on the tenth day of christmas, there was no room at the inns

After the most raucous shopping trip in recent memory, during which Reilly smuggled Bella into the store and Quinn popped into Figaro's and picked up a large pizza on his debit card and ate it in the car, Debe and I realized we had never eaten in our lives. Starving on a Sunday night in Salem = death, and the lower the blood sugar gets, the more complicated simple things become. First we hit Venti's, a favourite haunt, where the atmosphere was unusually casual, as was the food, which was all set out buffet-style. Todd and I have known Dino for eons and I was a little taken aback by the presentation. That's when a small, friendly, and hella drunk girl announced that it was the staff christmas dinner, omg omg omg. We laughed so hard. They were pointing to ham-ish things and rolls, but we accidentally left in and drove away in 7.5 seconds.

Next up, Los Arcos, where I've been known to dine six nights in a row, possibly as recently as last week. It was 8:31pm, and the sign said they closed at 8:30, but I decided it would be so incredibly charming to walk in, oblivious to their signage, and ask for some food in Spanish that we would have our enchiladas pronto. But the charm was lost on them entirely and they replied by saying there was no food anywhere in West Salem. Hay caramba!

Suddenly I was struck by all sorts of genius and suggested we watch some shit movie at Northern Lights strictly for the food. Debe has never been. I told her to pull in so I could peruse the flicks, and she literally pulled right up to the handle of the door, prompting two security tweens to rush out. They were somewhat worried, I was nonchalant. They explained the last time someone pulled up like that it was to jack the register. (Um, hello, all for $90.00?) "No," I said, "She's not robbing you, she's from California," and we left, laughing again, but closer to death. Finally, just as I began to think of the Donner Party, I remembered Thompson's...DUH! It's no longer the crown jewel of my culinary circuit, but damn that fish was good, and we met some great people, from whom we were seated a centimeter away, so we're obviously family now.

So after an hour of inn-hopping, we finally found our dimly-lit manger. Oh shit, did I just liken the Baby Jesus to some cod? I'm going to post this really fast so I don't know.