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. 

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. 

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!

Sweet Potato Gnocchi from Scratch

Ben and I made gnocchi one time when we lived in Santa Clarita, so at least ten years ago, and it was such a fiasco it has never occurred to me to attempt them again. You can get a shelf-stable package for $2.79! Why would you bother with homemade?

But then: in Isa Does It, there's a recipe for sweet potato gnocchi with brussels sprouts and tarragon cream sauce, and I thought, "oh, I'm a much better cook now. It won't be that bad." Hey, guess what: it sucked. Huge waste of time for no payoff. I mean, they were good, but not any better than what I can get at Harris Teeter. I will not be making gnocchi from scratch again.

What I will be making again is this vegan cream sauce, which was spectacular: cashew cream, white wine, garlic, onion, and tarragon. That's it. I didn't even use fresh tarragon because I forgot to buy any. It way exceeded my expectations. 

The dish as a whole was great - we both loved eating it - but I did not love making it. Good to know! Homemade gnocchi are off the table.

Trip Report! Thanksgiving in Savannah

Last year for Thanksgiving we went to Charleston and had such a nice time we immediately decided to plan on Savannah this year. After our whirlwind tour of southern Spain I was especially looking forward to staying in one place for more than 2 nights.

We stayed at the Catherine Ward House, a B&B right off Forsyth Park, which is the big park in the middle of the historic area.

It was beautiful, and true to our experiences in every B&B, the owners were so nice and friendly and helpful. The breakfasts each morning were also huge and delicious.

Our room was on the "garden level" (basement) but it did look out to the garden. My only complaint about this place is that it was a bit noisy. It felt kind of companionable and homey during the day to hear people wandering around and chatting upstairs, but on our last night there, the people next door were kind of noisy and that was annoying.

Look, though. This made up for the noise. FREE DIET COKE. They replenished it each morning.

Fresh flowers, too!

We ate Thanksgiving dinner at The Olde Pink House, one of Savannah's most famous historic restaurants. It was an absolute madhouse when we walked in - the entry was packed with people and we had to wait about 20 minutes past our reservation time. All was forgiven, though, when we actually sat down because everything about the restaurant was amazing. The food, decor and ambience, and especially the service was just perfect. On this trip I relented from embarrassing Benjamin and did not take pictures of our food.  But at The Olde Pink House I took a picture of the menu, at least. I got that BLT salad and I can vouch for it being as good as it sounds.

And someone took a picture of us! Well, sort of. When we got back to the B&B I was checking Instagram for other pictures posted of that location and someone had posted one while we were there! 

Too bad that giant vase is in the way.

On Friday we spent the day doing a couple of walking tours that were in a guidebook I had procured at the library. It was a great way to catch the highlights of the historic district without paying for someone to tell us about it. We did consider doing a guided tour on this trip but couldn't pull the trigger. We just are not joiners.

This fountain is in Forsyth Park and is "the most photographed fountain in the South." I don't know how they know that, but it was pretty.

Savannah is full of gorgeous, tree-filled squares and historic houses. Essentially those are the two things we spent the day looking at. 

This is the only picture of both of us from the trip. As you can see, I look a bit dazed. 

We went on a tour of the Owens Thomas House, which was really interesting. It was built in 1819 and was one of the first homes in the United States to have indoor plumbing. We have really gotten into this type of architectural tour in the last few years. Does this mean we're old now?

This was our favorite house. We are fans of the federal style.

The oldest house in Georgia, built in 1734. In general we were surprised at how much older Charleston felt than Savannah. They really aren't so far apart, but South Carolina was settled long before people moved into Georgia.

This is a gun that was used in the Revolutionary War.

For lunch we ate cheap Thai food. I figured it was fine to take a picture since our food cost $7 each. This is one thing I miss so much about Southern California - I cannot understand why Raleigh doesn't have cheap Thai food. 

One of the many squares we walked through.

This is the Mercer-Williams house, made famous by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (which I barely remember). They do tours, but you aren't allowed to ask about anything that happened related to the book, which seems a little pointless.

Ben wasn't really mad. 

This is across the street from the B&B - we were just on the edge of the Victorian District.

We had dinner at 700 Drayton that night, right on Forsyth Park a few blocks down from our B&B. Once again, the food was great. After dinner we walked around the park for a little exercise. This building is an emergency animal hospital.

The next day we spent mostly shopping. It was fun going into all the little stores with antiques and art and local treasures - that is not something we normally do, but I had some Christmas shopping to work on and we had seen a lot of interesting little places the day before.

In the afternoon we went to Leopold's for ice cream.

On the way back to the B&B we stopped in to look at this church, the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. It looked pretty standard from the outside but was really unique and beautiful inside.

For dinner our last night we ate at Noble Fare, which was my absolute favorite of the trip. I am still dreaming of my grouper with lobster & corn risotto. 

Savannah is beautiful! We had such a nice, relaxing trip filled with great food. The drive home back up I-95 was a bit harrowing, and I don't think I will be doing any major interstate travel on the Sunday after Thanksgiving for a while, but we made it home safe & sound.