Saturday, May 16, 2009

Lido's of Meriden (East Side)

My father likes to meet for dinner at pizza places. He used to love Wooster Street, of Wallingford, which is now closed. He is a bit fan of Sergio's in Cheshire, and of course, there is Bohemian Pizza in Goshen (one of my all time favorites). It's no wonder that as a child I have distinctly about six birthday parties, between my little sister and I, that I can remember at Papa John's, making pizzas.

My Dad's newest obsession: Lido's of Meriden.

My biggest pet peeve: his mispronunciation of the name!

Aside from calling Lido's (pronounced Leigh Dough's), Lydio's, and throwing an even extra syllable into the mix like Leigh-I-Dios, my dad has come to describe the place as "that pizza place where the movie theatre used to be."

Although I am not a super huge fan of its pizza, the restaurant does offer a quiet environment and HUGE portions, for example, I have my spaghetti and meatballs dinner, which is going to last me an additional two meals.

Another authentic Italian restaurant to perhaps give thought to.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

$1.99 Freshly Made Sandwich

If I go out to eat all weekend, I usually do not find the need to go grocery shopping for the week, as I will often times have a ton of left overs. Although, I have found a "trick of the trade" sort to speak.

Since I live by myself, I often times unintentionally have to waste. For example, I go through one loaf of bread in like three weeks, and I have become sick of throwing out old cuts that I have not eaten. So, I found that Shoprite has fresh sandwiches, daily, for $1.99. In fact, I went this morning and since there were no sandwiches already made, the woman made me a fresh one. (This happened to me once before.)

For $1.99, you can't beat it!

Dunkin' Germs

Yesterday, I was a little bit uneasy about eating my muti-grain toasted bagel with low fat creme cheese.

ALWAYS opting to go to the Newington Dunkin Donuts, up the street from campus, as opposed to the one near campus, for cleanliness reasons, I was a little unnerved when I saw that the woman who worked there was touching the money and running the drive through did not have gloves on.

I don't think that she put any on when she made my bagel either.

Now, some people, this would not bother at all, but when I saw her dirty cracked hands and the cigarette box behind the counter I was absolutely disgusted.

I know that she was all by her self, running the whole store, and I know how that is, but still, I was grossed out.

To calm myself I just said that the bagel was hot so the germs were killed, but realistically I knew that "they" would still be there if she did not wear gloves.

I am still hoping that she wore gloves.

Mother's Day Cake

Usually I am a fan of Stop and Shop cakes, although the communion cake that I ate a couple of weeks ago was wonderful, and from Walmart.

Upon asking my mother what kind of Mother's Day cake she wanted she said: "Shoprite has good cakes."

She wanted it to be a surprise, but she wanted chocolate.

I picked up a "Chocolate Sin-Sation Cake." It was one word: phenomenal.

I braved my fears to try salami--Grand Apizza--North Haven

Good service? Good food? Good service? Good food? Grand Apizza of North Haven proves that you don't have to compromise good service for good food, and vice versa.

I went there a little while ago with my mother and absolutely loved it! We ordered a large mozzarella pizza and an anti-pasto. Well, needless to say, I have never in my life tried salami until that day. To me, if something does not look appetizing, I simply will not eat it. Why should I? Well that has always been the case with both salami and pepperoni. Although, I am more positive that I don't like pepperoni because I even get disgusted when my dad orders a "half pepperoni" because the juices flow onto the mozzarella side.

Well, the anti-pasto looked so appetizing that I tried the salami and LOVED it! It tastes like a better bolgna!

The pizza was good. Not like "wonderful" but good.

The service---one of a kind, absolutely spectacular.

I even bumped into an older customer of mine from teh restuarant I used to work in.

Wooden Tap Southington

I had another favorable experience at Wooden Tap, but this time I went to the Wooden Tap of Southington.

Ever correlate a person or a name with a place? Well, that is basically what I have done with the Wooden Tap, although I am no longer phased by it. (Partially because the food is so good and partially because I correlated it with one guy and then last summer, I correlated it with another guy, both of whom were not good guys, but now it makes for some laughs.)

The last time I was at the Tap (besides last week) was late last summer with this guy and my friend Jane. Jane's boyfriend refused to join us because he knew that the night would result in me "dumping" the guy, who wasn't even my "boyfriend" so I was more just telling him that I did not want to act like boyfriend and girlfriend anymore. But, be that as it may, he was watching some ball game and we were in the bar side and he ordered me a drink, which I said that I probably wouldn't finish because I was eating a huge cheeseburger with bacon on it. Well, we got into a fight about me not finishing the drink and then my girlfriend and I went into the bathroom where she yelled at me and knocked some sense into me and told me to get rid of him.

Well, anyway, my last experience at the Tap (one week ago) definitely out weighed the previous horrendous experience about one year ago.

Shopping for a Communion Card

Who would have thunk that shopping for a First Holy Communion card would have been so difficult.

Like the last minute gal that I am, I waited until about 11:00 p.m. the night before the communion to go get a card at Walmart. This was not intentional, of course, my lack of timeliness has just become a daily routine in the life of a full-time working and full-time student, like myself.

Well, of course the Wallingford super Walmart was under renovation so I was all over the place even trying to look for cards. Alas, when I found the two racks of cards that the store had, there were no communion cards.

Ok, so at this point, I was exhausted and had cheese, for burgers that I had baked the day before and wanted to heat up for lunch the following week, melting in m hands. Ok, not melting, mushing.

Well, then, of course, I go home and wake up early in the morning to get a communion card. I was going to go to Halmark, but my mother suggested that the dolalr store might have one. So, I went into some dollar store on Broad Street, in Wallingford, Dollar Tree, or something or other, and they only had two communion card options: one for a boy and one for a girl. Of course, like Murphy's Law, there were no cards left for a boy. (But since I was right there, I managed to pick-up a cute Mother's Day card. I have come to the conclusion that I make the excuse "oh I am right here" to make a purchase.)

Well, as I was checking out, I asked the cashier about communion cards and she said taht what ever was there was what they had. Well, the woman in line infront of me, she was a cute older lady, said, that we should go take a look. I didn't know that she was going to bring me right back to the same spot that I had been looking, but I didn't want to be rude. And what shocked me was that she didn't know the difference between a christening and a communion. So I said that a christening was like a baptism.

Well, I left the dollar store and at this point it was something like 10:40 a.m. and the communion started at 11:00 a.m. and I had to stop at my apartment in East Meriden to change. I figured that I would stop at Walgreens. I stopped at Walgreens and found the same problem: no boy cards.

And, a sales associate also did not know the difference between a baptism and a communion, so I got sick of explaining that I just said that one was for a baby.

She was so sweet and managed to find a card for me.

Over all, I was shocked that people did not know the differece between a communion/christening/baptism. I know the difference between a circumcision and a bar/bat mitzva. O well.

Bottom line: I made it to the communion on time, with a card.