I hope everyone is having a fantastic Easter weekend! Our’s has been great, fun, relaxing, and full of good food (and a couple of drinks though I’m supposed to be off the juice this week). P and I both had Good Friday off, so we made it a Great Friday 🙂
We got up in a leisurely fashion, and made lunch reservations at one of our favorite dinner spots in Durham, Mateo. We had never experienced lunch at Mateo before since they only serve lunch during the week. Oh, boy have we been missing out!
We started off with drinks, a Cheerwine Sangria (no Cheerwine actually involved) for me and a Ponysaurus IPA for P. Sangria is not my typical go to drink, but I saw a whole pitcher go by right before we ordered and could not pass it up. We then had an appetizer of clams in the most amazing broth ever…I was literally drinking the broth by the spoonful and we got extra bread to soak up every last drop. Then came the sandwiches, and we were blown away. P ordered their take on the cuban pork sandwich, which was great but not quite to the level of my sandwich. I got the ham and cheese, and this was anything but a basic ham and cheese. First of all the ham is serrano ham, along with granny smith apples and cheese, but the real genius of this sandwich was the cheese grilled to the outside of the bread…this is a sandwich that would be VERY hard not to get on future trips. P and I are already trying to figure out a day we can sneak over during the workweek to have another one.
Lunch was followed by a stop at Scratch, which serves one of my favorites a London Fog…in a bowl no less, and since we were there we had to have at least one piece of pie. We opted for the Lemon Shaker, and the crust is what really made this pie.
When we got home we took Sam for a little walk around the neighborhood so that I could capture some of the Spring flowers on my new camera!
Happy Easter!!! Now….
The Rest of the Week
This week pretty much rocked in the food department. The first three dishes were just amazing-like we will make them again level good (and you know a repeat is not often in this house)
- Deliciously Active’s 40 Cloves of Garlic Chicken: I can not stress to you enough how good this dish was! The garlic cloves get all roasted so they become more like a butter than garlic and add incredible flavor to the chicken. We did use fresh herbs per Bri’s instructions. The only disappointment about this dish, was we did not have bread to soak up all that amazing sauce. For those of you who are not thigh eaters, I do think breast would work, just don’t cook them too long in the first step.
OMG @Deliciouslybri just made your roasted chicken with 40 cloves of garlic http://t.co/GsE0y4qpwg, unbelievable, crazy good!!
— Food Booze & Baggage (@foodboozebags) April 13, 2014
- Char-grilled Asparagus & Parsley Pesto Pasta: This was another excellent twist on pesto and pretty healthy to boot. You can not taste the anchovies at all, so don’t let that scare you off (they are a great source of Omega-3). We used regular anchovies as I could not find white ones and grilled the asparagus in the grill basket.
- Strawberry-Sour Cream Scones with Brown Sugar Crumble: These were delicious. Using the sour cream is great-so I don’t have to buy a whole bottle of buttermilk that I can rarely use up. As with all scone recipes, I use the food processor to cut in the butter. You can get a little look at how good these turned out on Instagram.
- Skillet Ground Beef Stew: Added in celery, fresh rosemary and thyme; served over egg noodles. If we make it again, I would omit the potato. It was a great rainy night dish. The addition of fresh herbs is strongly encouraged, as it brightened up the flavors significantly.
