new house!

WE GOT IT!

We put in an offer on a foreclosure over a week ago and found out today that it was accepted! It is our dream home...or at least it will be. We'll have to do some pretty major renovations, particularly to the kitchen. So I'm excited to take you all through the process of transforming our cooking/eating space in the new house, a la Young House Love style (without the amazing DIY-ness). Stay tuned for that...

While we waited to hear back about our offer, we kept saying that if we found out we got the house, we would celebrate. Initially, we were thinking a nice dinner out, a bottle of wine...but no. Instead, we went to vacation bible school at the church and picked up our special meal on the way home.

Nothing says "celebration" like an Oreo milkshake.

It wasn't much, but we were so excited we didn't care. Food doesn't seem to matter as much when you're on cloud nine. We've been giggling all afternoon...kind of like this guy:

Maybe, eventually, we'll get to have that nice dinner out to celebrate our new house. In the meantime, we'll just keep smiling as we think about our first meal in our new home.

:)

check these out

Sometimes I feel like I have nothing new to say, and it's hard to blog more than once or twice a week. So...let me refer you to some other blogs I have come across recently that fit within the scope of this one. I'd love to hear your thoughts on these!


http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/2012/05/the_dark_side_of_healthy_eatin_1.html

The entry above was sent to me by a friend who reads this blog (thanks, Kristen!). It is by Rachel Marie Stone from Her.Meneutics, Christianity Today's blog for women, asking the question, "Are pure diets really all that good for us?"  Stone speaks of "orthorexia" (literally, "correct appetite"), the dark side of people's obsession with righteous and healthy eating. She highlights the problems of a rule-based approach to eating, and how it can not only be detrimental to the individual, but especially to the act of sharing a meal with others.

It brings up some interesting issues, but as one of the comments suggested, "This is such a first world problem..." I agree. We are worried about what kind of food we eat and how we eat it. Much of the rest of the world worries about whether or not they will eat at all. The topic is certainly one that only middle-to-upper-class white Americans (like me) would find intriguing, and I appreciate the irony that I read it on a blog. (Blogs are definitely something white people like, but they didn't make the list. What did make the list were organic food and vegan/vegetarianism...and - ironically - irony.)



http://seeprestonblog.com/2012/06/the-eucharist-the-great-equalizer-mutuality2012/

I found this entry through Rachel Held Evans' series on mutuality, of which the post is a part. It was written by Preston Yancey, and is a beatifully written piece on the Eucharist, particularly as an equalizer of who offers and receives the Supper. I think the key line in the whole entry is when Yancey writes,

For in that moment, in the moment bread passes from hand to hand, wine from hand to hand, it is not that person who holds out salvation to me, but Christ our Lord. They are unto me, in that moment, as Christ. I receive by them from my Lord. Nail polish on fingernails or no, young or old, dark or fair: they are unto me, in that moment, as Christ.

 

Anyway, check these out and let me know what you think!

suzy's birthday

This past week we observed the national holiday that is my wife's birthday (at least, that's typically the way she thinks about out). On Thursday, we decided to celebrate said holiday by eating as much of the most delicious food we could find. So here's a quick recap of our - I mean "Suzy's" - day.

Lunch at The Lazy Goat, one of our favorite restaurants, although we had only been there for dinner. Good decision to try lunch. Suzy's parents split a kebob and Mediterranean salad; Suzy had a Muffaletta panini; but I won the day with this beauty:

This is (was?) the Lamb Burgesa, a hamburger patty of lamb tucked inside a pillowy soft warm pita, with a feta spread, a minty yogurt, lettuce, tomato, and red onion. Out.of.this.world. If you like lamb, this is about the best lunch you could hope for. It had the rich warm flavor of the lamb, cooled and muted somewhat by the yogurt and feta. 

These are pomme frites (a fancy French word meaning "freedom fries"), but The Lazy Goat has their own take on this side dish. They're thin cut and fried crispy, giving them great texture. Then they get hit with some truffle oil, giving them almost a savory but sweet-ish kind of flavor, offset by the saltiness of the finely shredded asagio cheese. They were fantastic on their own, but dip them in the chipotle ketchup? Magnifique!


Amazingly, I was able to return to work for the rest of the day, before our dinner out at American Grocery.

This is the same place we went for my birthday, which you can read about here. We ordered very similarly, but because the seasons had changed, so had the menu. Instead of apples with our pork belly appetizer, we had peaches (a great switch!). The braised beef tongue was now a braised corned beef tongue, giving it a little extra bite. The fresh fruit cobbler, instead of apple with cinnamon ice cream, was strawberry with vanilla.

An amazing day of eating at (arguably...and I'll defend this) the two best restaurants in Greenville.

But one of the best parts of the day was getting to feed our almost-eight-month-old. He takes after his daddy in that he LOVES to eat. He goes zero-to-screaming-hungry in 6.3 seconds. He makes "mmmmmm..." noises when he takes a spoonful of baby food. And he can put away some food. This was his lunch (probably not as good as ours):

Stage three macaroni with butternut squash. Yum!

I really enjoy getting to feed him, not only for the entertainment value, but because it seems like we're connecting in some way. It's like table fellowship with any adult - I get to watch his reactions, "talk" with him, and share a bit of life together. All in all, it makes me really happy...and apparently him, too.

nj & nyc

As I mentioned in the last post, we spent several days last week visiting Suzy's sister, Jessie, who lives in Montclair, NJ. During our time in Montclair and our day trip to NYC, we ate out what seemed like every meal to try all the places Jessie recommended. So here's an overview of our gastronomic adventures up north:

After we arrived, we picked up dinner from a Middle Eastern hole-in-the-wall restaurant around the block from Jessie's apartment.

This is the entire storefront, including the restaurant's ONE table.

Suzy had the falafel pita sandwich, I got the Philly cheesesteak, and we split some grape leaves and baklava. The grape leaves were different than any I had previously had, but were very good. The baklava was a little dry (I would've liked more honey). The falafel was really tasty, especially in the pita with lettuce and tomato. The Philly cheesesteak had a slightly sweet taste (maybe from the roasted peppers?) and was super juicy, almost like a French dip. One meal down...

When we went into NYC, our first food stop was Ess-a-Bagel on 3rd Avenue between 50th and 51st Street. 

The have 15 different kinds of bagels, and about a bajillion different types of cream cheese. Here is just a small sample (what would fit in the camera shot) of their selection:

Suzy and I split two bagels - an everything bagel with veggie cream cheese and a sesame seed bagel with chocolate chip cream cheese. The everything bagel was the best I've every had...no lie. I tried a bite of Jessie's boyfriend's, too (an everything bagel with jalapeno cream cheese), which was equally delicious. I was wary of Suzy's chocolatey bagel, but it was almost like a dessert (think: chocolate chip dessert pizza-ish), and was nice when paired with some black coffee.

After walking around, seeing Sesame Street being filmed on location in Central Park, and taking some uber-cute pictures of our baby boy in the big city, we finished our day in the city with dinner at the Shake Shack on East 86th Street. I had the Shackburger with the signature Shacksauce (some version of a mayo-based sauce), paired with their house-made ShackMeister Ale on draught. The burger was a juicy medium-rare, and the beer was a slightly hoppy but refreshing pairing to the burger.

It was a great trip with some great food...but it wasn't over yet. When finally returned to Greenville the next day, we drove straight to Suzy's parents' house to enjoy a good, old-fashioned, home-cooked southern meal. Ahhh...home, sweet home.

And yes, that is fried chicken...

three years

On Wednesday, Suzy and I celebrated our third anniversary. And if you could see me right now, celebrated would be in air quotes.

The day started early. After a night of little sleep (thanks, baby-crying-for-what-seems-like-no-reason), Suzy was trying to clean our house for an appraisal and finish packing, while I was squeezing in a half-day at work that would end by 11:00 a.m. (and therefore begin at 7:00 a.m.). Even our seven-month-old needed some coffee...

When I got home it was a mad scramble to load the car and get to the airport. Once there, we had to stuff down a "fresh made" microwave pizza and a "chargrilled" microwave burger in the terminal before our plane boarded. (I really wish I had been able to take pictures of these things. They looked horrible. But better than the e-coli-laced chicken salad sandwiches, I suppose...)

We landed in Charlotte for an hour and a half layover, and as we walked to the gate for our connecting flight, I saw this heavenly beacon:

I went to the original Bad Daddy's Burger Bar a couple of years ago, and I still talk about the burger I ate there. In fact, as we came upon it in the airport concourse, I said to Suzy, "I think that's the place I had the burger." Not only did she know what I was talking about, she described it almost verbatim...

Sam I Am (get it..."green eggs and ham"?)

I won't even try to begin to describe it. You really just have to taste one. So the next time you're in Charlotte (or in Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, concourse C), check it out. You can just thank me now.

But here's the tragedy in all of this - I was still full from the nuked burger at the Greenville airport! So we passed on Bad Daddy's and instead ended up sitting in an airport with a fussy seven-month-old, tired, gassy (the microwave burger/pizza didn't sit too well), sharing a Cinnabon, eating off the top of our luggage. Pretty classy, huh?

The third anniversary is the "pastry" anniversary, right?

I was reminded, however, that it doesn't really matter as much what you're eating as it does with whom you are eating. Near the beginning of our relationship, Suzy and I used to eat Chinese takeout on the floor of my apartment bedroom (because the only other place to sit was my one desk chair). Now, that's one of my favorite memories of us. Here's hoping that our third anniversary will be another of those memories.

We did finally make it to NJ, and had a great three days eating our way through north Jersey and NYC. More about that soon...

What about y'all? Do you have any memorable anniversary meals (good or bad)?