Dip Into Something Different

First, I must apologize for the horrendous quality of these photos. I mistakenly left home without my camera, and was forced to learn how to use the camera in my BlackBerry. But, I couldn't get away with not sharing our fabulous new (to us) experience from last week!

I think we've finally found an outstanding babysitter in our area, after being here for almost a year, and we enjoyed the new amenity with a night on the town. The kids were excited to have a movie night at home with Madison, and we were thrilled to have a date night.

We did see Funny People, and were pretty disappointed in Adam Sandler, but our date night meal did not disappoint. Daniel finally indulged me with a trip to The Melting Pot. I've been hinting and leaving coupons around the house for about six months, and I was thrilled that it finally worked out for us to go!

If you're not familiar with the restaurant, it's an interactive fondue experience. We chose a meal with all courses (of course!), and took our waitress' suggestions rather than building our own selections. We were very pleased with her suggestions, but now that we're familiar with the process and menu, we'll likely branch out and be more adventurous next time.

We started with the cheese fondue. Ours was the Quattro Formaggio Cheese Fondue. It had stuff that I'm not familiar with (Fontina, Grùyere) yummy cheeses, roasted garlic, basil and tomato pestos and fresh mozzarella Perlini. In other words, it was fancy queso and was absolutely delish! There were fresh veggies, apple slices and a variety of breads for dipping. Man, it was so yummy. I could easily live off melted cheese in any form because I love it so much, but I don't think I'd be able to get in our front door I'd be so fat!

I didn't think I was going to like the salad. I'm not much of a fan of greens, but this was the tastiest of salads. I'm not sure what made it so special, but I think it was the yummy balsamic glaze. Man, oh man, that glaze was tasty! And, the fresh mozzarella, vine-ripened tomatoes, and fresh basil were almost as good.

The main course was a cornucopia of meats including lobster tail, shrimp, sun-dried tomato chicken, pork tenderloin, filet mignon and sirloin. When added to the variety of glazes, especially the sweet and sour, all of the choices were tasty.

The experience includes cooking the meats and seafood, but it just takes a few minutes of soaking up the yummy boiling juices and they're ready. In between the meats cooking, we also enjoyed mushrooms, potatoes and broccoli that we'd been cooking in the pot. The mushrooms were my favorite when topped with this yummy, creamy Greek sauce. Oh, that sauce was certainly not low in calories because it was the tastiest of sauces!

For dessert, we combined amaretto, pecans and white chocolate in our fondue pot. I wish I could share with you all the treats we dipped and drizzled with the white chocolate sauce, but I was too busy devouring the platter to remember to take a picture. Ha!

As you can see, we easily found somewhere to put the cheesecake, marshmallows (chocolate and coconut), strawberries, bananas, pound cake and rice krispie treats. Surprisingly, my favorite treat was the chocolate marshmallows. Those things better be our pillows in heaven!!! (God, if you're reading this, that's just a suggestion, but it's worth looking in to.)