Weekend Foodie Warriors – Take 41!
Hello hello, again, Foodie Friends 🙂 Hope you had a great weekend! For this edition of Foodie Adventures, join us for two new takeout restaurant eats (and two past P&P favorites), making homemade bread, and two new recipes on the blog!
Restaurant Takeout Adventures
Greenville, SC
We started out our weekend early (as we sometimes do) with #thirstythursday! Hoppin, a new Tap House that opened up in early March, was having a cool deal on Growlers and we decided to check it out.
I loved the vibe of the place, neatly situated next to Todaro Pizza and the new Urban Wren Winery, which opened up at about the same time, all part of the new Markley Place area. Urban Wren will be hosting a re-Grand Opening in the near future, as they opened up right as all this COVID-19 stuff began, unfortunately.
Jamie and I loved the exposed wood and clean, modern looking decor in Hoppin, and the art on the walls was super fun! This was definitely a place we could see ourselves hanging out in during the day or week and not just on weekends or at night. He ended up getting the Jai Alai growler fill from Cigar City Brewing out of Tampa, FL, one of the many out of state brews on tap, highlighting some of the other cool breweries in the South and nearby.
Friday was #foodtruckfriday for us!! We had heard that one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, Tacos and Bla Bla Bla, was having their truck right up the street from Whole Foods and we had to stop by!
The coolest thing is they have almost their full menu on the truck, which makes for a ton of choices. However, we finally narrowed it down to a Chorizo torta with extra jalapenos and a Pork carnitas taco bowl. Added a little hot sauce when we got home and it was amazing! Definitely an authentic one to check out, I highly recommend their gorditas if you haven’t tried them before (see this blog here for my original review of those!).
Coastal Crust is definitely a favorite of mine here on the blog, and one we devoted quite a bit of of love to. *FUN FACT* – it’s one of the many pizza places in Greenville that offers non-dairy cheese on their pizzas – for a more comprehensive list, check out the one my friends at VV-Spot put together.
Max and I felt like having pizza Friday night and veggies were calling my name, so we ended up going with their “Farmer’s Pie” – which included olive oil, eggplant, mushrooms, caramelized onion, and fresh made pesto.
Ya’ll, let me tell you, they’ve struck gold here. Whoever decided to put caramelized onions on pizza is an absolute GENIUS. It gives a whole other depth of sweetness and flavor to this pie, with the umami from the earthy mushrooms and the salty tangy-ness from the fresh basil. The eggplant tasted like it came out of someone’s back garden, and believe me, there were no leftovers! Check out the link here to see our original review of the restaurant.
Saturday, we took a drive towards a friend in Anderson to go drop off one of the masks Mom and I had made last weekend. Jamie, unlike myself, grew up in the Upstate, and this restaurant called Carson’s was always a favorite of his family. We ended up chatting and eating together over some takeout at a safe distance!
Jamie is the biggest buffalo wing fan and Carson’s are really good! This may look like a lot of wings but they go down really quickly. Even though I was skeptical of tortilla chips underneath the wings, they end up soaking up a lot of the sauce and taste awesome!
Their chicken wing basket is another fan favorite, with their really great honey mustard sauce (one of my top three favorite variations of mustard if anyone’s asking).
They have the BEST happy hour deals in Anderson for beers and food, with $6 wing baskets, $5 fried pickle baskets, and $2-3 drafts.
It was definitely nice to get out of the house for a little while and we even took a walk around the neighborhood when the sun came out for a couple hours. ☀
Homemade Bread Making
Greenville, SC
So I’ll be honest y’all, we finally broke down and went to the grocery store this weekend. The pantry was beginning to look sparse, I could finally clean off a couple shelves in my freezer since forever, and the fridge was basically a ghost town. However, the one thing we didn’t buy was bread!
My mom gave me this Pillsbury bread machine before all this COVID-19 stuff started and it’s probably 15-20 years old, but it still works like a charm! Max wanted to help me make this one, so I was happy to have a kitchen helper. 🍞👨🏻🍳
The bread itself, depending the recipe you choose, has less than 5-6 ingredients, and most of which you probably have in your pantry or fridge already (except maybe the bread flour and active dry yeast).
Pleased as punch with this honey whole wheat loaf, which weighs about two pounds. I originally started making bread once I ran out a couple weeks ago (to prevent us from going to the grocery store), and it’s definitely been so fun experimenting with flavors! I think the next one we’re going to try is either a play on the rosemary olive oil bread from Macaroni Grill (absolutely one of my favorite breads from a chain restaurant) or a multi-grain version.
Have you all tried your hand at bread making yet? Let me know in the comments below! 🙌
New Recipes!
Greenville, SC
As you can tell, we’ve definitely been baking a lot lately in my house, and these new recipes certainly fit the bill!
Happy to be continuing to experiment with Gluten Free baking with my mom, who has been GF since last year. She really wanted something that was pretty healthy to snack on later in the day that didn’t have chocolate or so much sugar in it.
We love autumn flavors and we found a recipe for GF Pumpkin Cranberry Cookie Bars from Food Network that we ended up editing and scaling up for a meal-prepped protein-packed snack! Check that one out by clicking on this link.
The second recipe that went live was that delish lemon cake originally from Alex Guarnaschelli (one of my favorite Food Network Chefs ever), using the lemon frosting & filling recipes from my Good Housekeeping cookbook. This cake was absolutely a winner, check it out here and send me pics if you make it too!
So how was your weekend Foodie Friends? What’s been your favorite place to get take-out or carry out over the last week? Sound out in the comments below to let us know your suggestions of what dishes to make or places we should visit next. As always, feel free to like, comment, & share 🤗
