Foodie Weekend with Mom

Well, I do love a long weekend :) Doesn't everyone? Most especially one when Mom comes to visit! We had a fab time.

I picked her up after work and after she'd had her first Gautrain ride on Friday afternoon. We headed straight to the shops to stock up on ingredients. Instead of the usual eating out, we were planning on cooking at home this weekend (most especially since I'd eaten out 3 nights that week already).

For Friday night's dinner we made Beetroot Burgers (thanks to The Creative Pot for the recipe!) which turned out to be completely delish and amazed us both! I highly recommend these as something different and the colours are so much fun :) fyi. we couldn't find buckwheat so we used oats instead.

On Saturday I made us crumpets for breakfast and we were supposed to go on Past Experiences' Naming Jozi Tour ... which sadly got rained out completely. Seriously, we were drenched! It was a bit of a disappointment, I was looking forward to showing Mom a bit of Joburg city centre. Oh well.

After that we came home and got warm and watched Julie & Julia. Hugely appropriate for our cooking weekend, I thought :) And I did enjoy the movie. We also watched Iron Man, because Mom had never seen it - and she loves Robert Downey about as much as I do ;)

On Sunday we started with breakfast at my new favourite spot, The Salvation Cafe, where we both had my fav Mexican Spinach Burrito. Divine! After that we popped in at the Rosebank Rooftop market as is tradition and had a wander around there and I got 4 more frames for my wall :) Only need 3 more and I'm done (have actually added 2 new photos which is why I'm not just 1 frame short) and then I'll need to find a good framer to do the mountings for me ... Don't think I'm going to attempt it myself, especially in situation where the photos need to be cut to size. Would rather a professional did it properly! Can't wait for it all to be done, it is going to look so awesome :) *grin*

On Sunday evening, we went to watch Freakonomics. I was super keen since I'd so enjoyed the book, when I read it absolute ages ago ... And so, I guess the movie will be interesting for people who haven't read the book (although I'd recommend you do that instead!) but for me it was pretty much just a rehash. I'm honestly not entirely sure why they bothered making the movie. Although don't go expecting a normal movie, it's documentary style (what else could it be, really?) and I did rather like that different people directed each segment so they were each quite different. As I said, I'd recommend giving this one a skip and reading the book instead.

And then we went to go and find some dinner. I had a craving for Butternut Panzerotti. Do you know how long it took us to find what I wanted?!? We figured Col'Cacchio as the obvious choice, although I'll never go there when craving pasta again, their selection is tiny and they server their panzerotti in that butter-sage sauce (which I despise) and so shortly after sitting down and receiving our menus we were up and off again. Next stop en route home was The Green Peppercorn (kitchen already closed by 19h30 on a Sunday night) and Pomodoro (entirely closed). Then I figured we'd try Doppio Zero, which was the winner! Wow, I got to have exactly what I was craving for dinner, perfect :)

Monday was far more relaxed and involved more cooking. This time we made Simply Delicious' Roasted Aubergine & Feta Fritters. I'm a big fan of aubergine, but not of cooking it ... and these came out perfectly. I was also a little worried while we were cooking them, but we found the cooler leftovers to be even better than eating them warm :) They were really yummy!



On Monday evening, we watched Whip It. It was actually really awesome not to have Mom flying back on Monday evening, no mad rush to the airport, no wasted afternoon. I dropped her off at the Sandton Gautrain station on my way to work this morning.

It was a lovely weekend :)