Old Biscuit Mill Love.

Take a break from the sunshine to stop by the Old Biscuit Mill on Saturday mornings during your holiday in Cape Town. This is the best place to grab brunch after too many sundowners in Camps Bay the night before. We came early and did a walkabout the bustling market, hurrying from clothing booths to jewelery displays excited by all the new goodies to touch and try on.

Our grumbling tummies finally urged us into the market to drool over the food pop-ups that Old Biscuit Mill is known for. Everything looked tempting from mint lemonades and bubbles of champagne to ostrich burgers, potinerie, and risotto bars.

Who would not want to befriend a drunken Tuscan?

It took two laps around the market but I finally decided on The Charterturie and chatted up the friendly South African constructing my meal. He told us about the market, necessary places to visit and experience in Cape Town, and his farm to table shop. He made the tastiest Caprese with prosciutto sandwich on crusty bread with balsamic reduction. Seriously, my mouth is watering right now.

Biscuit Mill has been open for eight years in Woodstock, a ten minute drive from the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. You can find a variety of stalls serving all your needs, from fresh herbs and vegetables, handmade jewelry, organic cheeses, and handmade soaps and lotions. This isn't a place to find African trinkets and souvenirs, this is a place where you fall in instantly in love with the trendy and beautifully crafted items and the friendly atmosphere of the marketplace.

 

Old Biscuit Mill represents Capetownian lifestyle at its best, outside the gates it is rough around the edges but inside is a bohemian paradise of local goods and tasty treats that I have been dreaming of since returning to the States. 

There is a similar market open in Johannesburg that unfortunately we weren't able to try but I cannot suggest this place enough. Grab your drinks, sit on the long wooden benches, and keep trying new treats until 4pm. Or do as we did and fill those new bags for later and bugger off to the beach!

I wish I could be here every weekend!

Tuxedos in Boulder Beach

There's a perfect little seaport town that you will find as you travel down the coast of South Africa that has a perfect little beach.The sand is white and inviting. The sun shines down turning the water a brilliant shade of turquoise that beckons you to splash in the waves racing around the boulders and quietly washing the Atlantic sea onto your feet.

 

 

This would be enough to make Boulder Beach your favorite sunbathing stop but there is one more thing that makes this the best beach I have found and if you look closely you may see why!

 

I will give you a hint - it is black and white and CUTE all over... Penguins!

 

As you swim in the waves or lay on the beach soaking up the sunshine, little tuxedo wearing penguins will zip by you. Weaving in and out and every which way and seek you out wanting to play.

To get to Boulder Beach, head down the cape out of Cape Town about 40 minutes until you reach Simon's Town. If you don't have a car, there is also a local train that will take you as far as Simon's Town. The train will take 70 minutes with multiple stops but it does not have the safest reputation or most reliable timetable. If you do decide to try the train, you will still need to call a cab or walk the additional mile from the station to the beach.

 

 Boulder Beach has free parking and access to the penguins that let you get as close as you want - and will get as close to you too. If you don't want to sit with the penguins you can view them from the boardwalk at Foxy Beach but entrance will cost you an additional R55.

 

 Just remember that mean you may miss the opportunity to take one of the world's 17 Most Stunning Places to snap a selfie!

Crawfish Shack

 If I had to pick one meal to eat before I die it would always be seafood. Lobster, shrimp, oysters, clams, crab. Gimme. So I knew I had to check out Crawfish Shack after it appeared on Creative Loafing's List of 100 Dishes in Atlanta and best spots for BYOB in Atlanta. A BYOB seafood place? Yes, please. 

Crawfish Shack is a hole in the wall off of Buford Highway right after Aloha plaza in a small shopping center. It is equal parts ridiculously cheap and insanely delicious.We decided to make date night out of it and turned up on a Friday night to a packed house. When you dub yourself a Louisiana Cajun Vietnamese seafood shack you are bound to have many suitors. 

You can purchase soups, dips, or your seafood raw by the pound to cook yourself or stay to drink and wait for your food. The restaurant is decorated like a beach shack with ships and hanging fishing nets. The tables are long benches that would be great for a birthday party to squeeze all your friends in (and probably some strangers)  Guess which we picked?

Cheers! 

Crawfish Shack made the list off 100 Dishes to try because of their Boudin Balls. It is a Cajun dish that I had never tried and it was a bit like a hushpup but less breading, more seafood-y goodness.They also come in a pork variety but were doing seafood here!

They are deep fried and come with a spicy dipping sauce. Obviously naughty for your diet, get them anyways and pop em' with no regrets.

For our meal, we split the Seafood Boil for ONE. It was stuffed with blue crabs, lobster, mussels, shrimp, sausage, and potatoes.

 Yes, this is food that they deem acceptable for one person to consume in a sitting.

I think this place and I are going to have an amazing friendship.

Rain, Shine, or Pyro Cumulus Clouds.

 Savannah is a perfect southern city with sweet tea, gorgeous people, warm weather. I had not been in town for close to a year, so when J called to announce birthday plans I jumped at the chance to visit her in her new home. It is hard to stay away from a city like this in close proximity to the beach, delicious restaurants, and great night life.



Savannah holds a big piece of my heart. When I lived on a boat, we would port in Savannah once or twice a week and spend our evenings on River Street and City Market. We would take runs each evening and watch dolphins swim by and cargo ships fill the river expanse.

Savannah is a town that wants to have a good time and convinces you to do the same. There is an open container law and you can bring drinks into any new establishments you go in. That makes bar hopping a bit more exciting! Just remember anything you walk around with needs to be in a cup - or a paper bag like these $5 40's we survived on. My bag disintegrated by the time I tried to drink all of this! P.S. it didn't happened.

We arrived Friday after deciding last minute not to fly and checked in at the hotel, watched the opening ceremonies, and waited for the last of the crew to roll into town - they took too long so SP and I ventured out without them, but as usual, they caught up with us!

And finally it was time to celebrate this birthday girl! Remember gents, on Fridays we wear plaid.

We made all the favorite stops and finally ended the night at Savannah Smiles a dueling piano bar where I have spent nights before running back to the boat to make it back before departure. If you are in Savannah add this to your list of places to check out. Though I will always recommend a dueling piano bar to anyone and everyone I meet, this is the place that began my love and I guarantee a fantastic time! 

Really, I will buy you a shot if you don't enjoy it.

As always, it is great to be back together again with these friends!

The next morning we woke up to Indecisive Saturday, a traditional long boozy brunch with spicy bloody marys and carafes of bottomless mimosas at B. Matthews. It is a requirement to enjoy both on indecisive Saturday.

What a lucky girl I am to room with these fools for the weekend! 

We had hoped to enjoy the beach for the day but after venturing out realized there were bigger events brewing in Savannah. Smoked filled the blue skies and clouded our views of the Savannah river as we crossed the bridge into South Carolina.  

Determined to find out what was causing the flames, we headed to the port where we found the tire factory collapsed upon itself and engulfed in flames.

 There was no way to stop the blaze and the smoke took over the sky.

As we watched, we made best friends with Brandon the newscaster - most likely due to our boozy brunch and he asked to interview our reactions for the WJCL news. Our moment of fame was upon us! Plus, would you say "No" to him?!

 And we of course, gave the birthday girl the spotlight..

 

Honestly, we chose her because being a doctor she had the least likely chance of embarrassing us. And she did a fantastic job! This girl was made for TV. Once we heard that no one was in danger we stopped for one last family photo.

After our 15 minutes of fame and the pyro cumulus clouds plaguing us, our day turned quickly into evening activities and it was finally time to Slow Ride! Why do the days go so fast on holiday?

Slow ride is a 15 person bike that meanders through the streets and squares of Savannah for a tour of the pubs in historic downtown, otherwise known as a pub crawl on wheels. The bike helmet is only a requirement for some.  

Each seat on the "slow ride" has its own set of pedals so we grabbed our drinks, put Slow Ride by Foghat on repeat, and set to pedaling.

 
Important factors I learned during our slow ride:

1. It is harder than it looks - seriously. With the hard bike seats, your knees hitting the bar top, and the feeling you are going to lose your balance at any moment this is not a effort free activity.

2. Bring your own music - they don't play any music but will let you plug in an iPod. Definitely make a playlist for this excursion when (and you should) go!

3. At some point everyone in your group will stop pedaling. This will happen when you're in the middle of an intersection and you will freak out that you are going to get hit by oncoming traffic. Or you will be on a hill and struggle to get the bike started again. Invite your most active and ambitious friends to participate.

This is a shot of no one pedaling. 

 4. The driver has too many rules. I get it, he's chaperoning drunk patrons through the streets of Savannah but he threaten to kick multiple people off our bike, only gave us 15 minutes in each bar, hollered at us to always face forward (I am here to see the sights!), and turn the music down.

In the end he left us on the street when he got a $100 fine for how loud we were. Sorry Ed, even if you were a stick in the mud. 

5. It may not be the safest mode of transportation because only moments on the bike my pedals fell off! I must have been far too eager for the Slow Ride. At first I was very sad to miss out on all of the fun - until I realized I could supervise. Supervising had job duties such as monitoring the feet for slackers and "motivating" everyone to go faster. All while sitting back to enjoy the ride. So, if you can manage to knock off your pedals - do it.

We made four stops along the route with my favorite being "Abe's on Lincoln" Located off the stretch of tourist stops, it  is a small, hole in the wall bar off Lincoln. The walls are plastered with Abe cocktail napkins, there's live music, and its dark and dingy - which always make the best places.

We ended the evening at "The Rail" with many more celebrations for the birthday girl!

Peace out Savannah - see you for St. Patrick's Day!  

Atlanta Snowpocalypse 2014

It has been an interesting days in Atlanta filled with snow, day long traffic jams, and the beauty of Southern hospitality. I luckily did not spend 20 hours in my car or sleep at Kroger (or the hospital) like most of my other co-workers and friends and cannot entertain you with horror stories that I hope we can all laugh at now.

Instead I managed my way out of the hospital during the "Code White" and slowly trekked home in the ice. SNOW DAY was needed in our household so once all the roomies ventured back into the safety of our abode, we set to work playing, eating, and day drinking. It is important to never forget the true meaning of snow day.

But the snow kept falling into the night causing people to be stuck on highways, in accidents, and in bad situations. However, it turned our yard into a winter wonderland.

On Wednesday it was very obvious we would not be making our way into work that day so we started the morning with a big breakfast and Bloody Mary Snow Slushies while we waited for B to make his way back on the ice rinks we were calling our roads. He had made it to a friend's house the night before thankfully!

We did everything in our power to get rid of the snow plaguing our city. Filling our glasses to the top with fresh snow, adding a splash (or two) of Tit-o's and drinking those snow drifts away.

Goodbye snow, hello day drinks!

Then we took to the streets like kids out of school - sledding on our garbage lids (fail) and frolicking through the snow.

The boys ventured out for essentials since I obviously did not purchase enough Modelo the evening before. Cabin fever was already starting in for me, so I tagged along just to get out of the house.

By mid-afternoon the streets were thawing out but it was still treacherous in others!

Wanting to be (somewhat) productive, B took the time to teach me how to make pasta. He is the best pasta chef in the city so I tried hard to get it right and listen to every instruction. There is no recipe and no list of measurements. He decides everything by texture and experience. Sure, B sounds simple...

Did you know pasta can be made with only flour and egg yolks? When I admitted that I think he knew this was going to be a long lesson but we were snowed in and he was stuck with me!

B grabbed our 00 flour and farm fresh eggs to create our dough. A reference is using 1 egg to 3/4 C flour. 00 flour is the most highly refined flour and is ground into a talc-powder softness. As you can probably tell I learned alot of information on Snow Day!

We  He created a well in the flour and cracked each of the egg yolks into, discarding the whites. The dough is made by slowly mixing to incorporate the flour from the sides into the center of yolks. After it forms the dough must be kneaded to activate the gluten. (So much for cutting my gluten this year...) but at least I was good at this part of the project!

After your sough forms, let the pasta sit for about 30 minutes or the rest of the afternoon as we did. The dough should be tacky but not sticky and not stick to the plastic wrap when you are ready to use.

And then the fun began. We rolled the dough, fortified, folded, ran it through the machine and REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT.

We used KitchenAid mixers for this process which are wonderful! Start with the #1 setting as this will be the widest and slowly work down to your thickness. Make sure to fortify the dough each time by lightly coating it with flour and then wiping it off. It doesn't need to be rubbed in because the rollers will do this but wipe it off because you don't want any excess flour when running it through again. Otherwise it will be cracked and you want a soft velvety texture instead. This also helps if you are an amateur like me to not get the dough stuck on the rollers. 

I watched the master at work and finally pushed him aside when I thought I knew what I was doing. FYI - I didn't. He just made it look so easy!

One of the hardest parts was holding the dough so your fingertips were not touching the sides or creasing the pasta. Plus you have to feed the dough in straight and even so it doesn't crack the edges. If you do that you fold over the opposite direction and create new edges. So, no this is not a fast process.

B cuts each of his noodles. Yes, really. So next time you are at the restuarant think of all the hard work and time goes into EACH. NOODLE. It really is more than putting a pot of water on.

I, on the other hand used the KitchenAid mixer attachment that cuts for pasta of all types. Run it through one time and create perfect little noodles. At this step they are very soft and dough-y so we placed them on a cooking sheet using chop sticks and covered with a towel to keep the moisture in the air from drying it out. 

Next were a few steps I could handle. 1. Pouring wine. 2. Boiling water (B did yell at me for not adding salt - is that a thing you are always supposed to do?) The pasta noodles we made from scratch cooked within minutes so if you make your own make sure to time it right with the rest of your meal.

What a great family dinner and I have to admit I make a DELICIOUS pasta (ok, it was B) but I helped. Don't you think this pasta looks like a heart? Just in time for Valentines!

Happy Snow Day everyone! Pray that it will be our LAST.