Red Rock Brewery

My husband and I had had our yearly eye exams at a local mall this morning, and since they were finished around lunchtime, we decided to go the Red Rock Brewery for lunch.

We started with the fried green tomatoes.
They weren't that good; they were a bit bland.

I had the French onion steak sandwich, which was  served
with caramelized onions on toasted sourdough bread
and topped with melted mozzarella & Gruyere.  (I could
only finish one, but it was pretty good!)

The Cheesecake Factory

Slowly but surely, every couple weekends my husband and I have been going shopping to update various things in our house: a few weeks ago we bought a new dining room table and chairs at IKEA; today we bought a new washing machine and a sectional sofa. (Our soon-to-be former washing machine no longer spins, and our soon-to-be former couch has broken in multiple places.) It's exhausting, doing all this shopping, so we stopped off for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory to fortify ourselves before heading into Crate & Barrel for a couch.

We shared two appetizers, first corn fritters...

...and fried mac & cheese balls.

I had the Navajo: a chicken sandwich with avocado, onion, and spicy mayo on fry bread.

It came with fries (yum!)

Osaka Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi

My husband and I had optometry appointments this afternoon at LensCrafters, the nearest of which was in Fashion Place Mall. My husband has much better eyesight than I, the result of which being we only have to wait an hour for his glasses to be ready, while mine have to be sent out. (I'm informed of this every time I go, which is only frustrating because my prescription has had to be sent out for as long as I can remember.)

We had some time to kill, so we wandered on over to the food court for a mid-afternoon snack. My husband went for Chic-Fil-A, but I was in the mood for something lighter (and not fried), so I had the spicy tuna roll from Osaka Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi. It was pretty darn spicy!

Murray: Red Robin

Teaching at two different colleges, as I have been doing this past semester, leads to a bit of incongruity as far as calendars are concerned, in large part because no two college calendars are exactly the same when it comes to semester start and end dates. One college's classes ended two weeks ago; the ended this past week. (Then there are the associated Reading Days, and Finals Weeks, after which grades get submitted, so the "end of the semester" can actually be a week or so after the last class has actually taken place.)


In any case, to celebrate the end of the school year, and to celebrate my first year of "real teaching" work in Utah that wasn't subbing (I've been living in Utah just under two years, and all last year my job consisted of subbing in the local school district), my husband and I splurged and went to Red Robin. (Money being tight, as it is for so many folks right now, and with our first wedding anniversary only about two weeks away, we didn't want to spring for something very expensive, yet I felt that something a wee bit more celebratory than In-and-Out was called for - not that we dislike In-and-Out by any means.)

We started with the Towering Onion Rings (which my husband mostly devoured by himself):

I then moved on to the French Onion soup:

I also had Patty Melt (topped with sautéed onions, Thousand Island dressing, and American cheese), which I have to admit I only ate half of, since I was stuffed by this point: