the garden slug

To celebrate AdWords’ 10th Birthday, Google gave us a nice li’l gift: They put our name on the moon, for FREE.

We’re so touched *sniff* :’)

Click on the moon to watch the video

There’s a quote that goes “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We can’t say too much right now, but here are a handful of things we’re really looking forward to in the coming year: a brand new stove (the current one has served us well for a good four years!), a small facelift to the interior decor, as well as some form of expansion which we can’t quite reveal yet.

Although, we are still a little company and we hope to remain that way.

Shooting for the moon we are, but among the stars is where we hope we’ll be. Because the stars of the show have always been you.

That’s next year. For now, let’s have ourselves a fabulous Christmas.

This is too good not to share. Thanks for cracking us up, Nicholas! <3

What got me curious was the name of this week’s dessert special, the Peach Melba by Sophia Slug. So I press the magic F4 button on my keyboard, which brings up the magic built-in dictionary.

So, the magic built-in dictionary sez:

Don’t you just love the sound of that rolling off your tongue? Dame Nellie Melba. It sounds almost as smooth as a raspberry coulis with vanilla gelato gently swirling in your mouth. Dame Nellie Melba. *imagines a hot fudge raspberry sundae* Dame Nellie Melba. *imagines warm grilled peaches*

Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931, born Helen Porter Mitchell), was an Australian opera singer who was born near Melbourne & she took her professional name from that of the city. It turns out she was quite the diva, and has four foods named after her, all created by a chef/writer named Auguste Escoffier. One of which was, yep you guessed, Peach Melba. I think she liked them peaches. You think?

Anyhoo. There ya go, we’ve just helped you top up your useless information quota for the week. YOU CAN THANK US LATERZ.

By the way, José Slug’s special dessert projekt finally made its way into our/your hearts & into our permanent menu.

Also, this week, José Slug is responsible for almost all of the food pr0n on our weekly specials release. (Usually the photos are taken by long-time pr0nster Sophia Slug, but even food pr0nographers need a break every now & then.)

Did you not catch that cleverly hidden link to our weekly specials again? Well, darn it, you’ll just hafta wait till next week.

On a slightly different note (okay, who am I kidding. On a completely different note), Slugphile Melissa sent us The Owl & The Squirrel which had us all giggling. Thanks Mel, we ♥ you long time!

Dear Jinks

We’d like to apologise to you (and to the many quietly suffering readers out there) for our ‘off putting’ behaviour & blatant disregard for the lack of blog posts. *pulls ears & does a thousand squats*

It did cross our minds to write a quick blog post telling everyone how busy we’ve been at the shoppe (thanks to everyone’s awsum support! Everybody say Pizzarrrrrr!!) but we stopped ourselves thinking that might sound like we’re boasting. Boastful behaviour might be off putting too. So we didn’t write that blog post. I mean, we call ourselves a “humble li’l diner” and all…

Then we thought we might write about how our little shoppe got flooded twice this past month. But we got busy cleaning up the shop to make sure it’s really, um, clean.. so we didn’t get to blog about that either.

But maybe we should have.

We’ve always had this strange idea that nobody reads our drivel blog.

It is obvious to us now, with 4 5 6 comments on the last blog post alone (which is the most number comments we’ve ever gotten on ANY blog post.. honest!) that we are completely wrong. We need to ‘wake up our idea’ and do something about our self-esteem issues.

So, here we’ve dedicated an entire blog post to our public apology. We are very sorry, from the bottom of our sluggy hearts. We know that from the day we decided to have a blog, it is our responsibility to make sure it is updated as often as possible.

Here’s to more drivel & unfunny jokes blog posts from us! Pinky promise!

Meanwhile, Jinks (and other quietly suffering readers out there), if you’re on Facebook – we’re on Facebook too. We update fairly often, about our weekly specials, and sometimes about other people’s cats and dogs and parrots.

Also, if you’re on Twitter – we’re on Twitter too. We update there quite often, like two or three times a day? We post photos of food, goings-on in the shop, daily specials, who’s on shift, and generally have all kinds of conversations with other ‘Twitterers’.

Thank you for caring, Jinks, and for giving us a good wake up call. Let’s keep this conversation going, k?

Lots of Love,
The Garden Slug

They so pretty.

We’re just tabulating the feedback cards for José’s Apple Cranberry Streusel project from last month. We’d like to thank everyone who filled out the cards for your honesty and the constructive criticism.

We got a good laugh out of some of the “artwork” you left us at the back of the card. This one stood out the most because we just couldn’t make any sense out of it.

Can the artist responsible for this please come forward & drop us an e-mail at justask@thegardenslug.com (or DM us if you follow us on Twitter). We’d like you offer you an Apple Cranberry Streusel on the house!

In other news, we are happy to announce that Louise Slug has joined our team full-time. Louise will be our Operations Supervisor, in addition to José Slug. Louise, thank you for wanting to be a part of our humble li’l establishment, we are truly honoured.

Here’s to more Slug Power! \o/

—
UPDATE: The artists have spoken!

You guys are a riot! We’ll be e-mailing you soon, watch that inbox

[ Link ]

Realize it’s possible, instead of telling yourself why you can’t.
Become aware of your self-talk.
Squash negative thoughts like a bug.
Replace them with positive thoughts.
Love what you have already.
Be grateful for your life, your gifts, and other people.
Every day.
Focus on what you have, not on what you haven’t.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
But be inspired by them.
Accept criticism with grace.
But ignore the naysayers.
See bad things as a blessing in disguise.
See failure as a stepping stone to success.
Surround yourself by those who are positive.
Complain less, smile more.
Image that you’re already positive.
Then become that person in your next act.

Focus on this habit first, and you’ll have a much easier time with any other.

‘A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.’ ~Herm Albright

( via )

Apparently for this slug, just one strawberry pear cider does the trick.

We’ve brought in a small quantity of not-so-mainstream beer & ciders.

Come see if we can out-lobster Sophia Slug this weekend. Hur hur