THE FOOD.

As I mentioned before, we ate A LOT of amazing food over break.  One of my very favorite things about the holidays is getting Honey Baked Ham.  Not even because I look the ham, but because growing up my mom would always use the ham bone and leftover ham to make either Split Pea and Ham soup or Navy Bean and Ham soup.  Honey Baked Ham actually sells packets at their store for either soup and they are the BOMB.  I may or may not have hidden the leftover tupperware in the back of the fridge and put a barricade around it so that no one would notice it was still there.  I'm a little overprotective.

JD and I had two MUST HAVES while in Ohio: I made sure to get Panera under my belt more than once and JD of course requested Steak N' Shake.  He also had Tony Packo's {a polish hot dog joint} for the first time and I snapped a photo of Mitt's hot dog bun there.  The walls of the restaurant are packed with "celebrity" hot dog buns.  My mom and dad also made sure to take us to a jerky store.  Imagine a store in a middle of no where strip mall {if I can even call it that} with self-serve barrels of various beef, chicken, turkey, every meat, jerky lining the store.  Legit or frightening?  I'm still unsure.

Of all the restaurants, nothing hit the spot more than The Melting Pot.  I remember one year during spring break in Florida we went and it was good.  But seriously... this time around it was AMAZING.  I pounded so much food that night and didn't even feel upset about it.  The meat was good and all, but the cheese and chocolate fondue was literally out of this world.  The best part was yet to come though.  When the waitress brought us our check, she said, "Oh and I took care of the cheese and chocolate."  And then she quickly walked off.  When my dad opened the booklet and looked at the receipt, it was $150 less than it should've been.  He called her back and said he thought there'd been a mistake and that we loved our meal and hadn't complained or anything {we thought maybe she had mistaken us for another unhappy table or something}.  She told us that she knew and that we were just really nice so she comped it for us.  Even after debating our theories, we're still not exactly sure why she did it, but let's just say she got a really nice tip.  It was our little Christmas miracle. ;)