Vegas, Thanksgiving and other musings...

As Marc mentioned in his last post, we met up with my sister and her husband in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Marc got to do his wave pool thing, and we all got to eat in some great restaurants and spend some quality time together. In addition to Michael Mina (lobster pot pies), we also checked out Aureole, Burger Bar, Charlie Palmer Steak, Olives and Little Buddha. And it worked out that Maroon 5 was also playing that weekend, so good times for sure.

I, for one, enjoyed the wine list at Aureole - see right. It was a tablet PC (yes, it was running Windows XP) so that was unique. And the list was extensive. Aureole also has this wine tower that has ladies on some pulleys to obtain the wine. Apparently the word is the more expensive the wine, the higher the lady goes up on the pulleys. And I played in my first ever poker tournament and lasted about 90 minutes before losing all of my chips. Miracles can happen.

We had to make a slight change in our plans for Thanksgiving, due to Marc's recent and unfortunate injury. So we decided to make things low-key and do something for just the two of us. The final menu ended up being (thanks to Food & Wine's Thanksgiving issue):

Green Salad with Tangy Mustard Vinaigrette

Bacon-Roasted Turkey with Sweet Onion Gravy (stuffed with some Whole Grain and Sage Stuffing)

Green Beans with Shallots and Walnuts (substituted pine nuts for walnuts)

Mashed Potatoes (from the Good Housekeeping cookbook - one of Marc's specialties)

Crunchy Milk Chocolate-Peanut Butter Layer Cake (substituted Dark Chocolate for Milk Chocolate)

We decided to go with Pinot Noir as the wine of the day, so we started off with a 2003 Patricia Green Cellars - Bonshaw Vineyard and then went with a 2002 Archery Summit. The Archery Summit had a little bit of smokiness to it, which went really well with the bacon paste in the turkey.

So I was reading a story this afternoon about how more and more schools and universities are banning Wikipedia for researching school projects. It made me think of a story that Jarrett (brother-in-law) told us while we were in Vegas.

He was in court for a motion, or something like that, and how an attorney was making an argument with the presiding judge on the matter. When the judge asked the attorney where the case law precedent was from, the lawyer mumbled something. This lead the judge to say something like, "Did you just say that you researched this on Wikipedia?" Apparently this led the entire gallery into huge laughter because Wikipedia, while very helpful, is able to be updated by pretty much anyone, so that probably doesn't make it the best source of information.

It would have been great to have a camera on the attorney when the judge was about to pummel him (and probably his client) for citing Wikipedia.

And to the server at the hotel who thought Lisa and I were twins based on the picture below, I hope you enjoyed the extra tip. For those of you who don't know, Lisa is almost 6 years younger than I am. :-)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!