There's no recipe today, y'all, but I'm still gonna talk about food. I mean, does a day really go by that I don't? :-) I love to cook, but I also love having a good meal cooked for me. How do you think I got into cooking? Gee and Bet and my mum all cooked great food, and, once I left the nest and moved far-far away, I needed to know how to keep on getting that goodness in me. Well, restaurants may not be home cooking, but they're can still be great medicine for the soul. And you don't have to feel too bad about them...if you're smart. Here's how I indulge without breaking the bank or my belt.

Research
Folks, we live in an age where almost any piece of information is at our fingertips. This can be dangerous because too much information makes us paranoid. I had a friend who got bit by a spider, so what did he do? He Googled spider bite pictures to try and figure out what kind of spider had bitten him. That poor guy walked away from the computer worried that he was, at worst, going to die and, at best, lose a limb. All of this information is empowering, however, as well. When I want to figure out where to eat, I head to Yelp, Urbanspoon, and Local Eats. You can find countless places to eat on any of these sites with information on location, cuisine type, prices, and more. You can even create wishlists and favorites to keep track of places you've been and places you want to go, and using them will cause you to discover places you didn't even know existed. Think of it as a culinary adventure out!

Planning
Most of you are probably not neurotic like I am...what I mean by that is that you probably don't get all stressed out when the waiter comes to the table for the third time to see if you're ready to order and you're not.

PRE-GAME
verb
1. To look up a restaurant's menu before actually going out to the restaurant in order to decide on your order in advance. Because Dana made it a point to pre-game the menu before going out, she didn't panic and just order water when the waiter came to take her order.

I started pre-gaming menus a while ago to avoid this issue, but there's a fabulous added benefit. You can have a pretty good idea of how much you're going to spend before you even leave the house. Mike and I use this tactic to help narrow down where we want to eat, as there are approximately half a bazillion different places to eat here in Music City (sometimes it's hard to know just how much two or three dollar signs really means). You can also pre-game to make sure the restaurant you're going to offers something you really want that day. Then you just have to consider the tip, which leads me to my next point...

Eat Locally
I know, I know, you've heard me preach this before, but there are logical reasons for this. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of chain restaurants. I really do. My best restaurant experiences have come from local eateries, though. Why? Well, besides the fact that eating locally puts money back into the community where you live--the money stays with the serving staff, the local restaurant owner, and the local farms they [hopefully] source from--local restaurants have to work for your patronage. They have to earn it or the entire business will fail. A chain restaurant can afford to have crappy service or poor quality because the rest of the business will buoy that branch up...until they decide to close it, which could or could not take a while. Good local business owners know this and will therefore work that much harder to make sure their staff make their customers happy. The food will often be more delicious and unique that the usual chain fair too simply because local restaurants have to find a way to make what they offer stand out.

Tonight was one of the best nights out I've had in a while. Mike and I went out to a little spot in East Nashville called The Silly Goose. We got there and the hostess told us it would be an hour wait. Okay, I had already been eying the coffee shop, Ugly Mugs, next door, so we went over to get a nice, hot pre-dinner treat. We planned on heading back over after about a half hour or so. Well, our table was apparently ready after only about twenty minutes, and do you know that sweet hostess came over to the coffee shop to get us? I immediately looked at Mike and said, "You are going to build that into the tip," and he immediately agreed. Dinner was fantastic--Mike had a great, massive sandwich with salad and cous cous and I had a tower made of mushrooms, artichoke hearts, and Mascarpone cheese with a delicious mustard balsamic reduction. After that we headed over to Jeni's Ice Cream (I told you I liked some chains), had our friends Wes and Hannah join us, and had dessert and good conversation. So that's pre-dinner coffee, a great meal, and dessert for two for $43. And it didn't take anything more than a little time and effort. I hope this helps you in your next dinner-out adventure.