My Day Yesterday

Yesterday was so nice. Finally I was feeling well enough to do things (unfortunately I seem to have relapsed a bit today), so I cleaned up the apartment, which had been suffering from my sickness-related laziness, and worked on my new craft project (which I'll talk about later). Our handyman and assistant showed up (thank god I cleaned!) to open our windows, so finally we can get some cross-ventilation. That alone would be enough to make a good day, but they also replaced our broken toilet seat and gave us a rubber plug for our tub! It's like christmas!
In the evening I had to attend a meeting in Ballard--for those who don't know, Ballard is a super-fun area of Seattle. We would like to go there more often, and although it is only six miles away, this can mean 2 to 3 busses and over an hour of travel time just to get there. Yuck. So I figured, since I was going there already I might as well do a few other things I have been meaning to do there. The first one was stop at the Joann Fabrics there (which isn't a great store generally, but I needed some certain items for my craft project that I can't get at the small Capitol Hill fabric store) and the second to go to the new BBQ restaurant that opened up recently where one of my friends works. Since I would need to get around Ballard once I got there, I decided to take my bike, which also cut out one of the busses on the way there, and since it was turning into a beautiful (but windy) day, I got some nice riding out of it. If I hadn't been sick I would have biked all the way there along the Lake Union Trail, but I figured some light riding would be best, especially around Ballard's cute neighborhoods. My meeting went well, and Nathan and Brian met up with me after their Ultimate Frisbee game (which they dominated!) so timing worked out perfect for a late dinner at Bitterroot. We started out with jalepeno hush puppies and buffalo fried chicken livers. Then we all split the combo platter known as the "cowboy killer." That is half a chicken, brisket, pulled pork, and ribs served with a pretzel roll and three sides. They were out of ribs, so they replaced it with pork belly. I was sad about the ribs, but the pork belly was amazing, obviously. This is the face Nathan made when he realized there was a three-inch-thick slab of bacon on our table:

They smoke their meats in house with apple wood, and you could really taste the flavor. The brisket and the pork belly were the most amazing (correlated to fat content perhaps?) Scratch that, the cheddar grits were the MOST amazing, but aside from that. The chicken and pulled pork were alright. The grilled asparagus was great. We got to choose from sweet bbq sauce, xxx spicy, and a vinegar-mustard sauce. I tend to like a Carolina-style vinegar sauce, and while the mustard sauce was pretty good, I think it needed more heat. I'm not big on sticky-sweet bbq sauces at all, except for Nathan's/Joy's, which has a strong acidity to it because it's made with lemons.
So that was my nice day. Monday is kinda my weekend, so I like to make it count! We are all suffering from a bit of a food hang-over this morning, and I'm brainstorming about a vegetarian dinner for tonight...