Jude and girlfriend returned to Los Angeles today, ending the longest visit he's made home in years. Mary Ann is not happy about it, but the Thanksgiving feast at the Cool Water Ranch and the trip we made to plantation country on Friday was so enjoyable that it brought her mood up.
Mary Leigh brought The Boy back to Loyola and was gone most of the day. So it was just the two of us at home. For MA, it's really just one. The website rejiggering is taking all of my time. And my readers are bombarding me with requests for the lists of open restaurants on Christmas Eve and Day, as well as the Reveillon information I publish every year. The latter involves forty-eight restaurants this year. I entertained the notion that I could do ten a day for the remainder of the week and be done with it then.
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Hamburger at Zea.[/caption]
But the emails from subscribers and others who can't figure out where NOMenu.com has moved--or who can't make the website function once they do arrive--took up a large part of the day. Everything happens at once.
Mary Ann insisted that we go out to dinner, to pull me away from the screen. We went to Zea, where we have not been lately. The manager even asked why that was so.
We started with guacamole. Zea has managed to get its avocado shortage worked out, and they almost never run short of the ripe California alligator pears anymore. Now all they have to do is reformulate the recipe. It's almost pure avocado, and guacamole needs some other ingredients.
From there I moved to a bowl of red bean and andouille soup. The texture was such that it could have been served either as a soup (without the rice) or as the standard Monday platter (with). I think they should loosen up the former to make it soupier. And hotter.
The main reason we were at Zea today was that a guy called me on the radio show Saturday to ask where the best hamburger on the North Shore might be found. He was surprised when I opined that Zea was the place.
Well, that planted the suggestion in my mind, and since we are in a new month and I am allowed 1.2 hamburgers per, I was due. My thinking about the relative merits of Zea's mainstream half-pounder was confirmed again. I like both the ground beef patty and the bun, which is firmer and has a better taste than most. The dressings are pretty good, too. It's a bit oversize, and I quit about two-thirds of the way through. Thus I am done with hamburgers for the year 2013.
