Nashville Food!

One of my favorite places about cities is the variety of culinary experiences you can have.

This is a nice way of saying, I'm a fat girl at heart (and usually around the mid-waist area).

When my family came to visit in Nashville, I knew exactly where I wanted to take them.

The first restaurant we went to, I had never experienced. It was a BBQ restaurant across from the Opry Mills Mall called Caney Fork or something. Kerri and I shared a catfish reuben, mashed potatoes and baked beans. I would say it got a solid 6/10. Of course it wasn't my choice, so I don't really take responsibility for it. The best part was the gravy on the potatoes.

On Sunday, we went to two fabulous restaurants:

1. Rosepepper Cantina- an "upscale" (I really have no context for what is upscale or not, but I think this is a really classy joint) Mexican restaurant. I love the large portions, the margaritas (although I didn't indulge this time) and the beautiful year-round colorful Christmas lights. The food flavors are light and delicious.

2. Pied Piper Eatery- for dinner, we stopped by the Pied Piper Eatery. The menus are on records and the food all has really creative titles like the "Dolly Parton" which are two large chicken breasts smothered in BBQ sauce, or something.I ordered a Buffalo Chicken Salad (Alas...I can't remember the creative name.) Before I placed my order I asked for a sample of the sauce it was cooked in. I was going to spoon out a mouthful of the sauce but then realized that would be really stupid. I took a little bit and smiled at the man, "It's perfect!"

The words had barely escaped my mouth when I started choking. The sauce was so hot, I lost my breath. I was sputtering and crying...but now too embarrassed to renig on my "It's perfect" sentiment.

Sunday, we went to Ginza...my favorite sushi place! Kerri and I shared a platter of 3 sushi rolls.

After taking a poll, my family decided that:

Best Service= Pied Piper Eatery
Best Portions= Rosepepper Cantina
Best Flavors= Jack's (just a classic BBQ place on Broadway I forgot to mention before).

Family is in town...

I find that when real life happens, my blog doesn't.

This week has been jam packed with family hosting, and let me tell you, hosting is not easy.

My family (minus Betsey who is gallivanting around Europe) arrived in Nashville Thursday night.

The main purpose of this trip was for my family to see my classroom and students.

Unfortunately, MNPS closes school when there is a 50% or greater chance of snow forecasted. This might be a slight exaggeration...but it is definitely not a huge exaggeration. With a few flurries in the sky, I knew we were doomed.

While waiting for the impending news, I took my family to a lovely new hamburger joint called "Pharmacy." We sat in their heated patio and chowed down on delicious gourmet burgers and vanilla milkshakes. It was definitely an amazing meal.

4AM Friday morning, I got the text. School cancelled. Normally, I would be jubilant, but I was disappointed my family wouldn't meet my kids...and I would need to spend that extra time entertaining them (I kid, but seriously).

Friday morning my family and I decided to go the Opry Mills Mall to watch Beauty and the Beast 3-D.

I LOVE this movie, but seeing it in 3-D was a little disappointing. It seemed like the animators had done no adjustments for the 3-D setting. I'd prefer to have just seen the movie on the big screen. It was as if they divided the scene into the foreground and background and just made the foreground 3-D. Unfortunately, that just made it evident how flat and boring the background was. Anyways, I really know a lot about 3-D as you can tell. (NOT)....but the movie itself was the redeemer.

Quotes like this just never get old:

Gaston: It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting *ideas*, and *thinking*...

Stay tuned for my next blogs about the food, Friday night and other festivities!

Love is...

For advisory, I gave my students the following prompt:

"It is impossible to fall in love unless you are an adult." Do you agree or disagree?

This led us into a discussion about what love is. My students agreed to the following list:

Love is when:

"You can't picture life without that person."

"You are willing to die for that person."

"You see no one else but that person."

"You have a different feeling about that person, and everybody else is below."

"You would steal yo momma's car for that person."

Village Pub

Today Lizzie and I went to....wait for it..."The Village Pub."

It was awesome!

It was love at first sight.

When we walked in, we realized there was a radio show being broadcast LIVE!!

We were also given several opportunities to sign up for free drawings..and it was happy hour. Win-Win-Win.

When I saw the menu, my heart sunk a little bit. The majority of the menu consisted of pretzel sandwiches. I'm not a big fan of pretzels.

But...I'll try everything once, so I selected the Reuben pretzel.

AMAZING!

I also splurged on the 99 cents past salad. Best choice ever.

I know my overuse of screamers is annoying, but I don't care.

Food this good deserves ample screamers.



No, this is not the picture of my pretzel reuben...but I gobbled the whole thing up before I realized I should take a picture.