~ Watermelon Lemonade ~

We went to Alexanders for Lunch last Wednesday.  I’ve never been there for lunch before.  Maybe because my lunch often consists of either:

• A wholly dis-satisfying Slimfast Shake
• A home-made Panini with more calories than my body needs in a week
• or, if I’m cranky, both.

But my brother, Graham, My Captain, and I decided it would be nice to take my mom out for lunch to celebrate her birthday some more.

I hadn’t been there in a few weeks; I was looking forward to it!

As soon as we sat down, we were served Chef Smallwood’s newest southern-type creation:  A watermelon Lemonade.

Um……YUM!    It was like sipping on the month of July itself.  I swear I could hear waves lapping when I drank it.

My mom got this wonderful barbecued shrimp salad. It was a lot of shrimp!  And, beautiful, too.

It’s hard to tell in this picture, but the shrimp are wrapped in bacon.

God Bless Chef Smallwood is all I have to say about THAT.

My Captain and My Brother, Graham, got the BLT sandwiches with fries.

Chef Smallwood smokes all of his own meats there on the premises.  If you haven’t had freshly smoked bacon, you are in for a serious treat.  Leave your veins and arteries at home, though.   They don’t want to watch.

Let me get you up close and personal with that baby.  Ohhhh Mama.  Look at that.  Is there anything more satisfying than a BLT?  (The answer is, “Yes.  A BLT with cheese on it.”  But please don’t get me started on that particular subject.)

And you know what your corpulent, but loveable Mama Boe ordered?

A salad.  A plain, ol’ salad.

Oh sure, it had enough bacon, egg, sautéed onion and cheddar croutons on it to kill a horse, but it was a salad just the same.  And that is very sad.  Very, very sad.  Mama Boe does not like to eat salads.  Mama Boe would much rather have ordered the Flying Dog Beer Battered Shrimp.

But order the salad she did.  Not because she wanted to.  No sirreee.  She ordered it because she has been told by her doctor to lose weight and SOOON.

How terribly pedantic of him.

Is it me, or has Mama Boe started speaking in the third person now?  How marvelous!  Weird, but marvelous.

So I saved my calories that I might have a bite of some of the newer desert creations:  Homemade Nutella Ice Cream:

Of which I took one bite because I have unbelievably strong will (and because Graham took it away from me.  I pouted.).

and then I had a bite of cake that had all kinds of marvelous liquors in the icing.

I can’t remember if it was only Kaluha or Baileys or what, all I remember is that I wanted more than one bite and that my family is mean.  Ok, ok, maybe they are trying to save my life by not letting me eat whatever I want, but it is still very mean-spirited of them to take cake from me.  My life is so hard.

Ok, I’m over it.

The very talented woman who is in charge of all the baking, whose name escapes me at the moment, but who I am going to dedicate an entire post to soon….very, very soon…also made a home-made whoopie pie cake.  It is Out. Of. This. World.  I will write about it, I promise.

Ordering lunch was tough on us.  There were so many wonderful choices.  Choosing gave My Captain a headache:

I kid.  I was the one who gave him the headache.  Something about my incessant flow of inane drivel.  But I’m not sure.  I wasn’t listening.