One of the Best Meals I’ve Had

Recently we were invited over to the house of some friends of ours from our church small group for dinner.  They truly spoiled us with some amazing food.  Evidently Rick loves food as much as we do.  And I’m sure Erin benefits from that love of food frequently.  I know we did! 

I thought I’d give you the quick menu so you can share in my revelry.  The meal started off with bacon-wrapped sweet & spicy marinated grilled shrimp.  Yep, amazing.  I could probably stop right there & have you drooling.  But there’s more.  Our main course was grilled steaks with baked potatoes & grilled corn on the cob, which was smothered with some kind of herbed butter sauce Rick concocted and put on before he wrapped the corn in foil to grill.  Just delicious.  (Oh, and I contributed a lame-o bag of salad to this fine meal.)  Did I mention that the steaks were the size of my plate?!  For a perfect finish, Erin had made a scrumptious chocolate cake with a homemade peanut butter frosting and a drizzle of caramel sauce over the top.  Yeah, I know you’re jealous now.

During dinner, our conversation turned to an interesting food topic.  Apparently the men in Rick’s family (VERY Italian, by the way) have a unique routine while they’re cooking.  No matter what he’s making for dinner, Rick’s grandfather will be munching on a bologna sandwich during the process.  And then he’ll finish off his dinner with a bologna sandwich.  Rick’s dad eats hot dogs while he grills, too.  It doesn’t matter what the actual dinner meat is; he’ll add a couple extra hot dogs to the grill to enjoy while he’s out there.  This is a very interesting phenomenon to me.  Especially the part where Rick’s grandfather ends every meal with a bologna sandwich, no matter how full he already is from dinner foods.  But I decided that it’s probably not all that different from me feeling like I have to end a meal with something sweet, even just a small bite.  It just depends on what you condition your body & your taste buds to want.  I think this is similar to the fact that I “need” to drink soda with pizza.  Nothing else will do.  And though it probably wouldn’t actually kill me to drink something else with pizza, I’d rather not ever test that theory.  Ever.

So, thanks to Rick & Erin for one of the best meals we’ve had in a long time!!  And some interesting dinner conversation to boot.