The sign on our local Arby’s announces that Southwest Mini Egg Rolls are back. I guess I didn’t know that they had left. Or more to the point, I guess I didn’t know that they had ever existed.

Now, when I think of south west egg rolls, I am thinking Sichuan. Cabbage with spicy shrimp. But, apparently these are more of a Juarez style.

I guess anything that is wrapped in dough and deep fat fried is an egg roll. Then again, I suppose you could call ravioli won tons with tomato sauce.

A Blue Fin Tuna recently sold a auction for over $100,000. It was bought by a sushi restaurant. At $370 a pound, that is some expensive sushi. I wonder if it would be considered to be gourmet?

What is the idea behind “gourmet”? Originally, gourmet referred to food that was high on taste and low on quantity. But now, it seems like everything is being marketed as “gourmet”.

The down hill slide began with gourmet pop corn. Now, while I like pop corn, I didn’t consider it to be in the same category with caviar.

Recently, I bought “gourmet” peanut brittle. It was tasty but not the best that I have ever had. Most recently, I bought some dried basil. There were two kinds on the shelf; regular and gourmet. The gourmet was more expensive than the regular. I opted for the regular.

If you used gourmet pop corn for pop corn balls, would the pop corn balls be “gourmet”?

Thousands of shoes have been found on a highway in Miami. They were apparently dumped during the night and have been clogging up traffic. No one knows where the shoe came from and officials are looking for a charity who would like to have them.

I have always wondered about shoes found on the road side. It seems like it is always just one. Don’t people realize that they have just lost a shoe? I guess they must be sleeping with their foot hanging out of the car window or something.

In reviewing hits on my blog for 2008, the most sought after blog was Oven Ready Lasagna Noodles. This really surprised me as I didn’t think that there would be that much interest in the subject.

The second biggest hit on the blog was for Rachel Aldana but there was no surprise there.

All and all, I averaged about 10,000 unique hits per month.  Since I don’t know 10,000 people, I have to assume that total strangers read my blog.

Blog stats are always interesting.

The other day, I was talking with one of our sales reps. She is a classy woman who dresses quite nice. I asked her if I could look at her diamond ring. She eagerly agreed so I got out my loop for a look see.

As expected, it was a very nice diamond. Good color and clarity. Since I could not see any inclusions, I concluded that it must be at least a VS1.

After I had finished looking at it, she asked me if I could tell real diamonds from fake. I told her that I could most of the time so she reached into her purse and pulled out a single diamond earring. She wanted to know if it was real or not.

When I examined it, I could see a small inclusion in the stone so that told me right away that it wasn’t a cubic. Plus, it had a good color and clarity. Cubics just don’t have the clarity of real diamonds. I told her that I was pretty sure it was real but that she should have it checked with a jeweler.

Then she told me that she had found it in her sofa. Right away, I started drawing thoughts that had not yet occurred to her, namely, how did it end up in her sofa?

Since this earring was at least a 1/2 carat diamond, who ever lost it was out about $500. Certainly, if some one had been to her house and had lost such an earring, they would have made some sort of inquiry. Yet, no one had made any inquires as to its existence.

This would lead me to believe that the person who lost it was either too wealthy to care or the person who lost it should not have been there in the first place. I am inclined to go with the latter.

I am sure that she will eventually put two and two together.

In an effort to curb my fat intake, I decided to try some vegetable sausage.  I had hoped it would be some what tasty with a little tang to it.  But, it wasn’t.  It was more like oatmeal with a faint taste of sage.

I guess vegetarians don’t like tasty food.