Honey, look how much money we saved!

This is a supremely happy face. This is also a face that makes me supremely happy. This is the face of my best friend and life partner (going on 25 years!) participating in dim sum at Yank Sing near Market Street in San Francisco. Props to Red Lantern for recommending this unique culinary experience.

Semantics alert: boring stuff to follow. Skip to next section unless you give a rip.

Dim sum is Cantonese for "from the heart" or "to your heart's content." It is part of the traditional Chinese tea, Yum Cha (lit. "tea drinking") that descended from Silk Road teahouses that catered to weary travelers, and describes the process of ordering a la carte from waiters who offer one or several appetizer-sized servings of all kinds of delicacies. Every couple of minutes one of Yank Sing's many wait staff would appear at our table with a small plate of something delicious and offer it to us. Only a fool would turn this stuff down, so after a few minutes our table was piled high with pork dumplings, szechuan chicken, prawns with candied walnuts, shimp toast, wok-seared green beans with a spicy sauce, lettuce wraps, pot stickers, chicken satay with peanut sauce, mango pudding and traditional egg custard tart. Funny, though, there wasn't a grain of rice in sight anywhere...

Whew! I'm full just thinking about it all. We are definitely skipping supper tonight. Unfortunately, I'll have to skip quite a few suppers to make up for all the eating we've done this week. Jimmy, I'm going to need a couple of epic weekend rides to burn off these calories!

Oh, and the title refers to a little side trip we made to Loehmann's on Sutter and Kearny near Market Street. This is basically a high-end T.J. Maxx (I pray there are none in Minnesota). We were just going to pop in there and check it out, but 4 or 5 hours later, we had used up our last afternoon in S.F. Truth be told, I wasn't that put out, since I scored a couple of sweaters, 2 swizzy shirts, and a long scarf. Beth got a really nice purse (Longchamps, the same brand as the one she bought in Paris 2 years ago), jeans, sweaters, and a dress. It was raining outside, and a trip to bike shops or Alcatraz didn't hold the same magic it did a few days ago.

We added it all up, and, if you believe the "compare at" price on the tag, it appeared that we had saved lots of dough, but as far as I could tell, we spent a lot more than we saved. Feminine economics always eludes me. Oh well, Beth is mincing around with her new purse and a supremely happy face, so that's enough for me.