I made focaccia today also! And now my sourdough starter is under control and I have some good bread, the end.
My balcony rosemary is somehow still alive (albeit very frosty), so I threw that on top.
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I started February’s thread here:
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Same here… I found this one (Rival) at Goodwill a few years ago.
Neighbor #2 really enjoys these hot pockets or whatever they are called.
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So much fun . Never knowing how its going to come out . Flour , yeast , water . Salt.
Stock image but same guy as we have; ours is probably 40+ years old. But the inner surfaces of ours match your sandwiches exactly, so I’m guessing there was one original maker and they (whoever they were - Sunbeam??) made them for various brands.
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Well, the price differs, and can be anywhere between $150 and $300. Tonight’s dinner was the most expensive, at $135 per person, but it was 9 courses. We normally order around 3 appetizers and 2 entrees, and there are usually plenty of leftovers for another dinner. We only go to BYO restaurants, so it could be worse. I don’t mind paying extra for good food, but I just can’t pay triple the price for wine at a restaurant. That would add another $150 or so for 2 bottles of wine.
Prices might be cheaper where you live. They tend to be more expensive in the NY, NJ, and California regions.
The price of dinner has really gone up after the pandemic. Prior to Covid we could dine out for a little over $100 before tip. Now it’s almost doubled.
We don’t really go on vacation, so this is my main enjoyment (dining out at nice restaurants, with great food and wine, and service). We have around 8 to 10 restaurants that we dine at monthly, and they all treat us like family. Most of them comp us extra appetizers, and I bring bottles of wine or bourbon to the staff, as appreciation.
I’m also very fortunate that Mrs. P is a great cook 
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Had to “kill some time” in SF this night and decided spontaneously on dinner at Marlowe https://www.marlowesf.com . As always a good and reliable restaurant with well executed dishes but I wish they would change up their menu much more often, especially the entrees. Many dishes have only seen small changes, e.g. sides, over the last years but for us that makes it more of a restaurant perhaps to visit once a year instead of much more regularly.
Warm deviled egg, aged provolone, pickled jalapeno, bacon
Chopped salad, chicories, pink pearl apples, pomegranate, black olives, burrata
Marlowe burger, caramelized onions, cheddar, bacon, horseradish aioli, fries
Strawberry-rhubarb bread pudding, vanilla bean ice cream, whiskey caramel
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Thanks! That’s really not bad, given what you’re getting. Also worth it to have someone else put it all together like that.
And I’d missed that they were byo restaurants. Offhand I can’t recall if knew that was an option.
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You’re welcome.
I’m fortunate to live in NJ, which has a lot of BYO restaurants. They have a limited amount of liquor licenses to give out, and they are very expensive. Other cities like NY do not have too many BYO options.
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I admit when I first moved to PA I found the liquor laws pretty strange, but I’ve since very much warmed up to BYOB. It practically cuts our dining bill in half when we can bring our own wine, given the ridic markup for alcohol at restaurants. Not many BYOB options in our little college town, unless you count the Asian / furr’n contingent of places, but we basically focus on BYOBs in Philly when we go out. And there are so many excellent restaurants that offer BYOB.
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And oil! Oil is key.
No snow chez moi, but plenty of vids from across central FL showing it did.
30 was the low at my house, but im close enough to Tampa Bay to be insulated by the water. Inland friends sent me vids of icicles and their thermometer showing 26.
Even at nearly noon we havent managed to even get to 40. Broken water mains (and resulting ice rinks) all over town., and plenty of power outages. I seem to have been spared from all of it, but im staying inside!
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And just in case someone thinks Im a princess. I was born and raised in the Midwest, in a zone that gets Lake Effect snows. Ive lived through negative wind chills that had 3 digits, and have been snowed in for weeks on end.
But after 40 years in the subtropics, one’s body definitely changes, and when the house and the infrastructure are built for the average temps, It definitely hits different!
And the humidity matters. Lots of my fellow campers last week are from northern climes, and most of them grumbled that 40 degrees with 90% humidity definitely feels colder than 20 degrees with 30%! Two of the guys who were shocked at how bonechilling it can be here live in Utah!
(We have lazy wind here. It can’t be bothered to go around so it cuts right through you.)
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I’m sitting in Salt Lake City, Utah. A 20 minute drive up to ski resorts. It’s 56F outside, and no snow on the ground in my yard. NOT a usual situation!
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Is that a discard recipe? If so, please share!
Yep. Works good!
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Oh good! Thanks.
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: What’s For Dinner #126 - the Hearts, Flowers, Candy, But It’s Cold and Snowy! Edition - February 2026
same here re pre-Covid pricing. easy to pay $100/125 for a really good dinner for two, with drinks even, but it’s now much more. Always gives me sticker shock and we go out less now than before. because we do still love to travel.
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