Easter Weekend in Asheville

We took a little mini-trip to Asheville over the weekend to meet up with my mom and tour the Biltmore Estate. I have been there before but not for a few years, and as my company is their wine distributor they set us up with a bunch of fun extras for free.

We stayed at the Sweet Biscuit Inn, which might be our best B&B experience yet. We arrived earlier than I'd told them we would, so our room was not quite ready. The proprietor quickly found out I was in the wine business and brought out a tray with cookies and wine to the front porch and chatted with us for a half hour or so while we waited for the room. The owners are from Bavaria and spent 9 years running an inn in Provence before moving to Asheville to be closer to their son. They were a total delight. Here is Benjamin on the front porch.

Personalized welcome!

Our room is billed as the smallest in the house but it was large and roomy!

And this bathtub! I took an extra bath on Saturday afternoon just because.

On Saturday it was a chilly and wet day, but we managed to fit in a visit to the NC Arboretum during a break in the rain.

This is the quilt garden.

There was also an interesting bonsai exhibit.

And lots and lots of tulips! It is basically summer here in Raleigh but the early spring stuff was just starting to bloom in the mountains.

After the Arboretum we tried to go to a place called Craggy Gardens, but the Blue Ridge Parkway turned out to be closed for repairs. We did stop at an overlook. Such a grey day!

On the way back down into town I saw a freaking BEAR running along through the trees about ten feet off the road. Benjamin did not appreciate my screaming while he was navigating curvy mountain roads. It was exciting, though! Come on! Bear in the wild!

We grabbed lunch at the Laughing Seed Cafe, one of Asheville's oldest vegetarian restaurants. We have been there before but only for brunch. I got an enormous taco salad.

Mom got an equally huge quesadilla.

Benjamin got a tempeh reuben but refused to let me photograph it.

After lunch we wandered around downtown Asheville for a while and then went back to relax in the B&B until dinner, which was at Curate.

There is no restaurant more acclaimed in the entire state right now, and I was anxious to try it, especially because the menu is Spanish tapas and, you know, we went to Spain a little while ago. I found the whole experience really confusing, though! The menu turned out to be exactly what we found at any sidewalk cafe in Andalucia, and while it was all very well done, I don't understand what is being considered so revolutionarily fantastic. It's as if the chef went to Spain and wrote down all the most common tapas and then came home and compiled them into a menu. I've talked to some people since and apparently the original menu was much more creative & unusual; I'd be interested to know why she went back toward more traditional. 

The B&B gave us jelly beans for Easter!

And our Easter breakfast was intense - they baked an entire ham in pastry, which is apparently a Bavarian Easter tradition, and then we had a third course of made-to-order crepes. I was going to pass on the crepe due to having eaten that whole thing of jelly beans before breakfast even started, but then I came to my senses and had a banana Nutella.

We picked up my mom and headed to the Biltmore bright and early, as they were having Easter egg hunts all day and we were warned it would be busy. Guess what. It was busy. Lots of kids.

We did the basic house tour first. The twirly staircase is my favorite.

Then we did the butler's tour, which takes you behind the scenes to the service areas. It was really interesting, definitely better than filing along in the big line of people on the main tour.

We walked down to the gardens briefly. So many tulips!

And then we drove over to the winery for a personal wine production tour and reserve tasting. All for free! Sometimes my job really comes through for me. 

It was a great weekend! Even with the rainy weather, it was a memorable and fun trip. Asheville is, if nothing else, always interesting.

Jerusalem, Part 3

Here is the last thing I made - barley risotto with marinated feta. The risotto is mostly just in a tomato sauce and I was worried it would be boring, but paired with the feta it was perfect. 

I'm sold on this cookbook! In case you couldn't tell. 

Jerusalem, Part 2

The second dinner from this cookbook was pan fried mahi-mahi with the previously mentioned harissa and rose. I've had a randomly purchased bottle of rosewater for about a year so it seemed like a good opportunity to use some of it. 

The sauce was supposed to have currants, which are weirdly hard to find, so I used dried tart cherries instead, and served it over couscous and sautéed spinach. It was really good. 

Tonight for dinner I made another recipe from the book, turkey-zucchini burgers with sumac lemon yogurt sauce. I put them on flatbreads with lettuce and rolled it up like a little sandwich wrap. 

The sauces in this book are just incredible. Yay for sauce!

Jerusalem, Part 1

For months I've been coveting the cookbook Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi. I go to Amazon all the time and look at it. Finally it occurred to me to check it out from the library and see what it actually looks like! So I did that and am making stuff from it all week. I can tell you that 24 hours in I've already decided to buy it.

Yesterday for lunch I made a chopped vegetable salad with spiced chickpeas and Greek yogurt. 

It was terrific, and also a good idea since the day before we had managed to eat both Indian buffet and pepperoni pizza. 

For dinner I made chicken thighs with cardamom rice and currants and caramelized onions. 

Whoa. It was excellent. The rice! I don't remember the last time I was so excited for leftovers. 

Today in preparation for tonight's dinner I made harissa, a Tunisian hot pepper paste, from scratch. It nearly killed all of us, sautéing the habaneros. Those peppers are no joke! Hours later my lips and the inside of my nose are still burning, just from being in the same room while the peppers were cooking! So, while the finished product is pretty tasty (and spicy!) I think I might just buy harissa in a jar from now on. 

Sick little Banana

We have had a tough six weeks. We took the kitters in for their check ups and vaccinations at the end of February. They did not seem too bothered by the idea of going to the vet at the time. 

But once we were there they were pretty alarmed. 

I have never had a cat who actually seeks comfort from us when he's scared like Banana does. It is extremely endearing. 

So, big surprise, but the vet told us they could both stand to lose a few pounds. We immediately started trying to limit their food intake, and just as immediately, someone peed on the kitchen counter overnight. Thinking it was related, we started free-feeding them again. I would rather have fattish cats than urine on my kitchen counter. I mean, that's only reasonable. 

So then nothing happened for a while. Except that Papaya started sneezing and had to take a week's worth of antibiotics. That seemed like a big deal at the time but already seems like a minor detail right now. 

A week or so later, someone peed on the kitchen counter again. We got an app that does time lapse photography and set it up overnight to identify the culprit. We recorded a couple nights and there was no peeing, but Banana did get up there and wander around, while Papaya was nowhere to be found. Then Banana peed on his bed. Sadface! I took him straight to the vet, where they declared him to have a "raging bladder infection."

We did 10 days of antibiotics and some painkillers, during which he had no issues, then I took him back for a recheck. 

Urine clear! No more problems! Yay!

The next night he got in bed with us and was wet. And then he peed right there between our pillows. And then we got up at 4:45am and went to the emergency vet. 

It turns out that he has Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease, which is exacerbated by stress. Apparently, going to the vet is very stressful for Banana. He had to go on another week of medication to calm down his bladder. He also has to eat special food (which naturally they both initially refused but have since come around on). And then we just sort of wait and see what happens from here. Some cats need to be on Prozac for the rest of their lives if the special food doesn't work. Let's everyone hope that doesn't happen because he is becoming extremely suspicious of me subsequent to my shoving of pills down his throat twice a day. 

Look how cute he is, even when irritated! Poor buddy. I hope we are through the worst of it. 

Success!

I made an omelet without turning it into a mixed up mess!

Secret: butter.