Rosebud

Just in case you wondered, I love food.  Which is why I was delighted to be part of a party who brunched at Rosebud in Virginia Highlands on Saturday. 

Corn muffin

Most of us started with a steaming cup of hot coffee, which was endlessly refilled by our kind waitress.  For those who are not coffee drinkers, there are carbonated treats like Mexican Coke made with real cane sugar and Grown Up Sodas that come in a variety of delicious blends - like cranberry lime. The beverages were accompanied by the most delectable sweet corn muffins with a hearty, crumbly texture and melt-in-your-mouth goodness.

House-cured Salmon Slider

One among us had connections to The Angry Chef via her job, and so we were kindly treated to an array of appetizers - housecured salmon sliders, the eggrolls and chicken liver toast.  Having never dined on chicken liver toast before, I was pleasantly surprised by the smooth textured spread topped with bacon crumbles and pickle relish that added a little tartness to the savory slice.  I would definitely partake of it again.

Mama's Belgian Waffle & Country Ham

As an entree, I ordered Mama's Belgian Waffle served with whipped cream (the real thing) and Rosebud's Breakfast Syrup with a side of country ham.  The waffle arrived warm and golden, and the whipped cream was so sweet and luscious that I barely to dip each bite in the syrup that held hints of orange blossom honey.  What I loved best about the waffle was its lightness - some waffles are so dense, it's like eating cake.  But this was fluffy buttery yum.  The country ham was very thinly sliced, thoroughly salted and wondrously non-greasy. 

Not Your Mama's French Toast

Sausage Benedict with Cheese Grits

Others at the table noshed on sausage benedict served with cheese grits (which she graciously allowed me to sample) and Not Your Mama's French Toast, an enviable confection of French toast stuffed with Nutella and cream cheese and topped with rum-braised pineapple.

Cranberry Lime Grown-Up Soda

Instead of dessert, I opted for a brunch cocktail - the pomegranate sea breeze which included a puckering dash of pink grapefruit.

The company was marvelous; the food was rich but not cloying, as brunch should be.  Should you take yourself to Rosebud, you may find yourself like Citizen Kane muttering the word longingly for the rest of the day.

Adventure Monkey: On the Town

Happy to see Halle in town

Happy hour at Piola

Happy with the moo juice at brunch at Rosebud's

Parting is Such Sweet, Sweet Sorrow, 2010:

And I mean, that.  The sweetness of your departure cannot really be amply expressed.  It's the 365th day of you, 2010, you wretched beast of a year.  The very last day of what seemed to be an endless hit-parade of trials and tribulations.  The best I can say about you in retrospect was that you were unerringly efficient - with just 12 months to work with, you managed to pack a veritably bruising punch.

You took great delight in raising my hopes by delivering a price drop on the house I'd been pondering, and by the end of February, I signed on the dotted line.   And while all that was very exciting, you jerked the rug out from under me before I could get a stick of furniture moved in when Kudzu got sick just a week or two later.  That was a long and winding and emotional road to Tragedy Town.  Hours upon hours at the vet hospital.  Tests with bad results.  With no results.  With murky results.  The hope that he was getting better; the realization that he was not.  By the time Kudzu slipped away, I'd very nearly lost my mind.  His death left a terrible hole in my heart.

But I had to go on.  And you went on, too, taking another dear friend just weeks later.

There were less drastic measures in your arsenal - the 14-hour trip to San Diego and the $800 water bill from the running toilet at the house I didn't live in.  The occasion upon which I was mistaken for a pregnant co-worker.  A mistake that could arguably have been caused by my weight that yo-yoed between grief-stricken skinny and grievously chubbed.

Nashville nearly burned us to death.  And the burning question on everyone's mind was why, oh, why don't you live in your house yet?  At first, I was bothered, but as the year wore on, I became so accustomed to being asked that my hide toughened to the point that I had a pachydermal tolerance for it.  And I decided I didn't give a fig what anyone thought.  That's right.  I'm crazy - so what?  I do plan to finally move into the house, but that's to be filed under resolutions in a letter to a different year.

We started demolition on the kitchen in November - a process that seemed like it would be seamless enough.  But you, 2010, have managed to muck that up, too, and even as we speak, there's still work to do.

In addition to those things happening to me, you attacked the periphery - dear friends who lost brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers in sudden and terrible ways, leaving chasms in other hearts.  There were near misses, too, thwarted by surgical precision and medical miracles.  But at every turn, you were certain to point out to me that life is a desperately fragile thing.

You broke my heart, 2010.  In so many ways.  And so I find myself on New Year's Eve - chubby, single, cat-less and crazy.  You broke my heart.  But not my hope - I will ring in the New Year, a toast to your departure, filled with anticipation that your successor will bring better days.  Thanks for setting the bar so ridiculously low it's very nearly subterranean.

Good riddance,
Ash

The Kitchen Pit: An Update

For the record, we're 50 days into the yet to be finished project.  And while we've made some progress - a floor! a refrigerator! an island! - it wasn't smooth sailing.

The Domino Effect - Everything depends on everything else.  Which is why the cabinets had to be installed before they could measure for the countertops and the countertops had to be put in before the sink.  And it's also why when the cabinet above the microwave failed to arrive with the rest of the cabinetry, the microwave couldn't be installed as scheduled and sat in the kitchen floor for a week. 

The Focus Effect - Not one of the installers is a multitasker.  That's why we've had different workmen to install the cabinets, countertops, appliances, floor and backsplash.  And why the kitchen sink was installed but not able to produce water until someone else came to make the magic happen.

The Second Guessing Effect - With a little extra time and anxiety at work, you second guess everything.  Which is why Mom picked three different floors and two different backsplashes.

The Murphy's Law Effect - Whatever can go wrong will.  Which is how the plumber got called to fix the water spewing from the old dishwasher connection.  And why the cabinet above the fridge has no doors because the ones they sent were the wrong size.  And why the stove isn't flush against the wall because it requires some mysterious plug that - you guessed it - the installer doesn't do.

The Nervous Breakdown Effect - This occurs during the later stages of the process when your bedroom smells like coffee all the time and you've eaten six weeks' worth of meals on a tiny coffee table and you sawed your way through broiled porkchops weakly seasoned in barbecue sauce because you could find neither a pan nor appropriate seasoning and when you have to make ONE MORE decision about whether to move the island two inches toward the refrigerator or one inch toward the table and then you discover that the brand new sink is leaking in almost precisely the same way that started this whole thing.  And that's when you start drinking.

So when will we be done?  I'm guessing two weeks.

Why BuyLife is a Dead End

Ryan Seacrest, Alicia Keys and Kim Kardashian are dead.  And I'm not sad - I'm a bit disgusted.  I wrote a guest post for the Jackson Spalding Thinkstand on why this week's BuyLife.org promotion for World AIDS Day is a grave misstep.  Please enjoy this little bit of shameless self-promotion - unlike the celebrities mentioned, I won't make you pay $10 for it.

Terra Cotta's Gotta Go from Walnut Grove

When I was looking at houses, I passed over the one I bought a couple dozen times because I hated the shutters.  I know what that anonymous eponymous they say about getting hung up on paint colors that can be changed.  But this paint color gave the house such a repugnant drab watery look that I couldn't get over it.  These terra cotta shutters destroyed the whole house for me - so much so that it took a little convincing from my real estate agent to include it on the caravan of listings we were scheduled to see in the neighborhood.  Once I saw the inside and - let's face it - the towering trees in the backyard, I was sold.  Suddenly the odious repulsive shutters seemed like a small obstacle standing between me and home sweet home.  (We need not return to the list of much larger obstacles that have presented themselves since then.)  But back to the vile shutters that looked like this:

There's something so...old about those boring brick-colored shutters that do absolutely nothing for the brick color of the house.  It all melted together in one awful conglomeration of blah.  And I may be many things, but blah is not one of them.  As such, I decided to leave Terra Cotta Town for the olive-toned territory of Walnut Grove.  Behold the great greenness:

It's like a new house.  Like I left behind moth balls and knitting nights for swinging 21st century living.  Or something like that.  Also, I clearly need to spend some time admiring my new shutters while raking. *Ahem*  And while I was at it, I had the deck stained to better match the house, too.

Perhaps part of the moving problem had to do with the atrocious exterior - the dated ill-chosen shutters that made me feel like I might be learning macrame and hanging velvet paint-by-numbers inside while wearing orthopedic shoes and sporting shapeless day dresses.  But now that we're in Walnut Grove, I think that I have found a befitting haven for my stilettos, pumps and flats that is retro chic instead of retro shack.

Adventure Monkey: Tallulah Gorge