Nothing quite brings these two topics closer together than going out to eat. If you’re familiar with me and my writing I like cheap food. And more than that, I just like being cheap period. I highly dislike spending money for no reason at all; and for me “fancy food” gets really darn close to “no reason at all.”

As a picky eater, I like burgers and fries and sugar free Jell-O. I’m exceedingly easy to please for six bucks. In fact, the fancier (and by that I mean “weirder”) the food gets, the less I like it. Ironically, this is the food that also costs the most, so for me it’s a no brainer: a cheapskate isn’t going to spend more money on something he actually highly dislikes. I can see if you really, really liked that stuff, then you could easily justify spending more for the gastronomic experience. For me it’s like someone saying, “Here, I’m going to stick you with this pin. Oh, and by the way, you owe me a hundred bucks for the service.”

Plus, the practical person in me knows that my tummy doesn’t realize how much the food costs. If I spend $5 for a meal or $50, I’m not actually buying (or eating) ten times more food. An hour or two later, I’m still going to be hungry again and have my fist in a bag of sour cream and cheddar Ruffles. Except I know I’ll be out an extra $45 which will certainly drive this miser to several additional and wholly unnecessary handfuls of chips.

The moral of the story? Take me to Long John Silver’s for some chicken planks, of course. I thought it was obvious…

About a week ago we visited a new restaurant called Johnny Fins. (Well, the restaurant itself isn’t new. It was just new to us.) A soon-to-expire twenty-five dollar off coupon drove us there.

If you’re not familiar with the area around Lake Travis in Austin, to get to anywhere around the lake (by car) you have to drive long, winding backroads—sometimes for what feels like an hour just to get a few miles.

The winding trip to Johnny Fins ended in a parking lot and no restaurant. “Hmmm… I think we came the right way. Oh wait, there it is.” The restaurant floats right out on the water and all we had to do to get there was walk down a four mile, thirty degree incline which convinced me no matter what I ate at the end of this, I needn’t worry since I’d easily work it off on the return trip.

We got there a little late and it wasn’t crowded. We sat at our table right by the parked boats. (Is that the right nautical term? “Parked?”) A guitar duo was playing. Loudly. But fortunately they went on break soon. Our server came up shortly after, wearing a dark turquoise tank top with “Hey, Up Here” written in bold, white lettering. We ordered soft drinks and asked for the obligatory “few more minutes” as we pondered our culinary choices.

The menu said, “Best Burgers in Austin.” Of course, every menu (what serves the burgers) in Austin says that. However, I was at the end of a pretty good week, weight-wise, and decided that even with the long climb back to the car, I would still “be good.” I ordered the chicken caesar salad. (Otherwise, you’d be reading the “Austin Burger Tour #5″ post today instead.)

And I was good. I didn’t sneak fries or chicken fingers off others’ plates. (And by that I don’t mean my daughters’ plates, but the couple two tables over.) And the caesar salad was actually pretty darn good.

About the only thing I could complain about was the return of the music. The music itself was okay but didn’t need to be that loud. (Did I just say that? Geez, maybe I am getting old. I’ll be kicking those kids off my lawn any day now.)

But I’d recommend it anyway. Especially if you love sharing your dinner with real, live ducks. Check them out here.

If you’re not eating out at a restaurant and you’re not ordering in and you’re not at a friends house, yet you’re still not eating your own food, well, then you must be on a cruise.

A little over five years ago the family decided to go on a cruise. The kids were a bit younger then and had never seen a boat that large. They were initially excited about the prospect, although in hindsight, we probably shouldn’t have rented Titanic the night before we left.

We chose a short trip (four days, three nights) for two reasons: 1) to keep the price down; and 2) well, what if we didn’t like it? It’d be terrible to get stuck on a big boat for days and days and hate it. (Hate it and continue to pay for it. Might as well just stay home and pay taxes instead.)

However, if I’d only known what was in store for me, I think I would have booked a thirty day cruise. Because what I didn’t realize at the time is that Carnival Cruise Lines serves pizza. All the time. For free.

Did you catch that?

Pizza. All the time. For free.

No matter what you’re doing, no matter where you are, no matter what time is it, you can just run up to the pizza counter and yell, “Pepperoni, dammit!” And dammit if pepperoni pizza doesn’t appear out of nowhere. Want two slices? No problem. Twenty? Sure, why not! You’re on vacation so why not live a little.

Or a lot. Here are my stats from that week. The first date was November 25. The second date was December 2. As you can tell, I didn’t think twice about ordering twenty slices of pizza at a time. What’s also interesting about this period is that less than one short month later, I left Onederland for the first time since April of 2001. So in a lot of ways, this Carnival Pizza is what eventually started me on my Return to Onederland. Let that be a lesson to you all.

I think for this year’s family vacation I’ll stick to the plan. It’s just not worth it. Besides, what could be more relaxing than heading to the east coast, renting Jaws, then chartering a fishing boat the next morning?

Ask anyone what “Sunday” is named after and most are quick to correctly suggest, “The sun?” An only slightly smaller percentage might then guess that “Monday” is named for the moon. But after those two, it’s anybody’s guess where the names of the other weekdays come from. My shrewd guesses are:

1. Tuesday is the number Two-day of the work week.
2. Wednesday is from the Old German word “Woeden” meaning “hump”
3. Thursday is just a contraction of Thirsty Day.
4. And Friday is obviously the day you go to Red Robin for bottomless fries.

Turns out I’m flat wrong on all accounts. Can you believe Friday is actually named after Venus? A quick Wikipedia check states:

The name Friday comes from the Old English frigedæg, meaning the day of Frige the Anglo-Saxon form of Frigg, a West Germanic translation of Latin dies Veneris, “day (of the planet) Venus.”

This connection to Veneris is a little more obvious in romance languages such as French (vendredi) or Spanish (viernes). Even cooler (to me) is that most Indian languages call today Shukravar, which just so happens to be the Sanskrit name for … drumroll, please … Venus!

So why this common theme across so many languages and cultures? That’s easy! Friday, like the goddess herself, is beautiful. And the best part? It’s today!

So Happy Venusday, everybody.

Got plans for tonight? Do they include pizza? Or perhaps cheeseburgers? Are you going to have a beer and tell your friends, “Do you realize that today is Venusday?” When they look at you in awe and inquire what may be the font of your knowledge, just say, “I have people.”

So, my cool kids, what are your plans for today or this evening? Let me know below and I’ll enjoy one tall, cold one tonight for every five comments.

Looking for the next stop in the Austin Burger Tour? Don’t worry, we’ll be back with that later. (To be honest, I never intended to do them all in a row. The first four just sort of worked out that way.) However, all this recent burger-eating made me think: it’s time for another segment in the “Eating Out Tips” series.

If you missed the first two, click here:

• First One
• Second One

So now, without further ado, here are five more tips to help you, the struggling dieter, cope with the trauma of eating out. Each one is dedicated to one of the five food groups:

1. If you go to an Italian restaurant, and you’re worried about ordering a ginormous plate of pasta smothered in a buttery sauce, simply do what I do. Go ahead and order it, but ask for five carry-out boxes. Divide the meal evenly among each box. Don’t eat any of it now. Instead, take the boxes home, freeze them, then throw them out in 2012.
2. If you go to a Mexican restaurant and your table is stocked with forty-seven bowls of complimentary tortilla chips, try to imagine the chips are something you’d never eat. This targeted visualization technique will help you avoid high-calorie, pre-dinner indulgences, though potentially confusing your companions when you say, “No thanks, I’m not in the mood for earthworms.”
3. If you go to a Chinese restaurant and your table is stocked with one of those large lazy susans, make sure it never stops in front of you. You’ll need an accomplice a friend sitting on the other side of the table. If the food ever gets near you, it will be his or her responsibility to quickly rotate it out of your reach.
4. If you go to a Cheeseburger restaurant (I won’t mention any names, but it’s first initial is Red Robin) and they offer all you can eat french fries, take heart: all is not lost. As each basket of fries arrives at the table, immediately toss them over your shoulder into the booth behind you. You avoid the calories and the guy in the next booth doesn’t mind because—hey, free fries.
5. If you go to a Breakfast restaurant and you find that there’s simply no avoiding the Grand Slam, you can easily divert half the calories of the bacon, eggs, spam, spam, and spam platter by reaching into your coat pocket and pulling out your cleverly concealed dog. A bite for you, a bite for Rex. Another bite for you, another bite for Rex. Problem solved and you won’t need a doggy bag.