travel

Yes, this has been delayed a bit, but hey, at least it’s done now.

JenTastic and I set out on the long drive from Chicago to North Carolina on a Tuesday morning.  It was a bright, happy morning and we were armed with coffee, grapes, potato chips and french onion dip (safely ensconced in an iced baggie) as well as other random car snacks.  We had plans to drive about halfway and then stop for the night.  No specific plans about where to stop, just whenever we felt tired enough.

As you will soon find out, that is not always the smartest strategy!

Our first cool sighting was the wind turbine farm we saw along I65.  These things are HUGE.  They don’t look that big, but when you get up close and personal, they are gigantic.  I hear there’s lots of controversy about strobe light effects on the people who live nearby, as well as the dangers to the birds flying through the area.

Still cool to look at, though!

Ooh hey look we’re in Kentucky!  Drive faster!  I can say this, as someone who lived in Kentucky for a few years.  I went to a grade school where you got extra credit for wearing shoes.

This was in 1980.

True story.

Need I say more?  Hunk-a-pizza?

At one point, the car started making a really loud grinding noise every time Jen hit the brakes.  Since we were at least 8 hours from our destination, this was cause for concern.    In the end, it turned out to be something easily fixable (though not until we arrived in NC.)

We were never in danger of crashing into a ravine.

No, Jen really, we were safe the whole time.  Promise!

Then there was the time we stopped at a doozy of a place to fill the tank.  I had to use the bathroom (remember I have major public bathroom issues).  One, teeny tiny problem. This wasn’t a gas station. It was a service shop with a few gas pumps, a garage and a greasy spoon dinette/shop/place.  The bathroom was inside the restaurant (and believe me when I say I’m being polite calling it that). Throwing caution to the wind, I left all my stuff in the car and ran into the building. I had to ask the short order cook, who was flipping over eggs and hash browns to direct me to the bathroom.

It was about 1 1/2 feet from a table where people were eating.  Ew, that’s a little gross, but beggars can’t be choosers.  I went in and closed the door quickly realizing the light was not working.  It was literally pitch black in this tiny room.  I panicked.  I opened the door to let enough light in about three times so I could see where everything was. Let me be clear here, I’m not scared of the dark, but I have an irrational fear of tiny, public bathrooms with no lights.  I was so mad that I didn’t even have my phone to use as a light source.  Needless to say, it was the quickest bathroom trip ever.

Back to happier things…along the way, there were sightings of beautiful scenery

and, um, some not so beautiful scenery. As if Piggy Bank Pawn isn’t bad enough, they are in a town called Locust.  I’m sure that’s a lovely place, but I prefer not to stop anywhere named after bugs.

At the end of Day 1, we stopped in a little town in Tennesse.  This was the bad part of the “no planned route” trip.  This hotel, while it was clean, safe and full of friendly people on motorcycles, was out in the middle of NO WHERE.  We asked about a restaurant and we were told that the mini-mart at the gas station had a great food selection.  For real.

Someone also had a fascination with statues because the property, outside and inside, was filled with them.  Here is a sample of the greatest.

Zeus

Then Genghis Khan

I’m not sure why the eagle is eating JenTastic’s foot, but it looks painful to me.

No idea what’s happening here. When she gets this like, I just nod and smile.  That happened a lot on this trip.

I thought this was creepy until we saw what was next to him….

A strange hungover, sleep deprived Mr. Lincoln.  He looks like he could use some coffee.  And shampoo.

Here’s the lovely eagle again, without Jen’s foot in it’s mouth.

I don’t know what’s weirder here…you decide.

After we had a good night’s sleep, a decent breakfast and stocked up on coffee, we were ready to hit the road for day 2.  JenTastic commandeered the camera and took these shots.

A few hours into our drive, I did a spot check with Roberta (the navigator) to see what interesting things were around us.  Hey, we were 2.9 miles away from Gran Nanny’s Goat Milk.  Too bad it was in the opposite direction, that just might have been fascinating.

Ok, this is not scary or dangerous at all.

Really, Mr. Truck, you’re doing a great job with that dental floss holding back the tree trunks from flying into our car and crushing us like ants, and those tiny orange flags, yeah, those are really obvious.

Finally, we arrived at our destination, lugged our stuff into the house and quickly collapsed for the night.

I did get acquainted with Chick-fil-A on this trip. Boy, they have delicious lemonade.

I also discovered the Food Lion grocery store chain, where I saw this very exciting ad, especially for someone like me with an eyeball fascination.

Another Food Lion gem (reminiscent of the potted meat product Kim gave me for my 20th birthday, along with a hot pink toilet plunger)

We went to a local place for lunch and the food was absolutely terrific.  We shared a cheesy seafood dip with pita chips (delish!)

as well as a burger with brie, carmelized onions and arugala and the best sweet potato fries I’ve ever had. They tasted like candy, so sweet.

Look at that burger!

The only weird thing…look at the ads on the glasses?  Strange, no?

You’ve already seen the tour of the house and our trips to PikNPig but I’m strictly forbidden to discuss anything else that happened on this trip.

Not even the batch of raw cookie dough that was never baked, but mysteriously disappeared from the fridge

or the entire morning we spent laughing hysterically over Photo Bombs and Passive Aggressive Notes and didn’t get anything productive done

or the mysterious techniques we resorted to when building Rick’s desk

or the gem of a movie Jen dragged me to starring her movie star boyfriend that left us both stunned and in shock

or the “giving of the eyeball” at WalMart and the slippery shoes that almost caused my death or at the very least, serious maiming

or how I was tortured with Ke$ha for ten days and Jen was tortured with Celtics/Lakers games

or the countless times Roberta yelled “RECALCULATING” at us while we drove around

or when I had to restrain JenTastic from taking out a neglectful grandma in Barnes and Noble

or how many cups of coffee we actually drank

or the way JenTastic’s van kept giving me a concussion

or the number of times JenTastic called someone an assclown

or “The Great Eating Dessert in the Car” caper

My lips are zipped.

Nope.

Not saying a word.

We discovered a hidden gem in Carthage, NC.  Ok, maybe it’s not hidden and we didn’t technically discover it.  How about I just get to the food?

PikNPig is a bbq place specializing in pork.  Pulled pork and ribs and some chicken.  I’m all about the pulled pork so I was very happy.

This place is situated next to a small airstrip. You can sit outside and watch planes landing and taking off while you are shoveling down the food.

Pics of the smokehouse

I freely admit I don’t know a lot about BBQ, except that I like it. A lot.  I live near Chicago, which is not known as a BBQ hotspot, so I eat as much as I can when I’m traveling and it’s available.

This was the best pulled pork I’ve ever had.  The meat was tender, flavorful (really, does anything taste better than pork? I didn’t think so) and it just fell apart on the plate.  It tasted great even without sauce, but of course I used some.  They had a honey bbq and a spicy bbq sauce. I don’t like really spicy food, but I found the honey and the spicy together were a winning combination.

Oh that big jug in the middle is famous southern sweet tea.  It was delicious and not overly sweet, just enough.

Take home sauces.  Honey Butt Sauce and Spicy Butt Sauce.  Really, I’m not making this up.

Ok ok, on to the food.  I ordered the pulled pork combo for $6.95 and it came with cole slaw, hush puppies with jalapeno butter, and a sweet potato.  Um delicious! So delicious I took two photos!

Let me take a moment to tell you that the hush puppies were not at all like the grease balls you get at Long John Silvers (if you dare.)  These were little nuggets of dough, fried and chewy.  Tasty.

Look, it’s almost all gone. This was the kind of meal that after you’re done, you don’t want to eat or drink anything for a long time because the flavors linger on your tongue.

Now for desserts! 

JenTastic ordered this delicious concoction of yellow cake, pudding, crushed pineapple, whipped cream and coconut. They call it “Better Than Sex Cake’.  You’ll have to ask her if it lived up to it’s name.

I tried the Coco-Cola cake, also called Co Cola cake.  It looks dry, but it was really moist. I think they use a special kind of cocoa powder.  The frosting was really tasty, too!

Can you tell I liked it?

Our meal was very reasonably priced and the food was incredibly good.  The restaurant itself is small and a little cramped. It was a former post office filled with a lot of the original furniture.  All sorts of cool stuff.  The waitresses were friendly and it really looked like a neighborhood place.  They told us they get a lot of people flying in for take out and heading back out to their planes.  Must be nice.

I’d recommend PikNPig for anyone near Fort Bragg, NC. It’s worth the drive.

We had talked about renting a car while in San Francisco and either driving north to Sonoma/Napa or south to Carmel. We got loads of advice from many people about which place we should head. In the end, the decision was very, very easy. I found out through mom (thank you for being alert, Mom!) that Tyler Florence’s kitchen store was close to SF and kind of on the way to Sonoma and Napa Valley. Ok, decision was made! We were going north.  Did I mention that Tyler is my favorite Food Network chef?  Well, he is.

I’ve been following Tyler on Twitter, even taking (well, monitoring) his Twitter cooking class, so I knew he was in the area while we were. It was the night before we were heading out to Mill Valley when he posted that he was leaving for NY to do the Today Show when my world came crashing down. Tyler wasn’t going to be in the same town as me. I swallowed my disappointment and we decided to go anyway.

I was a little nervous about driving in San Francisco, especially after experiencing life in a cab, cable car and bus.  The hills! the people!  the cable cars! the other drivers!  were all very frightening, mostly because of roads like this one:  The Crookedest Street.

I like driving best when I’m familiar with where I’m going as well as the roads.  Lucky for me, Jose is a very good navigator.  He got me through downtown Manhattan and across the Brooklyn Bridge safely last year (we did take a very unexpected detour through Newark….though it was not his fault. There was a lot of construction and exits that just popped up out of nowhere)

In addition to driving to Sonoma and Napa, which in itself is very amusing as neither of us drinks wine, we had planned on going to another Food Network chef’s (Michael Chiarello) restaurant, Bottega.  The reviews on yelp.com are filled with people raving about the food.  We were intrigued and decided to go.

We picked up the car and quickly made it out of the city. It was much easier than I anticipated, and Jose did a great job of keeping me away from cable car lines, buses and pedestrians.  We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, which was pretty cool.  I love the color of the bridge and the fog gives it a nice, dreamy quality. There were quite a few people walking or biking across.

We drove to Mill Valley to Tyler Florence’s store . Mill Valley is cute, quaint town!  The store is nice, pretty typical kitchen store, but there is a reading room filled with comfortable seating and hundreds of cookbooks.

I’m not sure about the wild boar stuffed head over the couch; it doesn’t quite scream “Sit down and read a cookbook to plan a meal” to me.  What do you think?

Jose read on yelp that this store has the nicest bathrooms in the city, so of course I had to check them out.  My verdict: A+ Tyler….nice toilets!

I knew via Tyler’s twitter feed that someone stole one of the giant forks off the front of the store.  Literally, ripped it down. How does someone steal a five foot, fifty pound fork?  That reminds me of a time in high school when my friends and I would do our own version of TPing houses.  We would use plastic utensils and paper plates and we would stick them in people’s yards like place settings.  Much easier clean up than toilet paper hanging from trees. I wish I had a photo.

Here you can see the missing fork! I think this story is worth Googling just to see the funny headlines.  (search for Tyler Florence fork)

After we left that store we went to the little grocery store across the street to get some drinks and snacks for the car.  I bought the best Rainier cherries I’ve had a long time.  They were so tasty and fruity. Yum.

We continued on our trek to Sonoma and Napa and the drive was really lovely.  There were areas of really dry land, and then tons of vineyards.  Jose took a lot of photos out of the window because I was driving and couldn’t really check out the scenery.

One of the things we passed on the road was Marie Callender’s (yes, the frozen food lady) restaurant and bakery.  Who knew?

Our lunchtime destination was Yountville, home of Michael Chiarello’s restaurant Bottega.  I was pretty excited about eating here, especially since I heard that he was on site at the restaurant often.  If I wasn’t going to see Tyler today, I was at least going to see another Food Network chef.  (I like his show too…but I’m not up to that level of entertaining; I think I would if I had the space and the money to throw dinner parties like that!)

We stopped in at Michael’s NapaStyle store that’s in the same complex as the restauant and browsed around. It was very nice…lots of things to look at.  My favorite was the collection of salts.  If you watch his show, you know that the man is fascinated by salt (I was soon to find out exactly how much) and he sells about 12 kinds of salt in this store.  There was a table set up for you to taste the different kinds.  Something must be wrong with my taste buds, because even though they all looked different…they all tasted like…SALT to me.  Everyday, regular, normal salt.  Oh well.

We finally went in to eat (soo hungry by this time) and the hostess’ desk was this really interesting orangey glowing thing with wire mesh around it.  I kept looking at it and finally realized it was made out of…wait for it.  SALT crystals.  I told you the man is obsessed with salt.

We sat outside on a patio with a fireplace, lovely seating and a nice orange awning.  Our food photos look completely discolored because of this awning…so don’t think it’s your eyeballs.

It was really hot outside, but once in a while we were hit with a nice breeze.  The only negative thing that happened here (and it’s completely normal for outside eating, I think) is that since we were eating outside there were a lot of flies.  If you hear Jose tell it, there were a million of them on his arm and buzzing around the food.  In reality, there were 3 annoying ones.  Eventually they left us alone.  I kept my eyes peeled for a Michael sighting. Nothing. and then…a few minutes after we got our menus, I look up and here comes Michael!! bringing a plate of food to the table next to us.  I was just about to grab Jose’s arm to show him when our waiter showed up to take our order.  Rats!!  By the time we were done ordering, he was gone!

Before we ordered, our nice waiter brought us some bread with this garlicky, cheesy, olive oil dip.  It was literally chunks of garlic and parmigiano-reggiano cheese.  Delish!

We decided to have three appetizers.  The first was fried calamari with aioli nero, which is like a homemade mayo with garlic, and squid ink.  Now, I managed to avoid eating anything made with squid ink in Italy (where it’s all the rage in pasta), but I was determined to try it.  (it’s mixed with garlic and mayo..how bad could it be?)  It was not bad, I couldn’t even taste the ink.  It was just garlicky to me.  It did however turn your mouth black while you were eating.  It’s not always the most appetizing thing to see your dining companion with a mouth like a rotting zombie.  A few swigs of water and all is normal again.  The calamari was the best we’d had in San Francisco (and we ate it a lot).  I’ve upset a few of my readers by waxing poetic about the crispy tentacles, so I won’t do it again (but they were crispy!  and tasty!)

Then we ordered a warm goat cheese, frisee salad with dried, sour cherries. Ohh, this was one of the tastiest salads I’ve ever had. Jose isn’t really a salad guy (vegetables in general are a stretch) and even he thought it was delicious. (Still no more Michael sightings)

We also ordered this polenta dish that everyone on yelp raved about. It is called Polenta Under Glass, and it comes in this cute little jar with a lid.  The polenta is soft, with lots of melted cheese in the mix, and caramelized mushrooms and crispy onions on top. It comes with a little pitcher of warm balsamic vinegar sauce that you pour on top to your liking.  It was to die for.  Amazing texture, flavor, everything worked together.  We were fighting over who got to scrape the last bits out of the dish.  I could have eaten another one of those!  Here’s a nice review of the restaurant with a paragraph devoted to this dish. (No Michael)

I also had the ricotta gnocchi, which was good, but nothing exceptional.

Jose had the skirt steak with truffle SALT french fries.  The steak was so tender, it was amazing.  I have no idea how you can cook skirt steak like that. It was served with a red pepper sauce that was very tasty.

We were celebrating Jose’s birthday a little late and ordered two desserts. Both were very, good. One was a hazelnut cake with a warm chocolate center…very good.
The other was a caramel filled brownie like pastry, which was very, delicious.

Right about this time, we see a guy with a giantic camera walking around with a well dressed lady.  They were looking at tables and moving plates around and talking to diners.  Suddenly, here comes Michael with a bottle of wine and some wineglasses.  The photographer was doing a photo shoot for a winery.  The photographer was about 4 feet away from me, facing my same direction, which means, yes Michael was facing me.  While this gave me a great view, I couldn’t just whip out my camera and start taking photos.  Even if I wanted too.  Badly.  So here I am, mere feet away from a Food Network star and I can’t use my camera.  So I just watched the excitement for a while and then it was over.

When it was time to leave, I had to check out the bathroom (of course).  You know, for someone as anti-public toilets as me, I spend a lot of time photographing them.  This one was beautiful too (nicer than Tyler’s, but you didn’t hear me say that).

I leave the bathroom and walk past the salt lick…aka the Hostess Booth, and there he is!! standing there talking to the hostesss!!  I walked right past him.  We made eye contact, but he kept talking to the hostess.  Jose was still checking out the men’s room, so I sat down on a chair (close, but not TOO close) and waited.  Finally, he turned around and started walking past me.  We made eye contact AGAIN! and this time I said “hello” and he said, “Hello.  Good to see you”.  And he walked out the door.  Jose emerges from the bathroom while I’m hyperventilating and says “What happened?”  Typical.  And that my friends, is the story of my encounter with a celebrity chef.

We drove back to San Francisco, turned in the car and that was the end of our eventful day.  We drove 124 miles, round trip over a huge bridge (twice) to visit two kitchen stores, two celebrity chefs, eat a delicious meal and check out two nicely decorated bathrooms. Just a regular, normal day on vacation for us.