Salad Is Slaughter

I took the Devil Dog Lisa to the vet this morning for some “family planning” work.  This is the trip from her eyes:

Daddy’s going to the front door.  Why is he carrying towels?  Daddy, don’t close the door.  Take me with you.
The door’s opening again.  Daddy’s back.  I’m going to jump on him and lick his face.
Now he’s getting a leash and putting it on me.  Oh boy, a walk.

(Outside)

I’m going for a walk without Jake and Sammi.  I’m so lucky.
Why is daddy going to the car?  I don’t want to go for a ride.
Now daddy’s lifting me into the car.  Where are we going?
Guess I’d better lay down.  The car keeps starting and stopping.  At least daddy pets me between drinking his Diet Dr. Pepper.  Daddy, I didn’t get any breakfast.  Can I have some?
Finally we’re driving.  Why don’t you get in the car pool lane, daddy?  There’s two of us here.

(at the vet)

Finally we stopped.  Daddy’s clipping the leash on me again.  Where are we?
I’ll jump out of the car myself.  I’m a big girl.
Another dog! I’d better bark!
Ooooh, there’s lots of neat smells here.  I want to stop and sniff for a while.  Ok, I’ll go in the door.
Oh no.  There’s a really big yellow lab.  I’d better bark.  Look out!  That yellow lab is sniffing daddy’s hand and licking it.  I’d better hide and bark some more.
Daddy’s signing something.  I’ll bump into his arm so he knows I’m there.
Oh good, daddy’s sitting down.  I’ll bark some more.
The scale?  Again?  I weighed 30 pounds last time I was here.  I couldn’t have gained any more weight in only a month.  Thirty-eight pounds? Are you kidding me?
Now that woman is putting that green thing on me.  Where’s she taking me?  Daaaaaaaaddddddddddddddyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy I don’t want to gooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I’ll pick her up on the way home.  Hopefully she isn’t too afraid of the car when we take her to puppy class on Saturday.

Looks like CNN has noticed that Penn & Teller have a new show on Showtime. It’s called Penn & Teller: Bullshit! It’s on Friday nights at 11:00 Eastern (8:00 PM and 11:00 PM Pacific) and is well worth watching.

The first show screamed Bullshit! at the so called “psychics” who claim to be able to talk to the dead. This show was great. I had wondered if they saw the recent Southpark episode on John Edwards. Well, my question was answered “yep” when Penn called John Edwards “the biggest douche in the Universe.”

Their second show was on alternative medicines, and didn’t quite live up to the first show, but it was still pretty good. Didn’t see the third show because I was in Vegas.

Technorati Tags: television

For Christmas Janet gave me a trip to Las Vegas. The first thing that I noticed when we arrived at the Aladdin hotel were thousands of cheerleaders, ages from about 8 to 15. They must have been having some kind of competition. We went to check in and were told that we were given a complimentary upgrade. I suspect they gave our original room to some cheerleaders. It was a very nice but oddly shaped room. The shape came from being in the round part of the south tower.

On Friday night we took a cab over to the Orleans hotel for dinner and a show. We had dinner at the Canal Street restaurant. The food was very good — the lobster bisque was excellent and the beef may have been the most tender I’ve ever eaten. We then went to see Steven Wright. He was just what I expected — deadpan delivery, a strange perception on the world, and very funny.

On Saturday we drove out to Death Valley and it was very impressive. We went to the ghost town of Rhyolite, then drove down to places with names like Bad Water, The Devils Golf Course, Artists Pallete, etc. I took about 100 pictures. If you get a chance to go, you should.

On Saturday night we caught Rick on a break and talked with him for a while. We then went to dinner at the Eiffel Tower restaurant (click here to read my review) and it was fabulous. After dinner we finally got around to doing some gambling. I lost a little bit of money, but Janet won quite a bit. On one hand she kept getting aces and splitting them. When she got the last ace, she wasn’t allowed to split any more. I have never seen so many aces come out at one time. And she won every on every pair. That paid for the car we rented to go to Death Valley.

It was a good trip.

The Eiffel Tower Restaurant in Las Vegas’ Paris Hotel and Casino is the second of three restaurants in the Las Vegas area that I’ve wanted to try. The others are Renoir (reviewed October 2, 2002) and Picasso.

The Eiffel Tower restaurant accepts reservations 30 days in advance, so on January 8 I made reservations for February 8 at 8:15 PM. Janet and I had spent the day driving around Death Valley and taking pictures and were looking forward to dinner that evening. We went a bit early and caught brother Richard on a break from taking people’s money at the craps table. After getting caught up with Richard, Janet and I headed to the Eiffel Tower elevator. We knew that we were early but we were hungry and were hoping that we could be seated.

We rode up in the glass-walled elevator and were deposited in front of the kitchen. The best way to describe what I saw was orchestrated chaos. You can stand there and watch the line cooks prepare the meals, with the final assembly done right in front of you.

I gave my name to the maitre d’ and we sat in the lounge at the bar. The restaurant itself is very dark so that you can look out of the windows surrounding the restaurant and see up and down the strip. Each table has a light so you can see your food. The premium tables were by the windows and they all appeared to be tables for two. Larger tables were set back from the windows in the center of the restaurant.

We sat at the bar listening to the piano player for about 15 minutes, and then the maitre d’ had our table ready. She asked if we had settle the bar tab. We hadn’t, but I had expected them to just carry it over to our restaurant bill. They didn’t, so we paid the bar check and moved to our table.

We were seated at a table with a fabulous view of the Las Vegas strip. Unfortunately, we could smell tobacco smoke coming from the lounge. The dining room is non-smoking, but they do allow smoking in the lounge and there is no barrier between the two. We asked our waiter if they could move us, and they did. We ended up at an even better table that had a great view of the water show at the Bellagio.

We decided to order the Chef’s tasting menu, which was a 5-course dinner and dessert. I was tempted to order the Cream of Sweet Garlic soup, but the waiter said that this would probably be too much food. We also had the waiter pair up wine with each course. In order to get the tasting menu we both had to order it. Since that’s what we wanted to do anyway, that wasn’t a problem. For the wine parings there is a choice of full or half glasses. We decided to have a full glass of champagne and half glasses of everything else. The champagne would be for the first two courses.

We started the tasting menu with a selection of amuse-bouches – little appetizer gifts from the chef – paired with champagne. There were four tastes to sample that included a blue cheese mousse, a duck item, and a mushroom item. All were delicious.

Next came a salad topped with two of the biggest shrimp I’ve ever seen. The salad was a mix of various types of greens and vinaigrette dressing. I normally don’t order salad (this is where I would have liked the Cream of Sweet Garlic soup) but the salad was pretty good.

Our next course was scallops, butternut squash compote, lobster jus paired with Gewuerztraminer. The scallops were cooked just right and matched well with the butternut squash compote and lobster jus. This dish wasn’t as unexpectedly good like the cinnamon scallops we had at Chez TJ, but they were very good.

Next came sea bass and haricot vertes paired with Chardonnay. The sea bass had a nice flavor and the vegetables and the sauce went well with it. The Chardonnay had a nice smoky taste that went well with the fish.

The fifth course was beef medallions with a cognac sauce. The wine was a cabernet sauvignon. The flavor was very good, but surprisingly, this wasn’t the best steak we had this weekend. On Friday night we were at the Orleans Hotel and Casino for dinner and a show. The Canal Street restaurant in the Orleans has the most tender beef I’ve ever eaten. The beef dish at the Eiffel Tower was very good; it just wasn’t quite as good as what we had at Canal Street.

For dessert Janet had a soufflé and I had the apple strudel. We both decided that we liked our own selections better than the other. The apple strudel was big and loaded with apples. It sat next to (I think) apple ice cream and was topped with a crisp apple slice. The plate was decorated with caramel. This was one of the best desserts I’ve had in a long time. The final wine paring was a nice port. They then brought out a plate with our final amuse-bouche. I selected a piece of milk chocolate and Janet picked an apricot candy.

Overall the food was excellent, the view was fabulous, and the waiter was friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. Service was prompt and attentive – bread was always supplied, water refilled, and utensils replaced as needed.

On the down side, the restaurant was very noisy, tobacco smoke drifted from the lounge into the dining area, and the bar tab was not carried over onto the dinner bill. There are other restaurants in the Las Vegas area that I’m looking forward to trying, but I’m sure that I’ll return to The Eiffel Tower restaurant.

Eiffel Tower Restaurant
Paris Las Vegas - 3655 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV 89019
(702) 948-6937

Janet and I almost never buy wine from the store. Since we live northern California, we figure that we can just go to the wineries, sample what they have, and if we find something we like, we’ll buy it. We belong to two wine clubs. I’ve been a member of the Viansa Tuscan club for a while and recently upgraded to their Premio Vino club. Janet joined the Beringer Winery reserve club. We admit it… we’re snobs.

Since we spent Saturday cleaning up my place so we can eventually sell it, Janet wanted to do something fun on Sunday. She told me that the Livermore valley had some good wineries that rivaled Napa and Sonoma, and it’s less than half an hour from home. We started off at Murrietta’s Well Winery. Overall we were not impressed, but they had a couple of blends that we liked — The Red Vendimia and the White Vendimia — so we picked up about 4 bottles.

Next we stopped by Cedar Mountain winery. They had a zinfindel on sale for $9.00 that was quite drinkable. Their ports are highly recommended and we bought several bottles.

While we were at Cedar Mountain, some people who were there tasting recommended that we stop at Ivan Tamas Estates. They really did us a favor. We enjoyed every selection, especially the Pinot Grigio and the 2000 Chardonnay (didn’t try the 1999 Chardonnay so I don’t know how good it is, but the 2000 was great and quite a bit more expensive than the 1999). The Cabernet Sauvignon and the Sangiovese were also very good. They also sell a Brut sparkling wine (can’t call it champagne because it’s not from the Champagne region of France) that was very good. Overall, we were very impressed with the quality of the wine at Ivan Tamas. We kind of had sticker shock when we saw the prices, but in a good way. Ivan Tamas Estates charges far less for their wines than I would have thought. Since the prices were so reasonable, we not only bought several bottles of various varieties, we also each joined one of their wine clubs. They actually have 2 clubs, and they both ship 2 bottles of wine to members 3 to 4 times per year.

So, now we have 4 wine club memberships — Viansa, Beringer, and two from Ivan Tamas. If you can find wine from the Ivan Tamas winery in your area, buy it.

Note to my father: You can not buy any of the above-mentioned wines “by the box.”

Note expanding on the note to my father: The main player in the “wine by the box” industry, Inglenook, used to sell decent wine before they moved on to selling crap. They ended up selling their good vinyards to the Cappola winery. If you want to taste what Inglenook used to be like before selling their soul, check out the wine from Cappola.