Dinin and Winin

Giving Ernie a bath is quite a production and visitors are always excited to help.

Ernie doesn't like being cold so getting him out of the tub and dry has to be a mission executed with military precision.

I head through the grapevine that the flagship Costco in Issaquah recently started a pilot program making sushi in-house. When we got there it was evident that a few other people had also heard this. There was a long line snaking around the inside of the building.

Sushi elves

They rolled out a big cart of sushi and it was destroyed by the line waiters. I don't know if it was sashimi or something else special... but I figured out that there was sushi sitting in the case to the right there... so I walked to the front of the line, took some, then walked away.

This was what I wanted the whole time anyway so this was a great development: California roll with real crab!! Fake crab is a fish hotdog and in my opinion is the bane of sushi and should be against the law.

We stopped by Issaquah's Boehm's Candies on the way home.

Apparently Blippi is a kids show Youtuber who may be based in the area. Anyway they were selling packs that a kid could take home, eat the candy, and watch a corresponding episode on the show about how the candy is made.

They have a little self guided tour thing out back where you can watch some videos about the candy making process and learn all the things.

We finished up the day with a nice Italian dinner at Chianti.

The Chocolates of Issaquah

We popped into Boehm's Candies in Issaquah, Washington. They've been making candies by hand for 80 years.

I was immediately excited when I saw the store's Swiss chalet exterior. You don't build a place like this and then sell crap chocolates. 

There were a ton of different choices in the case and I was overwhelmed. I asked the nice girl behind the counter what the weirdest/best options were and she pointed out a few.

The Mozart Kugeln was good and decently weird, I'll give it that. I was fooled, however, when I looked up "filbert paste" and saw that filbert is just the local word for hazelnut.

I'm pretty proud of myself but another way that I avoided making the tough decision of what chocolates to buy was to grab a couple bags of assorted discount broken chocolates.

I don't think I realized exactly how much beer a tallboy advent calendar was going to contain. I'm still happy with my purchase though, as all of the beers are from small German brewers. It's rare that I'm confronted with this many beers that I haven't tried before. I will be brave and venture forth.