A culinary experience

While being in Charleston, we know there are a LOT of restaurants around and since we have very limited time we decided to try all of them in one night... Well...almost all of them.

Our method every time we walked into a restaurant was to tell the waiter\waitress what we were up to and ask them for their best appetizer and signature cocktail. This seemed to work pretty well and we had lots of fun talking to people too.

We started off at Magnolias, now have in mind all this restaurants are very popular and you need reservations, but since there is just the two of us we can just grab 2 chairs at the bar and that's pretty much what we like.

Here we had Fried green tomatoes with white cheddar & caramelized onion grids, country ham and tomato chutney. This was absolutely delicious, lets not forget the fresh baked French bread that gave it a little extra nice touch. All of it was delicious and enough to get us to next stop.

We had heard about this restaurant Husk for a while now, so we were very excited to check it out. This was an old house in the middle of town that had been turned into a restaurant. Very nice ambiance and the food was outstanding. Here we decided to have a selection of cured meats by a chef named Justin Cherry and Boiled peanut hummus with marinated cherry tomatoes and spicy pig ear "crackers" followed by two nice and light glasses of Pinot Noir. This place was one of my favorites in every matter. The location, the table setting, the waiter, the bartender and even their uniform was cool. I really hope to have the chance to go back and have a full meal one day.

Third place of the night was The Ordinary Seafood Restaurant. This restaurant used to be a bank back in the day and they also turned it into a restaurant, still keeping some of the décor though, so very cool and different ambiance here. We had an Oyster slider and Blue crab Louise style. The slider had a tropical taste to it and the blue crap tasted as fresh as you can get it. Here I had a glass of Greek wine which was a little weird, never seen or tasted Greek wine before and Jimmy had a cocktail.

Fourth and last place we decided to go to was for the dessert, which was highly recommended by the bartender at The Ordinary. It was getting a little late and I needed some coffee too so it was just perfect.
We had something called Sticky Sorghum cake with cinnamon ice cream. This dessert was absolutely delicious.

We had an unforgettable day\night and its our advice to people that are in a place for a short period of time. Don't go to one place and have 1 meal! go to several places and just have a little taste of each one of them, its so worth it and so much fun!

pics to follow!!!

pics :)

The dirty South

I know we havent been writing as much as we would like, but we you are sorrounded by people and exciting things to do all the time
its kinda hard to take the time to sit down and write, I apologize and below here im going to write some of the stuff be have been doing this past days, trying to get on track.

I think we left off in Orlando and all the engagement festivities. After that we headed to St Augustine, home to Jimmy's first captain Simon, his wife Dana and daugther Savannah. We had a great time at their house and walking around downtown St Augustine which is the oldest town in the US. A lot of nice things to see, all the spanish arquitecture and fun bars to go to. We ended up meeting
Jimmy's college roomate John and had a few drinks, it was a fun night, specially for Jimmy, he had not seen John for almost 20 years!!

Next day it was all about getting to Charleston. On the way we had a little stop in Savannah which was very nice, a very nice little town with lots of culture. We walked down River Street and had a little buffalo shrimp appetizer at Tubby's.

We arrived Charleston at about 8:00 pm and drove straight to Sullivan's Island to meet up John Crislip who is a buddy of ours that has been in Costa Rica a few seasons now. Everybody was hungry when we arrived so we went to dinner right away to a restaurant called Home Team BBQ. After this we went back to Johns house to get online and try find a place to stay. We ended up at the Marriot on Lockwood, downtown Charleston, for the night.

Next morning (July 23rd) we get up, pack our bags and head on to a place called "Toast" for breakfast. This place was highly recommended by John Crislip's girlfriend, Casey, and she was right, breakfast was outstanding. From there our plan was to go to a plantation tour. Hunter Britt's boss ownes this plantation so he was so kind to write our names in the list, otherwise it was a $20 fee to get in. The plantation is called "Boone Hall" and it had a lot of history to show.

We went to the "Gullah" presentation followed by a tour inside the house. This was a very interesting tour specially for me since we dont learn about US history when we are young, all about slaves coming to the US, how they got their freedom, what they did and how their culture influenced ours, what kind of jobs they did and so on.
This day we needed some shelter so we got in touch with another buddy of Jimmy, Tom Russell who used to own a boat called "Cerveza" We found out he was in town and that he had an extra room for us.
His house was beautiful typical southern\charleston house with beautiful views, nice swimming pool and a wonderful bed :) 

Im sorry this part of the blog might sound a little boring but we are just trying to get on track :)

The long of a short story....

It started months ago with an email to the food and beverage director of Disney, thanks Hooch! After a few emails and phone calls, he directed me where to go, Norway!
Of course I needed to tell someone, thanks for keeping it a secret, Paul Sanson!
Next was getting the ring! Marc great suggestion, had it done with ease, and shipped to Orlando.
Flying to Orlando solo, picking up the car and the ring, yet to be seen was nervous excitement!
Everything was perfect and ready, but had to wait 3 more days before I could share with everyone!
Each day that passed was more fun then the day before, going from our trip to the sailing yacht georgia, Tampa for dave Matthews and finally to Orlando and Epcot taste of Norway!
So nervous before but had great friends around me to keep the mood light and slightly distracted before the moment. We arrived at the landing dock and as the cast members came out to greet us, I nervously fumbled to get Stephanie forward to be greeted and set in the middle of the crowd so we could proceed with my part. Like Stephanie said, it was a bit of a blurr of what happened next but fortunately the important part was she said yes and we moved forward with our night!
The food was great, especially the brown goat cheese, sweet and creamy with a nice hint of goat cheese. Also, the rice pudding was great!
The following spent riding the rides in universal was so fun with great friends and great weather.
That night we had an amazing meal at Charley's steak house, one of the top ones in the country. We found out why, the steaks cooked over citrus wood at a temperature of 1200 degrees, you can taste the difference. Creamed spinach and scallops wrapped in bacon were top for me also.
The ring was designed not only to be the infinity sign and also an S in the shape of the diamond, just to give you an inside idea of what I was thinking.

A Magical Day!

I literally have no words to describe my feelings this day, July 18th!!  I thought it was a regular Thursday where we had big plans on meeting up with Dana, Simon and Savannah to hang out at Epcot Disney. Marygrace and Thomas had been with us already for a day so we all meet up and start what Jimmy had plan and I had no idea! To make a long story short, we get to Norway in Epcot, had reservations at 4:30 for some ride and I thought we where having dinner there. We get on the boat and do the little tour around Norway, at the end they tell us that now we are going to watch a movie about Norway. My surprise was, when I got out of the boat a group of maybe 30-50 Norwegians with their "Bunads" which is the typical Norwegian costume come out, 2 girls on the front had 2 yellow pieces of paper that said "Marry Me!" Jimmy looks at me and says something like "I have some jewelry for you, come here" he goes down on his knee and ask me to marry him!!!!!!! I couldn't believe it! I started crying and of course I said yes and the Norwegians in their bunads started singing the national anthem, so special!
After this happened, everything got a little blurry from the excitement, we went out of the place into the souvenir shop, got some Norwegian chocolate and then headed to dinner.

For dinner we had obviously traditional Norwegian meal that included smoked salmon, goat cheese, meat balls and some yummy desserts, all of this followed by a nice bottle of champagne. This was a very special day for all of us, specially for Jimmy and I. I'm so grateful for all the people that were there with us to celebrate this special occasion.

Just engaged!!! I showed a picture of a ring like this to Jimmy a very very long time ago and he got it! it means infinity, and its exactly what we are going to do, together until infinity and beyond!  

This picture was taken before it happened, I had no idea but now that I remember Jimmy was a little nervous. He even dressed up!

This is just our appetizer plate from the buffet table, very Norwegian!

When dessert came around, we got this cute plate made for us. I have to say, getting engaged in Disney is very special, they all make you feel loved and happy!

Norwegian desserts, nobody in our table could name them but it was "sjokoladekake" "eple kake med krem" and "riscrem" :)

Food Trucks

The day after Dave Matthews concert we got up lighly beat up by a night full of festivities, packed up and off to brunch we went. Jimmy and I, we have been watching this show on Fox Life called 'Eat Street'
where they show food trucks all over the country, some of them sounded very delicious so we thought if we ever are near one, we shoud definately check it out. The first one was in Tampa called
"Taco Bus", owned and operated by a hispanic family im guessing probably from Mexico, one of the funniest things about this place was this sing right when you get there that says "broken english perfectly spoken" The menu was very wide and fun, Jimmy had
something called Bistec Azteco and i had a Burrito. The food was delicious and we were all very happy. Hopefully we will see more of this food trucks as our road trip continues, it is such a fun experience
and this trucks always have long lines of people waiting to get some food which it indicates the food is outstanding, simple, but very very good!

Dave Matthews Band!

On Wednesday, July 17th we get up, leave Jupiter and start driving towards Tampa. We have a Dave Matthews concert to assist to and we are looking forward to spend some time with friends and good music. n the way to Tampa we stopped at a gas station that got our attention, you will see why! We get to Tampa, check in at the hotel, change up and head over to the Fairgrounds, on the way there we get this huge pour down rain so we have no other choice then to sit in the truck and wait for a better weather so we can continue with our tailgate, of course in the mean time we drink some good champagne and listed to good music. After a couple of hours the weather gets better, we started cooking and drinking and getting very anxious about seen Dave! I (Stephanie) have personally never been to a DMB concert in my life so it was very interesting and fun experience I will never forget!

This is why the gas station got our attention :)

Here Dave at his best! cool shot!

We meet up with Paul and Evan which are 2 very good friends of Jimmy. Good to see them and be able to spend some fun times together, we look forward to more times like this in our future!

Thank you guys!