What I Ate Wednesday #56: Date Night

On Friday, Nathan and I decided on a bit of an impromptu date night and made our way over to Ten Ten for a little something new. We had been there for lunch once before but never for dinner and had only heard great things. Especially about the brussels sprouts.

We made it there just in time to end happy hour so we ordered up a couple drinks and an order of the famous baby cabbages. It’s definitely out of the ordinary for me to suggest a fried appetizer, but at least it was a veggie, right? 😉

Fried brussels sprouts with chili vinaigrette dipping sauce

Holy moly did they live up to their reputation! The brussels are served with a sweet chili vinaigrette dipping sauce which only enhances the flavor. They were perfectly crisp and not greasy. I would say, however, that they were a bit salty but it was entirely too easy to polish off the bowl! Love the little brussel chips!

And what goes better with fried brussels sprouts than a nice citrus-y cocktail? I ordered the Hoop La—a brandy cocktail with combier, lillet blanc, and lemon. It was nice and light but full of flavor. It definitely hit the spot.

Hoop La! – brandy, combier, lillet blanc, lemon

For dinner, Nathan went with his new favorite—a ragout with homemade pasta. Ever since the honeymoon, if we see homemade pasta on the menu, he’s all over it!

Pork ragout with housemade tagliatelle, cunningham farms heirloom tomatoes, parmesan

Nathan describes this dish as “a hug from your mama in a bowl.” At least his descriptions are better than his pictures 😉 The pasta was tender with a little bit of bite.. pretty darn close to what we had in Italy! The ragout was hearty and rich, accented nicely by the parmesan cheese. The portion was just the right size.

I was a between a few seafood dishes so I asked for the server’s recommendation. I was told I couldn’t go wrong with any of them, so I guess we’ll have to go back soon, but this time I ended up with the pan-seared rockfish. Rockfish is one fish that is local to Maryland and the server said that they had been getting some great catch recently.

Local pan-seared rockfish with stewed red peppers, fingerling potatoes, olive tapanade

The potatoes were nice and crisp around the edges and the sauce from the stewed peppers was nice and light. I’m not a huge olive fan, but the small dollop of tapande on top gave the perfect amount of saltiness to the fish. And the fish was incredibly meaty but flaked apart nicely. I needed my knife to cut through the crispiness of the skin which, if you ask me, is the perfect preparation.

All in all, we were very pleased with our meal. There are definitely more than a few other items on the menu that we’d like to try [roasted mushroom toast, anyone?] and would love to head back soon for another date night.

Food for Thought

Do you prefer to hit up happy hour first or just sit down to dinner?

Do you have a favorite date night restaurant or do you try to go somewhere new?

A Marvelous Weekend

Don’t forget to enter my Chobani giveaway!

I’m definitely sad to see my 4-day weekend go, but it ended on the right note. This past weekend was just what I needed!

After running a few errands on Saturday, we decided to hit up the movie theater to see This Is The End but not before a little lunch. Nathan has been raving about porchetta since we went to Italy so I did a little googling and found Isabella’s in Little Italy. Everything I read about this place from the amazing porchetta sandwich, to the tiny area to eat [all of 4 tables], to the super friendly service was on point. And while the porchetta sandwich wasn’t the same as Italy, Nathan was still quite pleased. I, of course, went for the Greek Salad with grilled chicken and it was awesome! The homemade feta was my favorite part.

Greek salad with grilled chicken and homemade feta

Off to the movies! One of my favorite things about our theater downtown is that they have a full bar. It comes in handy when you go to see a movie like This Is The End.. not recommended. But at least it got us out of the house and out of the sun on a scorcher of a day! And I had a super tasty cocktail. Check out that top-notch pic! 😉

St. Germain Elderflower Liquer, blueberries, strawberries, white cranberry juice, and soda water

After a quick run to Whole Foods for sparkling water and figs [the essentials], we vegged at home and watched The Amazing Spiderman on demand. Another winner.. though, it was definitely better than the movie that we paid for! We got lazy and I whipped up a little egg white scramble for dinner which turned out to be pretty awesome! Awesome enough that I repeated it yesterday for lunch.

Egg whites, broccoli, corn, kale, cheddar cheese, avocado, tomatillo salsa, and a little sriracha

Sunday ended up being a bit of later start for us.. I got up and did one of my favorite Tone It Up cardio routines, Bikini Cardio. We were going to head to the farmers’ market, but I needed some food in my belly so I chowed down on my go-to breakfast—oats with egg whites & TVP, topped with Sunbutter, coconut peanut spread, and my homemade pumpkin seed butter.

By the time we got ourselves together to head out, it was 10:30. On our walk over, we decided it was hot, late [for the market], and there would be tons of people there, so we detoured over to Teavolve. Nathan grabbed a bite to eat and I got a delicious matcha green tea smoothie. I had only tried it once before, but it was just as marvelous as I remembered. Matcha powder is so pricey though, I just can’t bring myself to bite the bullet and get some to have at home.

We found ourselves around the corner from Whole Foods again, so we ran in to pick up a few things for some serious food prep when we got home, including these gorgeous beets!

How cool are these beets?!

We got down to business and Nathan was cooking up a storm!

He’s really been jonesing for some good Italian food like we had on the honeymoon, so he made a Tuscan-style ragu. It’s delicious and perfect to serve over pasta, quinoa, salad.. anything really! He also grilled up a flank steak which is going to be great  for sandwiches and salads all week. I roasted my beets which, unfortunately, were not as gorgeous as they were raw. I also made some easy kimchi that I found from Brittany [can’t wait to taste it later this week!], Israeli salad [cucumber, tomato, red onion, lemon, EVOO, & dill], grilled buffalo tofu for my salads, and for dinner I grilled some chicken with buffalo sauce.. plenty of leftovers there too.

We’re set for the week! Lunches and dinners are going to be so quick and easy. It really does wonders to set aside a few hours on Sunday to cook up some food for the week. Hope you have a marvelous Monday!

Food for Thought

Did you do any food prep over the weekend?

Are there any foods that you love but you won’t buy because of the price tag?