last weekend was relaxing and beautiful down here in georgia, and i spent as much time of that perfect spring saturday outside as i could. phillip came over to the condo where i was happily chatting with my neighbors chris and suzy and their sweet little pup shorty. the trees in our courtyard were providing the perfect amount of shade, and the slight breeze kept us cool. we cracked open some bud lights and caught up on the latest. it’s wild how much you don’t see your neighbors when the colder months are here. i felt like i hadn’t visited with those two in months!
as the early evening crept in, i could feel my stomach rumbling. we weren’t in the mood to cook, so phillip and i were trying to figure out where we should go for dinner. we knew we wanted to dine alfresco since it was such a gorgeous night, and with that must-have, chris and suzy were quick to recommend smokebelly bbq just down the street off east andrews. i’d gotten their flyers and coupons in the mail after their grand opening but hadn’t yet given it a visit. suzy was armed with several suggestions, and since i never turn down good bbq, we knew just where we’d be going. her fingers were crossed that we would like it just as much as she did; considering she’d been back several times after first going with chris, it sounded like a pretty good bet.
after finishing the publix half marathon and full marathon a couple sundays ago, you can bet we runners were ravenous. we met up with everyone in the neighborhood of decatur at the pinewood tippling room, unexpectedly coming across the perfect restaurant review opportunity.
known by the locals as the pinewood, this spot is a cozy neighborhood bar serving up “extraordinary cocktails and reinterpreted regional fare.” their space is clean without much fuss, and although they equally support what they call the high-class and “home-spun,” i felt a touch out of place in my running tights and sneakers. the other customers were dressed to the nines, it seemed, after maybe just having left church service with their family and friends. perhaps if i were coming on a different day i would have felt a little more comfortable. maybe that’s why they seated us way in the back…? nah, i don’t think so. i think it had more to do with the fact that we were a party of 12 and that was where they had room. i should have positioned myself on the other side of the table so that i could really take in the ambiance, for i was stuck facing a white-washed brick wall. oh well! good thing atmosphere is only one element of a restaurant, right? sure!
although i probably needed a couple gallons of water to rehydrate my body, i didn’t wait a moment to order a mimosa. something refreshing and crisp sounded like the perfect ticket, and these glasses were a great balance of orange juice and champagne. cheers!
mimosas for everyone!
the pinewood closes at 2:30 p.m. on sundays, so we all had to somewhat hastily make our selections. with a decently sized brunch menu, though, i don’t think it was hard for many of us.
okay, my loyal readers. i know you have been awaiting the dramatic conclusion to our trip in salt lake city a couple weekends ago. i very much apologize for the delay; i have been a busy bee, per the usual! if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, i gladly give you salt lake city – day 2.
saturday morning arrived, sunny and beautiful just like friday. it was our final full day in salt lake city, so to not waste any time, we put on our walking shoes, grabbed our light jackets, and strolled over to bruges waffles and frites for some breakfast. bruges had been recommended by both my coworker drew and the concierge geoff, and considering their suggestions are almost always a hit, we knew we’d be in for a treat.
i was extra excited for this restaurant because when i think of waffles in the morning, i cannot help but play that scene from shrek in my mind. gotta love donkey!
we woke friday morning to a sliver of sunlight sneaking in through the curtains. we were in luck with beautiful weather that weekend, a great thing considering there was snow back home in atlanta. sorry, folks!
we freshened up in the suite and rode the elevator down to the lobby. we had some ideas of where to go and what to do, but we swung by the front desk for a little direction. we ended up chatting with geoff for about twenty minutes as he gave us the inside scoop of salt lake. he even helped us out with a local city map!
after taking up plenty of his time, geoff wished us well as we started out into the morning, heading east on 600 south and then hanging a left onto main. our destination was apple spice cafe and bakery for some sustenance, and after pushing through the revolving doors and riding the escalator to the second floor, there we were. the restaurant was completely empty, but seeing as how it’s located in the wells fargo business building, i guess that makes sense that time of day.
we were warmly greeted by the cashier as we browsed the menu. but, shoot! we had just missed breakfast by about ten minutes. whoops! i guess we’ll be eating an early lunch then! we stared down the menu a few minutes more, for we’d both been looking forward to a hot plate of eggs and a mug of coffee. oh well. part of being spontaneous is about being flexible, so we just rolled with it.
kyle had the soup and sandwich pairing. the tomato basil soup was fresh and perfectly warmed when it was served. he gladly dipped into it the half ham sandwich, a pretzel roll topped with cured ham, havarti cheese, greenleaf lettuce, and their signature sauce. it was a solid meal, not too filling but not too light.
tomato basil soup.
ham & harvarti sandwich.
i also went with a combination meal because it’s not often a half sandwich/half salad plate steers me wrong. per the cashier’s recommendation, i tried the pomegranate salad. at first it sounded a little too summery, but seeing as how it was nearly 50 degrees and gorgeous outside, it actually seemed quite appropriate. the half size serving was very generous and very flavorful. the poppyseed dressing was light and slightly tangy, complementing the pomegranate seeds, roasted turkey, and candied pecans nicely. i scarfed it down quickly.
pomegranate salad.
next up was the blt santa fe. i love blt’s, and with sprouts, avocado, and bbq ranch, it looked like it could be a winner. unfortunately, it didn’t wow me like i thought it would. i liked each ingredient on there, but altogether it wasn’t my favorite.
blt santa fe.
as we munched away our meals, we basked in the bright blue skies and welcoming temperature. the sun warmed by back as we dined on their patio, a pleasant start to what would be a truly great day.
well, my final day in greensboro arrived early sunday morning. i thought all the crazy fun had already passed, but what little did i know! we had planned to go out for brunch, but seeing as how there was freezing rain steadily building up all around the house and our cars, we went nowhere fast. good thing mary had stocked up on bread and eggs, because a homemade breakfast is just what the doctor ordered.
first things first on a lazy and relaxing sunday? mimosas! well, i take that back. we didn’t have any orange juice, so we made ourselves some berry bellinis. step one was to make a little berry puree to complement the champagne. mary whipped out her blender and got a little raspberry-strawberry concoction going. it’s silly how simple it was!
step two is to over pour the champagne so that it goes all over the cutting board and chopping block, wasting about a fourth of the bottle. whatever! we never said we were perfect, just a few friends trying to have a good time, and that isn’t too hard with champs and sweets.
i think at about eleven o’clock we finally started cooking actual food. first up, sausages! mary had a moment of inspiration and let me in on her sausage-cooking secret: use a panini skillet of some kind, the ones with the ridges. you can place those little sausage links right in between so they don’t roll all over the place. your links will be perfectly browned and juicy, a great side to any breakfast dish.
wait, though. what was our breakfast dish of choice that sunday? eggs benedict! this mary lady just does it all – homemade strawberry puree, eggs benedict. man, was i spoiled this weekend or what? mary got out her pioneer woman cookbook and turned to page 16 to find the eggs benedict recipe. this particular recipe, to quote mary, is not particularly “figure friendly.” i mean, there are two sticks of butter in the sauce alone. good thing i’m not on a diet! before we get there, though, let’s take a look at the adventure that was poaching the eggs.
i’m sure there’s some exact science to poaching an egg, but we kind of just went on memory and instinct for ours. after the water came to a slight bubble, mike used a wooden spoon to get some good circulation going. mary plopped that first egg into the water and, oh! look at that! that’s not what a poached egg should look like! it looked like some weird mess caught up in an f5 tornado!
sooooooo, with that disaster, we dumped the water and started from scratch. this time we brought the water to a very low boil, didn’t stir as quickly, and gently slipped the egg right into the water without causing too much of a commotion. the white of the egg delicately fell in on itself, creating a little envelope for that yolk to cook perfectly. ah, quite the success!
mary served them up on soft toast with generous spoonfuls of the hollandaise. the sweetest breakfast ever served! the egg was rich and helped cut out the overly sour lemon in the sauce. now, the hollandaise calls for the juice of two lemons, but the lemons we were using were a bit larger, so i think we probably didn’t account for that. i also thought the sauce was a touch too runny, but that’s just my opinion. regardless, i sopped up all the yolk and sauce with my toast and didn’t leave a morsel on the plate. a great adventure with a great result!
just when we thought all the handiwork was done for the weekend, another surprise came our way. we couldn’t get a truck to tow the mazda to the dealership for its bum tire, so mike, the hero that he is, put the spare on my little hatchback. you never know what life will throw at you, but when you’re given lemons, you’ve got to make lemonade! never stop learning, folks. never stop learning. 🙂
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
we pretty much spent the entire day in the kitchen, drinking and eating our way through the afternoon. we had a hoot of a time reliving the weekend’s already wild happenings as the radio played. all of a sudden, “king of wishful thinking” by go west came on and mary squealed, nearly scaring mike and i off our chairs. “i love this song! i just cannot control my body when i hear it!” after listening and dancing to it, we pulled up the video online. i think we love it now even more, but i’ll let you be the judge!
aaahhh, the early evening was suddenly upon us, so mary and i switched to wine for the rest of the night. she’s a white wine lover and i’ve come to love red. good thing she had plenty bottles of both!
more vino!
even though we’d had a late brunch, our stomachs were starting to growl. well, just what would we have for dinner? mary had started a pork tenderloin in the slow cooker that morning, so after some serious thinking, we decided pulled pork sandwiches, mac’n’cheese, and brussel sprouts would be a great idea. am i, right? yep!
since the pork was already cooking, the brussel sprouts were up next. i’m warning you now. i took many unnecessary photos of pretty much the same thing over and over again. i mean, i had enjoyed almost that whole bottle of red by myself at that point. give a girl a break! 😉
mary had some red onion she needed to use up, so we figured we’d throw ’em in with the sprouts. mary armed herself with her onion glasses, looking like a regular pro. just check out those perfectly chopped chunks!
next we got the pan sizzling and browned the bacon (because bacon makes everything better) and softened the onions. the kitchen started to smell divine, as i am sure you can imagine.
mary gave the brussel sprouts a rough chop and tossed ’em in with the bacon and onions. it’s such a shame brussel sprouts get such a bad rap. they just needed to be served with fatty bacon all this time!
here is what brussel sprouts look like after you add salt…
…and here is how they look when you throw in some pepper…
…and then after you add garlic powder…
…and then when they’re all ready!
we finally had everything ready, so we dug in and spent the rest of the night watching old home videos that mary’s dad mark had filmed at the 1996 olympics in atlanta. ah, we were so young!
om nom nom.
eventually we rinsed our plates, filled the dishwasher, and headed to our beds. i cannot express enough thanks to mary and mike for a fantastic weekend, and my heart swells just thinking about how much i love these dear friends of mine. without any plans written down, we let the days take us where they would, which was, as i had hoped it would be, a lot of fun.
it was a sleeping in kind of morning on saturday, so there really was no rush to get going. i think we rolled out of bed and downstairs around nine or so, still rockin’ the pj’s in true weekend spirit. the coffee pot was fresh and full, so i fixed myself a mug as the sun poured in through the windows. mary finished prepping the strada and popped it in the oven for some good breakfast eatin’. just as the oven door shut, her hubby mike walked in from the garage, home depot bag in hand. ah, yes! the adventure of the garbage disposal continues, just as i promised!
we gathered in the living room around the fireplace, enjoying our savory breakfast before the manual labor began. i’ve got the strada recipe over here for you, so if you need a new something to add to your book, enjoy! it was rich and filling and reminded me a bit of biscuits and gravy, which we know should be a staple in every southern girl’s repertoire.
this weekend i am spending some much needed time in greensboro with one of my favorite couples mary and mike. mary has known me all my life; we lived in the same neighborhood when i was born all those years ago in birmingham. our mothers tori and kathleen were besties, as were our dads mark and milo. they were friendships that were meant to be in that sweet neighborhood of broken bow south, but more importantly, they are friendships that continue to stand the test of time, as they have moved anywhere and everywhere over the past 20 or so years. as young adults, all of us kids love each others’ company. i consider them some of my closest friends, and to visit mary and mike at their humble abode in north carolina is a very special treat!
i rolled in late thursday night to a winter wonderland in their darling subdivision. it’s so pretty!
the picture below is from us all at kyle and kari’s wedding back in october. such a good looking bunch! i’ll point everyone out, starting with kathleen on the far left and working clockwise.
so, they both went into work that friday morning while i posted myself up at their kitchen table with my laptop, cranking out some sweet documentation for work. before i hopped to it, though, i laced up my running shoes and braved the cold winter air for a quick jog. when i say quick, i mean that the roads were still icy and i almost twisted my ankle and fell flat on my back, so i very quickly ran down to the edge of the cul de sac and right back into the garage. oh well!
snow running: as unproductive as it sounds.
the afternooon came and went, and then the happy couple arrived home, ready to begin a weekend of fun and plenty of laughs. we were going to keep things chill this friday night, so we started by cracking open some beers and bottles of wine. it amazes me how quickly you can fall right back into conversation and comfort even when you haven’t seen someone in months. in between handfuls of cheez-its and hummus we reminisced about our families and caught up on the latest and greatest in the neuwirth, guthrie, and andrich lives.
after appetizers we dug into our wedge salads, something remotely healthy, for the rest of the weekend we were quite bad with our diets. okay, so maybe i’m not actually on a diet, but i needed something green with this meal, so iceberg lettuce and cucumbers sounded like a fair idea. oh, yeah, but then we covered them in bacon bits and ranch dressing. whoopsies!
mary whipped up some shake’n’bake chicken and nancy fuller potatoes for our dinner. the chicken was delicious, but i will admit that the potatoes were somewhat average. don’t get me wrong, i love carbohydrates and butter and cheese all in the same dish just as much as the next foodie, but i wasn’t dazzled. regardless, we cleaned our plates and got to cleaning the kitchen and then…..oh……and then the garbage disposal broke down on us. oh, the horror!
mike opened those cabinet doors to find water dripping from the disposal all over the place. well, that’s an easy way to spice up an otherwise already lovely friday night, yes? there wasn’t much we could do about it at the time, so mike quarantined off the kitchen sink so that the damage wouldn’t get worse. excellent work, mike! stay tuned for saturday’s greensboro post to find out what happens in the garbage disposal chronicles. i promise it will be worth the read!
we topped off our glasses and snuggled onto the sofas to watch gone girl. mary and i had read the book and were dying to see the movie. mike didn’t have a clue about the film but was a trooper to watch with us anyway. it’s more of a thriller than anything, so it was a good choice for the three of us. two and a half hours later the credits rolled and although i liked getting to see the story on the silver screen, i concluded i liked the book much more. i know that’s typical with most movie adaptations (just ask me my opinion on unbroken), but even knowing that, i’d say it was definitely worth the rental. maybe not the eleven bucks it would have cost to have seen it in the theatre, but definitely the few redbox bucks we spent.
we turned off the gas logs, folded the blankets, and trudged upstairs to bed. i ended the evening with an endearing conversation with phillip and then called it a night. if you thought friday was entertaining, just you wait!
since we took last week off from nrw, i decided we’d go for something indulgent this wednesday, and indulge we did! leon’s full service in decatur was the pick of the week, and considering i’d only heard good things, i was excited that we were finally giving it a try ourselves.
the idea here at leon’s is that you are going to have the best part of your day at their tables and that you will be itching to come back again. they strive to provide only the best service and hospitality in addition to a great meal and equally as great drinks. after beginning brick store pub nearly 15 years ago, mike, dave, and tom took a new turn when they started leon’s in february 2009. since then, chef eric ottensmeyer and sous chef robert lupo have been bringing “fun and seasonal aspects to neighborhood pub cuisine.” the menu has a varied yet modest menu that should hopefully tickle your taste buds in some fashion. we were a hungry crew that night, as always, so we were ready to dig in!
this week i wasn’t sure where i wanted to venture to for nrw, and as it turns out, i didn’t venture very far, at least as far as mileage is concerned. after meeting at my condo, we all made the short walk down roswell road to try out the big ketch saltwater grill. i pass it all the time on my runs, and since seafood sounded like the perfect dinner choice, we found ourselves gathered around a couple of tables and ready to eat.
i perused my list of nrw hopefuls and couldn’t really decide what sounded best this week. then, in a striking moment of clarity, i remembered good ‘ole hankook taqueria over on the west side. i have literally only been there once, and it was about four years ago with my old small group, but i remember it being one heck of a place. i thought it might be a contender, but kyle reminded me about the very limited parking. eh, that’s right….but! to keep in the spirit of that line of asian fusion cuisine, we decided on the midtown location of takorea.
takorea is the creation from hankook taqueria chef tomas lee, hence why i didn’t mind coming here in place of hankook. their idea is to make korean flavors available in a fun and energetic atmosphere by presenting it through traditional mexican dishes like tacos and burritos. don’t be fooled, though, because the fresh ingredients and components are all asian. you’ll be easily introduced to your new favorite street snacks, wondering how you lived all those years without these flavors! sound exciting? then read on to see how much we all enjoyed it!
kelsey v 