Memphis Eats: Brother Junipers

This is also a re-post of an old post, but I'm reorganizing so here you go.  This was one of jennifer's favorite Sundays in Memphis I think because she always talks about the morning we made Pimm's Cups, so this one's for you Jenn!

On to Sunday Funday....Jenn stayed at our house Saturday night and we woke up and decided we'd go to Brother Juniper's since EVERYONE has said it is delicious!  We drove over there and they said it would be an hour wait, so we decided to head back down the street to our house and have some Sunday Funday cocktails!  We had been dying to make a Pimm's Cup since leaving New Orleans.  It is the cocktail to drink at Wimbledon, but we know and love it from having it at Napoleon House in the French Quarter in New Orleans.  Napoleon House is a historic bar in the French Quarter in a building that has been around for 200 years.  Their signature drink is the Pimm's Cup, and its a great cocktail to sip while wandering around the French Quarter.  So so delicious and refreshing.  Anyways, I'm off on a tangent.  We made ourselves a Pimm's Cup!  Or we put Jenn to work, and she made us a Pimm's cup. 

Excellent presentation I must say!  How to make a Pimm's Cup, you ask?  Easy!  You need Pimm's No. 1 liqueur, 7Up, Lemonade (we used that Simply Lemonade that comes in the clear container and it was good!), and cucumber slices.  You put in a shot of Pimm's, shot and a half of lemonade, then add 7Up and cucumbers to taste.  Serve it over ice and garnish with a slice of cucumber.  If you haven't had one, probably hard to add to taste, but just mix the 7Up in until it tastes delicious to you.  Some recipes add mint, or use a squeeze of lemon juice instead of lemonade, but these were great.  Thanks to Tara Kelley for coming home from her visit to New Orleans and perfecting the recipe after she had one at Napoleon House and loved it!  On another note, if you can see them in the picture, check out the metal straws.  These are one of my favorite little things I own.  Had lemonade with a metal straw when I was little, and I had been on a search to find them ever since.  Finally found them at the Williams Sonoma outlet in Memphis during dental school.  They are so great because they get all cold when you drink through them. 

So we made it to Brother Juniper's and it was so so good.  Brian had the breakfast bean burrito:

I had the Gyro omelet.  Can't really tell from the picture, but inside was gyro meat, feta, and mozarella cheese.  Yummmmm!  And the home fries were AMAZING.

Jenn had the San Diegan, which was really good.  It was featured in Rachel Ray's Best Eats in Town in the Memphis section and definitely lived up to the expectations.  Everything was amazingly delicious.  Best breakfast I've had in a while, and probably dangerous that its right down the street. 

Memphis Eats: Cafe Palladio

This is an older post but I'm re-organizing a bit so I'm going to repost about Cafe Palladio:

So we discovered a new restaurant this weekend that was so delicious.  It is on Central a couple doors down from Central BBQ in an antique store called Palladio Antiques.  The restaurant is appropriately called Cafe Palladio.  Cute and tucked in the back of the antique store, the food was delicious!! Probably not fast enough for a work lunch but definitely worth a try.  I had the BLT (the T was a fried green tomato) with remoulade sauce, and chicken salad.  Both were so good and there was enough chicken salad for two people (and this was a half!).  I got it as a half salad, half sandwich deal for $9. 

Brian had the half sald, half sandwich with the BLT and the Greek salad. 

So I give this two thumbs up!  Not fast enough for a quick lunch but definitely worth trying.  Try the peach tea with your meal too.  It is sweet and delicious.  And you can bring wine with a $5 corkage fee.  Only open for lunch.  Brian thought it was a little girly, but the food was good so he approved:

Memphis Eats: Calvary Waffle Shop

So I'll start out the blogging with my latest little "discovery".  And by discovery I mean my discovering something that has been in Memphis since 1928.  So I'm a little slow on the discovery.  Anyway, I had heard about the Calvary Waffle Shop from friends, and it sounded interesting and delicious so I drug along some of my co-residents (and friends!) on my little adventure down to the Calvary Episcopal Church.

The Calvary Waffle Shop is only open during the Lenten season.  Anyone is invited to come and enjoy and yummy southern treat of a lunch each weekday during Lent from 11:00 to 1:30.  They also accept take out orders!  When you go in to the basement of the church, you walk in to the Waffle Shop which is in the church's large cafeteria.  You are seated family style, so it is great chance to chat with anyone from an older couple who has been coming to eat at the Waffle Shop for years or a couple of Memphis business men in suits.  That in itself makes it worth going just for the experience.

Anyway, the food is delicious.  Each day they have an entree and dessert special.  Friday's special was fish pudding which was kind of like fish casserole and came with cornbread, rice, and hash brown potatoes.  It was delicious:

The menu also features certain staples that are available every day.  You check off what you want form the menu at your seat and turn it in to the servers.

I had the waffles with chicken hash.  When you see chicken hash, it is not what you would picture, it is more like pot roast but with chicken.  I'll show you my picture of my meal and then we'll talk about what I'll do next time because I totally messed it up!

So I got this deliciousness quickly delivered to my table by one of the sweet older ladies who volunteer as servers.  It looked like people from different Episcopal churches in the area rotate through to work the Waffle Shop.  Our "waitress" was so sweet and took time to explain the menu to us, and explained how the daily entree and dessert specials work.  So back to my mistake...I got my waffle and chicken hash and did what i would normally do with waffles and put on some butter and syrup.  I enjoyed my meal- it was delicious.  The waffle was yummy and the chicken hash was tender and delicious.  But, as I was finishing up an older gentleman to my left sat down and ordered his chicken hash and waffles.  When his arrived, he opened up the waffle and poured the chicken hash directly on to the waffle.  Now we're talking.  No syrup, who needs syrup when you can cover your waffle in chicken gravy deliciousness.  So, that was my mistake that I will fix when I go back...this week!  Hey, I am running out of time because it ends Good Friday until next year!  The waffle recipe is a secret that only the most senior members in the church know.  They stand at the waffle table at the front of the rooms and make up those waffles all lunch long:

One of the other staples on the menu is the peppermint ice cream!  You can add chocolate sauce for 50 cents.  Just go on ahead and add the chocolate sauce.  You'll thank me later.  It was so good.  I will definitely share next time because it is a pretty big scoop and the chocolate sauce is rich, but wowza.   The man who checked us out said that they took the peppermint ice cream off the menu "a while back" (when this has been going on since 1928, I'm not sure how long a while back is), but so many people were asking for it that they added it back to the menu.  Thank goodness.

The Calvary Waffle Shop is in the basement of Calvary Episcopal Church at 102 N. Second Street in downtown Memphis.  It is open during the Lenten season Monday through Friday from 11-1:30.  There is a pay parking lot at the church that charges $6 to park.  We were able to get a meter spot about a block away.  They take cash or credit cards.  I highly recommend getting over there in the next few weeks while there's still time!

MuSiC MoNdAy! Fun.- Some Nights

Okkk I am going to try to start blogging again because Facebook is boring me lately.  So back to music Monday.  Brian discovered this one and it is so catchy I can't stop putting it on repeat.

The band is kind of known for their hit single "We are Young" that has been in some commercials and in an episode of Glee.  I think this song is pretty great.

Even though I haven't been blogging, I have been eating!  And taking lots of pictures of Memphis restaurants, so I'm going to try to catch up on that because we're running out of Memphis time.  We have been surprised at some of the new (to us) restaurants that we didn't even know about in dental school.

New Years Eve in Jamaica

After our fun, white Christmas, we hopped on a plane and headed to Jamaica!  We found a last minute deal and decided a couple weeks before Christmas to go on a trip.  It is my last big chunk of vacation time, and the last chance to go on a just us vacation before the baby, so we went for it.  We flew in to Montego Bay, Jamaica and took a short shuttle ride to Sandals Montego Bay.  The day we got there it was overcast and rainy, and we were very sad.  We got checked in and ate some food and checked out the resort and had a nice dinner that night.  The next morning we woke up to a beautiful, bright, sunny day and the rest of the trip the weather was perfect!  We had a great time.  We had been to Couples Swept Away in Negril for our honeymoon and it was fantastic.  Sandals Montego Bay was nice and we had a great time, but it wasn't as nice as Couples, so if you're heading to Jamaica check out Couples Swept Away first.  The nice part is that it was very close to the airport so we made the most of the time we had and didn't spend any time getting there.  The food was good.  They had about 5 different restaurants that you could choose from for dinner.  We liked the Stewfish restaurant.  It was a small open air pavillion with a thatch roof right on the the water.  We had a great dinner and enjoyed being at our picnic table right on the beach for the sunset:

During the day, we relaxed and enjoyed the warm weather.

We really liked the beds by the pool!  We had fun getting dressed up and trying all the different dinner spots.

We got upgraded to a room with a patio.  It was nice.  It was right on the lawn that you walked across to get to a pool with a swim up bar and the beach.  It was nice!

On New Year's Eve they had a big buffet outside with crab claws, grilled lobster, ham, prime rib, and lots of yummy desserts.  It was really good.  They had live music and a big countdown to New Year's.  We had fun, but had a hard time staying awake.  I think I'm officially getting old.  I had a lot of different smoothies and mocktails, but its not quite the same as a real cocktail!

Grilled lobster!

Desserts!!

And our cheesy Sandals New Years picture that we just had to buy because Brian's face is so funny.  That's his ohmygosh we're having a baby in 2011 face.

It was a perfect way to spend the New Year, and to get a tan in the middle of some seriously cold weather.  Now back to reality....

Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas break filled with fun and snow and then sunshine!  We headed to Clarksville on the 23rd and had a nice Christmas with Brian's parents, then got up and headed to Chattanooga.  We went to the Christmas Eve service at church that I always love, then had a nice dinner with the family and hit the sack.  Around 6 am Christmas morning, I woke up (not sure why I woke up so early) to look and saw SNOW!!!

It was great to wake up and see all this Christmas snow, and it just got better!  We got out of bed and had Christmas breakfast, then opened up our presents.  Since we were little we've always sat at the top of the stairs and gotten a picture or video of us running down the stairs, and this year wasn't any different!  Now we've got a husband and fiance and a baby on the way added to the crew, plus a few Bloody Marys! 

We opened our presents, then mom and dad opened their presents.  Many years ago, we were shopping for Christmas presents for my mom and we (my dad and two sisters) decided to split up and each buy some smaller things, then get back together and see what we came up with.  Dad and Jennifer met back up with what they thought was a great present- the Miracle Thaw.  We weren't so sure, but we wrapped it and gave it to her.  And like every mom does, she smiled, said "Oh this is neat!" and continued on her way.  Her critical error was that the next year, we brought down our Christmas decorations and there it was, still in its original wrapper.  Soooo we decided we'd show her, and we wrapped it back up and gave it to her again.  She was not so excited the second time around.  And thus began our Miracle Thaw tradition.  Every year since then, we have found some new way to re-wrap and re-gift mom with the Miracle Thaw.  Sometimes in a big box, sometimes in a small box, each year something new.  She always tries to hide it, but we find it.  We had a house fire a couple years ago and we thought all was lost.  But, my sister's fiance, Geoff was now in on the secret and had a genius idea.  He ordered a new Miracle Thaw since the original Miracle Thaw was lost and last year he wrapped it up and presented it to mom himself.  Got her!!  This year, Brian and I happened to be at a thrift store in Memphis and came across ANOTHER Miracle Thaw.  We decided this year we would change things up and give the Miracle Thaw from us, thennnn give the second Miracle Thaw from us.  We gave mom our presents and she opened up the Miracle Thaw:

Then, in a different, larger box a few presents later the second one....

Got her!!  After opening presents, we decided to walk down to the golf course and go sledding!  First time I've ever been sledding on Christmas!  And even though its probably not the greatest pregnant thing to do, I couldn't miss it!

 

We came back to the house for Christmas lunch with the family, and I have to give mom some props for the beautiful Christmas decorations.  Everything was so pretty!  Especially with the snow!

Pretty Christmas table

All in all a great, pretty, white Christmas!!!