Sunday, September 28, 2014

Dave's Thoughts of the Day: September 29th

If you have glasses, never try to write with your glasses off.   Tried that tonight and got a huge headache.

This was a very enjoyable weekend.   I'd love to take my Camry around and have a camera follow me all over LA going to restaurants.  There are already 100 shows that do that, but I am hoping people would enjoy it anyway.  The point of that comment was that I got to go to this place called "Britt's BBQ" at last.  It's in sleepy, quiet El Segundo by the airport.  Boy was that terrific!  I had an original dish they call "Smoked Fried Chicken" so imagine BBQ chicken in the smoker, all that good flavor, nicely fired up wood aroma, but instead of putting barbecue sauce on it, they bread it, then fry it.   It's every bit as good as it sounds!  Yum, so delicious.  The people there are wonderful... but do give it a try if you're ever around there.

Smoked Fried chicken... and you eat it and it's like "how come nobody came up with this before?"  It's a logical, yet, luscious combination.

The night before I was by 3rd Street Promenade and found the local "Burger Lounge" location.   That burger blew my mind!   I could not believe an 8 dollar burger could be that good.  A freshly baked, then toasted bun, topped with grass fed, free range beef, fixings, and the thousand island sauce.  Fresh Onion rings that were fried lightly enough where you could taste the fresh onion flavor, and even a Lagunitas IPA to drink.  That was a great meal.  The "Lounge Burger" was my choice of burger on that night.   I've really got to go back... not only a great burger, but easy to order, short lines, and great value.  To put it in perspective, the burger even with the onion rings would cost 1/3 less than the burger at "Father's Office."  Now, don't get me wrong, Father's Office is the pinnacle of all burgers, but it's fair to say that Burger Lounge holds its own for a cheaper price.

The Burger Lounge burger is a smaller burger, patty wise.   I think it's about 1/4 pound or maybe a tad larger, but not in the 1/3 or 1/2 pound range.   I don't really mind that, so long as the prices are reasonable.  Everything really came together greatly.

I had this ongoing desire to order 30 dollars of donuts for delivery.  That didn't happen but I noticed as I was driving that the Dunkin' Donuts in town finally slowed down.  This time I went in and got the French Vanilla and some donuts, then I completed my taste test by getting similar donuts at DK's down the street and over two blocks.   DK's is still winning this fight.   The cake donuts DK's make are denser, more flavorful, and crispier to boot.  The whole experience is first class with every bite.

Dunkin'... their donuts are pretty good but it still doesn't hit that upper echelon for me.   Any donut I eat there is a bit softer around the crust.   I do like their chocolate glazed cake donut A LOT.   There are many glazed cake donuts around America, but most of them just have the chocolate frosting on the top.   Dunkin's version is a fully glazed, 360 degree coating of sugar.  I think the only other place that did this with chocolate cake donuts was Krispy Kreme.

Kinda funny to say that, because my go-to at DK's is their blueberry cake donut which IS glazed head to toe, but I haven't noticed any others like it there.   The DK blueberry cake donut is just a personal favorite for me.   As cake donuts go, it has no equal.  I love it so much.  Maybe too much!

I ate five donuts today while watching football.  Five donuts and a turkey sandwich.  Simple insanity.   I could feel it too after 5 hours.  It wasn't pretty fellas.   I usually crash right around 2 and take a nap on Sundays, but I found particular action in the late games around the NFL.  The lot of them were more competitive, collectively, than normal.  Even the Jaguars/Chargers game was entertaining for a while.  It was Blake Bortles' debut, and he had a nice throwing motion working.  I sampled all of this plus that Steeler meltdown earlier in the day while eating donuts.  Somewhere in the middle I had that turkey sandwich: Boar's Head pan roasted turkey and medium cheddar with a little Gulden's mustard.  Oh so good.

The cheddar of that sandwich might even be TOO good because the taste is so powerful it distracts you from some phenomenal tasting sliced turkey.  Boar's Head hits it out of the park.

So at any rate, I didn't crash at 2 due to the games being so good and the extra large French Vanilla coffee I drank from Dunkin'.  It was served black too, no milk or sugar.   I like it.  I like the French Vanilla, because it takes the guess work out of the coffee.  I can just drink it straight up and enjoy without the hassle of adding cream.

But that simple fact points to the obvious truth that Dunkin's coffee isn't terribly strong or bold.   So nothing about the coffee has changed my opinion of it -- it's simply different.  I'd take Starbucks and Peet's over it every time, but it offers a pretty good change of pace, and I do find a couple of their donuts delectable.  I forgot all about Dunkin's pumpkin donut, which let's face it, is pretty decent, and festive for the occasion.

Having THAT MUCH coffee at once is going to set you up for a disaster later, and baby it came around 4:45 after the 49ers survived their game against Philly.   My brain was yelling at me to sleep all fourth quarter, but it was getting so intense.  The Eagles had their chances and there were fantasy implications so I sat there and kept it going.

Once the 49ers won for good, I went right to bed and lied down.   I was so tired, SO tired by then, and I had six hours of sleep the night before and just got up too early the previous morning too.  Once I was on my back, I could feel myself going right into a dream.  Usually you enter dreams as you're waking up but my body was frazzled.  I was right into a dream and I was at Best Buy.  In the *dream* I was so tired I could feel my arms and legs getting grabbed by gravity, as if it were hands that dragged me down from the ground and I fell down, feeling all sorts of weird, and drunk... but in the back I heard my phone buzz... that was reality, so my immune system got *up* from all that and I rolled over to check the text.  Nothing serious so back to bed.

I was SO tired that I couldn't risk playing music during my nap so I left the windows open and let the breeze keep me cool.   That was a great nap.   Put me out cold right until 6:50... a two hour nap.  When I got up, I saw the Cowboys were up 24-0 against the Saints.  I was not sure if I was still dreaming.

Oh but I was not, my friends!   I went back to the living room to watch the second half.  Good times, good times.


My work buddies and I are in a fantasy league this year.  Many of our colleagues aren't into sports, but six of us do like sports enough so we gathered six people in our small league.   I added an extra wrinkle to make the league exciting, a Thursday Night Football "Fantasy Challenge."  It started about Week 2, when the Steelers played Baltimore.  I email the other fellas and remind them which players each of them has starting in the Thursday game.   The first player that scores a touchdown wins a 10 dollar Chipotle card.  If a guy is starting a QB that night, the QB has to get two touchdowns since most of them average 2 TD passes.  It was a VERY fun concept, but sadly, Week 2, nobody had players that scored a touchdown that night.  Owen Daniels scored 3 instead, out of the blue.  The next week, it played out better, and we got two touchdowns from Matt Ryan and one of the fellas won the card.  He deferred the card to next week and we rolled out the challenge again.  This time my buddy who started Alfred Morris won the challenge, and he offered to host the next prize, so he will either offer the Chipotle card or furnish another gift card.

The Thursday challenge is one of my favorite parts of our work league so far.  It's generated a lot of juice, and some minor smack talk, and without a doubt, it got me more interested in those otherwise dismal Thursday night games.  It's much like those football pools but with more tangible outcomes.   I mean rooting for the ones digit to show a "7" or a "3" is kinda weird, let's be honest here. 

So football is a big part of the week these days.  As is smoked fried chicken.  I hope one day Guy Fieri or G. Garvin heads down to El Segundo to try that out at Britt's.  I mean it is SO GOOD.  Hopefully soon.  Til then keep your gut at the table and keep reaching for the fork.

I'll have an MLB post coming up in a moment, so keep your blog tuned right where it is.

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