I think we should just take a moment to appreciate something.
House red.
Orzo salad with braised asparagus ti ps and Manchego(?) cheese.
Crab Rangoon in puffed pastry.
Purple potato-encrusted halibut over a bed of swiss chard and pureed parsnips.
Cheesecake with chocolate and pistachios.
Obviously, I appreciated it a little more than you can.
This is what happens when you order a private dinner from Chef Jackie at the Banner Elk Winery and Villa. (It was dark in there for dinner, so please ignore the odd photo lighting.)
We opted for the Chef’s dinner since we knew we wanted the first day of our mini-retreat to be as relaxing as possible. The last thing Justin needed upon his return from Afghanistan was me screaming and grabbing his arm as we negotiated winding mountain roads back to the b&b in the dark after dinner.
I am so glad we splurged. It was very cool watching her cook and enjoying casual conversation while we inhaled course after delicious course.
What better way to spend an evening than with my two best loves — food, and my husband?
I didn’t mean to neglect you for the entire week — I really didn’t. But there’s just something about the B&B atmosphere — the bed and breakfastry of it all — that makes one sloggy.
See? Thirty-five words in and I’ve already made up 2 of them.
I even brought a computer along with perfectly good intentions of using it, but I find that when I’m surrounded by food and wine and luxury bedding and fall leaves and wine, I have absolutely zero motivation to turn it on.
Zero. (This image is straight from the iPhone. No filters or instagrammin’ or enhancements. Just pure, unadulterated, vineyardy goodness.)
Plus, we had a full case of Travel Mojo happening, and you don’t interrupt the flow of good TM with trivialities like technology.
Especially when there’s a full case involved.
What?
You’re unfamiliar with Travel Mojo?
Well that could be because I made it up.
In fact, maybe I should trademark that.
And its acronym. So it’d be: TM™.
Awesome.
Anyway.
Travel Mojo is what happens when a trip just has good vibes. You go into it all, hey. Whatever happens, happens. I might make reservations at a couple of restaurants just so we don’t turn into B&B porch lumps and starve to death, but other than that, I’m not going to over plan it.
And you know what happens?
Rainbows and butterflies and fantastic people and complimentary drinks and entire free meals, that’s what.
It’s letting go of the anal schedules and planning and trying to squeeze every possible attraction into an already overstuffed agenda because the thing is, the world is full of wonders.
It’s about kicking off your shoes, enjoying the drive, and sticking your toes into random photos of fall foliage.
It’s about books.
And conversing.
And sometimes just silently admiring a particularly interesting view.
I know.
We’re getting old.
But don’t get me wrong — there was also raucous laughter, swing dancing attempts and inebriated strolls through the city of Asheville.
And the TM was with us then, too.
And while it really was with us the whole time, it culminated on our last evening in Asheville.
See, I actually spent an entire day planning the basic milestones — food and lodging — of this trip before Justin came home from Afghanistan (which for me and my miniscule attention span is remarkable). I’d heard that Asheville is the type of town where you need to make reservations pretty much every night of the week. Many of the restaurants are small, privately owned boutique eateries that concentrate on quality over quantity, so I spent an impressive amount of time just deciding where we should dine.
And the winner for our last night was a place called Cúrate (cu-rah-tay), which apparently means “to cure yourself.”
And that, it did.
They say they serve authentic Spanish style tapas (“small plates”), but having been to Spain and eaten Spanish tapas, I would say the ones at Cúrate are significantly better. By far.
The Chef, Katie Button, quit her prestigious PhD program in Neuroscience (yes, and that’s after earning her master’s from L’Ecole Centrale in Paris, France, and her bachelor’s from Cornell University) in “pursuit of passion, life, and happiness.”
Sounds like my kind of chick.
All of this information is available on the restaurant’s website, but I’d actually read it in a book about North Carolina chefs just down the street from the restaurant while we waited for our reservation, which meant I was super excited when I saw Katie in person. Like, celebrity sighting excited.
I used the Open Table app on my phone to reserve us a place at the bar. (If you’ve never used Open Table to make reservations, you should start immediately. It’s so simple to use.) From there, we could see all of the action because the restaurant’s kitchen actually runs along the back wall of the bar.
We were practically inside it.
The atmosphere was my favorite — small, energetic, and full of shiny glassware.
We ordered many phenomenal dishes:
Butternut squash soup with smoked Spanish paprika.
Piquillo peppers stuffed with caña de cabra cheese (my favorite dish).
Sautéed shrimp and sliced garlic.
Lamb skewers marinated in moorish spices.
Fried eggplant with honey and rosemary.
Tapas dining is perfect for me because when it comes to menu options, I’m often paralyzed with indecision. But at a tapas restaurant that doesn’t matter, because I can try a bit of everything until I can’t try no mo’.
We were pretty much at that point when I stared talking to one of the couples sitting next to us. In an intimate setting like the one at Cúrate, it’s easy to start commenting on what your neighbors order and from there, strike up a conversation. (If the thought of starting a conversation with strangers terrifies you, start thinking of it the way I do — if they’re rude and unreceptive, they’re not the kind of people I’d enjoy talking to anyway.)
It turned out they were celebrating a birthday, and they ended up sharing their intricate sugar raspberry dessert with us and the couple I’d been talking to on my other side.
Before long, the birthday couple was ordering us more drinks and we ended up having a grand old time — it felt like we’d been friends all along, even though we didn’t even know each others’ names.
Then they were saying goodbye as we wrapped up conversation with the couple on the other side. I snapped a photo, we hugged, and they walked out of the door.
A few minutes later, we asked for our bill.
Server: Can I get you anything else?
Us: No thanks, that was fantastic! Could we please have our ticket?
Server: Um. It’s already been taken care of.
Us: What?
Server: The couple that was next to you. They took care of it.
Us: No, they just bought us drinks. We still have to pay for our food and original bottle of wine.
Server: You’re not getting it. They paid. They picked up your entire tab.
Us: ….
Server: Have a nice night!
Seriously? Speechless.
Maybe they’d had too much to drink and felt overly generous. Maybe they just really liked us. Maybe it was their way of thanking Justin for his military service. Maybe they’re just extraordinarily nice people.
Whatever the reason, we won’t forget them.
The Travel Mojo – it works in mysterious ways.
I actually feared discussing the Mojo because I was afraid that would weaken its power.
But you know what?
I think it’s like most positive forces in the Universe: The more you give, the more you get.
It’s not about hoarding and saving and tucking it away where no one else can see.
It’s about spreading the wealth. Sharing the fortune. Pouring butter over everything and not adding any calories.
If you see this couple, please let me know. Pronto.
As much as I’d like to be, I’m not really a tea drinker.
I enjoy thinking of myself as misplaced Euro trash, but more of the waify, carefree, wine and cigarettes with lunch variety than the humorless, pearl-wearing, yellow-stained teeth variety.
More this:
Less this:
Of course, we’re talking strictly in stereotypes.
And I don’t smoke.
And I look nothing like Penelope Cruz.
Because it’s a cruel, cruel world.
Anyway.
My point is that despite all of the wonderful things I hear about tea, I much prefer getting my nighttime antioxidants from fermented grapes over sticks and leaves, and coffee is too ingrained into my mornings for me to wake up to anything else, and for those reasons I will probably never be a true convert.
However.
When I was in San Antonio a couple of months ago, my friend Stacy took me to a tea room that almost changed my mind.
Almost.
See, I’ve always maintained that when you visit a new city, it’s wise to make yourself friendly with a local. Stacy and I go back to our cubicle days on Fort Bragg, but we kept in touch after I ran off to make hot sauce in Costa Rica and she ran away with her husband back to Texas.
In a city like San Antonio, it’s easy to get lured in by its magical River Walk filled with overpriced restaurants, twinkling lights, touristy shops filled with trinkets to take home, and plenty of beautiful spots to sit and contemplate how many drunk spring breakers have peed off the boardwalk into the murky depths of the waterway. But with a local, you might be more inclined to visit the city’s rusty edge or the King William Historic District, where resides a squat maze of rooms that comprise Madhatters Tea House & Café.
Beamed ceilings, crooked rooms, mismatched chairs and local art define the quirky decor, and one look around made instant my decision to ignore the long line at the counter and treat it as a true sign that this was the place to have lunch.
The line traveled quickly, leaving us just enough time to peruse the extensive menu.
Of course, since this was a tea room, we decided to embrace our girly girl selves and ordered the Tea for Two, complete with crustless sandwiches, scones, and little mini desserts with fancy French names.
After ordering at the counter, we selected our tea cups and I was reminded for a second of what it’s like to just play. To make tea cup selection a big, stinkin’ deal. To forget for a minute about mortgages and Homeowners’ Associations and quitting my job and just have a tea party because dammit, sometimes you just want to lift a delicate cup from an intricate saucer, stick your pinky in the air, and curse your decision to leave the house without your wide-brimmed hat.
I don’t remember what kind of tea we drank, but it was delicious, served hot and steeping at our table in its own funky pot.
And excuse me? Crustless sandwiches? I always thought that was wasteful as a kid and so never requested my bread sans crust, but whoa. I was missing out. There’s something about thick, fluffy bread unimpeded by stiff crust, and tell me — will people start looking at me funny if, at almost-30-years-old, I start cutting the crust from my sandwiches?
If so, I’ll just tell them my teeth are rotting because I’m getting so old.
Meager as it looks, it was actually a pretty filling amount of food. And the trick, my friends, is to eat slowly. Savor the flavor. Sip warm tea. Enjoy conversation with long lost friends and pretend, just for an hour, that life’s as simple as we want it to be.
It wasn’t wine and cigarettes, but the effect, I think, was the same.
Sounds quaint, I know. Like knitting my own socks or preserving my own peaches or churning my own butter.
But the thing is, I like granola. It’s a fantastic breakfast, it’s healthy-ish, and it’s crazy easy to make.
I mean, basically you mix a bunch of stuff together, then mix a bunch of other stuff together, then mix the two mixtures together, then bake.
Heck. You don’t even have to bake it if you don’t really want to.
To make it, you will need pretty much anything you want. You can use the recipe below as a guide, but don’t be afraid to get a little crazy. Like agave nectar instead of honey? Use it. Prefer vegetable oil to coconut oil? Be my guest. Crazy about oat bran? Substitute for some of the ground flax and toss it on in. If you want your granola to be more sticky and less crumbly, make more of the “wet” part (step 2) and cook a little less.
This can get a little pricy, depending on the ingredients you choose, but it makes a lot. If you were to buy the same amount from the store, you’d not only be spending mucho deniro, but you’d be getting all kinds of not-so-awesome added sugars and preservatives and all of that crap that makes us feel slow and drudgy instead of awesome and powerful.
Here’s what I used in my last batch:
4 cups oats
3/4 cup wheat germ
3/4 cup ground flax
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup chopped almonds
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup coconut oil (vegetable oil works, too)
1/2 Tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 Tablespoon vanilla extract
Optional additions:
Raisins
Craisins
Chocolate chips
Butterscotch chips, etc.
1) Mix the first 7 ingredients (oats, wheat germ, flax, sunflower seeds, and nuts) together in a very large mixing bowl.
2) Mix the last 7 ingredients (salt, sugar, syrup, honey, oil, cinnamon, and vanilla) together in a sauce pan, heat over medium-high heat, and bring to a boil for 1 minute.
3) Pour the wet stuff into the bowl with the dry stuff and stir to combine.
4) Line a baking sheet with foil or parchment paper, then spread the mixture evenly and bake at 300-degrees F for 30-40 minutes, stirring halfway through. It will keep cooking for a bit after you remove it, so don’t worry if it’s not completely crunchy before you take it out. If you like it softer, bake it less. There really are no rules — just don’t burn it. That’s easy to do, so watch closely as you start to near the end of your cooking time.
Once you take it out, add your raisins or chocolate or whatever your little heart desires. I prefer mine plain.
Let it cool on the sheet before storing it in an air-tight container.
5) Serve however you’d like! My favorite is over vanilla or plain yogurt with sliced strawberries.
Mmmm. All I have left to do is put my hair in dreads and buy some hemp pants and I can officially call myself crunchy.
But really, with granola like this, that’s not a bad way to be.
Also, it will make you feel awesome and powerful. I promise.
There are political figures trying to tell me what I can and can’t do with my body, there are people trying to sell me my own intellectual property, and there are princes getting naked all over Vegas but really, no one’s blaming Harry on that last one because who doesn’t want to get naked all over Vegas?
~*crickets*~
I think there’s just such an overload of fodder out there right now — and such a lack of focus on my part — that I tend to get overwhelmed and rather than talk to anyone ever, I instead opt to curl up on my sofa with a couple of mangy mutts, a glass of Zinfandel, and a streamed movie on Netflix that I didn’t realize was subtitled until 10 minutes in.
In other words, I have a lot of time to think.
There comes a time in most unpaid, extreme ADD blog writers’ “careers,” when the writer must evaluate the situation and make a choice. MY situation is that I’ve been doing this for almost 2 1/2 years, and barely anyone reads Domestiphobia.
Like at all.
And I love those of you who do — you’re like the validation I never got in high school. The prom date, the braces removal, and the boob development all in one, confidence-boosting package. (I actually did end up getting those last two — just not until it was too late to be enjoyed in high school.) It makes me feel like maybe I do have a niche. Like maybe there are some people in this world who get me, and even if you don’t, you still like watching me through that thick zoo glass from the relative safety and comfort of your swivel office chair.
And that’s okay, too.
So that’s my situation.
Therefore my choices, as I see them, are to:
a) Keep doing what I’m doing
b) Stop
c) Pick a focus and work to improve
or
d) Eat a sandwich.
I’m pretty sure, if you know me at all, (and if you’ve been reading for any length of time, rest assured that you DO know me), then you know which one I choose.
I’m sitting here, on a city street corner in a room surrounded by glass, and a salty breath of ocean breeze has found its way inside. It kissed my cheek and made me smile and reminded me of where I am.
I have a giant cup filled with the best chai latte I’ve ever had, which doesn’t hurt.
My mood is impeccable and I feel, maybe for the first time since Justin left, like I can breathe again.
I’m in a coffee shop, of course, and I realize now more than ever that this atmosphere is not conducive to writing. Especially this particular coffee shop, with its eclectic music, colorful street traffic, and sailor-mouthed old man sitting across the room.
The staff here at LION Coffee are friendly, the windows are open, and I know I’d come here again and again if I lived in this town. They’d know my name, and they’d know my drink, and I think I could probably be happy.
Until I’d want to move again.
Next time, I wouldn’t order the breakfast burrito.
With its cheese, potatoes, and bacon, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t awesome. The spicy salsa made the difference.
I would, however, order the acai bowl with yogurt, fruit, and granola. It looks incredible.
And the coffee? I could drink this all day. I could drink this all day and develop chronic shakes and totally not care because it’s just. That. Good.
And San Diego?
(That’s where I am, by the way.)
I could learn to love San Diego. I’ve been here before, and I’m happy to see that it sill makes me smile. With its people and its restaurants and its ocean and its perfect, perfect weather, it’s hard to be unhappy.
Even so, I just don’t cook as often. See, I still like to eat well. But as many of you singletons have been telling me over the years, I’m learning that it’s hard to stay motivated when you come home to an empty house. It’s hard to want to cook, when you’re the only one there to enjoy it.
But then, when I stop to think about it, I realize — one of my favorite foods is a hot dog. A thick, juicy, grill-marked, real meat dog on a crisp toasted bun.
Did you know that the song, “Build Me Up, Buttercup” always puts me in a good mood?
It doesn’t matter that my allergies have practically crudded my contact lenses to my eyelids and my husband’s in Afghanistan and the dogs have been waking me up at 5:30 every morning so they can drag me 2 miles around the neighborhood.
Ultimately, it’s The Foundations — not the sunrise over the lake or the smell of my morning coffee or any amount of caffeine — who put the spring back in my step.
Which only further proves that I was born in the wrong generation.
Technology makes me nervous, and I’m pretty sure that a poppy-seed from my bagel just got stuck inside my keyboard.
That wouldn’t have happened with a typewriter.
Of course, then this whole blog thing wouldn’t be happening either, and I’d probably be haphazardly wandering the streets of Fayetteville talking to anyone who will listen about the merits of Poo-Pourri while shoving photos of family vacations in their faces.
But instead, I get to shove them in your faces, which is much more gratifying.
So.
After our first day in Colorado was spent guzzling free alcoholic beverages at the Coors brewery, we decided we needed some culture in our lives. My mother, her boyfriend Ed, Justin and I hopped on a train that speedily dropped us in the heart of downtown Denver.
(Can I just say for a second how much I love public transportation? Seriously. My dream is to live in a city with clean, efficient public transportation — where I can jet from one place to the next without worrying where to park my car, how much it’s going to cost, or whether I might lose the drag race I just accepted with a 60-year-old man. True story.
I won.)
Just one of many modes of Denver mass transit.
Anyway.
Our first stop in the Mile High city was for food.
You know my priorities.
Justin, always the advocate for anything highlighted on the Food or Travel networks, opted for Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs. We were searching for their street cart at the specified location, but ended up walking several city blocks to the actual restaurant when we learned it was an off-day for the food cart. Turns out this was a wise decision, since I’m pretty sure they don’t sell beer from the food cart.
But I’ve been wrong before.
The decor is minimal and industrial, but their main food is hot dogs. What do you expect?
An interesting juxtaposition of good ol’ “Amurcan” cuisine, gourmet ingredients, and several oddities you’d be more likely to find dead on the side of the road than in Manhattan’s finest establishments make up the simple menu.
Tip: The larger the selection of food on a restaurant’s menu, the crappier it will likely be. Smaller, more selective menus are generally where you’ll find the best food.
I ordered the Weiner Wellington — an insanely delicious rib eye steak brat with mushroom duxelle and grainy Dijon cream wrapped in puff pastry and drizzled with Bordelaise. I don’t know what most of that is, but I do know this: It tasted like heaven wrapped in fluffy clouds dipped in gravy.
Now. I honestly can’t remember what Justin and Ed ordered. It may have been the southwest buffalo. It may have been the Wild Boar. Maybe the smoked bacon Bat Dog, with avocado puree, tomato cream cheese, caramelized onion, and bacon bits. And I know the idea of the rattlesnake and pheasant dogs were at least discussed.
I wouldn’t say I’m a beer snob, but if you stick a can of Coors Light in front of me, I’m not going to lie — I’ll ask you to bring me a glass of water instead because it tastes the same and has far fewer calories.
Unless it’s a hot summer day and I’m craving a cold light beer to get me through a project or a giant, juicy hamburger, I’m usually going to pick a darker, heavier beer.
So when Justin said he wanted to tour the Coors Brewery while we were in Colorado, I was intrigued because I hadn’t been since before I was of legal drinking age, but also secretly wishing we could have gone to some other brewery.
Turns out, though, that this one was worth the trip.
We arrived at the complex in Golden, Colorado, parked, and waited in line for about 20 minutes before getting on a tour bus. The folks at Coors run a smooth — and free — operation. My only complaint is that the outdoor waiting area wasn’t covered, hence my first high-altitude sunburn of the trip. Our tour guide was hilarious, taking us on a quick run through downtown Golden before dropping us off outside of the brewery.
Hey, red shirt guy. Get out of my shot.
Since the last time I was there, they turned the brewery part into a self-guided tour. The nice thing was that we could meander as we pleased, listening to our little self-guided tour speakers. Coors also had stations set up throughout the walk where employees could answer any questions we might have.
Of course, I don’t remember anything I heard through the speaker, so let’s just look at the pictures, shall we?
I have no idea who this woman is. But she wouldn’t move, so I took the picture anyway. She happens to be pointing to the label of what I’ve since discovered is a very awesome beer.
The infamous copper kettles. All I remember is that there were a lot of them, and you could determine the various purposes of each by looking at the size of the shaft. (Ha!) Also, the big red signs.
We’ll call this Mission Control. I’m pretty sure that guy was watching football. Or porn. Or both.
Hmm… how does one test the quality of beer?
By drinking it, I imagine.
About halfway through the tour we came upon the Fresh Beer Room, where we were able to sample exceedingly fresh Coors or Coors Light, straight from the source.
I’ll admit it was tasty, fresh as it was, but it was still just Coors.
One of the coolest parts was the packaging room. The maze of conveyor belts, gears, and complicated looking machinery had us mesmerized for several minutes. Waaaay up high in the back, we could see cans coming in. Then stuff would happen and suddenly they’d be in boxes.
Crazy.
By this point we were getting antsy and ready for the final stop of the tour — the bar.
The coolest part about the entire experience, aside from seeing that it’s actual people — not elves — who are responsible for putting beer in my fridge, was the fact that everything was free. Including 3 pints each of our choice at the end of the tour.
The Colorado Native was good, but the Batch 19 was phenomenal.
Couple of Batch 19s.
I asked the bartender how they manage to keep the locals from stopping in every day for some free beers, and he said that they don’t! Guests are limited to one visit per day, and he said there are students from the Colorado School of Mines who show up daily.
