Co Op: Cousins Dine(r)

There are five of us. Cousins. We all grew up together, more like brothers and sisters, and all of us would agree that our fondest memories all revolve around our grandparents. We spent most afternoons in their yard together. We are now grownups, parents, husbands, wives, and spread out but we jump at any chance to be together. Today we got to have an impromptu lunch thanks to Grandpa. We met at Thumbs Up Diner in Roswell.

Of course, we were having so much fun that I forgot to take pictures of the food before it was all gone.

But I did get pictures of family. The cutest of all being twins James and David:

My grandfather paying the bill. We call him Santa Clause this time of year as his generosity bubbles over.

And my grandparents holding hands:

So pull up a stool and have a coke.
And don't forget to order the Chicken and Waffles! We give them two thumbs up!

Go Eat This: Artichoke Pakoras

Restaurant: Vermilion thevermilionrestaurant.com
City: Chicago
Chef: Maneet Chauhan


Artichoke Pakoras: Fried artichoke hearts with jalapenos and a curry dipping sauce laced with pomegranate reduction. So good we had to order another plate!

Imperial Fez

We don't have many options when it comes to Moroccan food in Atlanta. I have searched for it ever since I spent time abroad in France and loved tender lamb served with couscous and garbonzo beans found in many restaurants. The major place to find such a dish in the city is Imperial Fez. This is not just a restaurant but a total dining experience.
I first went to Imperial Fez for my 16th birthday and years later ventured back for my first and very favorite New Years Eve with my husband. It has been 10 years since then and we went back this weekend to see if much had changed. The place was packed. Not an empty seat, or in this case pillow on the floor, could be found.

After taking off our shoes and tucking them away on shelves inside the front door, we were led to our place on the floor where we lounged against giant pillows. After washing our hands over a beautiful sterling bowl with hot poured lemon water, we embarked on our tour of Morocco through our five course meal. We started with Harrira Moroccan Lentil soup served with honey toasted bread. We moved on to Moroccan Salads that contained roasted eggplant, spiced carrots and raisins, cucumber, beans, and much more. Then came my favorite part and the dish I still remember from being 16. It is a pastry wrapped around ground beef, raisins,nuts, and spices and finely dusted with powdered sugar. Delicious and perfectly savory and sweet. Around this time the lights dimmed and we watched as belly dancers filled the room, spinning and dancing. Finally we chose our entrees of Cornish Hen Tangine served with apricots, ginger, saffron, honey and almonds for my husband. I enjoyed the Lamb Tangine with 32 aromatic spices, onions, raisins, and almonds.

We had eaten way too much to partake of the final dessert course of Mint Tea and Fruit Pastries but our waitress gladly wrapped them up in a to go box for us to enjoy later.

Co Op: Imitating Proenza Schouler

I opened my email this week to find a message from Jacqueline entitled "Can we please have a craft day and make these". She directed me to the blog honestlywtf.com
She referred to their November 16th entry about the amazing Proenza Schouler necklaces from their Resort 2011 collection. Here is the inspiration:


These inventive girls gave step by step instructions on how to make our own versions of these colorful necklaces. So we set a date, shopped at Walmart, Lowes, and Hobby Lobby for our supplies and got to work.

Here are several photos of my necklace in various stages. All in all I was pretty happy with the outcome. It did take quite a bit longer than I anticipated. I am not a patient girl and tying friendship knots for a couple of hours was tough to take. But all in the name of fashion, right??



If you want to tackle these necklaces yourself, we did discover a couple of helpful tips. Do not buy thin thread for knotting. Get the mason line that the girls at honestly...wtf? suggest. We found thread we thought was pretty with gold flecks, and it did look great, but it added hours to our production time! Also, we most definitely think you need 2 yards of the thick twisted cord!

Here is Jacqueline working on her necklace. I especially like how she tried to summon Proenza Schouler awesomeness by covering her wrists in bracelets similar to the ones in their ad.

Her sister and my cousin, Jenny, joined us for the fun and three plus hours of crafting and here is her creation in the making.

Co Op: Loving Lanvin

We had been scanning the pages of magazines for hints, clues, details, and designs to give us any glimpses we could find of the new Lanvin collection for H&M making its debut in November. Lanvin's designs are usually way out of our price range but so from afar we have admired his liquid lines and feminine asthetic. When we heard of this remarkable partnership, we could not believe that Lanvin would go to such lengths as to suspend major collections to be shown at NY Fashion Week in order to design a line available to the masses at H&M stores nationwide.

The date was November 20 and marked in red bold letters on our calendar. Jacqueline traveled from Birmingham to meet me at the Atlantic Station store. The doors opened at 8am. I arrived at 7 thinking an hour in line would surely score me coveted merchandise. Little did I know, there would already be a line around the block and many die hards who slept there the night before. Luckily I received a wrist band and the third shopping time slot and most importantly, a free gift of a Lanvin navy scarf tucked into this adorable bag!

When the doors opened the first time slotted group ravaged the racks, grabbing their limit of two pieces of everything per customer. Those of us watching from the roped off sidelines, waiting for our time to shop, soon turned from excitement and awe to sadness and defeat. The racks were bare in seconds! An H&M employee assured us there would be restocking after each group and we took a deep breathe.

By the time my time slot arrived and I was granted my ten minutes of shopping time, I ran like a mad person and grabbed as many accessories as I could carry. Jacqueline, who had a later time slot, cheered from the sidelines "Be aggressive, Be aggressive." I was able to get the exact clutch that I'd been dreaming of since seeing it in the glossy pages of InStyle a month ago.

Unfortunately, the shoes were the first to go and never restocked after the first group, so Jacqueline was not able to walk away with the leopard print heels she was drooling over. But we did find several other things that made out hearts go pitter patter.

After an hour of madness, the racks were completely empty. The signs were gone. The windows were stripped. The mannequins in disarray. If you arrived at H&M past 9:15 am you would never have known the joys and sorrows, the purchases and losses, that Lanvin lovers had experienced just minutes before.

Hot Date

One of the first dates my husband and I had when we first moved to Birmingham was at Hot and Hot Fish Club...talk about setting the bar high!! We have been fortunate to return several times over the years and we have never been disappointed!

Chris and Idie Hastings of Hot and Hot are locally and nationally recognized for their attention to detail on every plate, creative use of fresh, seasonal and local ingredients and overall culinary imagination! At the forefront of the farm~to~table movement, you can taste their commitment to quality in every bite and sip!

We recently celebrated an Anniversary dinner there and our experience from start to finish was another example of flawless service, quality and flavor!

We started out the night with an cocktails...for me an award-winning cocktail..The Summer Jewel...muddled garden cucumber with Bombay Sapphire, fresh squeezed grapefruit, finished with sake and rimmed with sweet ground pink peppercorn and juniper...Ah-mazing! Refreshing yet spicy..perfection in a pink rimmed glass! The hubby had a Chilton County cocktail - you can see it in the background..local muddled peaches, Vodka, sparkling Muscato..yep..as delicious as it sounds! And if you are wondering about that bread in that basket - or those biscuits which you can slather with the most amazing butter you can imagine..soft, smooth, velvety, rich..well it was like...butta!












If you are like me then over the past few years you have been wondering where all the good tomatoes have gone...well I'll tell you where they went! They are in the Tomato Salad at Hot and Hot! They are famous for this dish and we were lucky enough to enjoy it on one of the last nights they served it this season (back in Sept) I could list off all the ingredients in this magic salad; several varieties of amazing local tomatoes, ridiculously good bacon, corn, local field peas, buttermilk-fried okra, and the list of deliciousness goes on and on.. None of these ingredients listed on a page could prepare you for the amazingness that is this salad! (Yep - that is a word and if you don't believe me you have never tried this salad!)











The quality of this next photo is a slap in the face to the perfection that was The Fig Tasting..let me pause here for a brief explanation of how I feel about figs: LOVE..TRUE LOVE! This was a love song to figs..and by that I mean Figs with Foie Gras, Figs with Country Ham, Figs with Mascarpone, Figs with Rosemary, Figs with Anchovy and Spicy Walnut..is that the most delicious group of ingredients you have ever heard? That is what I am talking about!! Let me admit that I was not good at sharing bites of this! And for my main course...the Pork Trio..BBQ Shoulder with Arepa Cake and Peach Mojo, Loin with Creamy Pea Salad, Sausage with Mushrooms and Butternut Squash..each bite was worthy of its own blog..real talk..delicious!

And we finished off this fab meal off with another award-winning dish..Hot and Hot Doughnuts: tonight's version featuring Apple Butter and Cinnamon Sugar, Pecan Pie and Chocolate Eclair..

Perfect finish!

Ok fine...confession time..we had TWO desserts! Look at that patience being demonstrated while i snap this picture! ;) Late Summer Verrine with Pear Mousse, Asian Pears, Muscadine Grape Gellee and Ginger Sorbet.. What else is there to say..I have just reached my maximum delicious ingredients per blog limit....

Great Food Truck

You may spot it driving down I-75 like I did this week, making its way to the city to deliver eats to the streets. Its an old boxy red truck with a giant lace doily on the side that says "Good Food Truck". Mostly it can be found at the Urban picnic that is usually located at Sweet Auburn Market. Sadly, the season of weekly events is coming to an end with colder temps approaching but keep tabs on their locations on their facebook page and you can be sure to score a Poodle. What is a Poodle???



Only the best hot dog you have ever tasted! Hands down this one wins. These people, George Long and Jessamine Starr Long, can cook! Their specialty is the perfect balance in every bite of every dish between spicy, savory, and sweet. The Poodle does just that. It is a hot dog served on a french toast bun with Apple Maple slaw and drizzled with spicy mustard and maple syrup. Their savory waffle cone treats are wonderful too, ranging in flavors from curry cones filled with butternut squash to thai cones with panang curry veggies and coconut rice. All menu items change daily and sometimes include pressed sandwiches and drunken brownies.



If you try any street food in Atlanta, make this your first stop. You will be hooked! The only improvement that could be made is that this truck could stand to be renamed "the GREAT food truck".

Outstanding in the Field

I am sitting at the end of a table of 150 guests, eating this salad made up of ingredients grown on these grounds. My salad has beets in it which I hate admitting I do not like. What food lover doesn't like beets?? I have never met another one. I am of the opinion that your tastes can change and mature and so I always, always try the beets hoping this is going to be the beet bite that makes me fall in love. Suddenly my phone vibrates in my pocket and it is a text from my cousin who adores beets. She has sent me a picture of the fig tasting she is enjoying at Hot Hot Fish Club in Birmingham so I must shoot back a picture of where I am sitting and what I am eating.

I am at Love is Love Farm in Douglasville, GA attending the Atlanta stop of Outstanding in the Field. If you do not know of and love these people, check out their website and you will be hooked. It is October and I have had my tickets since March and I am finally seated at this farm to table dinner that is more than worth the wait. This dinner is the brain child of Jim Denevan and the meal has been prepared on site by Chef Steven Satterfield of Miller Union.

Here are a few more pictures to whet your appetite to sign up for one of these dinners whenever their bus travels to your area! And just for the record, the beets were delicious.