Well, we're slowly getting back into the routine, including the Thursday morning post about Wednesday night...
First course was the "Caesar Wedge" - a nice heart of romaine with Caesar dressing, Parmesan cheese and crushed croutons. Probably would have looked nicer if the croutons were more uniformly crushed... Back story - the reason we have romaine hearts on hand is because last week Kevin forgot to include romaine with his Thursday Teddy Bear Fresh order. I got on the phone and called Betty at FishWhistle, and Jeff gladly lends us a case. He uses hearts, so that's what we returned to him on Tuesday. Point being, that is the kind of great relationship we wish we had with all of the restaurants in town, instead of just a few. You need something? let us help you out. We need something, can you help us out? Jeff is a true professional and we really appreciate the alliance we have with him. Thanks Jeff!
Anyway, second course is a poblano pepper stuffed with St. Brigid's Farm shortribs and jack cheese. Really nice looking plate, eh?
And finally, a chocolate cream cheese cupcake with a cute little scoop of vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. Another back story - this started out as simply Angie making a dessert for service. When she realized she'd misread the recipe as X number of cups of cocoa instead of X numbers of ounces, it was too late - we had to make a lot more batter. Up side was that now we had a dessert for the Wednesday menu!
On a side note, here's the pretty salad we've been serving with John's bibb lettuce, shrimp and avocado. Next thing you know there will be Redman's asparagus all over it!
In other news, I'm in the throes of dealing with "energy choice". Thanks to our government, we have a choice as to where we can purchase our electrical power, or maybe it would be better to phrase it as: we have a choice as to who we pay for our power. Our choice, a few years ago, was Direct Energy. I'm not sure why we chose this party to deal with, but we did, hoping for lower prices on our electric bill. I'm not sure we got lower prices either - I'm going to do a comparison - but our contract is up in November (!!) and the calls have begun to come in from the third parties that nail down those (must be) lucrative contracts for the energy suppliers. The first call and email came from the company that originally signed us up. And of course they don't say they are a third party, they say they are Direct Energy. They use the Direct Energy logo and have the Direct Energy contact numbers on their paperwork. And even when you call DE, they still don't tell you that you are dealing with a third party, they say "oh yeah, Milton's working on that".
But when you get a new caller, who first you think is the other third party who must verify your relationship with the first, but who ends up being someone else trying to get your contract, you start to get really confused. (Aren't you?) This person tells you that they can beat that rate that "Milton" offered you (which was touted by "Milton" as a great price because rates are at a historic low and they could go up at anytime and now's the time to lock in that rate, blah blah blah), you wonder why would Direct Energy be competing with itself for your admittedly small business? And why would the second caller say, "Well those guys downstairs can't give you the same rate I can"? "Downstairs"? Really?
So. After printing out the first email with the lower rate for a two year contract, I call the Maryland Public Utilities agency. Not much help there. So I call Direct Energy. As I noted above, not much help there either. But that call does earn me another call from "Milton", who, when I tell him what the rate is that caller Number 2 offered, puts his supervisor on the phone to tell me that if I can get that rate in writing, to send it over to him, because there was no way Direct Energy would be able to touch a rate that low.
Great.
So, I do what any intelligent tenant would do. I call the LandLord. And he tells me that he's been through a few hoops with Direct Energy himself.
Well, I've got until November, right? So what if rates started going up again as soon as I hung up the phone from "Milton" - which was why "we" postdated the contract for March 19th, so I could lock in those historically low rates - I think I will do a little more homework. Who knows, it might turn out that just sticking with Delmarva Power could be the most cost-effective way to go after all.
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