One more reason

Having a friend over tonight for dinner.

We are celebrating his birthday.

Not that we need an excuse to have people over, but I'm getting lazy and so is he and I knew he wouldn't be doing anything special anyway.

It's also an excuse for me to cook dinner, making someone more than tacos or chicken , you know the usual easy stuff you do automatically without any planning or forethought.

This would at least allow me to use some fresh stuff and spend a little time doing it.

So, off to the town I drove, first to pick up a baguette of freshly baked bread that our transplanted baker named IVO makes.
 IVO has a pizza shop on the main plaza and he bakes bread daily, but on Fridays he makes a great baguettes, so naturally that was the first stop.

The second stop was at the carniceria  or butcher shop that I shop at.
 First I got a pound of freshly sliced bacon. In Mexico the prepackaged bacon is awful.

They cut is so thin that first it sticks together and when you fry it, the slices all curl up like caterpillars that you give sun-tans under the magnifying glass. Remember when you were a kid.  ( I never did that, but saw my friends do that)

So here I asked them to cut it on the "thick or wide" side.

I also asked the butcher for 3 New York steaks.
"Sorry, don't have any today.  How about T Bone?"

And here I thought that one part of the T bone actually was a New York, so why not?

So they cart out a slab of beef, throw on the table and start cutting it apart.
He apologize about 3 time for me having to wait while for 5 minutes while they dissected the slab. After another minute he calls me over to the band saw. (can you imagine a butcher NOB allowing anyone behind the counter to supervise the cutting ?) ( Insurance)
So, he starts the saw and asks me how thick I wanted each steak by moving it by the speeding blade.

I showed him and seconds later, 3 T-bone steaks were delivered.

The  bacon was 48 pesos, which is about 4 dollars for 2.0 lbs.

The 3 T-Bones were 224 pesos which is about $18.50 . I weighed them when I got home and they were 4 oz shy of 4.0 lbs. My last recollection of T Bone NOB was about 10-15 dollars a pound, so I think 18 bucks was a pretty decent deal.....

So, gotta get going here, making some Eggplant ratatouille, nice salad with blue cheese, fresh bread, yellow rice and dessert is going to be a Grand Marnier souffle with a candle stuck in the middle......