On our lunch break we went for a walk in the beautiful gardens of a church downtown adjacent to the theatre…
The trees are blooming and beautiful, but they kind of smell like salmon…
Lunch hour with friends just got way more pleasant. Now we can eat lunch, play Taboo, and go for a walk among the flowers before retreating back into the recesses of our chilly yet wonderful theatre for the remainder of the day…
Yesssss.
And then I went for a run after work. It was glorious and I felt much better about my plans to meet Shawnda, Meg, and Becca at Chocolate & Vines…for dinner. Not dessert. Dinner. What you see below was my dinner. And it was perfect.
I had a flute of sparkling moscato….
We shared this magnificent cheese platter of crustinis, dried cranberries and apricots, salted nuts, gurkens, manchego, gjetost, gouda, ‘across the pond,’ and the best whole grain mustard, honey, and duck pate I’ve ever had…
And then we moved on to a dessert and a piece of chocolate for each of us, which we passed around the table so we could all taste everything, like all smart foodies do.
I had tiramisu and a piece of passion panna cotta white chocolate (to.die.for.)…
Meg had the chocolate truffle mousse and a piece of blackberry jam with crystallized ginger dark chocolate….
Becca had the cranberry saligari and a piece of coconut curry chocolate…
And Shawnda had the amaretto mascarpone and a piece of coconut dark chocolate…
If manners, reputation, and friendship were not at stake, I would have licked everyone’s plate or bowl clean…civility be damned. But I also kind of think nobody would have cared because we all pretty much had the same idea.
It was all heavenly, but my favorites were the insanely tasty gjetost cheese (a goat whey and cow’s cream cheese from Norway with “a rich caramel fudge texture”), the delicious duck liver pate (with roasted red bell peppers and port wine) that none of us could get enough of, the out-of-this-world whole grain mustard (which was crazy flavorful but not spicy), Becca’s dessert which tasted exactly like Christmas, my sinfully rich yet light tiramisu, and my truffle that was filled with soft creamy white chocolate and a sweet yet tangy orange passion panna cotta syrup that was mind-blowing.
Girls night, indeed!
Get thee to this place immediately.
Flowers at lunch, running on a spring afternoon, girlfriends, and epic nosh? I could get used to this.
