I just got back from Quilt Market in Salt Lake City. Quilt Market is a three day show where shop owners like me have an opportunity to place orders for fabric, books and patterns that we will be carrying in the shop as they become available. And while it sounds like it would be amazingly fun to see all these fabric companies and visit all these booths filled with every imaginable quilting goody, you cannot believe how stressful and tiring this can be. For one thing, if you only have a cup full of money to spend, and the stuff you are looking at requires a gallon jug, you have to pick and choose from among everything offered--which would be okay if you're only choosing for yourself, but stressful if you're trying to magically know what your customers are going to enjoy. Anyway, after a really long day of walking up and down aisles and calculating out what we needed to order, Amber and I decided that what we really "needed" was a nice steak dinner at a sit-down restaurant where we could relax and let our brains recover. So Amber goes up to this information kiosk in the Salt Palace Convention Center and says to the woman, "Where can we go for a nice steak dinner?" The lady behind the counter says that she knows just the place to go, Christopher's Prime Steak House and Grill. She tells us it's only one block from where we are, and hands us a coupon for a free dessert! "Doesn't that sound wonderful?" I say to Amber. And off we go to this little restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City where we did, indeed, have one of the nicest steak dinners I've ever eaten.
See the dessert at the top of this post? That's the totally reasonable dessert that came with my steak dinner. It's a little bit of ice cream with some berries on top. VERY nice. But remember, we also have this coupon for a free dessert. I say to Amber, "You know, I'd really like something chocolate." She says, "Okay, well, I'm not into chocolate like you are. You order something chocolate and I'll eat the dessert that came with your dinner."
It sounded like such a reasonable plan! I showed the waiter our coupon and innocently said, "Do you have anything chocolate?" He tells me that he's got the best chocolate cake in Utah. "That sounds great!" says I. In a little while, he comes back with what I can only tell you is the largest piece of chocolate cake I have ever seen in my life! It was several layers tall and looked like someone had just cut one of my grandmother's hand-made chocolate layer cakes into four slices and put one of them on a plate. Honestly, it was the biggest piece of cake I have ever seen in my life. Had I eaten the whole thing, I would have immediately gone into a sugar coma and Amber would have had to drag me out to the car. Instead, I nibbled on one small corner of it.
Don't believe how big that thing was? Here's a photo of me that Amber took with her cell phone. What's even more amazing is that I did NOT eat the whole thing! Some things in life are just too much to have all at once. And in case you're wondering, that's a big glass of iced tea in front of me, not anything stronger. I was in Salt Lake City, remember?
