Category: Chapel Hill

Fall!

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I know I went poof for a few more days, but I have some good excuses for it.

Firstly, isn’t this weather great?  I love the fall, everything seems crisper and brighter and better.  And sure it has been a little rainy these past few days, but who cares?  Fall, guys, fall.

Jon’s birthday was last week.  I got him this cake from Whole Paycheck Foods.

I also got him the Carnivorous Plant kit about which I wrote.  I’ll update on that later this week.  Unfortunately we won’t see any actual growth for a few months, so the first few updates will probably just be pictures of dirt.  Life takes time y’all.

On Friday Jon and I volunteered to help out our friend Heather Gordon at the Golden Belt Third Friday Artist Demo Night.  A number of the artists in the studios were doing fifteen-minute demonstrations of their work throughout the night and Heather, who was organizing the demos, needed some extra hands to help out.  Jon got off easy, he just had to film a few videos.  Me?  I had to wear a sandwich board:

So stylish.

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Carnivorous Plants

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A short post tonight, because writing all of those Dragon*Con recaps was exhausting (but fun!) and also because it is Jon’s birthday.  He was the zombie with the creepy Hellraiser eyes who was shuffling alongside me in a lot of my Dragon*Con pictures.  Anyways, since it is Jon’s birthday that means more conversing with actual humans and less time typing up manifestos on my blog.

So, what does one get her boyfriend who enjoys putting latex and stage blood on his face and who enjoys crafting suits of armor out of Wonderflex and who generally likes all things strange and nerdy?

She gets him this:

That, my friends, is a carnivorous plant set.

You get a little plant greenhouse, a bunch of seeds, some dirt, some fun props like fake snakes and bugs.  Put it all together and a few weeks later you get a bug devouring wonder machine of curiosity and awesomeness.  I hope.

Jon was really enthused by it (yay!) and I am excited to see how the whole set comes together.  I’ll probably post some pictures once the plants start growing!

Mountaineering!

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I’m leaving tomorrow for a long weekend in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee, at a bed-and-breakfast which we are staying at for a steal courtesy of LivingSocial.  I hope to see some mountains and maybe go into some caves and see cavelike things and also maybe sleep a lot and read a lot and maybe I can go swimming some somewhere.  Anyways, the point of this is that the blog will go night night until Sunday or Monday when I am back.  Then I can post lots of pictures and y’all can be jealous of my camera skills and my vacation.

If you get bored you could go read last year’s 50 Days to Dragon*Con countdown.  I went to Hemlock Emporium today to get some adjustments made on this year’s new costume and I’m super excited about the whole thing.  I got the main bulk of the costume for cheap cheap cheap so Dragon*Con on a budget is a go!

Also, the last time I was in the Smokey Mountains, which was when I was fourteen or fifteen, my family and I totally saw one of these scrounging about the side of the road:

Bears, guys!  This weekend’s goal is to see more bears!  Bears!

Anyways, see y’all on the other side of the weekend!

Quesadillas, Inspired by KoKyu

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So in my last post I wrote about the amazing KoKyu short rib quesadillas.  They were so good that they inspired us to make quesadillas for dinner on Saturday night.  We grilled up some flank steaks, made a filling of grilled onions, peppers, mushrooms and jalapenos, and stuffed the whole thing with plenty of grated Mexican-blend cheese.

Those are the flank steaks on the grill, Jon picked them up from the Carrboro Farmer’s Market.  I made a Mexican-style marinade with soy sauce (works like a charm in terms of adding salt!), oregano, lime, sugar, cumin and some oil and let the steaks sit in it for a few hours.  Jon cooked the flank steaks perfectly: they were so tender and pink on the inside.  We had a good guide in the Food Lab’s How to Grill a Flank Steak over at SeriousEats.

That’s the flank steak with the grilled vegetables for the quesadilla filling.

Quesadilla fillings!  Cheese, flank steak, peppers, onions and jalapenos!

Now here’s the fun part.  We decided that, once the quesadillas were assembled, we’d throw them right back on the grill to get that crispy, smokey finish on the outside of the tortilla.  This worked perfectly.

Look at that char!  Perfect.

The grill was such a great summer investment.  The last few summers I’ve lived in an apartment with no outdoor space, which is a bummer when reading amazing seasonal summer recipes that extol the glories of the grill.  Now I can make all the fantastic, summery dishes about which I’ve read.  Grill victory!

And yes, the quesadillas were delicious.

Acme

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A few weeks ago LivingSocial or Groupon or one of those sites ran a deal for Acme, a restaurant in Carrboro.  Acme is a consistently solid establishment: I have never had a mind-blowing meal here but I have also never been disappointed.  On this particular summer Friday Acme once again did not fail: we had a solid meal with solid service and we left satisfied.

We started with a great, summery appetizer of heirloom tomatoes and house made mozzarella.  This was a perfect dish y’all, I could have eaten it for the main course.  The tomatoes were perfect and juicy and the mozzarella was mild and creamy.  The dish was garnished with deviled eggs and a tasty basil pesto which we sopped up with the bread.  Summer is awesome.  Apologies for the dark photos–didn’t want to use the flash.

For the main course Jon got a steak with garlic mashed potatoes, all well done.  I had crab cakes with a succotash of kale, butternut squash, corn and tomatoes.  Really tasty all around.

We–or rather I since Jon isn’t a dessert person, sigh–ended with a brownie sundae.  Impossible to mess up, really.

Acme is a great place to go for a reliable good, fairly upscale meal.  A Carrboro institution one might say.  Y’all should check it out if you haven’t!