Something Squirrelly this Way Comes

Saturday night my friend D & I went to The Melting Pot to celebrate our birthdays. Her's is 15 days after mine and in college we'd always celebrate the weekend between our birthdays. This year she'll be in India so we moved up our celebration.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with The Melting Pot - it's a fondue restaurant. Meaning everything (except salads & drinks) involve skewering things and dipping them into the pot in the middle of the table. First course is a cheese (I highly recommend the cheddar!!) with veggies and bread for dipping. Next course is a salad (their raspberry vinagrette dressing is scrumptious) followed by the meat course. You choose oil or broth (there are a variety to choose from) and pick your meat platter. When your server arrives (we renamed our's Sven) he gives careful instructions on never putting the raw meat on your plate and not to eat from the skewers themselves (they get mighty hot sitting in the hot broth). I'm sure some people would be put off by having a plate of raw meat plunked down on their table. I'm just glad the shrimp were on D's side and that she was kind of enough not to cook any until I was done. Not gonna chance any amount of shrimp juice on my food (allergies).

Meat course also comes with a variety of after cooking sauces. Green goddess, mild curry, teriyaki, bbq, gorgonzola pepper, etc. Also the dippers - veggies, bread, fruit - are endless (except for the meat).

The last and arguably best course is dessert - chocolate fondue. I prefer dark chocolate, D prefers white chocolate (white is way too sweet for me) so we compromise and go with milk chocolate. Personally, I wanted the flaming turtle again but she didn't (it's milk choc., carmel, nuts and a shot of rum that they set on fire at your table, flaming the alcohol out). We did jazz up the milk choc. by adding a shot of grand marnier (orange liquer). It was good :) I mean hey, warm chocolate with fruit, marshmallows, cheesecake, pound cake, brownies to dip in it. Hard to screw that up. Also switched out the strawberries for granny smith apples instead.

Funny thing about Sven, our waiter, we had him both times we've been to this location. D was under the impression that he might actually remember us, he was very polite and diplomatic about it. His name is actually Ben and when D told him that we had renamed him Sven (I have No idea why she told him this) he asked if it was in reference to the SNL character played by Mike Meyers. To which I said, only if that's not insulting to you. Which is when D clued in that he could, possibly, be offended by being renamed. Granted I am a tad sensitive to things like this. I'm sure he just thought we were crazy, which is fine. We gave him a great tip, so hopefully it helped smooth any feathers we may have ruffled. Especially since we were there til nearly 1 and were one of the last customers to leave.

Sunday was spent in shopping mall hell. I'm just not a mall person. We had wanted to go to Old Town Alexandria to loaf and shop but it was just too cold outside. We did up going down there for a late lunch. We spent the majority of Sunday at Tysons Corner & Tysons Galleria. I refuse to give link to these places as they caused me MUCH grief. First getting to, then parking, then the people. Maybe if I hadn't been driving, it wouldn't have been such a pain. I don't know. I just know that I have no need to ever go back to either mall.

So there you have it. The birthday extravaganza. Not so extravagant but mostly fun. Hope yall had a great weekend :)