paradise! Did I?


Mmmm Food!!!

Hey Mark, what did you eat in 2005? Funny you should ask, here are Mark’s food awards for 2005!

First the stats:
# of places ate: 96
# of visits: 275 (.75 per day)
Top 5 most frequent:
1t. JT Whitneys 19
1t. Chilis 19
3. Taco Bell 12
4t. Red Robin 11
4t. Papa Johns 11
This includes any food ate anywhere but at a home that was home cooked. Includes pizza delivery, ice cream treats, donuts, food for free at work or bike races, food on vacation (84 meals were on vacation) etc.

Mark’s awards:
Best Burger: Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage, Cambridge, Mass
Best Burger Local: Dotty’s Dumpling Dowry
Best Mexican: Teocali Tamale
Best Mexican Local: Taco Bell (Steak Chipotle Grilled Stuffed Burrito)
Best Pasta: Olive Garden (Never-ending Pasta Bowl)
Best Pasta Local: Same
Best Breakfast: Dunkin Donuts, Bangor, Maine
Best Breakfast Local: Green Lantern
Best Cheesesteak: Chilis
Best Cheesesteak Local: Same
Best Pizza: Drags, Rice Lake, Wisconsin
Best Pizza Local: (Tie) Papa Johns Deep, Pizza Oven Buffet
Best Happy Hour Local: Damon’s
Best Appetizer: Spudmania, Jungle Jims, Lake Buena Vista, FL
Best Appetizer Local: (tie) Cheese Curds, Dottys, The Sampler Platter @ Damon’s and Best of the Southwest at Tumbleweed
Best Fast Food: Sonic
Best Fast Food Local: Taco Bell
Biggest Surprise (good): China One
Biggest Surprise (bad): Ten Pin Alley (and their toxic tasty ketchup.)
Best Atmosphere: Spaghetti Factory, Toronto, ON (intimate setting, awesome!)

Notes:
-Although available only on vacation, Dunkin Donuts was eaten 6 times (in 2 vacations)
-Favorites White Castle, Waffle House, Long John Silvers and Sonic were each eaten twice, Checkers and Taco Time once. Jungle Jims took the cake with 3 visits in a 7 day span.
-McDonalds was #1 for breakfast, occurring 7 times.
-We ate at Olive Garden 10 times, 7 of which were during the 5 week never-ending pasta bowl span.
-Disappointments include A&W (crappy chicken sandwich), Friendlys (lots of hype, average meal), Checkers (worlds largest checkers= worlds worst service and average food), Pitas in Paradise (expectations were low, expectations weren’t even close to being met), Taco Time (world’s worst location, now gone).
-Two unique food experiences were the Varsity Club box seats at Camp Randall and Taste of Madison. I highly recommend both!
-Food quotes: “4 Hours of P.O.P.” at McDonalds in Iowa (no city needed as Iowa sucks as a whole.)

Cement Creek Tavern, above average food and Ms. Pac Man...sweet! If only some random dog hadn't walked through the front door and spewed all over the floor.

So here you go, Mark's year in review in food! Stay tuned for my year in review of cycling, training, musi, movies and whatever else I might think up! Oh yeah, I expect good opinions on this one!

I can’t seem to update my blog from home so I can’t use hi-res pictures. I’ve been trying to fix it but to no avail. Hopefully I can change that tonight so I can upload a couple of photos of what we got for Christmas. Anyways, time for the weekend update!

Happy 2006!!! I will have various lists of best of 2005 coming in the next couple of weeks so stay posted and comment a lot! We had a long weekend off of work so that was nice! What isn’t nice is next work holiday=Memorial Day. Guh!

Thursday night we saw the Bodeans in concert at the Barrymore. Good concert! I am not really a fan but I had a good time and all the true fans absolutely loved it!!! Friday I got up early for some hoops and was pretty much worthless after that! Oh yeah, we saw that movie Rumor Has It. Pretty decent for a chick flick, it kept us guessing, but kind of fizzled at the end. But it was very entertaining! Saturday was New Years Eve! We did a lot of cleaning and preparing (and more basketball for me) and we were ready to party around 5pm. A little Burger King and then people started to come over! Barry and I knocked a good amount of swill (See post below) and I think everyone had a good time! We had an intense game of some wagering trivia game that was fun. We played some Cranium Primo which is a definite upgrade! We then sang some karaoke, played some 80’s music trivia and almost missed midnight. We closed with a little Catchphrase. Special thanks to everyone who came and for bringing some good food! Special thanks to Dean and Barry for partying like was 1981 (with Schnapps that was from 1981.)

Sunday was met with a little headache (not very bad though.) I read the paper and cleaned up the mess from the night before and then we went to the Smulkas to watch the Packer game. We stayed and watched Green Bay win, then watched the movie Mr & Mrs Smith. A good movie, I think most everyone would enjoy it! We then went to Olive Garden (too busy) Nitty Gritty (closed) JT Whitneys! We came home and crashed! Then on to Monday and the domination of Auburn by Wisconsin! We also started a crazy jigsaw puzzle which now has two messed up pieces because of Chili. Last night was our first basketball game. We were up 8-0 and then pissed it away to lose like 47-36. We have a lot of things to work out but our biggest problem that I saw was that we had 10 people. No one played long enough to get into a flow or to learn how to work with others. Pretty crappy. Personally I was held scoreless (0-2, 2 fouls) but it seemed like I hardly played at all. 10 guys playing running time 20 minute halves…not a great idea…but that many committed and paid so who knows what the future will hold.

Now it is Tuesday, I am stuck at work, and my only solstice is that Wedding Crashers comes out today. Hope you all had an excellent New Years!

Name the game…

At New Years, Barry and I played a little game after drinking a mini keg of Coors Light. After the game we ended up drinking a bottle of mudslide and some mint chocolatinis. Yummy!