Weekend Update
Saturday was Beth's birthday, so we did something we've been talking about for a while - we visited the Wildlife World Zoo. Notable happenings there: a very disgusting camel burped at Beth, a "wild african dog" peed in my general direction (we were separated by a chain link fence and a distance of 3 feet), and Beth fed a giraffe with a tongue like Gene Simmons. The literature at the zoo states that giraffes' tongues are purple and a foot long, so feel free to draw your own filthy comparison. I took some pictures on Beth's camera, and if she's feeling bold, she may post them.
Saturday evening, we went to eat at the Melting Pot here in Ahwatukee. Their raison d'etre is fondue. We'd heard it was a very nice and somewhat upscale place, which I have to admit didn't mix with my vision of what a fondue restaurant might be.
Turns out that it was, in fact, very nice and fairly upscale but definitely worth it. It was actually a good restaurant for us: Beth enjoyed the hoity-toitiness, and I enjoyed being able to play with my food without attracting stares. The typical dinner is 4 courses. The first is an appetizer course where you pick a cheese and they fondue it up so that you can dip breads, apples and vegetables in it. You wouldn't think green apples dipped in swiss cheese fondue is good, but it is. It's the crack of the new millennium - mark my words. The second course is the salad course (nothing gets dipped here, sadly). The main course is next, so you pick your fondue style (we picked something with a long French name) and what you want to dip in it (we got the lobster/steak/shrimp/chicken combo) and then you go to town. After all that, you pick a dessert fondue (white/milk/dark chocolate or a mixture) and they bring out a plate with strawberries, bananas (the devil's fruit), pineapple, brownies, poundcake and cheesecake. All in little skewer-sized bites for dipping into (in our case) white chocolate fondue.
Then you pray for death to come. My prayers were answered in the form of "fondue farts" which, sadly, were very memorable as well. Still, it's a small price to pay and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.