smile! it’s saturday.

January 23, 2010

luscious
is the best word that i can come up with to describe my feelings about sleeping for about 10 hours last night! it’s unfortunate, but it seems that getting ~7 hours/night during the week is not enough, because clearly there was still some sleep debt that needed repaying. even though i’m usually a morning person, i loved getting up after the sun today.

AHHHHHHHH. good morning 🙂

i’m excited that it’s the weekend — with absolutely no possibility of being pulled to the PICU to ruin my fun. inspired by kath (what else is new?), i plan to spend this weekend as my own personal spa retreat. sure, there may be some studying and cleaning (and even laundry) performed at this spa (it’s an intellectual, rustic sort of place), but still. having a spa-like mindset is more important than all the trappings, right?

[image]

or at least i’m telling myself that.

evening entertainment
we had such a fun time last night catching up with k, who i’ve known since elementary school and recently moved back to the area (she is a UNC grad). we shared bits of havertown gossip (limited, since neither of us really are on the pulse of what goes on there anymore . . .) and enjoyed some contemporary mexican at jibarra in downtown raleigh.

image from the website
i had wanted to try jibarra for such a long time after reading numerous exuberantly positive reviews in the raleigh news and observer. as it turns out, i apparently waited SO long that the restaurant had moved and morphed into a more casual (and perhaps less exceptional) version of itself in the interim.

i just figured that out this morning, when i found this review. ahh! this explains why it wasn’t as super-crowded and haute cuisine as i had been expecting. still, i think we all enjoyed ourselves. here’s a little photo-overview (in which i take ugly pictures using the flash because it was SO dark in there!) . . .

we started with a round of drinks — i chose a glass of albariño because i was not really in a sweet-drink kind of mood, and k opted for a cucumber margarita! it was pretty, but she felt it was a bit overwhelmingly cucumber-y. josh drank a mild spanish version of merlot, which i think he liked. it’s a rare occasion these days that he chooses wine over beer! interesting.

that’s tuna . . . not raw bacon. promise!
to go with our drinks, we ordered tuna and white bean ceviche and fresh guacamole & chips. these appetizers were my favorite parts of the meal! the tuna tasted fresh but pleasantly salty (admittedly: i love salt), and it was very plentiful even though it was just a small plate selection. the guac was fresh and came with some mild and tasty cheese embedded — a nice touch.


our waiter surprised us with a little complementary taste from the kitchen between courses — teeny, tiny little gorditas! they were super, super cute (i tried to convey this using a fork for scale, but . . . i realize all of these pictures are pretty terrible). this little bite was tasty but not all that exciting.


our main courses then arrived! k had ordered off of the taqueria menu — beef fajitas of some sort, which arrived looking colorful and fresh.

i chose the pork entree, which may or may not have been a mistake. this looks like a huge pile of meat, but looks are deceiving: maybe 25% of this was actual lean meat, 40% was bone, and the rest was just fried FAT! i’m not referring to fat-streaked meat, but just . . . fat. yuck.

menu descriptor: chilorio de chamorro, or pork osso bucco marinated sinaloa style and then braised. served with sautéed tomato salad, yucca and caramelized onions
i avoided the fatty pieces as best i could, but it was a difficult task under the dim lighting. josh helped eat some of this, but i was sad that the cut was so fatty, because the actual pieces of meat were quite succulent and delicious. i did enjoy the yucca and fresh tomatoes that accompanied the pork, although they were tainted by cilantro (ughgh) that had not been mentioned in the description. i ate around the scary green flecks.

god, i sound SO picky in the above paragraph, and i’m not usually that kind of restaurant eater! and honestly, there were enough high points that i’d still go back to jibarra and try something else next time. luckily, while my entree was imperfect, the company was tons of fun, making for a great evening. we arrived home and i passed out within seconds.

tonight
will be catered by moi at our house! josh and i haven’t hosted a dinner party in forever, so i’m pretty excited. this will be a casual affair, but i still want everything to be nice, relaxing and delicious.

tentative menu:
■ wine / crackers + hummus & local ricotta

■ mark bittman’s roasted sea scallops

the front burner‘s sweet potato and carrot curried lentils

■ spinach salad with apricots & hazelnuts

■ dessert? tbd . . . any suggestions for something simple and fairly light?

ask anything
finally, i thought it would be fun to take this idea from heather and see if any of you had any burning questions for me that you were afraid to ask! all you need to do is

click this link

. . . and you will be taken to an anonymous form to submit whatever suits your fancy. assuming that i actually get any questions, i’ll compile them and answer them all to the best of my abilities (and level of comfort!) in a later post. go ahead! say it! i’ll never know it was you.

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1.22.10

workout: none, rest day

reading: 10 prep questions + explanations (30 minutes). i really do find the question/answer format so much more engaging and fun for studying purposes!

3 Comments

  • Reply Anonymous March 10, 2019 at 7:26 pm

    agreed that 7 hours isn&#39t enough. i need more like 9. and that never happens 🙁

    tonight sounds wonderful! wish i was in the area and could party crash haha!!

  • Reply Kath March 10, 2019 at 7:26 pm

    Happy Spa!

  • Reply Denise March 10, 2019 at 7:26 pm

    Wow – 10 hours of sleep! I vaguely remember what that feels like. It is strange to know that I will not be getting that much sleep for a long, long time. Enjoy that well-rested feeling!

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