Vintage Enoteca

I was really happy that I managed to squeeze in a trip to LA last weekend. It takes about four hours to drive there from the desert if you swing by Cypress to pick up a gorgeous lady called Amee.

A couple of years ago, the ridiculously talented Mike and his beautiful wife Carolyn, whom I often refer to as "the classiest person I know", moved out to LA. A few months ago, Amee also moved out there. My Stunt Guy and I had managed to pull off dinner with Mike and Carolyn back at the tail end of our San Diego trip last summer, but we hadn't seen them since their wedding last fall.

Mike and Amee are both great actors, and I remain hopeful that wonderful things will happen for them soon. I sometimes feel like Carolyn could be my food soulmate. Her taste is impeccable and she really really knows food.

Carolyn suggested dinner at Vintage Enoteca. We were planning on heading to a show not far from there, and they had a pretty hard to beat happy hour that timed out perfectly with when we would like to be there.

Vintage Enoteca is lovely.

We decided to sit outside. The front of the restaurant is almost like a big covered porch. The benches around were strewn with comfy cushions and, though the street was noisy, the atmosphere just felt really good. I instantly tucked in to some really stellar Blackberry Sangria. It was light, fruity and perfectly balanced.

The Happy Hour special was for half off food not including the cheeses and salumi. With prices like that it was so easy to try several great things off the menu.

Carolyn and I are both really into cheese and I wish I had had the presence of mind to write down what we ate but, well, that didn't happen. One of the cheeses was a smoked blue cheese though and it was simply stunning.

I adored the Medjool Dates, which were stuffed with Manchego, Goat Cheese, Pepper and Speck. They were piping hot and quite good.

Next came a Bruschetta Trio. I went for Grilled Peach with goat cheese and bacon marmalade, Blue Crab with lemon and mint, and Chicken Pate with pickled shallot. Holy crap they were amazing. All three were just insane. So delicious. The crab was light and tangy and delicious. The bacon marmalade was out of this world. The pate, oh the pate. The pickled shallots were perfect on top. If you find yourself at this restaurant, you have to order those three. They were beyond superb.

I grabbed a bite of Mike's Mac and Cheese. It was really yummy, but I just wanted to get back to my Bruschetta. 

Seriously. Grilled Peach. Goat Cheese. Bacon Marmalade. Perfect.

The last dish that came out was the Gnocchi with Fava Bean Puree and Truffled Ricotta. This is the dish that I keep thinking about. The gnocchi was light as air with a perfect crisp edge to it. The truffle was pronounced, yet balanced, and the puree was unexpectedly good. I could have eaten it on it's own and loved it, though it's not something I would have thought to order.

Our bill was remarkably low for dinner and drinks for four people. I think we came out to less than $30 each including tip which strikes me as impressive in LA.

Spending time with friends was so worth the drive. I'm so happy for a lovely meal in such great company!

Home Sweet Green Juicy Atlanta Home

 

After I got done with work at 11:30pm on Sunday I hitched a ride to the airport, curled up in a corner, and napped and watched TV until it was time to get on a plane at 6am. After five and a half hours, I made it to Atlanta, Georgia and was greeted by my amazing Stunt Guy. We had 67 hours before I had to head back to the Circus. 

Georgia in early June is one of the most beautiful places you can be. The air is heavy with the smell of flowers and grass and trees. Everything is lush and beautiful. The occasional cloud bursts of rain keep it glistening but not too wet. The humidity is about perfect, and everything feels so wonderfully alive. But on to the food!

When I go to Atlanta, there are several places that I end up eating each time and I managed to hit a couple of the regulars on this trip. The Brickstore Pub is in Decatur. It's a favorite local spot because they have an enormous beer selection, with lots of great craft beers. It's frequently busy but the pub itself is really lovely inside. It's got local art on the walls, and a good buzz of happy people. If you're torn between beers there, they will happily let you taste a few to pick which you are after.

I devoured their Country Chicken Pate with Smoked Peach Preserves. The crackers were thick and homemade and the perfect complement to the pate, which was pale and light and almost mousselike. It packed a great wallop of flavor, and the pairing of the peach preserves was perfect and so.... Southern. I had to order more crackers of course, but it was awesome.

Beer-wise, it was Founders Cerise for me. It was a light cherry beer with a good amount of tartness, it wasn't overly sweet like a lambic. I loved it, and sadly you can't get it on this coast, but if you are East of the Mississippi you should be good.

I know the picture is awful, but my Stunt Guy had the Shepherd's Daughter Pie which was described as "ground lamb, beef & pork, barley wine ketchup, fennel & fresh herbs, scalloped potatoes, gruyere sauce, mesclun greens with lemon vinaigrette". I'm sorry to say that it completely missed the mark. The flavor of the lamb was there, but everything else was just kind of... meh. The sauce was quite bland and the potatoes were almost non-existent. It wasn't really a heart dish. Our dining companions adored their pretzels though, and I have to say the house made mustard dipping sauce for them is really great. I've found that the food in the Brickstore can be a touch hit or miss. I remember loving their pierogies too. But if you are there, definitely try the pate.

As should well be, our liquor bill outweighed our food bill. I adore that.

 Partly because our waitress missed the pretzels on the check. We paid for them anyway and left her a moral dilemma note. I wonder what she chose to do?

After I crashed horribly hard, having been awake for 48 hours with less than four hours of sleep, it was time to hit up my absolute favorite place to eat breakfast. We go here every time I come home or I get very cranky. It's The Flying Biscuit Cafe. They have the best and most delicious biscuits anywhere, and the rest of their food is also pretty top notch. We started out with a Blue Moonmosa, basically a mimosa made of beer.

I had the Egg-Stravaganza which combines everything I love, their perfect scrambled eggs, their Creamy Dreamy Grits, and a giant and delicious Flying Biscuit and the French Toast.

The French Toast at the Flying Biscuit is worth the trip alone. It's made on giant fluffy wheat bread, but the kicker are the sauces. They top it with a stunning raspberry coulis and a honey creme anglaise. It is absolutely delicious and I love it more than I can express.

Stunt Guy went for the Hollywood Omelette, which was also pretty yummy and, of course, a biscuit.

The biscuits really are spectacular. They come with cranberry apple butter. I've tried to replicate them before at home, but they never come out. I don't know what they do, but you really need to go there to try out the real thing.

After our wonderful late breakfast,  it was off to the North Georgia Mountains, which is completely stunning all the time, but particularly this time of year when everything is green and gorgeous. We stayed in a little perfect cabin, and this was our view. We relaxed, we read, we went for a walk and watched the sun set over that lake. We ate dinner, which we had brought with us.

Ru Sans Sushi, home of the most perfect Miso Soup and some fairly decent yummy sushi. It's not horribly overpriced at all, and we decided that it would be perfect to take with us, since we wouldn't have to do any cooking in the cabin and we weren't sure of our supplies. We had a Spider Roll, Rainbow Roll and a Punk Rock and Roll. All were really good, but the miso soup was, of course, excellent.

The next day we hiked up Amicalola Falls, which is a really beautiful waterfall and state park up in the mountains. It's a mile hike, including a whole lot of stairs. The waterfall was really stunning.

Here's a little action video with a cameo from Stunt Guy. 

Once we hit the top it was time for a beer with a view. Then back to the city for a quick dinner and a movie.

Dinner at Taco Mac. John loves this place. He's been coming to one of it's several Atlanta locations for years. I have too, but for drinks, never the food. I have to say, I find the food here incredibly sub-par. No matter what I order, and I've tried tons of different things, I think the food is really bad. These were Fish Tacos with South western rice. The rice was dry and had been sitting out a while. The tacos had no flavor. Just unimpressive. I had a yummy Left Hand Milk Stout though. If you're going there, I'd stick to the beer list.

The next morning it was off to the airport, with a quick breakfast at Highland Bakery. I love Highland Bakery too. They make all their own bread in house and it really is spectacular. Their Sweet Potato Pancakes are to die for. If you're already them, you'll need to share because they are so rich and delicious. They have great Shrimp and Grits, and I love their cheese bagels. I often order the breakfast sandwich and then forget that I'm not keen on it. They don't tend to season the eggs and that doesn't work for me. I need to try better to remember to just order a bagel with some scrambled eggs on the side. 

Oh but their cinnamon rolls.... heaven. Light and fluffy with the most delicious cream cheese frosting you can imagine. We split a small one because, well, we would have eaten a large and then they would have had to roll me on to the plane. If you go here, regardless of what else you order, you really must order a cinnamon roll.

And then it was back to reality. Back to the desert and the circus. It was a completely whirlwind trip and I didn't have an opportunity to see most of my friends because the time there was so short, but I'm so glad I went. I needed a taste of home. I'm saying goodbye to my Stunt Guy for another 23 days, then I get him for two weeks. So it's back to the kitchen with me. New recipes are coming soon, and I've got so many ideas!

Consistency

It is with a heavy heart and a lot of soul searching that I am announcing the inevitable.

I'm back on my diet.

This saddens me greatly, but so does the size of my tummy, so it must be done. I'm on a new work schedule that will cut into my free time quite a bit, so I doubt I'll be going to the gym as much as I should. Trust me, I plan to continue to eat delicious things, I just have to do a lot more portion control and a lot less snacking. Believe me, this will not effect how many recipes I deliver. It just means I'll only be eating one of the cookies instead of the entire batch.

One of the easiest parts about dieting for me though is consistency. You see, I eat the same thing for breakfast seven days a week, and I eat the same thing for lunch five days a week. What can I say, I like poached eggs and I like routine.

Breakfast is the same. I get up and make a cup of tea. An hour or so later I put on a pan of water with some salt, let it boil (usually while I potter around the apartment doing some cleaning), then when it's boiling I add in a splash of white vinegar and an egg. I slow poach my eggs, so in the four minutes or so that it takes I've usually managed to unload the dishwasher or clean the kitchen counters. Then I cut a thick slice of homemade bread (which I don't toast), and dump the egg on it. I mash is up with a fork so the yolk is spread everywhere, then a few good grinds of salt and pepper and I'm done. It's yummy and complete and it fills me up and keeps me happy. If I don't have a poached egg for breakfast, I tend to feel mildly unsettled.

5 days a week I eat lunch and dinner at work, and while dinner can vary, lunch tends to be the same. See, I don't like to have to prep too much to take to work so in my desk I keep a pack of flour tortillas and in the fridge I keep Italian Salad Dressing, Lettuce Mix and Shredded Cheese. I'll usually throw a tomato in my purse and at some point when I get hungry I'll just assemble myself a wrap at my desk and munch it down.

Every so often my lunch will change a little, particularly if I have some small tub of leftovers that I want to eat up. I'll often bring in a few snack items too, though those will mostly get cut out with the new diet.

For the most part though, everything tends to look pretty much the same on my work days.

So how about you? Is there something that you eat every day?

Finding What I'm Missing

When I was thirteen, much to my mothers chagrin, I decided to give up eating red meat. She was certainly not thrilled at all, and I particularly remember one incident where I was sitting at the dining room table crying because I was allowed to leave until I had eaten all the sausages on my plate. We did eventually find some middle ground. I then gave up poultry and fish in my early twenties, and kept it that way for about seven years.

It was a big moment for me when I started eating fish, and then recently I've added other things back in. I'll still eating primarily vegetarian, mostly out of habit, but I've been adding things of a meaty nature back in.

So it is with great excitement and a tinge of regret that I announce that I have just discovered Bacon and Blue Cheese Pizza. Dear. God. It might be one of the most delicious things that I have even eaten. My foodie partner in crime, Myles, suggested it when we went out for a drink the other night. I'm sold. I want to eat nothing but gooey, unctuous, tangy, salty, crunchy, delicious pizza. I'm smitten with it.

I've always thought that the whole "everything is better with bacon" was a load of bollocks, to be honest. I find, though, after experiencing this pizza, that I'm feeling as though I have been missing something. When I was a kid, we used to have bacon sandwiches for lunch on Sundays. I think they were incredibly valuable in my sister and mother developing a strong relationship after she went through being a teenager. I think she used to always come over for them, but I may be remembering incorrectly because I didn't eat them back then, and I also moved to America. Now, though, I am excited about the prospect of heading home next year to spend time with my family and eat some of those sandwiches.

So what else have I been missing when it comes to bacon? My friend Margaret says that I should try Dark Chocolate Covered Bacon. I think she's crazy. Is she crazy?

I think I certainly need to explore this world. It seems like an interesting place to be.