Sunday, February 23, 2014

One

A few weeks ago the newspaper came out with its Best Restaurants of 2014 report and I had never even heard of the winner! It's called One and is in Chapel Hill. The chefs have worked at some of the best restaurants in the world and we had made a pledge to try to get to Durham and Chapel Hill more this year. It was fate! We went there on Friday night. 

When we arrived the server went through the menu and specials and then said they also have a thing called Impromptu Tasting, where they just bring you lots of things and it's all a surprise. Well, why would we not do that? I like lots of things. So we went for it. 

First they brought us 3 little snacks. A pepper macaroon, fried pimento cheese ball (Ben had eaten his before I took the picture), and a little cookie that was chicken liver with cocoa. I know that last one sounds weird but whoa, it was good.  And did not taste remotely like meat. 


Then came the first real course, which was beef tartare and puffed tendon. ALL IN! I had never eaten either of these things before but they were great, and the combination complimented each other perfectly. 


Then this item arrived, which was duck confit with pickled carrots and other carrot-shaped items. I had also never eaten duck before but oh my god, it was so good. I think my favorite thing of the meal. 


Then we got shaved rutabaga with grains and a mustard oil sauce. Excellent. 


This was called chicken of the sea, but it was some kind of cod-like whitefish with a chicken- based sauce and smoked potatoes and turnips. 


At this point I was starting to get nervous about how much food was still to come as my stomach was pretty full. Fortunately there was only one more savory course, poached hen with broccoli in miso-butter sauce. 


Then came this delightful item, frozen blueberry meringue with cotton candy. 


And then dessert, a pavlova, which I am familiar with from recently reading a bunch of Australian chick lit. It's big in New Zealand. We are pretty sure there were pickled apples involved. It was good. 


And then they brought us house made passion fruit chocolates to finish. Again, Ben ate his immediately so it's not pictured. 


This meal was so fun and everything was perfectly done, including atmosphere and service. One is the total package! The only downside, naturally, is that we ate too much and spent a lot of money, but it's fun to do once in a while! This place is going on our special occasion short list for sure. 

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Snowpocalypse 2014

We have had a terrible winter by North Carolina standards. There have been a couple of nights with lows in the single digits and just a couple of weeks ago we got a good 3 inches of snow, which is unusual but was less than they were predicting. I think that is maybe why people took the forecast for this week's storm with a grain of salt. Surely it wouldn't be that bad! But it happened exactly like the forecast predicted. It started snowing at noon on Wednesday and became terrible almost immediately. I  left work within 20 minutes of the beginning and the roads were already virtually impassable. I went about a mile in 40 minutes. Then I parked my car at Kroger and walked the rest of the way home. It was 5 miles. There were times during the walk I thought I might be overreacting, but as the night went on it became clear I had made the right decision. There were hundreds of cars left stranded in the middle of most of our major roads by 6pm. 

This was the scene on Six Forks Road about a half mile from where I left the car. Nobody could get up that extremely minor hill. 


Remember it had started snowing literally less than an hour before. It was total craziness. 

Here I am about a mile in. 


When I was walking over the freeway overpass a woman yelled at me from her car, "is there something going on down on the highway?" Uh. What do you think?


Conditions (and my mascara) were becoming increasingly grim. This is 4 miles in. But only 1 mile from home!


Ben showed up just after I took that picture - he left home with coffee and a backpack, picked up a bottle of wine at the gas station, and met me to walk the last mile home. Hero!


Amazingly, we only lost power for about 2 hours, from midnight until 2:00ish, and then again for an hour or so this morning.   It was pretty icy!



I'm now officially ready for winter to be over. 

Monday, February 3, 2014

A Few Days in Florida


Our second long weekend was spent in southwest Florida, visiting Benjamin's parents. It was such a nice break from this weirdly wintery winter we are having.

We went to a park where tons of manatees hang out in the superheated water that comes from a local power plant. This sounds sort of horrifying but they promise there is no pollution, only heat. Here we are with a small version of a replica manatee skeleton.


Then we went to a different park near the beach to see tortoises. You walk through a jungly area...


.. that gradually opens up as you get closer to the water.


Unfortunately we only saw one tortoise. You can't really see him in this picture but I promise he is there.


The beach was beautiful!







There are a lot of horrifying things to be found in the ocean.



The rest of the trip we mainly relaxed, taking walks and reading our books. I was still ailing from my cold so it was nice to not have any responsibilities for a few days!

Meeting #4

January was a whirlwind. I planned back to back long weekend trips, which I sort of knew was a bad idea, and predictably got a cold that has just now abated.

But it was worth it! Because I got to meet a new nephew, Harrison Randall. He was 6 weeks old at the time.


Everybody spent a lot of time playing with Mira's rainbow loom. It is a Hot Item.



I also got to go to Mira & Griffin's basketball practice, which was pretty entertaining.


Griffy is the littlest one!


I told Mira to "pretend you're watching the game" for this one and she did a good job.


Everyone likes baby Harry!


LOOK how many kids this is. It's crazy town.


Sullivan is two and a half now and never shuts up for one second. He is very cute.


The morning I left we discovered this page in Mira's notebook. She may not be great at spelling yet but she has a way with words!