North Carolina Weekend + Some West Virginia Food

We headed down to North Carolina for the L O N G Memorial Day weekend. Mom and Dad picked me up from school on Thursday and we headed to Fayetteville, WV, one of “the coolest small towns in America.” Fayetteville is almost the half way point between Pittsburgh and Cary, NC where my Tita (my name for Auntie) and cousins live, and we stopped there for the night and to have dinner at our favorite Pies and Pints. It is our favorite stopping point because the pizza is soooooo good, Mom and Dad like the beer selection, and the service is always great. I had a small pepperoni pizza and Mom and Dad had the Thai Pie. We sat on the patio for the first time and then almost as soon as we got there, we had to close the plastic curtains on the patio because a thunderstorm came up; the storm left a DOUBLE rainbow!

We headed to Cary the next morning and arrived in a thunderstorm - we didn’t bring it with us, I swear! I got to meet my new cousin Amelia - she is soooooo CUTE! - and I spent the weekend playing with my cousin Pilar, who is 5 ½ years old. We had yummy extra chocolate cake and lasagna at grandma’s on Friday night (she lives in Cary too).

Amelia, my youngest cousin

On Saturday, Mom made her famous coffee cake for breakfast and then we helped open the neighborhood pool for the summer season by swimming and eating their free hot dogs in the sunshine. That night, Grandma babysat while the adults went out to explore Raleigh's brewpubs. On Sunday we headed to Chapel Hill for a picnic at GranTita and John’s house where I got to see my Greatgrandma Nonny. I played an awesome game of badminton and played with Pilar in GranTita’s beautiful garden. I especially liked the shredded BBQ chicken and the homemade vanilla ice cream with brownies. GranTita and I played the piano for everyone.

Pilar and me at the pool

Back at Tita’s house, the girl’s looked through Papa’s treasure box for the first time - it is a cigar box that he had high up on a shelf in his garage that is filled with arrowheads, handmade buttons, old pennies, and little pieces of paper (a receipt, a ticket stub to the Texas Theatre, a tag that says “made in Japan,” and another that says “Don’t Open Till Xmas”).

We left this morning to head back to Pittsburgh and stopped in Fayetteville again, this time to eat at Diogi’s Mexican Grill and Cantina, a dog loving and delicious Mexican restaurant with a Salvadoran flair. I had the chicken enchilada and it was DEEE-LISH, as Daddy would say, and it was the first time I had an enchilada! Oh yeah, the queso was really yummy too!

Now . . . I’ve been promising the triple roasted marshmallow technique and we’ve been waiting out the rain for the opportunity to make them again but since so much time has been passing, I want to be sure you have the recipe for your summer roasting pleasure. (Mom broke her camera lens this weekend, so no pictures until it is fixed.)

Here’s the technique:

• First, it is important to SLOWLY roast the marshmallow. Once it has browned nicely, carefully peel off the browned skin goodness of your marshmallow and eat the browned part - YUM.
• Second, slowly roast what remains on your stick some more until you get the roasted brown skin goodness again . . . carefully peel that off, eat it - YUM once again.
• Third, slowly roast what little remains of the marshmallow, and once it is roasted to perfection, eat the entire thing! YUM for the Third Time! Woohoo! Triple roasted marshmallow perfection, with a dose of patience.

Bon appetit!

Happy Mother's Day!

Daddy and I tricked out Mommy's bike for her for Mother's Day (no pictures yet because it is still in the shop), and I also traded my friend Nico a see-through moose squishie for this Buddha pencil eraser (not quite a squishie). For those of you who don't know, squishies are this year's silly bands. Nico was trading squishies and I happened to see the Buddha on his desk. Remembering that Sunday was Mother's Day, I tried to think of something good to trade knowing that I wanted the Buddha for my mom. So . . . I asked if he would trade my see-through moose for the Buddha and he said, "Okay." SCORE! And Mom LOVED IT!

I know I promised the triple roasted marshmallow recipe (and we may do it still tonight) but it has been raining like crazy in Pittsburgh (the past TWO months) and we haven't had a chance to try since our treehouse camping weekend. Here are my latest clay creations though, I've been really into making clay miniatures for my dolls. These I just wanted to make anyway but also because Mr. Hare is reading Alice in Wonderland to us in class and I've been thinking of the little cakes that Alice eats to get big and also to get small. So here's my version of her cakes - I just gave the carrot cake to our neighbor Benita because she liked it.

This is Daddy's set up for Mother's Day dinner - one of Momma's favorite treats, Sake Steak that they first read about in Saveur Magazine many years ago (before I was born). Daddy's trying it a bit differently today by briefly smoking the filet mingnon steaks with sage and hay from our garden. Next he dredges the steaks in kosher salt, cooks them on the grill for two minutes each side. He washes the salt off by bathing the steaks in sake, cooks them for two minutes each side again. Then he bathes them in a soy sauce bath and cooks them three minutes more on each side. The steaks caramelize on the outside because of the sugar in the sake and the soy sauce, and inside they are de-lec-ta-ble!

Happy Mother's Day Mom! And all other Moms out there. Triple roasted marshmallows to come - pinky swear!