My mother has decided we just don’t spend enough time just hanging out lately and felt the need to remedy this. As a result we went out for a late dinner this evening. At first we weren’t really sure where we wanted to eat, although it was decided that Applebees, Chili’s, Flying J’s, and the like were out since we go to those places semi-frequently. After much debate we decided to got to Ruby Tuesday, which is a restaurant I had only been to twice before.

Thus far I haven’t ordered the same thing twice, although, I’ve only tried their steak dinners so far. But that’s just a habit of mine, I tend to choose steak over everything else whenever I go out to eat. Tonight I their Peppercorn Mushroom Sirloin and it was delicious! The steak consisted of a 9-ounce cut topped with black pepper, sauteed baby portabella mushrooms, and a Parmesan cream sauce. All steaks come with white cheddar mashed potatoes (or a baked potato but I never choose that), steamed broccoli, crisp onion straws, and salad bar. I love their onion straws!

The meal was cooked to perfection, but what my mother ordered took the cake so to speak. I tend to avoid ordering ribs anywhere because of three things:

• They’re generally messy and I always feel like awkward trying to eat them in a restaurant without getting sauce all over my hands
• I put ribs in the same category as pizza, it’s finger food and just looks wrong eating it with a knife and fork
• They tend to be either char-broiled (Chili’s!) or under-cooked (Cattle Barron’s)

My mother was more daring and ordered their Ribs & Louisiana Fried Shrimp plate. I tried to talk her out of it, fearing the worst, but was pleasantly surprised when the food arrived. They call their ribs “fork-tender” and believe me, they are. The meat slid right off the bone, perfectly cooked yet still moist and tender. Unbelievable! The next time I go there I’m ordering some ribs!

Ruby Tuesday’s servings always leave me stuffed and feeling as though I should be popping weight loss supplements before and after dinner. I very rarely order desert when dining out but tonight I decided to give their New York Cheesecake a shot. Big mistake! But not for the reasons you’re thinking!

The cheesecake was huge! I’m so used to restaurants serving such tinny portions of cheesecake that when I saw it on the menu priced at $3.99 I sincerely thought it was going to be pretty small. Since I was starting to get full I thought a little sliver of cheesecake would be dandy. But as you can see in the picture above, it wasn’t small at all. I couldn’t eat the whole thing and had to take half of it home. Definitely a pleasant surprise there!