Colonnade, Columbus, Crabs

This past week must have been busy, because we completely forgot to blog!   Either that, or nothing interesting happened.  However, this past weekend has given us lots to share. 

Friday night we were invited to the Colonnade by out friends Carl and Cayenne (pictured).  You may remember our dinner at Mary Mac's Tea Room.  The Colonnade is the less fancy answer to Mary Mac's old-time styling.  They have similar menus (heavy on the fried) and abundant sides, but the Colonnade's sides are slightly stranger, and that's a good thing.

For example, our table mate Thomas ordered the pear salad.  

This is the pear salad.  2 pear halves from a can, a sprinkling of shredded cheddar cheese from a bag, and a generous (to put it lightly) serving of mayonnaise (Duke's?) on the side.  

The strangest part of it all: in combination, this salad actually wasn't that bad!

Cayenne ordered one of the special sides: a bing cherry jello-salad (also with a large dolop of mayo).  You can't make it out in the picture, but inside the jello is one whole cherry (its on the left).  We forgot to ask what this was like, but after being pleasantly surprised by the pear salad, I'd wager this humble dish offers a complexity that belies its appearance.  

Here's the fried chicken.  Perfectly breaded and cooked, though I prefer my fried chicken with more seasoning.  

The real winner for Alex and I was the fried chicken liver appetizer.  We enjoyed Farm Burger's chicken livers, but the breading overwhelmed the livers.  The Colonnade had a perfect breading to liver ratio and some interesting sauces on the side that enhanced the liver flavor.  Colonnade, we will be back!

The next day, we drove to Columbus, GA to celebrate my dear friend Wild's birthday.  Wild's is one of my oldest college friends, and I was thrilled to finally see his hometown.

Columbus, for the record, is wonderful.  Alex and I were pleasantly surprised with the beauty of this town of about 200,000 people. 

We had a great time touring the town and making new friends.  Thanks Wilds!


Last but not least: the crabs.

The weather has just turned in Atlanta.  Its a glorious 70 degrees all day every day, so to celebrate Alex and I had an end of summer crab boil!

Goodbye September!

All American Weekend

Class has begun and I've been busy studying Austrians like the logician Kurt Godel...

German phenomenologist Martin Heidegger...

And Carthaginian theologian Augustine...

So its hard to remember that we're still living in America. So this past weekend we had a heavy dose of Americana. In a previous post we blogged about the waffle house museum. This past weekend it was finally open. Not only that but the founders were there to sign autographs!

They had displays of some wonderful merchandise over the decades. Such as a share holders bow tie and more buttons than you can shake a waffle at.

We even got to hang out at the counter of the original diner, and of course get our picture taken in a cardboard cut-out-thingy.

Take that continental philosophers! Waffles in the house!

Back to Beef (Farm Burger 410b W. Ponce De Leon, Decatur)

Lilly and I had a very blog-worthy meal today. Easily our best burger experience in years. If not our only burger experience in years. Lilly has been off beef for several years and I've been off industrial agriculture for about as long. However the promise of organic grass-fed beef at Farm Burger (a recently opened joint not far from our house) convinced us to give cow another try. It was worth the wait.

I got a burger with white cheddar, smoked bacon, and caramelized onions.

Lilly got it with an heirloom tomato, feta, and pesto.

We split an order of delicious fried chicken livers.

And finished off the meal with a twinkie (these twinkies are made daily at a bakery down the block).

These burgers were great. They hit all our fatty, salty, and savory buttons all at once. It's good to be back amongst beef eaters. Just look at this happy carnivore.

Labor Day Pickles!

top down, left to right: red onion slivers, dill pickle, asparagus, spicy cucumber, okra 1, okra 2, radish wedges, bread & butter.

Happy Labor Day!

Preserved Americana

On an incongruous corner of Dekalb, GA sits a piece of Americana that stands as a tribute to one of the South's greatest treasures.

I give you...

Waffle House: The Museum!

(text: WAFFLE HOUSE.  GOOD FOOD FAST.        MUSEUM)

This is the recreation of the original Waffle House restaurant, on its original site.  It first opened on Labor Day weekend, making this month the 55th anniversary!  Wikipedia has a detailed backstory, but the short of it is the original restaurant was repurchased in 2007 to create this "museum".  

The interior has been lovingly restored and decorated with a (plastic) sampling of the original wares.  

We couldn't get inside to get a good picture, but its pretty awesome.  The museum is mostly closed, or used for private corporate events, but in ONE WEEK on Saturday, September 11, the Waffle House Museum will be OPEN from noon until 3pm!  If anyone's interested, we'll be there at 11:30 am sharp!

Waffle House Museum

2719 East College Avenue
Decatur, Georgia 30030

Have a great Labor Day Weekend!  (GO HEELS!)  

What we've been eating...

We realized we couldn't just post about a wonderful market without sharing some of the things we've been making with all that bounty!

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of everything so for some meals recipes will have to do.

Pork sausages, radish & grapefruit salad, brussel sprouts sautéed with onions and sun-dried tomatoes.

Zuni chicken!  Zuni Cafe is a restaurant in San Francisco that we actually haven't been to (unfortunately for us, it is closed on Mondays so we missed it last time we were in the Bay).  However, this roasted chicken, served on a bread salad, was so good that we'll definitely be making a second attempt.

We got the recipe from my all-time favorite food blogger Smitten Kitchen, but the original can be found in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook

Memorable meals also made but not pictured:

Ina Garten's mustard-roasted fish (we made it with pink snapper instead of red... not sure what the difference would be) from The Barefood Contessa: Back to Basics, a gift from Alex's family-friend Iris, which we will definitely be coming back to again.  This meal was an easy crowd-pleaser.

Minnesota wild-rice soup, made with actual Minnesotan rice from Alex's Uncle Jeff and Aunt Jill (thank you both!)

An incredibly easy and tasty lamb and okra stew, served with couscous.

Herb-marinated pork tenderloin (another Ina Garten Back to Basics recipe).

Malted-milk ice cream from the amazing David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop (to all you early-xmas shoppers, for the chef in your life buy this book and a Cuisinart 1.5 Quart Ice Cream Maker and you and the giftee will forever be on good terms, not to mention in constant supply of ice cream!).

We also adapted a recipe from Time/Life, Foods of the World: The Cooking of India to make goat curry with  naan and okra on the side.  We received The Cooking of India, South America, and Asia from Alex's parents (thanks Gary and Heather!) and look forward to experimenting with the recipes.  Next on deck: red-cooked pork, steamed pork buns, and mole.  Ole!