4/27/2012 We Cant Believe We Ate the Whole Thing!

We didn’t have any real plans for today as this is the day where the parking lots around the Lodge will get jam packed because of dinner here this evening. We certainly didn’t want to take any chances of not having a place to put The Beast if we did go out and not return until late in the day.

Besides, Bob has hurt his back somehow. He can hardly move. He’s pulled a muscle or twisted somehow and getting in and out of the truck is just not an option for him today.

I did venture out to get my nails done for which I was long overdue. I had an instant rapport with the nail tech. I asked Karen if that was her given name since she is from Viet Nam. She told me it was as her father named her and he was an American, there during the Viet Nam war. She went on to tell me that he named her and her sister. She also shared with me that she has been in this country for 22 years and did not know her father. She knows he was from New York and often wonders about him but has not tried not to find him. She said that too many of her friends found their American fathers and more often than not the outcome wasn’t good. She said she doesn’t want to chance that.

I asked her if it was hard to learn English at age 22 and she said yes, it was very hard. I asked if she remembered the first word she learned and she laughed and shook her head yes. She looked at me with a huge smile on her face and said, “Whopper!” To this day she loves Burger King!

Karen and I talked about so many things and I enjoyed her company so much that I was sorry when my manicure was completed. If I lived here this is one woman I would seek a friendship with beyond manicures and polish changes. I truly just like this woman and could see us becoming great friends.

I got back to the Lodge around four and the parking lot was beginning to fill already. The front lot was full and cars and trucks were filling in the back area quickly.

Bob and I went over to the Lodge around five and were lucky to find two chairs at the bar. We put our order in for how we wanted our steaks and what kind of dressing we wanted for our salads.

Soon the dinner platters started coming out for those around us and when we saw the size of the steaks Bob and I just looked at each other. The baked potatoes were also very large. We thought that we’d never eat all this and that we should have gotten a platter to split between us.

Not too much time passed and our salads were brought to us. They were also quite large and made of lettuce, grape tomatoes (I had five grape tomatoes in mine so they weren’t skimpy when they made them) cucumber slices, shredded cheese and bacon bits. Salads were served in the good sized Dixie paper bowls.

Our dinners came and we just couldn’t believe the size of these rib eye steaks. They were served on large glass dinner plates and the steaks took up half the plate. Easily two inches thick. Bob and I just looked at each other again and said, “There is no way I can eat all of this.” We both took that first bite of that steak and knew that finishing every last morsel was not going to be a problem. The baked potato was fluffy and while I couldn’t finish all of mine it was delicious.

Ronnie, the grill master, has this down to a science and got well deserved raves from every one who had dinner here this evening.

So did we finish everything? Salads – gone. Steaks – gone. Potatoes – Bob’s gone, mine almost gone. We thought we were going to burst.

We did find out that each steak averaged one and a quarter pounds. I would have never thought I could eat that much steak at one sitting. I certainly wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, unless of course Ronnie was at the grill.

This is one Lodge dinner we’ll never forget!