Ali heard about this new place in Henrietta — Make and Take Gourmet (1475 E. Henrietta Road) — so we went there to check it out for their menu sampling day. Everything was very good and it was nice to get to try everything. The idea is that you assemble a meal (or you can buy it preassembled “to go”) and take it home to cook and eat or to freeze for later. It’s definitely a niche concept but it seems to make sense: you get to try out a new recipe without the hassle of buying all the ingredients (and having to find an immediate use for the left-over perishables that wouldn’t ordinarily get used) and hoping — against all odds — that you got everything you needed.

Make and Take provides a bunch of recipes to choose from each month — in May 2008, there are 16. They have “assembly stations” set up at their location with all the ingredients for one or more of the recipes and you can go there and get all the ingredients ready in a take-out container (that they provide although you can also bring your own). I think you may be able to just walk in, but they prefer that you sign up before you show up so they can make sure to have enough of everything ready-to-go. The recipes are scaled for either 2-3 people or for 4-6 people and one of the perks of making it yourself is that you can add more of what you like and omit anything you hate.

Ali set up an event on May 20 — you can see the details on Tuesday’s entry of this JayceLand update.

Ali and I had a nice dinner at California Rollin’ at Village Gate Square (274 N. Goodman St.) then headed to [location redacted] to see Village Idiots Present (VIP)’s improvisational comedy. It turned out to be their first show so it was a little rough around the edges, but overall it was very funny. The players in the troupe have very varied styles, strengths, and weaknesses and I’m sure this will set them up to have a strong showing in Rochester.

The only thing I didn’t really like was that the support staff tended to act too formal — it was like going to Geva except that the structure wasn’t backed up with any foundation. For instance, we were instructed to sit toward the front when it really didn’t matter as there weren’t really any stragglers. And as for the improv, there were a couple times when some ego-based and fear-based “no’s” tripped up the performers’ stride.

But if you’re going to take risks, you’re going to sometimes fall big and other times win big.  In this case, it’s worth it.

Ali and I went to the Ontario County Real Property Tax Foreclosure Land Auction at The Ontario County Safety Training Facility (2914 County Road 48, Canandaigua) hosted by The Reynolds Auction Company. We were not planning to buy anything, we just to see how things get run.

We considered Lot #4 as we looked at it last week.  It’s located just south of where Routes 32 and 64 meet in Bristol. According to Google’s new terrain maps, the property is located about a half-mile east of the valley and 320 feet higher into the surrounding hills with the first 1000 feet of road at a 20% grade. Ali’s poor Saturn SL-2 barely made it up (and the transmission’s “2″ setting didn’t even come close to helping on the way down).

The property was listed with an assessed value of $27,500. In an information session last week that I attended, someone asked about that particular property’s assessment, commenting that they own land nearby and they thought the assessment was wrong — I assumed they meant “too high”. With that in mind, I was a little worried that it would actually sell for something approaching what we could afford — a couple thousand dollars, perhaps — because we didn’t even bother to register.

Well this one was particularly unusual. Ali knew the County Treasurer Gary Baxter from her days working in Canandaigua and when we chatted with him earlier, he menionted that there seemed to be a lot of people interested in this particular lot. Well I had no idea — I guessed they’d attempt to start bidding around $9,000 (then they work down until they get a bid) and it would sell for something like $12,000. Ali was worried it would sell for much less — after all, we looked at it and it’s hard to get to (i.e. 4-wheel-drive-access only) and the A-frame structure was in need of a fair amount of repairs, but it would indeed be a nice secluded spot to get away to on occasion. In the end it went for $37,500 — percentage-wise the largest amount over the assessed value of any of the properties we stayed to see. I sure hope those people like it.

We stayed through 14 of the properties and noted that the later you stay, the more people leave so in the future, I’d consider bidding on one of the later properties on the list. After that we had a nice dinner at Eric’s Office Restaurant (2574 Macedon Rd., Canandaigua). We hadn’t been there in a while and it was a bit late; food preparation time was a bit slow for us personally but the quality was quite good. I thought the French Onion soup wasn’t as good as we’d had at Hogan’s Hideaway (197 Park Ave.) but Ali liked it more. We split both our meals in half so she had half my portabello sandwich and I, half her cheeseburger. Both were great. Amusingly enough, the auctioneer John T. Reynolds and one of the women he was working with (I forgot her name and don’t know their personal relationship) happened to get dinner there too.