On Communication, Food And Shopping

Mrs. 45er and I had a great day of shopping today.  There is a great town just North of here that has a huge and eclectic collection of shops and restaurants.  It's a very German town, so there is a lot of good beer, too.  There is also a fantastic kitchen store.  I can hear the collective eye-rolling from the guys, but this is something I actually enjoy doing with my wife.  Mostly because she shops like I do and we get to eat lots of great things.  

On Communication:

It's important.  I think I found the perfect tool for the married couples out there.  It gives a new meaning to the term "pillow talk".

Uhhhh

Or, more likely:

The dust-collecting side

We did a lot of wandering around and ended up in a candy store.  Nestled in between the chocolate and pectin-based fruit chews were these little boxes of joy.

Yum

Double Yum

Triple Yum

And before you ask, yes they are real.  What kid can't wait for their parents to go to the candy store and bring home a box of crunchy insects?  Tasty.  Ok, I can say I've had weirder things. 

If I was lost in the wilderness...  Maybe.

On the way out of the same store, there was this:

Yes, it says that

And yes, those are chocolate covered Jalapenos to the right.  I didn't try them or the chocolate covered pickles to the left (not shown).  This wasn't bad, but it really wasn't great.  I think with a better cut of bacon it could work.  The bacon needed to be cooked a little more to render more fat if you're serving it cold and give it a better crisp.  Anyways, now I can say I've had it.

Moving on, we got hot chocolate in a shop a few doors down and saw this:

Oh, the good old days.  I'm sure it had cologne of some kind in it.  This is the kind of town that had plenty of the old silver cap gun revolvers that brought back great memories for me.  The hot chocolate wasn't all that fantastic, so we kept moving.  

Next, it was the place with the great hot sauce/salsa for sale.  This place is fantastic.  It has almost everything right out there for you to taste.  I always end up leaving with something.  I also always have to head to the back room, which is the seventh level of hell for your tongue.

My kind of sign

By the way.  They aren't kidding around with that sign.  I tried a Bhut Jolokia sauce for the first time sitting on this table.  If you don't know what that is, it's between 850,000 and over 1 million on the Scoville Heat Unit Scale.  Habanero peppers top out at 350,000 or so and the puny Jalapeno is about 2,500 to 8,000 tops.  Needless to say, I didn't buy the sauce.  But I did try some things in this room:

The Inferno.  Dante is in the corner

You know, normal sounding sauces like:

Yes, they went there

And

So did they

So after this room, I go back to the front and Mrs. 45er asks me to try something to see how spicy it is.  My answer was pretty much "How the hell would I know, now?"  Subtle spice nuances were lost at this point.  It was all one burn.  I did end up with a great bacon chipotle grilling sauce.  I'll have to try it out and do a post on that later.

All this munching has kicked up our appetite, so it's time to get lunch.  We found a nice place downstairs under the kitchen store.  Almost all of the buildings here are pretty old and very not ADA approved.  So, we head down some very narrow stairs and walk into the restaurant.  The first thing that hits you is the smell of a flat-top grill doing its thing and the pungent smell of sauerkraut.  This place has a good looking turkey reuben on the menu.  However, that's not what I had my eye on.

Now, that is yummy

Pecan crusted chicken with a creole gravy served with rice and candied ginger carrots.  This was fabulous.  Mrs. 45er had a good old shepherd's pie.  It was a chilly day and this hit the spot.  It was a great day.  We ended up not breaking the bank, which is nice and got some great exercise which was more than offset by lunch and the cup o' creme brulee we had for dessert.  You've got to enjoy life.  :)