Before we hit full-on spring, we wanted to share a few photos from the past few months with you. We post a whole lot of photos over on Instagram. If you're following along there, you've likely seen some of these photos, but not heard the stories behind them.
So let's start (and end) with baked goods....
Clay had the opportunity to have breakfast one morning at Buvette in New York City, when he was up there for a work trip. It's among our favorite places to eat when we're visiting there; we ate dinner on another trip last year.
Breakfast at Buvette was the kind of breakfast that we dream of (but rarely have). It started with these beautiful, teeeeeeny tiny croissants. We love how they were served: with jam and butter piled on a spoon on the plate. But that was just the beginning...
The next course at Buvette was even better: eggs that are "steamed scrambled" and served with smoked salmon, on top of a very buttery piece of toast. Heaven.
On the other end of the indulgence spectrum, Clay also had a chance to visit the New York offices of a company called Facebook (maybe you've heard of it?). We'll spare you the details of the work meeting, and skip right to lunch, which was phenomenal. It was an amazing array of choices (hot food, pizza, pressed sandwiches), but the stand out was the salad bar (Clay's salad is pictured above).
The salad bar had about anything and everything that you might want on a salad. There were at least six kinds of greens. All manner of toppings. And some things -- like crosnes -- that we had never heard of before. Moral of this story: If we worked at Facebook we would not be able to stop eating.
We spent New Years with friends in Provincetown, Mass., a place that we love to visit in the summers but had never gone to in the "off season." The town, though at least half-empty, was still charming as ever. The highlight was a walk we took with friends on a mile-long jetty across the breakwater, all the way out to the beach, in the freezing cold wind. It was a bracing but beautiful day at the beach.
On another, more recent trip to New York, we met our friend Sion for brunch at The Fat Radish, a cozy little restaurant down on the Lower East Side. We sat in a window while snow fell outside, and were blown away by the meal. This dish is one of the things we ordered, a special dish for the day, pulled pork on creamy grits. We can't wait to visit again for dinner.
We had a wacky, but fun, DC experience. Our friend Sue was inducted into the famed Gridiron Club, a fraternal organization for DC journalists. The annual induction banquet is a major event, with tons of DC politicos, including the president, and a host of media folks. Gridiron members (i.e., the media) put on a show (think political-themed skits, musical numbers).
We attended the Sunday repeat performance for friends and family. What you see in the photo above is a large wall piece displaying the Gridiron symbol on a field of roses.
More than a year ago, Zach's sister and her husband gave us a wonderful gift: a gift certificate to Culinaerie, a DC-based cooking school. We had been delinquent in scheduling a class, and every time we tried, we were too late on what was available and of interest to us.
We finally committed to a class a couple months ago, and somewhat randomly chose one called "Fishing Hawaiian Style." The class featured four fish preparations -- and we were completely blown away by all of them. The one pictured above is a Miso Glazed Mahi Mahi with a Macadamia Nut & Sake Cream Sauce. It was a really wonderful experience and we plan to share some of these recipes with you soon.
At the risk of bragging, we really liked this photo we snapped at the beginning of one of our big snow storms this year.
At the end of last year, Zach's parents relocated from his Tennessee hometown (about 60 miles from Nashville) into downtown Nashville itself. They're enjoying retirement and taking advantage of everything the city has to offer.
We visited them for the first time in February. Here are a few of the highlights.
We had an amazing -- amazing -- brunch at Pinewood Social, a huge, beautiful restaurant with a bowling alley inside. All the food we ordered was great, but get a load of this:
That, friends, is a waffle with PEANUT BUTTER MOUSSE, bacon and bananas. Be still our hearts (literally?). We also ate at -- and loved -- Lockeland Table, where we had dinner one night. We're eager to visit Nashville again soon.
Let's end with one more baked good. This one is from San Francisco (another Clay work trip -- we swear we've spent some time at home over the last few months! Although we didn't even mention Tulum...).
On his last day on the West Coast, Clay bullied our friend Andrew into meeting him early for breakfast at Tartine Bakery. The highlight was the Morning Bun. It's hard to explain just how good these Morning Buns are. They're both crispy and soft at the same time. It may be our all-time favorite baked good. If you're feeling ambitious, you can try to make them at home. If you do, report back, pronto.
That's a bit about life and food over the past few months. Let's hope spring is equally delicious.
While we're waiting on those warmer temps to finally settle in, follow along with us on Instagram.
