after a pretty swell vacation, it was tough to be home again, especially in the first few days back on the grind. i am feel the slump something serious, even a full week out. this has always been the case for me. italy, california, north carolina, cape cod: wherever i go ends up feeling more "home"-like than the places i hang my hat for the night. maybe i need bi-yearly escapes from the rat race of the metropolitan area, and perhaps i'll feel different once juan and i move into our apartment in a few weeks, but the feeling of being fish out of water here is totally familiar. and yes, moving out and into an apartment together is the big life news mentioned in the last post. hooray for starting december in a new space!
i also realized, while planning out the remaining weeks' worth of suggested projects in between trips to ikea and ordering comforter sets, that i don't have a 52nd project. this is something i need help with. please feel free to come out of the lurk and make suggestions (via anonymous comment if you'd like!).
huh huh highlights from vacay
halloween! we were pretty exhausted from the early flight and getting up at 4:45ish to catch it. first stop of the day after picking up the civic from dollar rental - which was fantastically budget-friendly and speedy in their processing - was sola cafe in the raleigh suburbs. since sola is more removed from the city than the places we were going to visits in durham, we struck but how busy it was at 10 in the morning on a friday. the cafe was pretty packed!
full disclosure: i love cafe culture and a lot of the finer points of hipsterdom. i appreciate that organic, fair trade and/or locally produced coffee a whole lot. i also like being surrounded by creative, off-the-beaten-path people and really feel most like myself and at ease among them. sola's "theme" seemed to be marked by red library cards and bicycles (on the order cards and hung on the walls, respecticaly). so i guess it's not unusual or inaccurate to think i'd end up somewhere like this. all in all vanessa and i were super hungry so that first egg muffin sandwich an cappucino hit the spot.
then, off to the sarah p. duke gardens for some fresh air! the gardens are nestled right in the heart of campus which meant that a lot of students walked right through as we were busy getting lost in the native plants acreage. the air was perfectly crisp for fall. not as blustery the rest of the weekend would prove to be!
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| from the middle landing of the tiered gardens |
brunch at scratch can be summed up in three words: pimento cheese sandwich. i could go on and on about last meals and favorite meals of the trip and best things i've ever eaten, but to get to the point, the pimento cheese sandwich was fantastic. this was my first dabbling in proper pimento cheese. loved the simplicity of the house-baked pullman loaf, the heat of the peppercorns against the red pepper, and the crunch of the romaine lettuce.
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| inside of scratch |
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| the chalkboard wall |
we went back to cocoa cinnamon three more times before leaving on monday morning. their menu is extensive. a variety of drip coffees and espressos, lattes, hot sipping chocolate, tea lattes, and an assortment of gluten-free/vegan desserts. also, wine and beer! aside from the villa rica (latte with housemade vanilla bean syrup), i had the tower of babel (honey latte with date sugar), the simon bolivar (yerba matte latte with honey and cayenne pepper), and the temujin (white chocolate latte with ginger).
i am, it should be said, ridiculously bummed to be 471 miles away from it. yes, i mapped it.
after cocoa cinnamon we took a longgggg nap and went out for dinner around 7. dos perros is a fairly posh mexican place that we had scoped out online. the atmosphere was really fun. definitely would have been a great place to hang out with friends for dinner before going out for additional drinks. vanessa had the pork quesadillas with goat cheese and i had a chille relleno the size of my bicep. too much crema on my black beans aside, really good dinner. then, off to bull city burger for an attempt at a beverage. we were so stuffed after dos perros that we each only had one drink. vanessa got a beer and i had the ubiquitous sweet tea in a mason jar.
we got up for the continental breakfast at la quinta on saturday morning and made yet another trip to cocoa cinnamon. wasn't feeling the farmer's market in the rain and dreariness. in the afternoon we headed over to chapel hill - the chap, as i called it for i don't know what reason - to check out franklin street. we missed the huge halloween street party there on friday night. so many restaurants. we had originally intended to check out industry, which seemed like a trendy bistro pub with a lot of options. unfortunately, it was closed until dinner and we were not about to hoof it in the wind for another two hours. so we wound up somewhere better.
mama dip's is a chapel hill institution. here is where you'll get pretty standard, traditional southern food. vanessa ordered chicken fried steak with green beans and yams. my pickings were pretty slim (egg fritter or plate of vegetables) but the mac and cheese was amazing. best sweet tea of the trip, too.
we decided to stay local for the night. bad daddy's burger bar in cary. best "chain" burger i've ever had. there were legit amounts of black beans in my black bean burger! vanessa's pittburgher looked awesome with its stack of shoestring fries and garlic ketchup. everything was made fresh. red robin's got nothing on bad daddy.
sunday started with another cocoa cinnamon run in preparation for the food truck rodeo in durham central park. juan and i had missed the final food trip when we visited after christmas, so i had really been looking forward to the rodeo. it did not disappoint. we had food from the humble pig, pie pushers, citizen pops, and wicked biscuit. favorite bite of the entire trip had to be the pimento cheese and fried egg biscuit from wb. amazing stuff. we sat like slugs in the grass and nursed our full stomachs before stepping out for the pops. i missed some chirba chirba green monster dumplings, but there is always, always next time.
mini end-of-flight anxiety attack aside, i loved every minute of this trip. durham is one of my favorite places on earth and i know that i'll be back there next year for more gourmand adventures.
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| final look down the street before the last cocoa cinnamon run |
this past week's completed project: i got 8 hours of sleep each night. yeah, i figured that i'd roll one project into another for this monster post (which is days late, i know). it felt really really good to continue the "on vacation" trend this past week even though i was home and stressed from work. at least i could control the amount of sleep.
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this week: we'll be making ravioli with my cousins as part of our toth family thanksgiving tradition. not sure that i'll make three different kinds, but we'll see!
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