classy ladies

My bestest pally, Lydia, recently simultaneously celebrated her college graduation and 22nd birthday. Once I returned from Austin, I had to take her out whoo!

I love this picture of us.

Taken at The Jolly Roger (people who go to the Outer Banks, this place makes the best brunch ever!) last summer at the beach.

Since we are classy ladies, and we like the ladies’ things (anyone who understands and appreciates that link has my undying love),  we headed to Grand Cru, a wine store and wine bar (I guess that’s what Vineria roughly translates to?) in Arlington.

It was quite nice because you could sit outside and admire the trees and flowers and things (er… ignore the “Big Buns” sign… for the record that’s a burger place, no funny business).

*Sigh* if this were Austin, there’d be a band.

The reason the seats are a bit unoccupied is that it was still… a bit early. It was five o’clock… in Newfoundland. Nonetheless, we ordered. We decided this made us “European” rather than “alcoholics”. I asked Lydia to convey this with a pose, and she obliged.

 

House Pinot Noir for her, Chardonnay for me. Nice deal: if you’re on Yelp and mention them, a house wine is $4!

We chatted and caught up for QUITE awhile, then admired the wine selection at Grand Cru’s shop which was impressive but overpriced.

Now, this was a first for me: I was driving home. I have drunk alcohol before. I have driven a car before. But I have not driven a car after drinking. I had one glass of wine and was not at all impaired, but I still felt a little weird about it, mentally.

So we hunted down a delicious snack to soak up the alkie-hol :D

Which led us to Tivoli Gourmet and THIS beautiful thing:

Flaky-crusted, almond-sprinkled, melting apple and raisin-filled struuuuuuuuuuuudel!

Lyddie and I split one- this is a mere HALF.

Scrumptious to the nth degree. All birthdays should be celebrated with wine and pastry, in my opinion (well, all adult birthdays).

Is this picture artfully blurred or just blurred? I hate that all of my posts have at least one picture I am just not satisfied with.

For dinner (once I finally regained my appetite- conveniently my mother worked late so we ate on European time), I decided it had been far too long since I made this lovely pasta recipe with the classiest (and most delicious) vegetable of all time: Anna’s pasta with artichoke-walnut-lemon zest-parsley topper. NO WORDS! I slightly ghetto-fied it by not bothering with the breadcrumbs and just tossing it together as a nice cool pasta salad. It is such a great weeknight meal.

It takes twenty minutes tops and it is CRAMMED WITH FLAVA. And no wonder because it contains what I would argue are two integral ingredients for adding tons of flavor with no work- fresh herbs and lemon. Yummers!

  

Classy: that’s a tablecloth from Greece. Slightly less classy: we took it out and put it on our dining room table… for Easter. We just haven’t bothered to put it away. We so rarely use the dining room… except for blog photographs!