Lovehardsteins!: The Amazing Things That Happen When You're Unemployed!

Since traveling to NYC for Julia's wedding and coming back to Atlanta, we're pretty much settling into the groove here in the ATL. We celebrated our one year anniversary (YEEEHAW!) on Labor Day weekend and went to ASHEVILLE, where Ben had planned a surprise hike and dinner and b&b for me. Asheville is like my fave place on earth. In spite of its flaws (actually what are the flaws?), I love Asheville. Its cute downtown, its lovely green hills, it's hippy/artsy/trendy vibe, for some reason it feels so real and genuine to me. I love the restaurants there, and this visit only confirmed that.

On the way down, we had to stop at the Spring Run Creamery. You can see the cows the ice cream comes from grazing outside. Their butter pecan is salty and delicious.

After a trip to the lovely Syler Bald (a place I'd always dreamed of going),

we headed to our amazing b&b. I wish I had taken photos because we were upgraded to an incredible room with a view looking over the woods and the garden.

No time to spare...Off to Salsas, of course, for a night of the best food in the world (every Sept 1 we must eat Salsas, apparently!) and we loved our empanadillas with 3 salsas (corn, mango and seaweed!) and then had "paquetez" of sweet potato, corn, black beans, chipotle, cilantro, and so much more. We had also an empanada de pollo with amazing salsas. Why this amazing restaurant still doesn't have its promised cookbook (or a website for that matter) is totally beyond me. It is, no doubt, the best restaurant on the face of the earth. Ben and I agree on that one!

Next up? We saw this bar that was serving beer and we went in. And boy oh boy, this was incredible! This place, the Thirsty Monk, had just opened its American beer bar (previously it just had a Belgian bar. Wow...we had some Duck Rabbit Wee Heavy Scotch Style Ale, Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, and something else I don't remember. But...it was in HALF POURS! Half a pint for $2.50. How amazing is that?

Getting a chance to try all these incredible beers, many of them local, all of them "hand craft" and "damn good." They had this chocolate/beer pairing I was dying to try but we decided to go home and come back another time.

We slept super well and had a delicious breakfast, which I won't describe for fear of boring our dear readership. We then had a leisurely day around Asheville at their Mast Store supersale and checked out some other stuff, and headed on over to the City Bakery, which was ok, not great, so I won't link to it. HA!

Then we headed on over to Turtleback Falls, aka, greatest place on earth. We went there on the Friday before our wedding with lots of our friendsies. I've included here a few photos of our trip there last Labor Day weekend so you get a sense of how amazing it feels to slide off a huge rock into a waterfall. Incredible! The river was pretty high though so it was actually quite hard to navigate out of the water...and at times pretty scary.
Go Greg Go!

THAT THAR was our anniversary! Since then, we've gotten back on schedule of cooking delish meals, meeting up with the Burundians (I'm officially their "family mentor," aka they are the only friends I have in Atlanta, besides a few key folks!) and traveling on the weekends. SMOOCH SMOOCH! Aren't they so cute?

This past weekend we headed to Chattanooga area with Ariel, Chad, Barb, and Christa to do a hike and to wind up drinking damn good beer and nibbling on wood-fire pizza. YUM! Below see the pictures from our journey.

We always find our way to the local brewery. In this case, it was Big River Brewery.

Here we are, below, at Lupi's, a gourtmet by the slice place. We got a "warm wheat loaf" with garlicky oil.

And the bathroom may have been the best restaurant bathroom I've ever seen! Yes, please imagine me going into the bathroom with my camera.

Now the week has started and we are...looking for jobs. YESSSSSSSS!!!!!! I should take my own advice.. But we are also going to the farmers markets and eating lots of food. We'd love to host anyone coming through this town.