A Tale of Two Mamas
Trying to keep someone IN timeout
Archive for July, 2006
July 29, 2006 at 10:21 pm · Filed under Food
We have been awaiting this day for about 4 years now, shortly after having eaten at Garcia’s in Cortland. Having not been back to Texas in a few years, we have been without true, cheap eats Mexican food. Lunch specials for $4.95 and bottomless chips and salsa, how can you go wrong? Plus, cheap margaritas that give me asthma attacks are sorely missed.
While Garcia’s Ithaca has yet to get its liquor license, the food is everything we imagined. To start, the chips should always be free! And thin and hot and crispy. The salsas were medium and hot, and very simply seasoned. We went through 3 baskets. Shawna got the two enchiladas and taco with beans combo, and I had the two enchiladas and rice and beans. Grammy got a side of beans that we ate. Shawna forgot to specify cheese enchiladas, so she ended up with two beefies. Her hard taco was crisp and reputedly delicious. The enchiladas were corn tortillas wrapped around what I suspect is white american cheese, or the generic ground beef, and either deep fried or toasted in the oven with a ton of grease, and then smothered in a not-too-tomatoey enchilada sauce. The beans were so smooth, but not overseasoned, and just tasted like beans. The rice was well-flavored and soft.
Grammy was being ornery. She was compliant for about 15 minutes while we waited for our server/water/meal–she ate a packet of sugar, slid ice cubes across the table, threw the ChocoTaco display, and ate salsa with her knife. She lost it during our meal, eating a paltry two half-forkfulls of beans, then escaped to the freedom of the aisle and showed the restaurant how efficiently she can pick her nose. Red-faced, Shawna extracted Grammy’s finger from her nose and stated, “We don’t pick our nose in public,” with the implication that it is perfectly acceptable at home (no comment).
The meal was in part a celebration of Shawna’s first paycheck from Streetdelivery.com. We had a hard week, with Shawna putting in a full 30 hours on the road and about 400 miles on the car, Graem in tow. Shawna’s weekly events included being honked at in the middle of an intersection, being interrogated by a particularly bitchy she-cop, falling into the ditch knees first and twisting her ankle, and taking a picture of a sign on Muscle Car Drive. To get the first paycheck has certainly made her efforts worth the trouble, and has also put at bay our fears that this job is a hoax!
July 22, 2006 at 10:47 pm · Filed under Milestones
Okay, so we forgot. At least we posted Vegas before we went back! We’ve been running ourselves ragged with our little “Debil,” and with Shawna’s new job. She’s been out of town 4 out of the last 5 days, but taking Graem with her–an adventure that I can only imagine.
We were getting ready to leave this morning, and I went to wrangle Grammy up to get her dressed. She had been getting a bit ornery, since she woke up early and was due for a nap. I found her lying on her floor with the Lady Speed Stick, applying it liberally to her face. We made the mistake of getting the sunscreen stick for her face, so she’s decided that any hygiene product that comes in stick form must be for her face, in spite of all our attempts to show her exactly where deodorant goes.
Apparently Grammy has overall confusion about hygiene products, since she also has a habit of smearing Carmex all over her face, hands and knees. We’ve decided that the mess is a small price to pay for a few minutes of silence on a long car trip, so we will be the first to open that Carmex jar for her.
She’s gotten the dental care down–she begs constantly for a toothbrush and toothpaste, and cries if I don’t give her a flosser.
Graem’s latest skill is jumping: she crouches into a squat (makes my knees hurt just watching), waits for an adequate audience, and then jumps! She gets about a centimeter of air most times, and then expects everyone else in the room to follow suit and jump.
July 10, 2006 at 8:27 am · Filed under Food
We acted against our better judgment after pool and a day of no nap to try out the new Pancho Villa Mexican restaurant that just opened this weekend. Graem sat in her high chair for about 2 minutes, despite our attempts to ply her attention with green and red tortilla chips, grated cheese, a wallet, a fork, and her baba. She sat in a regular chair briefly, then sat in my lap, then sat in Shawna’s lap, then cruised around the restaurant and almost out the door.
As soon as we walked into the restaurant, I had a gut feeling that it was going to be expensive, mainly due to the fact that the waitrons wore starched white shirts and ties. Sort of antithetical to Mexican food, what with refried beans and cheap margaritas usually entail. Anyway, red flag #2 was the Tabasco sauce bottles on the tables! Traditional red and mild jalapeno, neither of which are particularly Mexican!
We were seated near the kitchen, which had us on alert for Grammy’s wanderlust. It was kind of lame that the table we sat at had a pre-soiled tablecloth (beans, I think). We hoped for the next patron’s sake that they changed it after we were through! Our hunches about price were confirmed when we opened up the extensive, albeit inkjet-printed-with-bad-resolution-clip-art menus. The menu had your typical Mexican fare: enchiladas, burritos, chimichangas, fajitas, and some chef’s specials that mostly consisted of seafood.
Shawna attempted to order the crunchy beef tacos, but our waiter informed us that they didn’t have them. I guess we should cut the place slack for misjudging food quantities for opening weekend, but tacos are a prime staple for a Mexican restaurant. It was a bit annoying that we had to go through the menu with the server to ask, “Do you have this? How about this?” I ordered the Triple Enchiladas mole, with two chicken and one cheese enchilada, and the house mole, which is all they had of the three choices.
The food came quickly, which was a relief to us, since Grammy had strewn most of the cheese around our area. Shawna finally settled on the carnitas, which was a slow-cooked shredded pork in a tomato, onion, achiote and cilantro sauce, similar to puerco pibil, but not quite as citrusy. Her dish came with soft corn tortillas, and rice and beans typical of all the entrees. Shawna would have liked some lettuce/tomatoes/pico de gallo to fill out her tortillas, and the presentation of the carnitas could have been a little better: they came in a big-ass slop bowl with no garnish, just a pile o’meat.
Bean choices were black beans or pinto beans, and the rice was well-seasoned but not too salty. My mole enchiladas were pretty good, and the plate was hot, as I was well-warned. Somehow I chose to touch it anyway. The enchiladas were baked instead of fried, which I suppose has its health merits, but I do love a good deep-frying on any food! The result was slightly less-crisp tortillas that were a bit dry on the edges. The cheese and mole went well together. The chicken was all white meat, and was also pretty well-seasoned. I did get a little fatty bit of chicken, which was a little gross.
The service was decent for opening weekend, the food tasted pretty good, and serving sizes were appropriate for the price. I don’t think we’ll be back to soon–it’s out of our range for a middle-of-the-week, toddler-throwing-food-everywhere meal, which is our demographic these days. I think the suggestions I’d have for them is: get some real hot sauces on the table, splurge a little and have the bottomless chips ‘n salsa, trim down the menu–it’s way too long and confusing, too many loose pages–and have them reprinted professionally.
I guess we should be hopeful, because at least the place is run by real Mexicans, which is more than can be said about the other “Mexican” restaurants in town. We eagerly anticipate Garcia’s opening, which will hopefully will be in the next week or so.
July 10, 2006 at 8:26 am · Filed under Milestones
Actually, we think Grammy started the TT’s several months ago. But yesterday was a real doozy, due mostly (hopefully) to lack of nap.
During attempt #3 of putting Grammy to nap, we gave in yet again to the crying and whining. Shawna walked into Grammy’s room and shrieked. I quickly ran to her room, convinced that Grammy had fallen out of the crib or puked or done something worse, to find Graem standing in her bed buck naked and crying, and her diaper on the floor! Alas,
I think we may have entered a new stage of toddler badness.
The rest of the day was comprised with run-of-the-mill tantrums: Graem wanted a popsicle every time we opened the freezer door, wanted our attention when we were playing Playstation and thus reset the console and switched discs, and wanted to watch Hop on Pop! for the 47th time.
Her latest words are: outside (another battle when she wants to go outside and we aren’t ready), inside, yellow, blue, purple, tree, lion, flower. She asks for Lew Lew and Lee Lee constantly, and last night couldn’t get enough of Jen Caron (aka Da Da). We’ve recently decided that it’s probably about time that Graem got into daycare: at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday she wouldn’t talk to any of the other kids, and instead chose to have a conversation with a dog.
At the pool yesterday, we ran into her friend Miles from Tot Spot, and they parallel-played together quite nicely. After nearly drowning herself several hundred times (her latest stunt is sitting in the toddler pool and dunking her face into the water), we joined Miles and his mom at the playground area. There she and Miles played house together, griping at each other about whether the oven door should be open or closed, taking turns being inside and outside the house, opening and closing windows, and riding down the slide. The best part was when she and Miles said “bye-bye” to each other as she closed the door to the house.
July 4, 2006 at 8:48 pm · Filed under Milestones
And I didn’t even have a moment to post. We went strawberry picking on Saturday with Laura and Lydia. We had a great time eating and smearing berries on each other. Then, to our dismay, after sorting through berries at home, we found that 50% of the berries Shawna picked were rotten or had inhabitants, and then about 10% of the remainder smelled like pee and tasted just as bad. We decided that the best thing to do with our hand-picked berries was to toss them into the saucepan and make topping for waffles.
Sunday we vegged out and went to a barbecue at Jen’s–it was certainly the party of the season. In addition to a plethora of hand-rubbed grilled meats, we participated in adult beverages, badminton, touch football, and karaoke. Graem partied all night long, finally passing out in the car at around 12:30 am.
The remaining two days we attempted to go to the local pool, but were foiled by Ithaca weather: the moment we stepped into the pool on Monday, the pool got shut down due to imminent thunderstorms. I made sure to get my $5 worth and dunked myself and Graem. We were finally successful this afternoon, as most people had assumed that the pool was already closed and there was no line to get in.
Graem’s latest words are: blue, yellow, blah-blah-blah, inside, outside, and eyes.
