I’m packing up to head back to Charlotte after a long weekend visiting my family. It’s been a great few days with lots of good eats so I thought I’d put together a recent eats post for ya while I enjoy one last oceanfront blogging session.
The highlight of my trip was a dinner out with my parents and my grandmother for my birthday. We went to Marina Cafe and my mom told me that they also took me there when I turned 5! She told me all about how she got me all dressed up and fancy for the dinner. 🙂
Perhaps the most laughs I had of the trip was on the drive to dinner playing SnapChat with my grandmother. This was her favorite filter. (Follow our antics @ jendecurtins.)
It made my heart so happy that she came out to dinner with us!!!
My mom and dad ordered a spinach and fried oyster salad to start and shared some with me. It also had blue cheese, applewood bacon and candied nuts. You can never go wrong with fried oysters!
I started with the pork belly appetizer. It was served over black rice and to die for!
For my entree I had local sauteed grouper with a ginger soy sauce, avocado crema, purple hull peas and cucumber salad.
Back at home, I started most days off with a smoothie bowl and topped it with my dad’s homemade granola.
One morning was fresh fruit and scrambled eggs (and a side of cake but more on that later).
And this morning we finally visited The Donut Hole. We got there at 8 a.m. hoping to beat the crowds but arrived to find a short wait AND they were out of apple fritters. AHHHH! I went with a sour cream cake donut instead and had scrambled eggs and bacon too.
Lunches were my favorite kind of beach lunch. A sandwich on my dad’s freshly baked bread.
And lots of watermelon!
One day I made a salad but quickly went back to sandwiches for the remaining days.
My dad had to work my first night here so I cooked dinner for my grandmother, mom and me. You can never go wrong with Ina Garten’s Perfect Roast Chicken.
I roasted the chicken on top of potatoes and onions and made a big batch of my braised red cabbage on the side.
On the evening of our dolphin cruise we went to a new French-Vietnamese restaurant after. We started with coconut curry mussels.
And I had this Co’m Tam dish that was a mix of fried egg, pickled veggies, shrimp and rice. They served it with a fish vinaigrette-sauce-ish thing on the side and it was different and good.
My favorite dinner of the whole trip was my dad’s peanut butter shrimp and grilled plantains. I’ll be sharing the recipe for both super soon! 🙂
I wish you could stick a fork through the screen and taste these plantains. They’re INCREDIBLE! I can’t wait to share the recipe!
And finally, my dad baked an old fashioned yellow cake with chocolate icing and I’ve been eating away at it for the last couple of days. A slice after breakfast? Sure. A mid-afternoon treat? Why not! 🙂 My mom helped with the frosting and accidentally used salted butter but I kind of liked the salted chocolate effect it gave it!
Off to enjoy my final bit of time with my fam and the beach. I’m sad to leave but I miss my fiance and my girls so I’m excited to see them tonight.
Have a great day friends!
What’s your favorite type of donut?
What’s your favorite food to eat on the beach?
