Food for the Soul in Raleigh, NC!

May 21, 2014 By Tam Warner Leave a Comment

GUEST BLOG BY SUZANNE STAVERT OF Adventures of Empty Nesters!

Mixing business with adventure is so gratifying, not to mention, super fun! In addition to writing Adventures of Empty Nesters, I represent a health company called Touchstone Essentials. I was traveling to Raleigh, North Carolina for our Second Annual Conference and ironically, my husband had business in Raleigh as well! This almost never happens, so we had a 2 for 1 special business trip with a side of adventure!

During the day, I spent my time learning valuable information about health and wellness at the conference, and Craig focused on his work obligations. However, we still have to eat don’t we? Raleigh is an awesome “foodie” town and a great place to find food for the soul. The kind of food you don’t easily forget and want to come back to again and again. It is a relatively small, urban city, so we were able to walk to most of the restaurants we wanted to go to from our hotel in the downtown area. At the suggestion of our dear “Almost Empty Nester” friends who live in Raleigh, we were given a fairly lengthy list with many types of food and libations to choose from. It was definitely a difficult decision!

What I admired most about the restaurants we experienced in Raleigh is how genuine and unprententious they were, yet the flavors were sophisticated and out of this world. Ashley Christensen is a red hot chef in Raleigh and has just been awarded the 2014 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast. On a very wet and rainy evening we only walked just one block to Poole’s Downtown Diner. The vibe is super friendly and since they don’t take reservations, it is usually always packed with hungry customers. I don’t mind the wait, because you just plan for the time, talk with friends and enjoy some ridiculously creative cocktails as you wait for your table.

Creatively written on hanging chalkboards, the menu has a Southern flair with a modern edge. Since we live in Southern California, we never eat anything remotely Southern, so we were anxious to participate!

It was so tough to choose that we opted to share two sides and each have an entrée. The “highest” of the highlights for me was the Mac and Cheese side dish (Macaroni Au Gratin). This was honestly the best I have ever tasted. Craig and I consider eating mac and cheese as a rather decadent treat. We like to try it at restaurants that offer it as their signature dish. We have tasted several versions of truffle mac and cheese, lobster mac and cheese and now Poole’s. Poole’s is hands down the very best we have ever tasted. The chef must combine three or four types of cheese and it comes with a crispy cheddar crust. OMG! It is worth every calorie and gram of fat.

Craig enjoyed his chicken fried pork shoulder sausage with grits…. He was so “un” Southern when he ordered his meal he said: “I would like to have the chicken sausage.” The server said: “There is no chicken in the dish, it is CHICKEN FRIED”. Oh is that what that means!

Note: Poole’s was fairly dark and taking photos with a flash is a no-no. So these are not my best work, but you get the idea.

Joule

Our number two highlight in Raleigh was Sunday brunch at Joule, which is also owned by Ashley Christensen. She owns Beasley’s Chicken & Honey, Chuck’s, Fox Liquor Bar, Joule Coffee and has two more restaurants coming soon. At Joule, they make aromatic hand crafted cups of coffee and hand made croissants. Making croissants by hand is extremely labor intensive and they were light and delicious with a slightly sweet almond flavor. We shared a scrumptious almond croissant and homemade yogurt with granola and berries as our Sunday morning breakfast.

We were in Raleigh a very short time, but these two restaurants are a “Do Not Miss” when visiting Raleigh.

Should I really be eating all of this food? YES!

In actuality, I spend most every week eating healthy food and following good diet practices. But when I am out discovering new restaurants and their creative cuisine, rules go out the window. It’s a culinary adventure for goodness sake! I will arrive home from the trip, get back on the proverbial horse, eat well and exercise. Seriously, do you want me to write about eating roasted broccoli, going to the gym and how many miles I walk the dog? Or course not, I save the just interesting stories to share with you!

Life is about balance – We should design and live an extraordinary life. Don’t you think?

Have you tried a new and fabulous restaurant lately? We would love to hear about it!

Road Trip to Bossier City, LA???

May 20, 2014 By Tam Warner 10 Comments

The Horseshoe Resort and Casino in Bossier City, LA

Yep. I took a road trip from Dallas to Bossier City, LA. In case you don’t know, Bossier City is just across the Red River from Shreveport, LA. And it has gambling casinos….lots of them! I am true to Caesar’s Group, so I stayed at The Horseshoe, a very nice resort located on the river. Actually, all of the casinos are on the river. Why? Because gambling (with a couple of exceptions like New Orleans) is only allowed on riverboats. The Horseshoe Casino is built as a “riverboat”, and they even start the engines once in a while as law requires. It is, however, attached solidly to the rest of the resort. It looks pretty funny, doesn’t it?

Riverboat is on the bottom left, and downtown Shreveport across the Red River

Heading east from Dallas is depressing given my Ohio born and bred sensibilities. Dallas could not be any flatter, or less appealing as you drive the labyrinth of expressways to get out of the city. Ugh. Concrete and more concrete. It is mid-May and the wildflowers are mostly gone, though a few remain as one drives farther east. The land around Dallas is dry, flat, with short trees…and although I left Ohio 30 years ago, I still miss the green, rolling hills and fields of cattle and crops…corn, wheat, tomatoes, strawberries, pumpkins…trees hundreds of years old; tall, reaching for the sky. My favorites were always the Blue Spruce pines. They are so beautiful, and huge, and yes, they really are blue-ish.

It gets better as one drives into East Texas. East Texas is filled with pine trees, none as tall and glorious as the Blue Spruce, but some pines are better than none. There are lakes, and taller trees, and even some inclines in East Texas! The green of East Texas is soothing and pretty heading toward Louisiana.

I spent two nights at the Horseshoe, and happily played video poker for hours and hours, leaving a winner! I was introduced to video poker when I was 23 years old, by my compulsive gambler mother (though she was not compulsive at the time because my dad was still alive and able to drag her away from her beloved slots). Of course, if he hadn’t been there she wouldn’t have left, so perhaps that compulsive gambler was always in there. Digression. I love poker, and hate the slowness of the poker tables, so video poker and I are happy companions. I have studied the statistics of the games, and adhere to my poker strategy. I was certainly lucky this time!

Like Kenny Rogers says, “you got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em”…and “I found an ace that I could keep”. Here are MY aces!

IMPORTANT! Facebook has decided to charge pages like Travels with Tam a fee to share posts, even with people who have Liked our page. I have over 3,600 fans, but only 47 saw my Mother’s Day Post! This sucks, right? If you are on Google +, so am I, and if you’d like to get my posts you should subscribe via email, on the upper right of the page. I will be so so happy if you do!!!!

Fabulous Photo Friday: Bath, England

May 16, 2014 By Tam Warner 16 Comments

I LOVE England. LOVE LOVE LOVE. I am a true Anglophile, especially when it comes to British history. I’ve been to England several times, and I certainly plan to go back again and again! We spent two weeks roaming the English countryside while my daughter was doing her study abroad in London. My son and I were alone in Bath together and hired a British historian so I could actually talk to someone about what we were seeing! As you can see, the weather was a bit foreboding, but it added to the atmosphere of the place. And yes, I know it is Jane Austen’s hometown, but I was more interested in the Roman history. Ah, I want to go back. Enjoy!

uk 07 bath jane austen — Jane Austen’s street

Tomb of the Nash Family (my mother was a Nash) — Stone Tomb

uk 07 bath bath — One of the Roman baths

My son Wes on Pultenoy Bridge, the River Avon

May 15, 1987: Throwback Thursday

May 15, 2014 By Tam Warner 6 Comments

On May 15, 1987, I gave birth to our daughter, Alexandra. As I said in my mother’s day post, she terrified me. The idea that I was responsible for this little human life was overwhelming. I went from being a nervous wreck (truthfully, I was a nervous wreck for quite a long while), to finally relaxing enough to enjoy her. She is 27 today, the same age I was when I gave birth to her. 27! We, the Boomers who have all hit 50 now, have begun to realize that our parents were correct: our children grow up fast, and time seems to fly. It is very difficult to believe that my darling baby girl (who stopped screaming at 2 months old, when she found her thumb) is 27 years old. She still looks like a child to me.

Mother and daughter had tough times, that is definite. We are not two peas in a pod, in fact, we are very, very different. AllyCat wants to know what the plan is….I always say there is no plan, we’ll play it by ear. THAT drives our AllyCat into “batshit crazy”. She always wants a plan. Always. Sometimes I have a plan, but it is always flexible. Oh, no, not for Alexandra. A plan is a plan, and you have to keep to it. Obviously, our temperaments are different, and we spent a great deal of time butting heads when she was in grade school, and again when she was in high school. This is the 10 year old who told me that my parenting was “inconsistent”. At 10! I have always been the type to say, oh well, that did not work, so we’ll try another way, but Ally wanted an absolute structure. I am really not good at structure. No, she was never an easy child.

Ally is a person who follows the rules, I am a person who questions rules and I usually only obey the ones I think make sense. This has made for some extremely interesting encounters out in the world. She was such a good little girl, so particular. She wouldn’t fingerpaint, she had to use Q Tips! I celebrated when she received her first demerit. Ha! Regardless, there has always been an unbreakable bond between us; actually, between the 4 of us as a family. Granted, we are a bit nuts. Ally has always believed we would be a better TV show than the Ozbournes. Ha! Yes, we are loud, there is cursing, and we are always engaged with each other in some way. We are a family who will talk about almost anything, and we have no compunction about asking questions, though sometimes the answers are not always what we want to hear.

The house was full of Ally’s friends and boyfriends as she grew up, I loved having the group here where I could at least know they were safe instead of out driving on a New Year’s Eve. Our little homebody didn’t want to ever leave home, she wanted to live here forever and go to college locally. We forced our little bird to fly, and she went to college in Florida, spent time in London for a study abroad semester, and lived in Boston for a year. Ally is a homing bird, and she is back in Dallas now, which is wonderful. She has had a stellar education, valuable experiences, and that is what we wanted for her. She and I took a trip to Thailand this year, and that was extremely enjoyable. My grownup daughter and I get along very well, and like being together. Fancy that!

So happy, happy birthday to you, Alexandra! Our little girl, our Pissy Sissy, our Biscuit, our AllyCat, our Xanadu…I am so glad I had you! (so is your dad, but he isn’t writing this blog, I am!). You have added meaning to my life that I never could have anticipated. I love you….big bunches!

So much delicious food in Seattle!

May 13, 2014 By Tam Warner 5 Comments

by Suzanne Simone Stavert of ADVENTURES OF

EMPTY NESTERS.

Eating all of the delicious food in Seattle is one of my favorite things about going there.

My goodness we had a great time and many of our favorites times were discovering new restaurants in a city with so many culinary delights! All I can say is food, food and more food…Leslie turned to me on Day Two of our gastronomic adventure and exclaimed, “No more, I can’t eat another bite!” (Truth: She did eat one more time at Sunday lunch! Sorry Les!) The good news is that in addition to eating our way through Seattle, we walked endless miles as well. We must balance the calorie intake with calories burned…right?

I really could write several posts about where we went to eat and how each chef dazzled us with their talent. I guess that would not be so bad to read about would it? Seriously though,I am the one who takes photos of most of my meals in restaurants. The dishes are so gorgeously presented on the plate, they are like works of art! One meal that could be characterized as one of our most favorites was breakfast atPortage Bay. The food is large, local, organic, tasty, sustainable and oh so delicious! We giggled all through breakfast at how fortunate we were to be eating there!

They have a unique pancake topping bar that contains huge glass bowls piled high with strawberries, blueberries, pears and boysenberries. There is a mountain of whipped cream, a small “hill” of butter and pitchers of pure warm maple syrup. I can honestly say that I have never witnessed a more gorgeous set up for breakfast. These were just the toppings! It was ridiculously good.

I believe you would characterize these photos as “food porn”. It was so fun to throw our diets out the window and splurge on these amazing dishes.

In addition to serving delicious food the owners of Portage Bay have a simple philosophy about food and I LOVE THIS!

Eat like you give a damn about…

where your food comes from
what goes in your body
the ethics of how your food is raised and handled
how your food tastes
the environment

When you combine delicious food with a company who cares about the rest of the world it is a home run in my book. If you are in Seattle, visiting Portage Bay is a must. Love this place! <3

Hungry now?

Fab Photos Friday: An Awesome 4th Dive Day in Cozumel!

May 9, 2014 By Tam Warner 5 Comments

Our last day of diving went well. I very much enjoyed my days with Challenge Diving, they do a great job. On my dives were people from Colorado…and one man from New Jersey. He was a hoot. Italian, with a great Jersey accent, and a name like DeLucci! On our second dive, Greg DeLucci’s mask broke. It was bad enough that he had to ascend. On his safety stop, I glanced up to make sure he was doing all right, when I saw what looked like glass falling through the water to the reef. I went after it, and it turned out it was his prescription lens. As a diver with a prescription mask, I appreciate how devastating the loss of a lens would be during a trip! When I ascended and was in the dive boat, I told him I found the lens, and he could not have been any happier! He told me that just before I came up, he had said, “Tony Tony please come down, something’s lost and must be found!” I had never heard that before…but it turns out it is something he says to St Anthony (Patron Saint of the Lost) when he loses something. Of course, he calls him Tony. Funny guy!