Brown Sugar Rocks...Literally (01.12.2008)

As I said in my last post, Kevin and I spent the weekend up in Middletown, NJ with my friend Mara. We ate a lot of great food and watched exciting football. Since my Redskins are out of it - and I live in Baltimore - I have adopted the Ravens as my playoff team. It was fun to cheer them on to a victory.

Around lunchtime, we tried some amazing pizza from Luigi's (I think this is the place). We forgot the camera, but it was the exact type of pizza I love. Thin, chewy crust, light, sweeter sauce, and good quality cheese.

Later on, we headed to Asbury Park to watch the 4pm game at the Brickwall Tavern. This was a cool place with a good atmosphere. I guess this area is in the process of being revitalized since it used to be a pretty sketchy area of town, but the main street area where we were was cute.

I loved the menus because they were made out of clip board material.

Front: (As you can see, the prices were extremely reasonable.)

Back:Kevin and I started with sweet potato fries. They gave us a ton and I ate too many. They were just really good and fries are my ultimate weakness.

I decided on the shrimp and grits for my meal and after I ordered, the waitress told me it was the best thing on their menu. SCORE.

The shrimp were a good size and had a tasty Cajun flavor/sauce. As you can see, there were about 3 thousand pounds of grits on my plate. They were outstanding, but maybe a little too rich with butter and cheese, so I got no where near finishing them.

Sunday morning, we headed to a local diner for breakfast before hitting the road. I started with coffee.

I've decided that I really like the white diner mugs because the rim of the cup is thicker and rounded. I guess that is sort of weird, but I want to find coffee cups like that.

I decided to get oatmeal! I have never ordered oatmeal out - like ever. But I wasn't in the mood for an egg or pancake type breakfast, so I went for it.

I ordered it with bananas, raisins, and brown sugar. (I asked for peanut butter before the brown sugar, but they said they didn't have it.)

As you can see by the picture - the bananas are mostly hidden by the large amount of raisins. The waitress apologized for the brown sugar rocks by saying that they haven't learned how to keep it fresh in the kitchen.

Now, that probably should have worried me about everything coming out of the kitchen, but I still ate it. The oatmeal was just OK. Kind of goopy consistency and I missed having nut butter. I should have asked for some sort of nut on top.

We made it home in record time. Everyone else in the NY/NJ/PA region was watching a very important football game, so it was a good time to head out.

After getting settled at home, I headed to the gym for an hour on the elliptical while catching up with the Real Housewives of OC, then about 25 mins of lifting. It felt good to work off some of the weekend's food and alcohol.

Last night, Kevin made a ridiculously good pasta dish that I will post the recipe for later tonight. I am talking "licking the bowl" good. And I am officially addicted to 24. So much so that I didn't watch the golden globes!!