Weekend Foodie Warriors- Take 20!
Hello hello, again, Foodie Friends 🙂 Hope you had a fantastic weekend! In this edition of Foodie Adventures, we headed to Boone, NC to Old Europe Bakery, made Crock Pot Pulled Pork Al Pastor, and checked out Greenville’s award-winning ice cream shop, Molly & Myles!
My dad and little sister took a trip up to Asheville this weekend, and knowing how much I love my blog (and baking), she decided to take pictures for me of their favorite new bakery, which coincidentally just had their new Greenville location’s grand opening earlier this month!
Old Europe Pastries has been in business as long as I’ve been alive, bringing great baked goods, snacks, and locally roasted coffee to the great people of Asheville and beyond!
A case full of cakes, pastries, and goodies greets you as you walk in the door 🍰🧁
Their specialty cakes can change daily, and they also have an awesome wine bar! Same with the macarons – this weekend’s flavors included pistachio, lemon curd (my favorite), double chocolate, a summery lime, and black raspberry.
My dad got an eclair and my sister got a piece of cake that was similar to a Neapolitan, a puff pastry layered with a french-style cream or custard in between. They absolutely loved them, it was a great daddy-and-daughter breakfast adventure!
The new location of this store was opened in downtown Greenville a few weeks ago by a former Furman football player, Bobby Daugherty. While I’ve yet to stop by their new location, this great review from my family of the original makes me want to go check it out!
Their new storefront, which is now open from Sun–Thurs 7 am – 11 pm & Fri–Sat 7 am – 12 am! Go check them out 🤗
🥐🧁🍪
Crock Pot – Pulled Pork Al Pastor
Recipe inspired by: https://www.tastingtable.com/cook/recipes/braised-pork-al-pastor-tacos-recipe-easy-slow-cooker-recipes
You all know how much I love pork al pastor. In a taco, on an arepa, heck, straight out of a bowl are some of my favorite ways to eat it. I always try it at different restaurants to see what the next great al pastor place might be, but in the meantime, I wanted to see how good I could make it at home!
I started out with a recipe (after looking through a ton) from Tasting Table, which included a couple of differences and substitutions in my picture here, as I couldn’t find all her ingredients at my local store.
First thing was to make the spice rub for the meat. I had to substitute 1 tsp. of ancho chile powder for 1 dried guajillo chile pepper (which according to my fellow food bloggers is a normal measurement & substitution)
Next was the rest of our mise en place, or prep work, grabbing the chicken stock (I only ended up using about 2 cups, the onion, and garlic, and chopping up a whole pineapple, washing and chopping the outsides into stripes.
The coolest thing about her recipe, something I would’ve never thought to do, is utilizing the rinds of the pineapple as almost a blanket between the pork, pineapple chunks, and the lid. As the meat, fruit, and veggies steam, the juices that are left in the rind fall back down onto the meat, making it even more flavorful and juicy!
Once we tossed the meat in the seasonings to coat it well, we placed it in the bottom of a Pam-sprayed crockpot, placing the onions, garlic, pineapple, and chicken stock on top.
The last task was to lay the pineapple rind stripes cut side down, put the lid on, and wait!
…Four Hours Later…
Taadaa! I forgot to take a picture of this coming straight out of the crockpot because I was so excited to see what it tasted like!! The originally recipe didn’t call for this but I ended up shredding my pork and then putting everything back into the crockpot for maybe 10-15 mins so the flavors could meld.
I swear this is one of the best al pastor pork I’ve ever had, and I’ve been eating off of it for over a week! This recipe made enough for 9-11 two taco/medium tortilla-sized scoops of this filling per serving. It lasts about a week or two in the fridge too and has great potential to be added to burritos, tacos, on arepas, on nachos, you name it! Here’s our version we made after recipe testing and trying a lot of local versions too. 😁
I was reading an article on Facebook the other day from the Today show about the “Best Ice Cream Shops in America”. I was surprised to find that not only was my favorite childhood ice cream shop on there, Richardson’s Ice Cream (shout out to them, my grandma used to walk me there from her house in my stroller when she would babysit me, and we would get a kiddie cone of strawberry ice cream and black raspberry and go look at the baby cows and sheep behind the creamery), but also a relatively new place here in Greenville I’ve been meaning to go to called Molly and Myles Ice Cream.
This place is an ice cream and comic book lover’s dream! From Doctor Who posters to Marvel superhero paraphernalia, this place had it all. Masks, characters hanging from the ceiling, ice cream named after heroes like Super Man, this place looked like a lot of fun! See slideshow for more pics of the funky decor ⬇
Besides the awesome ice cream and decor, the best part was really the vehicles the ice cream came in. Their multitude of cereal and cookie-themed bowls and cones were super yummy and played really well with the 15+ flavors of ice creams and sherbets they had to offer.
Even yours truly got to enjoy some Oreo Cookie Almondmilk ice cream in a Thin Mints coated cone (the cone was my favorite part 😍), while Zach got a chocolate chip cookie dough sundae.
They even had awesome nerdy, cereal-inspired cakes!! Not sure if they were just for display or they could be examples of their ice cream cakes, that’d be super delish, but not sure.
This place has superhero nights for the kiddos and a fun atmosphere, check it out for the kid (and ice cream lover) inside of you 😋🍦
So how was your weekend Foodie Friends? Where’s your favorite ice cream shop near you? Sound out in the comments below or let me know your suggestions of what dishes or places we should visit next. As always, feel free to like, comment, & share 🤗
3 Comments
Never thought about pineapple pork al pastor. It looked good.
The bakery had key lime pie. Yum.
You can tell the Thomas family gene however by the love of ice cream. Zach can tell you his Baw Baw loved milkshakes better than anyone. His favorite cone ice creams were orange pineapple and butter pecan.
Cool store.
It was pretty cool! Super grateful they had non dairy ice cream 😊
[…] Of course we couldn’t forget about dessert! Molly and Myles was there to cool us all off 😁🍦 See last week’s review of their ice cream shop here. […]