{"id":1341,"date":"2008-08-01T16:38:13","date_gmt":"2008-08-01T21:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawrencem94.sg-host.com\/?p=1341"},"modified":"2008-08-01T16:38:13","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T21:38:13","slug":"the-starbucks-vivanno-does-not-bring-all-the-boys-to-the-yard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/?p=1341","title":{"rendered":"The Starbucks’ Vivanno Does NOT Bring All The Boys To The Yard…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I met up with Ms. Laura<\/a> for a quick lunch before she left town today – got to meet her sister, who’s accompanying her on the drive out West, and we lunched at Lulu’s down on the Blvd. I’m going to miss seeing her & chatting with her – but I’ll accept her excuse (her wedding\/honeymoon). While the company was excellent & our conversation good, the food itself was… OK. I appreciated the copious quantity of vegetables, but I was struck again by the comparison in my head to Thai Place\/Thai House. It’s just not there for me, what they’re serving. I put my finger on what was missing (beyond the obvious: sauce), and realized it was fresh herbs. Seasonings. The condiment tray consisted of sugar, ground red pepper, and jalapenos floating in vinegar. I doctored my noodles up some, but found myself wishing for a tangy brown sauce.\u00a0 It’s kind of “Thai-Lite”.<\/p>\n

So, I thought I’d swing through Starbucks on the way back, and try out one of these new smoothie milk-shake thingies. Except it’s not actually a milk shake. I got the banana-chocolate Vivanno, and even after I got past the fact that ice cream hadn’t even walked down the same sidewalk as this beverage, I still couldn’t find much joy in it. Tossed. Because $4 drinks grow on trees, natch.\u00a0 Sigh. I realized when I looked it up that any beverage that employs whey powder isn’t going to remotely parallel a smoothie or milkshake, and while it’s moderately healthy & contains all sorts of good things, again, I was reminded of the Dessert Tray of Disappointment.\u00a0 (This was from our trip long ago to Puerto Vallarta, where “desserts” were artfully arranged and displayed in such a way to promise sweet finishings to your meal, only to discover they had less sweetness than a biscuit.)<\/p>\n

All I can say is that the pressure is on for dinner tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I met up with Ms. Laura for a quick lunch before she left town today – got to meet her sister, who’s accompanying her on the drive out West, and we lunched at Lulu’s down on the Blvd. I’m going to miss seeing her & chatting with her – but I’ll accept her excuse (her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}