In My Mind I'm Goin to Carolina

My first of two recent trips back to the East Coast was courtesy my friendly federal tax return, and it was money well spent to visit one of my best friends Emily. I lived in Charlotte, North Carolina for a little over a year so it was fun to visit some of my favorite local salons, shops and eateries. I got my hair done at Fuze Salon, tried not to buy up everything at Paper Skyscraper, and sampled several dips at Dean and Deluca.

Friday night we chose to stay in and create our own tasty dinner. Inspired by Argentina we paired our Malbec wine with some steak we bought at a local butcher and made a fresh Chimichurri sauce. As a side we made quinoa with fresh vegetables, a little lemon juice, salt, pepper, oil and cayenne pepper.

Oh yeah, we were ready for a great night!

Em, chopping up some veggies for the quinoa.

The finished meal! So delicious!

 And for dessert we made Tres Leches Cake from scratch. It's actually quite a misnomer because there are in fact four different milks used in the creation of the cake and it's sauce. Here's a pic of Court de-stressing by stabbing the cake so it can soak up the creamy sauce goodness.

Get it Court!

So incredibly tasty! 

For our last night together Em and I decided to celebrate the second half of our late 20's by going out to a fancy new restaurant called Dresslers in Charlotte's new hot spot, the Met. The food was absolutely fantastic, and I highly recommend the calamari appetizer. It was so nice to relax and spoil myself for the first time in a long while. But the best part of the night, and the entire trip, was spending time with a life long friend. Love ya Em!