A Local Vacay

Graduate school has dictated the bulk of our lives for the past four years, and one of the things over which grad school reigns supreme is our time off. We've been taking the first week of January off for vacation over the past four years, mostly because this is one of the weeks that we know with certainty that neither of us will have class. In the past we've spent this week hiking in Big Sur or taking in a southern city's charms in a historic carriage ride or camped in a yurt, etc. After a particularly gruesome fall (as far as school goes), we decided that we'd re-ignite our summertime focus for our January vacation: keepin' it local. Spend enough time outside of your house filling other mindwrenching obligations, and suddenly your very own home feels like an exotic locale.

We spent some of our time reading (for fun, y'all! for FUN!), taking care of home improvement projects (replacing our kitchen countertops), and celebrating a certain spunky niece's 6th birthday. We also took a couple of day trips--to Charlottesville and Richmond--to do what we do best: eat and drink.

We had good intentions of checking out Devils Backbone Brewing Company in Nelson County just outside of Charlottesville over the summer, but could never squeeze it into our intinerary when we were in the Cville area. We promised ourselves we'd head out to the brewery, which sits at the bottom of Wintergreen, over the winter. We sampled flights of ten different brew varieties:

What it looked like when we were done:

My faves: Morning Bear Imperial Stout, Wintergreen Weiss, and Winters Cheer. Nick's fave: Trukker Pils, Bavarian Dark Lager and Morning Bear Imperial Stout. We both had a hearty espresso rubbed steak with our beer, and it was a filling night. Nick had an after dinner drink made with a local whiskey(Kopper Kettle Virginian Whiskey) and house made ginger beer which was oh-so-delicious. This Virginia whiskey is actually made at Belmont Farms in Culpeper, VA, not far at all from our little town. I smell a visit to the distillery in our future.

In Richmond we splurged at Mezzanine in Richmond's Carytown. Mezzanine is known for its focus on fresh ingredients from local farms and rivers, and our dinner was comfortably long and quiet and deelish.

The menu board during our visit:

We started with the special soup: butternut squash. The soup tested so bright a fresh. Nick had the pan roasted free range chicken w/ goat cheese, haircot verts and celery root puree. I've never heard him rave about a chicken dish like he did he did this one. It was a really pretty and generous plate. I noshed on the grilled Virginia rockfish over pineapple fried rice with ginger sake butter. The fried rice was the star, chunked with pineapple and studded with plump shrimp. So good. And we finished off the night with a velvety chocolate mousse dessert bedecked with hazelnuts. A yummy splurge, and totally worth it.

While these day trips were bright spots during our vacation, the real highlight was interrupting our crazy routines and spending undistracted time with each other. Home vacations rule.

You Keep Playing Me Like a Fruit Machine

One of our priorities for early 2010 is to buy a new digital camera. Nick bought our current camera in 2005 right before a trip to Paris, and I was actually upset with him that he made such a lavish purchase just days before our shoestring-funded getaway, worried we might suddenly have the need for a monetary cushion on the other side of the Atlantic. In hindsight, it was a very smart buy because we were able bring home gorgeous memories from our trip; it was well worth the money. But now, at five years old, our current camera is now a dinosaur in terms of technology, and it's dying a slow death. Our recently unreliable digi cam drove us into the vault of our cell phone photo albums for this post, so please pardon these slightly hazy pictures. (Also, Grandma Betty, this camera crap-out is why we've not been able to share pictures of your mushroom kit! The kit is pretty neat, and every time we harvest our mushrooms it's like nerdy, warm hug to our inner Bill Nye. We promise to share pictures soon, Grandma!)

After our trip to the Heritage Harvest Festival last fall, we were inspired to take a trip to Edible Landscaping in Afton, VA, right outside of Charlottesville. Michael McConkley had given a lecture on figs at the festival, effectively kick-starting our infatuation with paw paw and fig trees. We had planted fruit bushes and brambles over the summer and were interested in learning about other edible goodies we could incorporate in our small city lot. We came home empty-handed, but not for lack of interesting edible plant life. In fact, we came across some fruits we had only seen at the farmers' market or grocery store and never actually seen growing in situ. And we saw other fruits that looked like props from a Harry Potter movie--odd and creepy.

The nursery was located down a long wooded drive off an old country road.
FIGS! (At the harvest festival, we were advised by Michael McKonkely that figs are ripe when they hang like a pair of dog's testicles--no joke. Hilarious.)
Dragon fruit! When we were in Mexico a couple of years ago an old man just plucked one of these off of a vine growing in his backyard for us. (I wish I could remember the name of the village, but it totally escapes me.) It was so refreshing. This one here was growing in a greenhouse. I doubt we'd have the skill to pull this off in our own backyard, greenhouse or not.
Che fruit! We had never seen this fruit in real life before. From a distance, it looked almost like a cherry tree.
Up close, not so much like a cherry. Weird, right? Like a cross between a lychee, an orange, and what happens when you feed a Mogwai after midnight. Tastes kind of like a fig!
BEES y'all! They pollinate the orchard and other nursery goodness.

Sigh. Have I told you how much I want my own hive?

Julian Cornus Kousa--a dogwood fruit. We had no clue what this was and had to ask. We'd never seen it before. Beautiful.

Southern muscadine grape.
Sneaking a taste...super tart! More please!

Persimmons!
Sneaking another taste. (We were such bad guests and slyly sampled the more interesting fruits. I mean, we have to taste it if we're going to know if we want it setting roots in our backyard, right?)
Not going in our backyard, apparently.
Hanging out under the persimmon tree.
I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I (idiot) did not know that kiwis grew on trees. So cute!

Scoping out the berry brambles.

It was a good afternoon in the country. Though we left empty-handed, I have a feeling that we'll be back in the 2010 growing season to return with some YUM for our yard.