The chocolate brownie ice cream cake was lopsided. And there was frost covering one side of it. I couldn’t even finish my piece, not because I was full, but because it just didn’t taste that good.
Lily had requested an ice cream cake for her 7th birthday, and to tell you the truth, I was crushed. I enjoy baking her cake at home and decorating it myself. Somewhere between her sixth and seventh birthdays, however, she decided that cake was not her thing. Enter the lopsided brownie ice cream cake from the generic ice cream shop down the street.
For her 8th birthday, Lily wanted an ice cream cake again. I inwardly sighed and decided I had to buy it from a different place; a place where hopefully the cake would be frost free.
But then, a couple of days before her birthday, Lily changed her mind. She wanted something fruity.
Ed plans our roadtrips by looking for places to eat. He loves eating at unique places; I doubt he has set foot in an Olive Garden since 1989. On our way to the Smoky Mountains, we stayed in Berea, Kentucky. Weeks before our trip, Ed knew that we were going to eat dinner the Historic Boone Tavern Restaurant.
While sometimes it seems like it would be easier to stay by the hotel and eat at a chain restaurant that’s familiar, eating at a local place is a lot of fun. Shortly after we sat down at our table in the Boone Tavern, a server came over to give us our first taste of spoon bread. Neither Ed nor I had ever had spoon bread before. Yum!
When we went to my Dad’s house one Christmas, we thought it would be fun to spend a day at a water park. After spending the day at the Wasserbahn in Central Iowa, Ed informed my whole family that we were going to eat dinner at The Ronneburg Restaurant. Sure, bringing the girls to the water park was fun, but it was the German food Ed was really after. And he was right. The German food at The Ronneburg was outstanding.
North Platte, Nebraska was a stopping point during our drive from Chicago to Estes Park, Colorado. Ed arranged for us to have a hotel room with bunk beds for the girls, and we were going to eat at Whiskey Creek. He knew it was a chain, but the fact that we had never eaten there before made it a good choice.
This past summer, I decided to take a page from Ed’s book. Before our trip to Alaska, I asked my cousin where I should take Ed to eat for his birthday, and she suggested Simon and Seafort’s in Anchorage. I surprised Ed with a reservation and a table by the window. The hostess even sprinkled birthday ribbons on our table! As we were eating, we were able to look out at Cook’s Inlet and Mount Susitna, “the sleeping lady.” It was a wonderful evening!
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