Good Eats

 I'd be remiss if I didn't include a few lines about my girls weekend with my sister from another mister. 

We get together as often as schedules allow; she's in Southern Maryland and I am a Pennsy gurl, so whenever one of us is traveling, we meet up for a meal, and failing that, we meet up at a quasi equi-distant point for adventures.

These adventures once included epic (read 7-10 mile) hikes and explorations. Always, they include great food. It's really simple; I do a little research and pick where we're eating, and more often than not, I do the ordering, too. Neither of us are ever disappointed.

One exception, and it wasn't really, but I'll get there in a sec--when we were out in western PA to see Fallingwater and Polymath Park (and also the Flight 92 memorial--that was a packed day), we were looking for some place "local" to eat.  After white knuckling the turnpike in sleet coming back from the memorial, I was ready for food....

EXCEPT.  We drove around Uniontown for a good 45 minutes, looking first for an Asian restaurant that was apparently no longer there (and perhaps never was, we will never know), and then for a dive bar that appeared to be in a dead end in a trailer park on Google. When we pulled into a random driveway with nothing remotely looking like a bar in sight, we knew we had to give up the whole idea of "local color."

By this time, we were both raw, annoyed, pissed off and starving. We ended up at the Texas Roadhouse near our hotel and folks, I am here to tell you that there is NOTHING as good as their Roadkill special with a margarita the size of my head. (She took the keys and drove us back to the hotel).

So this go-round, back in January I scanned options and alit on a townhouse suite.  OOOH.  Beds were upstairs with a balcony, and downstairs was a kitchenette and sitting area. 

Generally speaking, we just do a room. Because we don't spend much time in it. 

But....I saw possiblities. Cooking!  I do love to cook; I find it relaxing and it's right there now with darts, sudoku and crosswords in helping my backend processing. Boom.  Booked.

As it happens, the world ended, weatherwise, but we were prepared.  We're both iron chefs in the "we will make whatever we have work" tradition and turned out some stellar dishes with our glass two-burner stove top.  I cooked pad Thai on Friday night and sauteed some shrimp in sesame oil and garlic for spring rolls for Saturday lunch. While the wind howled and snow and sleet fell, we went to the indoor pool and hot tub and spent the afternoon paddling and going back and forth from pool to tub.

Back at the room, we showered, chilled (I took a nap), and K cooked a killer meal of mussels, shrimp and asparagus in butter and garlic over linguini.  OMG. 

Never one to let anything go to waste, I packed up the rest of the sauce to use over lobster ravioli this week. And it was heavenly.

Moral?  Nothing beats good food and good company.