Heather Bakes

That’s What She Said…

Home Sweet Home September 14, 2009

Filed under: September 2009 — heatherwlu @ 3:47 am
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We’re baaaaack!!!

I’m so glad to be home! South Carolina was fun but 8 days is a long time to be away. Look at the sweet face that greeted us at baggage claim:

chloeairport

Chloe hasn’t left our sides since we got back. Even Piper seems happy to see us. Right now she’s hanging over Brian’s stomach on the couch.

But back to the weekend…

-FRIDAY-

On Friday we made the drive to Asheville, NC to tour the Biltmore Estate. Just a nice little country house:

biltfront

Isn’t it gorgeous??? I kept having to remind myself that people actually lived here. It was like hotel. The coolest part was the basement, which featured a bowling alley, indoor pool and several kitchens (pastry, rotisserie, etc.). And check out the amazing view from the back of the house. Even the servants’ rooms looked out onto this:

biltback

The mountains made me miss Virginia.

We had lunch at the Stable Cafe on the grounds. The food was delicious. I ordered a turkey sandwich that was served on ciabatta with bacon, brie, arugula and raspberry mustard. The turkey was roasted on-site; none of that slimy deli meat business. I was starving yet could only manage half of this monster:

biltsand

We also toured the winery and took advantage of the wine tasting. Well hello there, handsome fellow.

briwine

I definitely tasted a few. The pinot noir and sauvignon blanc were my faves.

-SATURDAY-

On Saturday we slept in and then headed to downtown Greenville. It’s such a cute town with so many great shops and restaurants around Main St. And look at this, right in the middle of downtown:

falls

I tried to restrain myself with the shopping, but we did end up buying Jack a cute little knitted hat. He also got a sock monkey at the Biltmore. He’s not even here yet and already so much fun to shop for!

For dinner, we ate at Trio, a brick-oven pizza restaurant downtown. Brian’s parents took us here a loooooong time ago, when I was still in college, and we were excited to go back again. I started with the Trio salad:

triosalad

Brian and I decided to order two pizzas and share. I had the goat cheese pizza, topped with kalamata olives, sun dried tomatoes, pesto, peppers, mushrooms and capers:

goatpizza

And Brian had the smoked salmon pizza with brie, green apples, capers, red onion and dill:

salmonpizza

My pizza featured pretty much all of my favorite things (I could eat goat cheese at every meal) and was perfect. Brian’s pie, on the other hand, was a little disappointing. Too many creamy incredients. It needed some acidity- more apples or capers would have been good. But still, anything with that much brie can’t be too bad.

-SUNDAY-

We had a stopover in Atlanta, which made Brian VERY happy. Why you ask?

krystalb

Because there’s a Krystal in the airport- i.e., the Southern version of White Castle.

I tried one of the tiny burgers to see what the fuss was about.

krystalburg

Not impressed. It smelled like B.O. I stuck with my little $5 grape and cheese tray.

cheesetray

OH- I borrowed Water for Elephants from Brian’s mom and finished it in about 2 days. What a great book!! I couldn’t put it down. So that makes three amazing reads for this vacation.

My parents picked us up at the airport and we immediately headed to Matt’s Rancho Martinez… a week is a long time without Mexican food, after all. I had the chicken fajita lights:

fajita

And then came home and took a nice long snooze with my pug. Ahhh, home sweet home.

-SURVEY-

What do you eat when you travel? Airport food? Or do you pack snacks?

I’m pretty good about packing Larabars and such, though I usually end up wandering into Starbucks or grabbing something snacky. And I love those little Biscoff cookies Delta hands out.

 

Last Day September 10, 2009

Filed under: September 2009 — heatherwlu @ 3:14 am
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Today was our last full day at the beach. So sad. Though it’s probably time to leave… despite ample  SPF 50, my shoulders and knees (weird) are really sunburned.

We packed another picnic lunch for the beach today:

picnic2

PB&J, oranges, apples, bananas, Goldfish, trail mix, soda and water.

It was gorgeous outside- we’ve been really lucky with the weather this week. I ended up finishing Cooking for Mr. Latte. What an amazing foodie read!! This one was checked out from the library, but there were so many great recipes inside that I’m tempted to just break down and buy a copy for myself.

Around 4 we headed up to the pool. My cabana boy (Brian) fetched me a nice strawberry daiquiri.

daquiri

Virgin, of course. He had some weird coconut rum-pineapple-grenadine concoction.

We decided to make tonight our “nice” dinner night. On Monday we walked by this cute little café in Shelter Cove Harbour, Bistro 17. It was packed with diners (always a good sign), looked out onto the water, and got decent reviews on Yelp.

I started with the chilled tomato soup with basil oil, chives and shaved parmesan:

soup

This was PERFECT. Fresh, tangy and just slightly creamy. I cleaned the bowl and could have eaten three more.

Our view from the table:

restview

For an entrée, I ordered the seared sea scallops with cauliflower puree and snap peas:

scallop

 This was a little disappointing. The scallops were cooked well and the caviar sprinkled on top ws a nice surprise, but the puree was really bland. And they substituted snow peas for the snap peas (why??). Brian ordered the crabcakes, which were delicious- so I guess I just chose poorly.

After dinner we walked around for a bit, visited the bookstore, then decided to find some dessert. All week we’ve passed the Hilton Head Diner and been really curious about the place. It stands out from the other restaurants on the island in a campy kind of way, and it’s open 24 hours. Plus diners are known for good pie, right? Our table had its own little jukebox.

diner

Brian played some Van Morrison.

I ordered what I thought was chocolate cream pie, but it ended up being some Oreo concoction.

pie

How ridiculous is that whipped cream? Unfortunately it didn’t taste quite as good as it looked, so I bogarted Brian’s cherry pie a la mode.

Before I forget: Be sure to check out Monica’s blog, Run Eat Repeat! She’s on her honeymoon this week (woo woo!) and asked a few food bloggers to submit guest posts about their honeymoons. It was fun getting a chance to reminisce… can’t believe it’s been FOUR years. We look like babies. Anyway, thanks to Monica for the opportunity- hope you’re having a fun trip!!

 

Savannah September 9, 2009

Filed under: September 2009 — heatherwlu @ 1:06 am
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Well we just got back from our big Savannah adventure. What a great city! It was definitely different than I had imagined- much larger and with more of a downtown area.

First stop: Lady & Sons!

deensign 

Oh, Paula Deen! I was a little concerned that the restaurant would be too gimmicky, but it really wasn’t. You’re supposed to arrive in the morning and get on a waiting list for later in the day, but we showed up at 11:30 and they sat us immediately. You can either order off of the menu or get the buffet for around $13. We, of course, went for the big ol’ buffet.

 The wait staff was SO friendly. Our waiter saw me pull out my camera to shoot the food and immediately offered to take our photo:

 deencouple

Then a staffer came by and presented us with a garlic-cheese roll (oh my god… so good) and a hoecake. I’d never actually had a hoecake; it tasted like a cornmeal funnel cake. They recommend that you top it with syrup.

 deenbread

Started with a green salad with Vidalia-peppercorn dressing. The best part were the pickled green tomatoes:

 deensalad

And then the “real” food: baked chicken, lasagna mac and cheese, green beans w/ new potatoes, lima beans, yams and black eyed peas.

 deenmain

I knew we had a big day of walking ahead of us and did NOT eat this whole plate. I did sample everything though. The lasagna tasted like cream cheese, which cracked me up. Of course Paula Deen would put cream cheese in lasagna. The sides were definitely the highlight, particularly the yams and macaroni.

 Finally, dessert: Banana pudding for me and chocolate chip gooey butter cake for Brian.

 deenbandeencake

 He won that round. The pudding was good, but the cake was pretty much amazing. I’m going to have to look up the recipe once we get home.

 Next we headed out of the restaurant and down to Broughton Street. First stop was the Savannah Bee Company.

honeysign

They had honey tastings! How cool is that?

 honeytest

Including fresh honeycomb:

 honeycomb

We ended up buying a few jars, including orange blossom, organic acacia, and one creamy version from Finland.

Next we walked down to River Street:

 river1river2

 And then back through downtown, through a ton of old parks, a cemetery, past this gorgeous old church (Cathedral of St. John the Baptist):

 church

 Next stop was the Mercer-Williams House, which you might recognize from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil:

 mercer

 We thought about taking the tour, but then found out that they didn’t allow photos. Lame. This really makes me want to go back and reread the book… for the third time. We also visited The Book Store- “THE BOOK” being Midnight, of course. It was half retail store, half museum, and the walls were papered all of these great clippings about the individuals from the book. Very interesting. 

 We walked pretty much constantly from 12:30-5:30. I hear Jack sleeps while I’m up and moving, so he’ll probably be up and kicking for the rest of the night. We finally stopped and took a breather in Forsyth Park.

 forsfountain

 

I’ve never seen a city with so many gorgeous parks- probably one every two blocks. It’s a very pedestrian-friendly city, too. Though with so many one-way streets and dead ends, I really wouldn’t want to drive here.

 

Oh, another cool stop: the Savannah College of Art & Design Store. They had some great artwork, house wares and jewelry. I’m definitely checking out the website once we get home.

 

So now we’re back in Hilton Head. The vacation is going too fast! Tomorrow we’re taking it easy and just hanging out on the beach, then Thursday is back to Greenville.

 

Beach Bums September 8, 2009

Filed under: September 2009 — heatherwlu @ 3:13 am
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Hope everyone had a fun Labor Day! It was crazy to see how much the hotel emptied out between yesterday and today. I felt like we had the beach to ourselves.

 Apparently the Heavenly Beds are a little too heavenly, because I didn’t wake up until almost 11. We pulled ourselves together (breakfast: Luna bar and decaf coffee in the room) and ran down the street to Fresh Market for some groceries. I’d heard great things about Fresh Market but honestly wasn’t all that impressed. It’s like a very tiny Whole Foods.

 Instead of going out for lunch, we decided to pack a picnic for the beach:

 picnic

Peanut butter & jelly on whole wheat, Goldfish, fruit, trail mix, Cherry Coke Zero and water.

 Sometimes food just tastes better outside. We swam around in the ocean for a while and then came back onto the beach to chow down. Most of the rest of the afternoon was spent in our beach chairs, reading. Eventually we decided to head up to the pool. Brian swam:

 bpool

And I read:

 book

And got more freckly, if that’s even possible.

 freckle

Came back up to the room, watched a movie, cleaned up and then headed out to find something for dinner. We stopped at a restaurant called the Sea Shack (highly recommended on Yelp), but it was crowded. Then we tried a marina area near the resort- no luck on a good restaurant, but we did see some cool boats.

 boats

I want to go to there…

boat2

 Eventually we gave up searching for a restaurant and headed to The Salty Dog Cafe. I’d always heard of this place and just assumed it was a big touristy restaurant in the middle of Hilton Head. Not so much. You pay $5 to drive through this really dark, massive neighborhood with gorgeous houses, and after 15 minutes of driving and seeing NO evidence of any type of restaurant, shop, etc., you finally stumble upon a marina with all of the Salty Dog restaurants. I wish we’d been able to make it out when it was still light outside, because I have a feeling we would have seen some really amazing homes and had a great water view from our table.

 We split an order of steamed shrimp:

 shrimp

And I had the crab cake sandwich.

 crabcake

By the time we ate, it was almost 9 and I was starving. Honestly, the food wasn’t all that great… but it’s a cute place and I’m glad we had a chance to see it.

Tomorrow is our Savannah trip!! I can’t wait. We’re getting up early to try and get a lunch reservation at Lady & Sons. I think Brian’s not-so-secretly hoping that I’ll fall in love with Savannah and propose that we move down here. Not likely… I’m a TX girl.

 

Hola from Hilton Head September 7, 2009

Filed under: September 2009 — heatherwlu @ 3:39 am
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Well I’m writing from the wonderful Westin Hotel in Hilton Head! Wireless is almost $20/day, so I’m having to type this up in Word in the room, then use the business center to publish. As Brian says, “The nicer the hotel, the more sh— you have to pay for!”

 Ironic but true.

 Anyway, the last couple of days have been all about the planes, trains and automobiles. We flew from Dallas to Greenville with a stopover in Atlanta. My parents gave us a ride to the airport and were nice enough to stop at Einstein Brother’s on the way so I could get my bagel on. Honey wheat with caramel apple cream cheese:

 bagel

 We had a three-hour layover and ended up grabbing lunch at TGI Fridays. I had the pecan-crusted chicken salad with blue cheese, dried cranberries, celery and balsamic. Yum.

 pecan

I finished The Marriage Bureau for Rich People on the plane. So good! I would highly recommend it, especially if you like reading about India (which I do).  Now it’s on to Cooking for Mr. Latte.

 We landed in Greenville around 8 and Brian’s mom picked us up at the airport. On the way home we stopped for dinner at Doc Che’s- kind of like a sit-down version of Pei Wei. I had the Thai basil noodles with extra veggies:

 thai

This morning we intended to get on the road early, but didn’t end up leaving until almost noon. Brian’s mom was sweet enough to stock their kitchen with Chobani, fruit and Quaker Oatmeal Squares AND she surprised me this morning with a pumpkin spice latte! Perfect breakfast.

 Stopped for lunch in ??? (somewhere outside of Columbia). I had a turkey sub from Subway but won’t bore you with a picture.

 After driving for 4 hours, we finally arrived at the hotel in Hilton Head.  We haven’t been to the beach in over 3 years and it was so exciting to get out of the car and smell the ocean.

 Our hotel:

 westin

Nice bag, Bri:

 briocean

We didn’t get checked in and settled until almost 5, so no real beach time today. But tomorrow for sure! The room is pretty nice, and you have to love the Westin Heavenly Beds.

 room

Our W&L friend Shane recommended a few restaurants for us to try. Tonight we ended up at It’s Greek to Me. I haven’t had Greek food in forever and it was delicious! Started with the Greek salad, naturally:

 greeksalad

And I had the moussaka for an entrée:

 moussaka

Delicious… and HUGE. I probably ate half, Brian snagged several bites, and we still had about ¼ of this monster left. We ran across a coupon for free dessert, too. Brian graciously let the preggo choose: chocolate-chip baklava.

 baklava

Whoever thought of adding chocolate to baklava = genius.

 Okay, down to the business center I go. Hope everyone had a great weekend!

 

Guest Post: Austin-Bound! September 4, 2009

Filed under: September 2009 — heatherwlu @ 4:08 am
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Hello Heather’s readers!

My name is Joy. Heather and I have been good friends since college. My boyfriend Chip and I are loyal readers of Heather’s blog, so when we headed to Austin for a long weekend we jumped at the chance to have our meals featured on the blog. Just a warning: this was a weekend of debauchery and our food (and drink) choices pretty much reflect that. There were also several unphotographed meals at What-a-burger and copious amounts of queso that will not be discussed here.

Our first stop on our trek to Austin was The Czech Stop in West, TX—Exit 353 off of I-35S. This is a gas station that has the BEST kolaches (and other Czech pasteries, cookies, cakes, etc.) in the entire world. We had a couple of sausage and cheese kolaches, and they were amazing as ever:

kolache

Delicious is their business.

Once in Austin, we checked into The Hotel San Jose. It is located on South Congress, which is a great location with a very cool vibe to the neighborhood. Just a block or two from the hotel there is parking lot full of airsteams selling various food items (to be featured later).

The beauty of the hotel’s location was realized when I saw the Amy’s Ice Cream right across the street! Amy’s Ice Cream is, in my opinion, the best ice cream in Texas (with Blue Bell being a close second). So as soon as we checked in we ran across the street and got some ice cream. I had a small cup with Mexican Vanilla and Ice Cream Sandwich (yes, ice cream sandwich is a flavor!). The perfect snack for a hot summer day.

amys

We chilled out in our sweet suite for a while then headed to Wink for dinner. Wink uses all fresh and mostly local ingredients, and the menu changes daily. Every course was very flavorful, the ingredients thoughtfully selected and seasoned perfectly. We started with the black truffle mac’n cheese:

maccheese

It was gooey, cheesy, deliciousness. For our entrees, I had scallops on squash with an orange sauce and Chip had snapper with Chinese eggplant.

scallopfish

For dessert we had this: milk chocolate mousse infused with ginger and earl grey tea in bittersweet chocolate soup.

mousse

Despite the extremely unappetizing (and somewhat phallic) photo, it was actually quite delicious. My favorite part was the candied orange peels served on top.

Chip and I are training for the Chicago Marathon, so Friday morning we dragged ourselves out of bed to run a loop around Town Lake. We were both impressed by the sheer number of people, dogs, and strollers at the lake on a Friday morning, and the giant jugs of water available at various points around the lake. Austin seems to be a great town for runners (or active people in general) despite the oppressive summer heat. After working up an appetite, we stopped by Jo’s Coffee (conveniently located right next to our hotel) for an Iced Turbo and a couple of breakfast tacos.

jo2

Chip had a migas taco (with fresh avocado slices!) and I had a bean and cheese taco, and they were the real deal. I really liked that my taco had black beans instead of refried. And the Iced Turbos were indescribably delicious coffee concoctions.

jo1

After cleaning up and (sadly) checking out of Hotel San Jose, we headed down the street to Hey Cupcake! which is located in the parking lot with all the other airstreams. One of our friends told us we had to go here and try the cupcakes. Oh.my.goodness. These cupcakes were heavenly, and the airstream was so cute!
trailercupcakesign

They even will insert a free shot of whipped cream in the middle, Hostess-cupcake style.

cupcake

We devoured these in seconds flat.

After doing a little shopping and internet surfing at a coffee shop, we stopped by Curra’s for some Mexican food before heading to the river. Curra’s specializes in traditional interior Mexican food and has a funky, almost dive-like vibe. We both had margaritas with a floater shot of tequila (it’s vacation!).

margarita

I had their delicious ceviche (my favorite meal at Curra’s).

ceviche

… and Chip had quesadillas. Also unpictured is our queso flameado. After stuffing ourselves silly, we headed south on I-35 to meet our friends at the river.

We basically skipped dinner in favor of drinking Friday night, and hung out in the river sipping sangria and making friends with fellow river rats staying at our condos. One guy, a mortician, actually made it to the second round of American Idol, and gave us a moving rendition of his audition song. The next morning we woke up, had a nutritious breakfast and prepared for the river.

river

Needless to say, tubing was great fun. Once back at the condo, we all took power naps and then rallied for dinner: burgers, sausages, potato salad, and coleslaw.

hotdog

Perfect after-tubing food.

Sunday morning, Chip and I woke early, packed up, and headed back to reality (AKA Dallas). First, we made one last stop in Austin for brunch. Austin is known for their breakfast tacos, and I had heard several good reviews of Maria’s Taco Express, so we decided to check it out. We started with chips and queso, then I had a bean and cheese taco and Chip had 2 miga tacos.

taco

Both were tasty, but we decided the best thing about Maria’s is the atmosphere. The walls are covered in photos, music posters, etc., and the outside is brightly painted and fun-looking.

maria

marias

So that wraps up our foodie adventures in the Hill Country of TX! Thanks for reading!

 

Home Alone September 3, 2009

Filed under: September 2009 — heatherwlu @ 3:07 am
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I just got really excited when I saw that Perfect Strangers was on FX… and then realized that it’s the stupid Halle Berry/Bruce Willis movie, NOT the awesome TGIF show. So disappointing.

Speaking of disappointing, I made an awesome dinner tonight but had to eat it by myself. It’s 9 and Brian’s still at work. I know we’re lucky because this pretty much never happens; it’s kind of unheard of for him to get home after 7. But I’m still going to whine about it. And maybe go get some ice cream.

Let’s discuss the dinner, shall we? Newflower had fresh brussels sprouts on sale, so I bought a ton of those the other today. Tonight I trimmed and halved them, tossed with olive oil, garlic powder and kosher salt and roasted at 400 for 30 minutes. SO GOOD. The best part are the little leafy bits that fall off the “sprout” and then char- they taste like potato chips. Don’t think these babies are burned. They’re just nicely carmelized.

sprouts

I almost never eat (and reallllly never cook) pork, but something possessed me to buy pork chops at Newflower the other day. After messing around on FoodNetwork.com, I came across a Tyler Florence recipe for Thick Pork Chops with Spiced Apples and Raisins with lots of rave reviews. You marinate the chops for a couple of hours in apple juice concentrate w/ peppercorns, salt and brown sugar. I halved the marinade and it was way more than enough. Then you just brown the pork chops on the stove and throw them in the oven to finish cooking. In the meantime, you saute apples and raisins in butter and add more apple juice and spices, then simmer to thicken.

pork

Okay, this is a definite keeper. The apple-raisin mixture alone is amazing.

The rest of the day was less exciting in terms of food. I still feel crappy and didn’t really want to eat much. Breakfast was a Green Monster, minus the Green.

smoothie

  • 1 C Almond Breeze
  • 1 Frozen Banana
  • 1/2 C Frozen Berries
  • Handful of Frozen Cherries
  • Scoop of Vanilla Protein Powder
  • Ice

It was so thick that I ended up eating it with a spoon.

Met Brian for lunch. We ended up at Panera. Once again, not that hungry- so I had a bowl of veggie soup:

panera

I wanted to get something to read for our trip, so I headed to the library after lunch. Not my usual library (Audelia)- the one on Skillman. First of all, it was PACKED at 1pm. Crazy. I really needed to look up an author but every computer was taken. So I hung around until one finally opened up. As soon as I sat down, this old man comes up behind me. “Are you on computer #5?“

I look at the monitor. Yes, I am in fact on computer #5.

“I’m supposed to be on computer #5.”

Yeah, old man totally booted me off my computer. I was unaware that there was a formal waiting list set up for this sort of thing. Luckily the nice librarian helped me find the author I was looking for and I was out of there in a few minutes. Has anyone read either Cooking for Mr. Latte or The Marriage Bureau for Rich People? I can’t decide which one to start first.

Okay, off to scrounge around for some dessert. Tomorrow I have a GUEST POST by my awesome friend Joy and her boyfriend Chip. They recently took a little trip to Austin and were sweet enough to write about all of their culinary adventures. Cupcakes and trailers… that’s all I can say for now…

We leave for SC on Saturday, so don’t forget to send me any restaurant suggestions if you’ve been to Hilton Head!

-SURVEY-

What’s your best vacation food memory?

We used to take the same vacation every summer: South Padre Island. My dad would buy us giant Pixie Stix on the 11 HOUR drive up. I also remember eating at the same restaurant every year, Louie’s Backyard. I thought it was pretty awesome because we could eat outside on the water… and I got to order virgin strawberry daquiris. Nice.

 

Lake Dogs April 28, 2008

Filed under: April 2008 — heatherwlu @ 2:30 pm
Tags: , ,

My parents went out of town this weekend, so we took advantage and headed up to our family lakehouse Saturday night. It was a great weekend! Very relaxing. Just a lot of hanging out, watching movies… and DOGS. We kept my parent’s dog, Sophie, since they were away all weekend.

Meet Sophie:

I took a lot of pictures, so I think the best way to document our day yesterday is through photos.

First, we took the dogs down to the lake:

They hung out on the dock for about 5 minutes:

But it was pretty cold out, and REALLY windy…

Apparently the girls don’t like wind. So they ditched us:

And then they had their own party. (I’m sorry- this is so inappropriate, but Chloe does this ALL THE TIME. Brian yelled at me for taking a picture of it. Poor Sophie- my dog is a sexual predator.)

The End.

Busy day today. I’m off work- but taking the day to register for culinary school! Wish me luck!