weekend events (and grilled veggie marinade)

Last weekend was another busy weekend, and as per usual, too short. After having been away for two weekends in a row (Lancaster and then Deep Creek), I was excited to stick around town, clean my apartment (yes, I was excited to do this - and I'm still not done), get my haircut and see some old friends. Friday I stayed in, but Saturday involved a 'lil girls night with some big burgers. I brought a side of veggies to grille after a successful trip to the farmers market where I also got some herbs for the kitchen windowsill - a little bit of a makeshift potting situation - but it works:

Basil, Parsley and Lemon Thyme - yum.

I picked up red, yellow and green peppers, mushrooms, zucchini and eggplant and did a really simple and easy marinade that added great flavors to the veggies:

Grilled Veggie Marinade:

2/3 c olive oil
1/3 c balsamic vinegar
1 T chopped fresh basil
1 t minced garlic
1/2 t salt
1/4 t pepper

I chopped up my veggies in fairly large pieces and marinated them in fridge for about 4 hours in a plastic ziplock bag - then shish kebabed them up and threw them on the grill for abut 15 minutes. So fresh and tasty:

Bianca was our host and she cooked us up some delicious burgers and put together a creative and super fun spread of toppings to choose from:

She did an amazing job with all the selections - it was such a fun thing to do during our little reunion.

Looks pretty damn good! It was such a fun night and great to catch up with some old friends:

Sunday involved an afternoon Pirates game which was very fun. Turned out to be the longest game in PNC Park history - 16 innings! They lost - but we made the most of it:

The weekend was full of good times and good eats, so as I like to say: success!

xo. cheers. namaste,

MK

Burgatory and some #softballswag

Last softball game of the year for the NR team after a long season of...zero wins. It's okay though, like they always say - the more important thing is that you had fun:

To celebrate the season we headed to Burgatory, preeeeetty sure I've mentioned this place in a post before and I'll tell you what, preeeeetty sure these are the best damn burgers in Pittsburgh:

The one 'bad' thing about Burgatory, and the only hesitation I heard from the group about going there, was that there usually tends to be a wait. Not necessarily a bad thing for the restaurant, unless it does deter people from going. Since it was a Monday night, we decided we would wing it and even if there was a wait, it would be worth it for our end of softball celebration. It was packed, even on a Monday and we did have to wait, but we also did have a party of 8. They did, however, make it a SUPER easy wait by taking our phone number so that they would text you when your table is ready. They even text you when you first put your name in with an approximate wait time - AND they give you ten minutes to get back to the restaurant or close out at the bar once your table is ready:

Pretty sweet. I had the Elk Gone Wild burger which involved delicious and lean Elk burger, smoked Gouda, caramelized onions, bacon jam, roasted tomato vinaigrette and arugula. SOOOO good. If I ever come across another Elk burger and I am in a burger mood, I would definitely get again - or maybe I'll try to make my own ;-). You can also custom create your own burgers with a choice of endless toppings. 

So needless to say, it was quite the American night with softball, beers (Great Lakes Oktoberfest - fall beers are a comin') and burgers. Yum! #softballswag

cheers. xo.

MK

it's okay to start over

Slacker!

No, not slacker - just - sidetracked.

Summer is here, but passing quickly - a lot has happened and there is a lot to come. I figured this is a great time to restart the blog:

A lot has happened, but I'm just going to start fresh. I will share that over the past two weeks I have had a lot of good eats; I visited Il Pizzaiolo, Verde, Azul (where I had the best Bloody Mary of my life), Salt of the Earth and Tessaro's. 

Il Pizzaiolo:

Il Pizzaiolo was great. I was a little weary about the wine selection - I remember this same thought the time that I visited the Mt. Lebanon location - this time I was at the newer Market Square spot - which I found to be bigger and more comfortable than Lebo overall. The waitress chose the closest option to a Sauvignon Blanc - which is my favorite wine on a hot summer night - and I was happy with her choice. Though I hate being blind to wine.

My salad was phenom. I had the Insalata Romana with arugula, radicchio, frisee, tomatoes and anchovies (which were optional - but they MADE the salad) yum:

And, naturally, I ordered a pizza, for myself:

To be fair, their pizzas are thin crust wood-fired pizza - and I did take half home ;-)

I went with the Funghi - but it was hard for me to choose between that and the Prosciutto E Arugula pizza - I was very satisfied with my choice though.

Service was good, 'til the end - when I think our waitress forgot about us. We waited for our check a little longer than I think we should have, but overall, satisfied with the service and food.

Verde:

I had a similair experience at Verde as far as service goes. Started off great and then slowly faded off, we all could have gone for a second margarita, but weren't really given the chance - pretty sure this waitress just wanted to go home. That did not, however, make my experience a bad one.

I came in with the mind set of getting the Lavender Margarita that everyone was telling me about when they talked about Verde and their delicious craft margaritas, but much to my dissapointment, the Lavender Margarita was only on their Spring menu, and we are in full swing summertime - so I had the Black Rose Margarita, which was very tasty. Loved the rosemary garnish:

For dinner I went with a pork quesadilla appetizer - which was far from just a starter and was more than enough for a meal - however, I could have been pretty stuffed from the first round of free chips and salsa that they give you, and the fresh guacomole that we had ordered before our dinners came.

Everyone I have talked to really loves this place - and I definitely give it a thumbs up as well.

Azul:

As I had mentioned before - I had the best Bloody Mary of my life last Sunday at Azul. I needed to go the grocery store because I had no food in my house, but I was starving, so I decided to go down to get a bowl of Azul soup - when the waitress (owner) presented it to me she said, "Here is your chicken stew," and that it was. Heart and delicious, great flavor and loved the big chunks of avocado in it:

AND I figured I would get a Bloody while I was waiting. Such a good decision. I'll repeat what I had mentioned earlier -  this was the best Bloody Mary I have ever had in my life. The owner (I wish I knew her name!) explained to me that they do not use any horseradish and that they use orange, lemon and lime juice. They also use a spice called Tajin, which is what is around the rim along with salt in the picture below. Basically Tajin is dehydrated lime juice, chili peppers and salt. SO GOOD. I stopped at Reyna's in the Strip this weekend to pick some up. She said it's great on cantelope and I looked online and saw that it would be good to put on cucumbers too, for something simple - excited to use it.

Salt of the Earth:

I have been wanting to go to Salt of the Earth for some time, so when my friend Lisa was coming into town for a few days I suggested that we go. It was pretty fantastic.

Their menu changes constantly because they only use fresh and local ingredients - they don't actually have a menu, they write their menu on chalkboards, as shown above. Now, I was able to check out the menu online - but it was just subject to change. Dinner was a tough choice, some very interesting combinations of food. After some help from our waiter, we went with the Alaskan Salmon and Chilled Udon as our appetizers, and I had the Hanger Steak as my main dish. The flavors and presentations were spot on:

(poor quality pictures, I blame the lighting)

Tessaro's:

So much to my surprise and excitement, my very good friend Marianne decided to visit this past Saturday. She drove in with her sister who was planning to meet some friends at Tessaro's for burgers. Having never had one of their famous burgers, I was pumped. I had the Gourmet Burger (pictured below) which was topped with pepper jack cheese (my choice), sauteed onion, sauteed mushroom, lettuce, tomato and mayo. Yea, it was good:

So, it's defintely been a foodie type of two weeks, and I'm happy for it. Looking forward to sharing more. 

xo. cheers. namaste,

MK