Family + Friends + Food = The Perfect Weekend

I am a lucky gal. This weekend I had the all-too-unusual pleasure of spending time and eating some of Fayetteville’s most spectacular food with my sister, mother, grandmother, husband and friends. This happens, umm, never.

After an impromptu visit to the Northwest Arkansas airport, aka landing strip in a cow pasture, to pick up my sister, who has been stationed in Harrogate, England for the past year, we met up with two wonderful friends for sushi. While Wasabi is sometimes hit or miss, they were certainly on point the evening. I won’t go into how much sushi I shoveled into my mouth – it’s just gross. Despite my embarrassing eating, my party took a chance in going out with me after dinner. I’m not sure I would have been so gracious, were the sushi in the other mouth. But whatevs.

At this point Brandy was patiently awaiting the arrival of her bags, particularly since she had no toothbrush, face wash, clean clothes, or any of the other essentials that one needs in order to be allowed out. Going to bed with a vehement assurance that both bags would be on my doorstep the next morning, she remained calm. But of course only one showed up in the morning. I’ll not recap the entire ludicrous situation or the 20 (minimum) phone calls to United and American Airlines. Suffice it to say that the bag is lost and may or may not be recovered.

But we would not be deterred from our commitment to a lovely weekend. Mom arrived on Saturday and we did some light flea marketing, made amazing burgers from Richard’s Meat Market (go there, now) and drank far too many Sweet Tea cocktails. Take it from me – this is an essential and totally easy summer cocktail:

• 1 part sweet tea vodka
• 1 part water
• Lemon slice
Caution – it tastes just like sweet tea and goes down as smoothly. Watch yourself and only consume around people that will be your friends in the morning despite your crazy behavior.

So after a fabulous Sunday brunch at Café Rue Orleans and a quick jaunt up to Tontitown to purchase my vintage movie theater seats, which are going to make a fabulous bench for whatever dining table we eventually purchase, we watched the World Cup at Foghorn’s and consumed copious amounts of beer and wangs. The Viva la Jalapeño sauce is where it’s at.

The Nanny came up Sunday evening and we had a shrimp and crab boil, which is so nostalgic for me. The whole weekend was, really. Maybe it’s that make very strong associations with food and memories, but it seems that nearly all of the wonderful times that I’ve had with my family or friends have been accompanied by certain wonderful, comforting foods. Now, perhaps my growing derrière is an indication that either I have an amazingly wonderful life or I take my connection with good food a little too seriously, but I think that we all celebrate a little more heartily and enjoy each other’s company a little more when good, thoughtful food is in the mix.
This woman is grateful to have such wonderful people to enjoy fantastic food with.
Me, my sister, my mom and Nanny enjoying the yummy early birthday cake I made Brandy.



The cake is orange-chocolate cake with a toffee cream middle and orange and Limóncello icing – I’ll post the recipe tomorrow. It's super easy and ridiculously tasty.